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Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:
Trump continues to push theory that virus came from lab
“Something happened, the US president told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the theory that the coronavirus was released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Probably it was incompetence. Somebody was stupid,” he added during a meeting with the Texas governor.
It comes after US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, claimed he had seen “enormous evidence” that the virus had originated at the lab. No evidence has been produced. China has denied the claims.
Global death toll nears 270,000
The total number of coronavirus deaths across the world has reached 268,999, according to Johns Hopkins University, which has tracked the spread of the virus during the pandemic.
The US death toll from coronavirus has now surpassed 75,000 people, the highest globally, followed by the UK with 30,689 deaths.
The countries with the next highest numbers of deaths are Italy with 29,958 and Spain with 26,070.
White House reportedly shelved guidance on reopening businesses
A report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was shelved by the White House, according to AP News.
The document includes step-by-step guidance on how and when local authorities should allow businesses to reopen and life to resume as normal.
The 17-page report was scheduled to be published on Friday but now the guidance “will never see the light of day”, a CDC official told AP.
It urges businesses to slowly reopen while continuing to observe social distancing. Trump has pushed for a rapid reopening despite fears of a surge in coronavirus cases.
Concerns over UK contact-tracing app
The UK’s contact-tracing app must not be rolled out until the government has increased privacy and data protections, a parliamentary committee has said, as rights groups warn that the current trial is unlawful under the Data Protection Act.
The joint committee on human rights said it was essential legislation was enacted to ensure the mass surveillance of personal data did not result in a violation before the trial was expanded.
The app, which is being trialled on the Isle of Wight, logs users’ movements and can alert people if they have had contact with someone who has developed symptoms.
Madrid health director resigns as region seeks to lift lockdown
The director of public health for the Madrid region, Yolanda Fuentes, has resigned, apparently in protest at the regional government’s decision to seek to loosen lockdown restrictions in the area of Spain hardest hit by coronavirus.
Fuentes stepped down as the Madrid regional government prepares to seek permission from the national health ministry to reopen small businesses, with restaurant and bar terraces opening at 30% capacity.
Fuentes is understood to have had grave reservations about the move, as Madrid remains badly affected by the virus.
France’s daily death total falls
France reported 178 new coronavirus deaths, a fall from 278 the previous day, and saw its number of patients in intensive care drop under 3,000 for the first time since late March.
The health ministry said 25,987 people were now confirmed to have died from the virus in hospitals and nursing homes.
France reveals easing of lockdown measures
The French prime minister, Édouard Philippe, said the country’s border will remain closed for the “foreseeable future” except for absolutely essential professional or family reasons and trans-border workers, and they will still need to carry an international declaration.
Although restrictions will be eased in some areas, in the capital and the four adjoining regions – Ile-de-France, Hauts-de-France, Grand Est Bourgogne-Franche-Comte – which comprise the “red zone”, public parks and gardens will remain shut.
Anyone stopped by police or gendarmes making a journey of more than 100km will need a new sworn declaration stating the journey is absolutely essential.
Brazil records further 610 deaths
Brazil registers 9,888 new cases of coronavirus and 610 deaths on Thursday, the country’s health ministry said. That brought the total to 135,106 confirmed cases in Brazil, with 9,146 deaths from Covid-19.
WHO study: 190,000 people in Africa could die from virus
Up to 190,000 people in Africa could die of Covid-19 during the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail, according to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Algeria, South Africa and Cameroon are among the countries at high risk if containment measures are not prioritised, the study found.
It also warned that health services would be overwhelmed with the number of people requiring treatment and recommends that hospitals increase their capacity.
Turkey records 57 further deaths
The number of people who have died from Covid-19 in Turkey has risen by 57 in the last 24-hours to 3,641, Health Ministry data showed.
The overall number of cases rose by 1,977 to 133,721, the highest total outside western Europe, the US and Russia.
Australian cabinet set to ease restrictions in stages
Australia’s national cabinet is expected to ease some social distancing restrictions on Friday as the number of new coronavirus infections slows.
Australia’s minister for health, Greg Hunt, said he expected the cabinet to detail a timetable for easing those restrictions.
“What I expect is a clear roadmap out, with clear stages,” Hunt told reporters.
Updated
Brazil records further 610 deaths
Brazil registers 9,888 new cases of coronavirus and 610 deaths on Thursday, the country’s health ministry said.
That brought the total to 135,106 confirmed cases in Brazil with 9,146 deaths from Covid-19.
Australia’s national Cabinet was on Friday expected to ease some social distancing restrictions as the number of new coronavirus infections slows.
With fewer than 20 new infections each day, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week said he would meet with state and territory leaders to decide which restrictions will be eased.
Australia’s Minister for Health Greg Hunt said he expected the Cabinet to detail a timetable for easing those restrictions.
“What I expect is a clear roadmap out, with clear stages,” Hunt told reporters in Melbourne.
Updated
Starting Friday, California will allow retailers to begin offering curbside pick-up as the state moves deeper into “stage 2” of its reopening plan, governor Gavin Newsom said.
Manufactures and warehouses that support these retailers will also be allowed to reopen with modifications. Eventually the reopening plan in stage two will include some office spaces, dining at restaurants, shopping malls and outdoor museums, Dr Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services, said.
Ghaly said starting Friday, retailers can begin delivering items to customers’ cars with gloves and a mask while using hands-free devices that allow customers to pay.
He added manufacturers should use outdoor spaces as break rooms and warehouses should carry sanitation materials when making deliveries.
Stage 4, the final stage in the state’s reopening plan, will allow for large gatherings to resume, such as concerts and sporting events, Newsom said. However, he indicated that stage would occur once a vaccine is made available.
California has been under a two-month lockdown.
US death toll passes 75,000
The US death toll from coronavirus has now surpassed 75,000 people, according to the counter from Johns Hopkins University.
Deaths in the US are the highest globally at 75,447, a rise of around 2,000 in a day, followed by the UK at 30,689 deaths.
The proceeding countries with the highest numbers of casualties are Italy with 29,958 and Spain with 26,070.
Updated
Donald Trump said his administration was considering further economic measures, possibly via executive orders, to provide help against the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
In remarks to reporters at the White House, the US president appeared to confirm the possibility of further postponement of the deadline for filing 2019 federal income tax returns, already extended by three months to July 15.
“Things could happen like that. We have to help people,” he said in response to a question about the tax deadline and economic measures that would not require congressional action.
“We can do things ... through executive order or otherwise that can help a lot of people ... like delays. We can do delays of various files. ... I can see that happening,” he said.
Congress has passed major coronavirus relief bills worth nearly $3 trillion, including payments of $1,200 to many individuals and more than $650 billion in loans to small businesses.
Asked whether there would be more direct payments to individuals, Trump said: “Well, something could happen. There’s talk about something happening. We’ll see what’s going on.”
WHO study: 190,000 people in Africa could die from virus
Up to 190,000 people could die of Covid-19 during the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail, according to a study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) based on prediction modelling and analysing 47 countries in the region.
Algeria, South Africa and Cameroon are among the countries at high risk if containment measures are not prioritised, the study found.
It also warned that health services would be overwhelmed with the number of people requiring hospital treatment.
An estimated 3.6-5.5 million people could need hospital treatment for the virus among which around 52,000-107,000 would need breathing support.
The study recommends that hospitals increase their capacity.
Updated
White House reportedly blocking release of CDC guidance on reopening businesses
A report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was abruptly shelved by the White House, according to AP News.
The document includes step-by-step guidance on how and when local authorities should allow businesses to reopen and life to resume as normal. The 17-page report was scheduled to be published on Friday but now the guidance “will never see the light of day,” a CDC official told AP.
It urges businesses to slowly reopen while continuing to observe social distancing, while the president has pushed for a rapid reopening despite fears of a surge in coronavirus cases.
The White House has sought to control guidance on the virus outbreak rather than the CDC, which has traditionally let the US fight against epidemics.
Our Australia live blog has launched, covering developments in the country where news of a gradual easing of lockdown restrictions is expected.
A doctor in the UK has used the weekly clap for carers, where people stand on their doorsteps to applaud those key workers on the coronavirus frontline, to call for more PPE. The issue has dogged the government’s response to the epidemic and has been cited by some bereaved relatives of healthcare staff as a factor in their loved ones’ deaths. See the video here.
Trump said his administration is talking to Republican senators about the work visa issue.
Four Republican senators sent a letter earlier urging the US president to suspend all new guest worker visas for 60 days and certain categories of new guest work visas for at least a year, until unemployment returns to normal levels.
Trump added he wants to ease international travel restrictions at the appropriate time.
Updated
President Trump continues to push theory that virus originated in a lab despite no evidence
“Something happened,” Trump told US reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the theory that the coronavirus was released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Probably it was incompetence. Somebody was stupid,” the US president added during a meeting with the Texas governor.
It comes after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed he had seen “enormous evidence” that the virus had originated at the lab. No evidence has been produced. China has denied the claims.
Updated
Albania will let shopping centres and services start work and drivers travel without permission from Monday after Thursday marked the ninth day without any deaths, officials said.
It has closed its borders and imposed long lockdowns since its first case on March 8. In May, still enforcing dusk-to-dawn curfews, more businesses have resumed working or will.
Albania has registered 31 deaths from Covid-19 and 842 infections.
“Fortunately, we are not facing those indicators that stop the opening,” said Mira Rakacolli, the head of the committee of health experts managing the crisis, said in a statement.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Pope Francis discussed the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the world in a phone call today and agreed on the need to help poorer countries, her spokesman said.
The conversation centred on the humanitarian and political situation in view of the pandemic and the importance of cohesion and solidarity in Europe and the world, spokesman Steffen Seibert said.
“Both favoured supporting in particular poorer countries in the coronavirus pandemic,” he added.
Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran pastor, also invited him to visit Germany when circumstances allow.
Italian footballl club Sampdoria announce that four new Covid-19 cases have been found in their squad.
The entire squad and staff were subjected to swabs before a return to training.
The club said: “UC Sampdoria inform that, during the tests performed on the players, results emerged that showed three new positive cases for Coronavirus-COVID-19 and one return to positivity.
“Currently asymptomatic, they have been placed in quarantine and will be constantly monitored, as per protocol.”
It comes after Fiorentina earlier announced six cases, three players and three members of staff.
Senior US health official Francis Collins told a Senate hearing today that the country needs better diagnostic testing technology to cope with the pandemic.
Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said existing testing technology still relies on sending samples to labs for results, and new technologies must be developed to deliver tests that rapidly deliver results on site and be widely distributed.
“We believe it is not just a matter of taking what we have and making it higher throughput, we need new technologies that have these more appropriate features,” he said.
Collins’ comments echoed those by Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House’s coronavirus task force, who said last month that “we have to have a breakthrough innovation in testing” in order to fully reopen the economy.
A shortage of tests has hampered the U.S. response to the pandemic, which has killed about 74,000 people in the country and infected more than 1.2 million.
In April, the NIH announced plans to fund development of new testing technologies in academia and business, and scale them up by the end of summer.
Former boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard has revealed one of the ways he stays sane through the coronavirus lockdown is by attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings online.
Leonard, who won six world titles at five weights between 1979 and 1989, has been attending AA meetings for around 15 years.
Speaking from his home in California, the 63-year-old told Reuters: “I can*t go to meetings now but I am on Zoom, I get it on Zoom and I join AA meetings that (have) people from the UK, Puerto Rico, all over the world and we*re watching this, like I am doing with you, because technology is so amazing.
“I can relate to that and I love this. You can go anywhere. It takes you to where everyone else is. It puts us together.”
Updated
Austria said that several coronavirus patients were cured after receiving transfusions using blood plasma from people who had recovered from the virus.
The treatment has been tested in several countries but there is still little medical data available about its effectiveness.
Three patients who had transfusions at a hospital in the southeastern city of Graz are now cured, Robert Krause, an infectious disease specialist at the hospital told a press conference.
However, he said it is “an option for hand-picked patients and is not readily transferable” to anyone who falls sick with the virus.
Two of the three patients had other diseases and very weakened immune systems.
A total of 20 people have been treated in Austria with the therapy, which uses part of the blood rich in antibodies, known as convalescent plasma, from Covid-19 patients.
The Red Cross launched an urgent appeal to plasma donors on Thursday to allow this therapy, which is still experimental, to be tested more widely. Some 200 donations have so far been made in Austria.
Updated
Turkey records 57 further deaths
The number of people who have died from Covid-19 in Turkey has risen by 57 in the last 24 hours to 3,641, Health Ministry data showed.
The overall number of cases rose by 1,977 to 133,721, the data showed, the highest total outside Western Europe, the United States and Russia.
The number of daily deaths and new cases has fallen sharply from peaks recorded last month.
A French court has ordered Renault to suspend production that had resumed at a plant in northern France due to insufficient precautions against the coronavirus.
The car factory at Sandouville, which has almost 2,000 employees, resumed work on April 28 after stopping on March 16 due to the epidemic.
But the court in Le Havre ordered it to stop production until further notice because the resumption did not “ensure the safety of workers in the factory facing the risk linked to COVID-19”, according to the court order first reported by Norman media Le Poulpe of which AFP obtained a copy.
The court ordered that production be suspended “for the time it takes to effectively implement measures” and also told the company to carry out a risk assessment.
French courts have already ordered online retailing giant Amazon to restrict its operations in France pending an evaluation of virus risks to its staff.
Amazon said on Thursday it now planned to extend the closure of its distribution centres in France as a result of the ruling until Wednesday.
Here is our report from our US office about a valet to Donald Trump testing positive for coronavirus. Deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said: “The president and the vice-president have since tested negative for the virus and they remain in great health.”
The UK has come together for its weekly Clap for Carers to celebrate key workers on the frontline. The UK live blog has more details.
The National Trust tweets a floral tribute.
An enduring symbol of hope in support of the NHS and key workers. Thank you for working hard every day during this crisis. We're so very grateful for everything you're doing. #ClapForOurCarers
— National Trust (@nationaltrust) May 7, 2020
Photo: Senior Gardener Sarah, @HidcoteNT pic.twitter.com/ZfvCuaqR3S
South Sudan has announced the easing of restrictions to combat the coronavirus, including re-opening bars and restaurants and shortening a curfew even as cases continue to rise.
South Sudan confirmed 16 new cases on Thursday, bringing the total to 90 in the country - up from a total of six cases at the beginning of last week.
President Salva Kiir took the decision which will be effective “in 72 hours”, according to Richard Laku, a member of the country’s task force on the virus.
The measures include re-opening internal travel by air, land and river and allowing regional flights back to South Sudan, Laku said. Markets, shops, bars and restaurants will also be allowed to re-open.
Schools, mosques, churches and night clubs will remain shut, while sports activities and other public gatherings remain banned.
The curfew which had been from 7pm to 6am has been shortened to start only at 10pm.
The task force decided to maintain other measures such as requiring all travellers coming to and exiting South Sudan to present a certificate proving they are free of the virus.
Denmark is to allow shopping centres to reopen from Monday and colleges, restaurants and places of worship a week later, authorities announced.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a press conference that professional footballers will also be able to resume training immediately. “It is mainly because we have followed the advice of the health authorities to keep our distance and disinfect our hands that we can now open seriously,” he said. The easing of restrictions comes with a series of health instructions in particular the need to respect a two-metre gap between people.
The borders, closed to foreigners since March 14, remain shut but a decision on their reopening is expected on June 1.
Since the start of the epidemic, Denmark has recorded 10,281 cases, with 514 deaths.
France virus deaths fall
France reported 178 new coronavirus deaths, a fall on the previous day, and saw its number of patients in intensive care drop under 3,000 for the first time since late March.
The health ministry said 25,987 people were now confirmed to have died from the virus in hospitals and nursing homes.
Over the past 24 hours, 178 people died from COVID-19, down from 278 on Wednesday.
France’s lowest daily death rate in recent weeks was reported on May 3 when 135 people were confirmed to have died.
France is due to emerge from a lockdown on Monday that began in mid-March.
As well as a decline in death rates, France also reported 186 fewer patients suffering from the coronavirus in intensive care, making a total of 2,961.
This is the first time that the number in intensive care - which rose above 7,000 at its peak in April - has been below 3,000 since March 25.
Nationwide, there were 23,208 patients in hospital, 775 fewer than the previous day.
Updated
The World Health Organization has advised governments to clinically test a herbal drink touted by Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina as a remedy against coronavirus.
The Covid-Organics infusion is derived from artemisia - a plant with proven anti-malarial properties - and other indigenous herbs.
Rajoelina hopes to distribute the infusion across West Africa and beyond, claiming it cures COVID-19 patients within 10 days.
Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Niger have already received consignments of the potion. Others such as Tanzania have expressed interest.
But the World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly warned that there are no published scientific studies of the herbal tea and that its effects have not been tested.
“We would caution and advise countries against adopting a product that has not been taken through tests to see its efficacy,” WHO Africa Director Matshidiso Moeti said.
She urged Madagascar to put the drink “through a clinical trial”.
Updated
A federal judge has ordered Massachusetts authorities to allow gun shops to reopen after the governor deemed them non-essential businesses that needed to close to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
US District Judge Douglas Woodlock in Boston ruled that the restrictions ordered by governor Charlie Baker in response to the pandemic imposed an “improper burden” on the constitutional rights of citizens seeking to possess firearms.
Syria’s President Bashar Assad issued a decree Thursday postponing the country’s parliamentary elections until July due to coronavirus.
The elections were initially scheduled for April 13 but in March a presidential decree delayed them until May 20.
The latest decree pushes the new date to July 19.
Syria has recorded 45 cases of infections and three deaths because of COVID-19.
The government has began gradually easing restrictions imposed since mid-March to fight the virus but schools and universities remain closed and a night-time curfew is in place.
Georgia will lift its lockdown in the capital Tbilisi and allow shops to reopen on Monday as part of a gradual easing of coronavirus restrictions, Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia said.
He told a televised cabinet meeting on Thursday that a lockdown imposed in another large city, Rustavi, would be lifted on May 14. The country would reopen to foreign tourists from July 1, with domestic tourism resuming from June 15.
Tbilisi, Rustavi, Batumi and Kutaisi were locked down on April 15, with bans on vehicles entering or leaving. Batumi and Kutaisi were released last week.
Georgia still has a state of emergency until May 22, which includes a night curfew, the closure of restaurants, cafes and most shops, the suspension of public transport and a ban on gatherings of more than three people.
Gakharia said retail and wholesale stores, except those selling clothing and footwear, would reopen on May 11, provided they were not located in shopping malls.
The construction and automotive sectors were allowed to resume on May 5. Georgia reported 615 cases of the coronavirus as of Thursday, with nine deaths.
Fiorentina football club in Italy have announced they have found six new Covid-19 cases, three of them players and three staff, after the first round of medical tests.
All the Serie A clubs are performing swab tests before the return to training.
The Florence-based club said the individuals who tested positive have been isolated and the rest of the squad is due to begin training tomorrow.
This is Jessica Murray signing off for the day, I’m handing over to my colleague Nadeem Badshah. Thanks to everyone for reading along.
Summary
Global death toll approaches 265,000. The total number of coronavirus deaths across the world has reached at least 264,679, according to Johns Hopkins University, which has tracked the spread of the virus.
The US has the highest number of deaths, 73,573, followed by the UK with 30,150 and Italy with 29,684.
International tourism to plunge by up to 80%. The number of international tourist arrivals could plunge by 60-80% in 2020 owing to the coronavirus, the World Tourism Organization has said.
Widespread travel restrictions and the closure of airports and national borders to curb the spread of the virus had plunged international tourism into its worst crisis since records began in 1950, the UN body said.
Tourist arrivals fell by 22% in the first three months of the year and by 57% in March alone, with Asia and Europe recording the biggest declines, according to the Madrid-based organisation.
Death toll rises by 539 in UK. The UK coronavirus death toll has reached 30,615 after a further 539 people died, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, revealed at the government’s daily coronavirus briefing.
In the 24 hours up to 9am on 7 May there were 86,583 tests for coronavirus in the UK – the fifth day running that testing was below the government’s 100,000 target.
Dr Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer for England, said testing numbers had dropped due to a “technical hitch over the weekend” but were now rising again.
UK minister warns against abandoning social distancing rules. Raab said that if people “abandon the social distancing rules” the virus “will grow again at an exponential rate”.
He said the prime minister, Boris Johnson, would set out the roadmap for the next phase of lockdown on Sunday, along with the conditions for each milestone in the easing of restrictions. He added: “It’s safe to say that any changes [to the lockdown] in the short term will be modest, small, incremental.”
Trump tests negative for coronavirus after report valet was infected. Donald Trump and his vice-president, Mike Pence, have tested negative for coronavirus after finding out that a member of the US military who worked on the White House campus had become infected, a White House spokesman said.
The military official was identified by CNN as personal valet to the US president.
US unemployment claims hit 33.3 million. A further 3.2 million Americans sought unemployment benefits last week as the economic toll from coronavirus continued to mount.
The new applications brought the total number of jobless claims since mid-March to 33.3 million, which is 20% of the US workforce. However, the number of new claims reported each week by the Department of Labor has subsided since hitting a peak of 6.9 million in March.
Russia overtakes Germany and France after record rise in cases. Russia overtook France and Germany for coronavirus cases on Thursday, giving it the fifth highest total in the world at 177,160.
More than half of all cases and deaths have been in Moscow, which on Thursday reported a record overnight tally of 6,703 new cases, bringing its official total to 92,676. Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said research showed the real number of cases in the Russian capital was about 300,000, or more than triple the official figure.
Donald Trump, offered to send medical aid to Moscow during a phone call with Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said.
France to keep borders closed until at least mid-June. France’s borders will remain closed until further notice following the lifting of the coronavirus lockdown on Monday, said the interior minister, Christophe Castaner. He said the restrictions would remain in place until at least 15 June.
The country’s health minister, Olivier Veran, said France would be able carry out 700,000 tests a week for the virus from Monday.
Australia hits back at US claim linking coronavirus to Wuhan lab. The Australian government has pushed back at US claims the coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan lab and has determined that a “dossier” giving weight to the theory is not a Five Eyes intelligence document.
It is understood Scott Morrison’s government sees the promotion of the theory that the virus leaked out of a laboratory in Wuhan as counterproductive to Australia’s push to gain broad international support for an independent inquiry into the origins and overall handling of the pandemic.
The US embassy in Canberra declined to comment on a report in the Nine newspaper on Thursday of suspicions within senior ranks of the government and the intelligence community about a staffer’s possible role.
Guardian Australia understands Anthony Byrne, a Labor MP, has been in regular contact with the intelligence community and senior members of the government to support them in pushing back against US government claims.
Virus exposes shortages across Africa’s healthcare systems. African nations are facing a surge of Covid-19 cases with fewer than one intensive care bed and one ventilator per 100,000 people, a Reuters survey found.
Even in a best-case scenario, the continent could need at least 10 times the numbers it has now as the outbreak peaks, an analysis of researchers’ projections showed.
The shortages across Africa’s national health systems are among the starkest elements to emerge from the survey, which polled 54 countries and received responses from health officials or independent experts in 48 of them. The World Health Organization has warned that Africa, home to 1.3 billion people, could become the next centre of the pandemic.
Schools in Norway, where the number of new cases of coronavirus is decreasing by the day, will be able to reopen as of Monday and bars from 1 June, the government said.
Cultural and sporting events of up to 200 people will be permitted from 15 June, the government also said.
The national football championship, which was due to start in April, can get underway on 16 June, with training resuming this Thursday.
The Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, at a press conference:
Our goal is that by June 15 we will have reopened most of the things that were closed.
But there is an important condition. We will only end confinement on these dates if we manage to keep the epidemic under control.
Norway adopted a semi-confinement regime in mid-March to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
Kindergartens reopened on 20 April with primary schools returning a week later.
“This is not the end,” said the health minister, Bent Hoie. “At best, it’s the beginning of the end”.
The infection ratio, that is, the number of people infected by each patient, has now fallen to 0.49, according to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, which means that the epidemic is on the decline.
However, physical distancing remains the rule, travel abroad is officially discouraged and the borders remain closed to people without a residence permit.
Norway has officially registered 7,995 cases of coronavirus, with 209 fatalities.
As the coronavirus lockdown clamps down on the informal economy and tourism dries up, Egypt’s most vulnerable are left without protection or food security.
This powerful photo essay from Elle Kurancid and photographer Hamada Elrasam explores the lives of Egypt’s most poor in the face of the coronavirus crisis.
Madrid public health director resigns as region seeks to lift lockdown
The director of public health for the Madrid region has resigned, apparently in protest at the regional government’s decision to seek to loosen lockdown restrictions in the area of Spain hardest hit by the coronavirus.
Yolanda Fuentes stepped down as the Madrid regional government, led by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, prepares to seek permission from the national health ministry to move to the next phase of de-escalation from Monday 11 May.
The next stage - known as phase one - will see the reopening of small businesses, and restaurant and bar terraces reopening at 30% capacity. Hotels and tourist accommodation will reopen, with the exception of communal areas.
Fuentes is understood to have had grave reservations about the move, as Madrid remains badly affected by the virus. Of the 221,447 confirmed cases in Spain, 63,870 are in and around the capital. To date, more than 8,500 people have died from Covid-19 in the region.
The French prime minister, Édouard Philippe, and his cabinet colleagues gave details of how France will end the strict lockdown on Monday.
While saying the good news was that the whole country would see the end of some of the most draconian coronavirus restrictions, the “not so good news” was that some areas - including the Paris region - were still designated “red” and would continue to face some rules.
Philippe said the measures would be reviewed in three weeks.
Ministers spoke about schools, transport, the reopening of businesses, and health measures.
Some points of particular interest include:
- The French border will remain closed for the “forseeable future” to all except for absolutely essential professional or family reasons and trans-border workers, and they will still need to carry an international declaration.
- Anyone stopped by police or gendarmes - and extra officers will be on duty - making a journey of more than 100km will need a new sworn declaration stating the journey is absolutely essential for the above reasons. The 100km will be counted as the crow flies from their primary residence so they will also need to be carrying proof of primary residence.
- Parks will be closed in “red” departments. All beaches will be closed unless the local prefect and councillors decide otherwise, and can guarantee that health and distancing measures will be respected.
- Almost 90% of nursery and primary schools are ready to welcome back children. Priority will be given to children of frontline workers, the handicapped and those students who are struggling to keep up with home schooling.
- Public transport will be running but not at 100%. Employers are advised to stagger working hours to avoid rush hours on public transport or traffic jams on the road. Masks are obligatory on public transport.
- There will be fines of €135 for anyone travelling more than 100km without good reason, for anyone on an inter-regional train without a reservation, and fines for those who do not respect social distancing rules in public.
South African Breweries (SAB), one of the world’s largest brewers, says it may have to destroy 400m bottles of beer as a result of the country’s ban on alcohol sales that is part of its lockdown measures.
South Africa stopped all sales of alcohol when its lockdown came into effect on 27 March and the brewery has seen beer pile up at its production facilities.
The brewer is seeking special permission from government to move the beer to other storage facilities. The transport of alcohol has also been outlawed in South Africa.
SAB told news station eNCA that if it’s not able to move the beer, which amounts to about 130m litres (34m gallons), it’ll be forced to discard it at a loss of about $8m. That loss would put 2,000 jobs at risk, SAB said.
It would also be frustrating news for millions of thirsty South African beer drinkers who are going without.
South Africa is one of just a handful of countries that have prohibited alcohol sales as part of its fight against the coronavirus. India and Thailand also had bans on alcohol sales, but recently lifted their restrictions. Panama and Sri Lanka still have bans in place.
The South African government has also banned the sales of cigarettes in the lockdown and has been criticised over its hard-line approach.
Prof. Salim Abdool Karim, one of the government’s top health advisers in the Covid-19 pandemic, defended the alcohol ban at a briefing with reporters on Wednesday.
He said alcohol is a significant contributing factor to violent crime and road accidents in South Africa, and banning its sale has reduced pressure on medical services.
Representatives of the alcohol industry say the government should allow alcohol to be purchased for consumption at home only.
The UK’s contact-tracing app must not be rolled out until the government has increased privacy and data protections, an influential parliamentary committee has said, as rights groups warn that the current trial is unlawful under the Data Protection Act.
The joint committee on human rights said on Thursday it was essential legislation was enacted to ensure the mass surveillance of personal data did not result in a violation before the trial was expanded.
Its report was published following a legal letter from the Open Rights Group warning of “heightened and urgent concerns” that the government had failed to follow laws requiring it to submit an assessment of the risks to the information commissioners office.
The app, which is being trialled on the Isle of Wight, logs users’ movements and can alert people if they have had contact with someone who has developed symptoms.
Ministers have said it is an important tool to study the spread of Covid-19 and to help them ease lockdown restrictions.
But privacy campaign groups have opposed its introduction and a group of UK academics working in cybersecurity, privacy and law recently signed a joint letter saying it could open the door to general surveillance.
The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, will proceed with maximum caution as he looks to the next phase of the government’s response to the coronavirus, a spokesman from his office said.
The prime minister spoke to opposition party leaders today to update them on the government’s strategy to combat coronavirus.
He told them the government would approach the next phase with ‘maximum caution’ and his priority above all else would be to ‘save lives’
International tourism faces its worst crisis since records began, with up to 1.1 billion fewer people taking trips globally in 2020.
The scale of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact is outlined in a report by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), which predicts a decline in international arrivals of between 58% and 80% this year.
This is due to widespread travel restrictions and the closure of airports and borders worldwide. The prediction of a 58% decline is based on the gradual reopening of international borders and easing of travel restrictions in early July; the 80% figure is based on early December.
Globally, the crisis threatens the livelihood of up to 120 million people who directly rely on tourism for work - and millions more indirectly – while representing a financial loss in export revenues from tourism of between £736bn and £971bn.
The predictions are based on UNWTO figures for the first three months of this year, which show a worldwide decline in international arrivals of 22%. Following the start of the lockdown in many countries, arrivals dropped by 57% for March alone.
Zurab Pololikashvili, UNWTO secretary general said.
The world is facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis.
Tourism has been hit hard, with millions of jobs at risk in one of the most labour-intensive sectors of the economy.
More than 50% of shops on Paris’ famed Champs-Élysées avenue are expecting to reopen for business on 11 May, said the business committee representing the district in a statement.
The committee said shops would have reinforced health and safety measures, and would be open from 11am-7pm from Monday to Saturday, and from 11am-6pm on Sunday.
New York City will test 140,000 people for coronavirus antibodies between next week and early June, mayor Bill de Blasio announced.
The antibody tests, which indicate whether a person has been infected with the virus at some point, will be offered for free by appointment at five locations around the city, de Blasio said.
The results will be available to the individual in one to two days and will also be used for epidemiological research, he said.
Researchers have said it is unclear whether antibodies for the coronavirus provide immunity or whether people who test positive for the antibodies can still be sickened by the virus. De Blasio said:
We are not promising people a rose garden here.
We’re not saying the antibody test is the last word. Its not. But it tells you something.
Blood tests are different from the nasal swab tests currently used to diagnose active Covid-19 infections. Instead, the tests look for blood proteins called antibodies, which the body produces days or weeks after fighting an infection. Most use a finger-prick of blood on a test strip.
Health officials in the US and around the world have suggested the tests could be helpful in identifying people who have previously had the virus with or without getting sick and developed some immunity to it.
But researchers haven’t yet been able to answer many questions about the tests including what level of antibodies it takes to be immune and how long that immunity lasts.
France is “ready to massively test” people suspected of having the coronavirus and anyone who has come into contact with them from next week, the country’s health minister said.
Olivier Veran said France will be able carry out 700,000 tests a week for the virus from Monday when it begins the fraught process of relaxing its almost eight-week lockdown.
The minister said the authorities - which have been heavily criticised for the lack of mass testing - now have enough capacity to cover the needs of the whole population.
France has been one of the hardest hit European countries, with some 26,000 deaths since March.
Testing and tracing are regarded as key to allowing the country to get back to work, by pinpointing those with the virus so they can be quickly isolated.
Veran admitted that there may have been a “gap between the theory and the practice” of testing in France, with many people with doctor’s prescriptions for tests unable to get them.
But he insisted that “our capacity for testing is today at the level of our estimated needs”.
Qatar has launched a new drive-through coronavirus testing programme to assess the prevalence of the disease in the wider population beyond the worst-affected groups where tests had been targeted.
The Gulf monarchy of 2.75 million people has seen a relatively high number of cases with 18,890 testing positive.
However its death rate with 12 fatalities is one of the world’s lowest which experts say is down to the country’s young population and mandatory health checks for its vast foreign workforce.
Migrant labourers in the Industrial Area suburb of Doha and Qataris returning from virus hotspots like Iran have been the focus of testing efforts, along with those found to have been in contact with them.
But a two-day pilot launched on Wednesday has seen citizens invited to participate in voluntary tests at several clinics across the country.
Roberto Bertollini, an adviser to the health minister, said:
The project aims at understanding what is the prevalence of the disease in the community - the community at large.
We have a lot of data coming from the labourer community but not much from the overall community of white collar (workers) Qataris, and other populations.
Tens of thousands of residents were quarantined in the Industrial Area after cases of Covid-19 were confirmed among the community in mid-March but authorities have begun to ease restrictions.
“This will allow us to know how many people are actually infected today,” added Bertollini.
Senegal’s Supreme Court has upheld a ban on repatriating the bodies of citizens living abroad who have died of coronavirus, rejecting a plea from their distraught relatives.
A group of families with dead relatives abroad had sought to overturn the ban on the grounds that it violated their right to mourn and practice religion in the Muslim-majority West African country.
Senegal’s government had ruled out bringing back the bodies to stem the spread of the virus.
Family members have said that around 80 Senegalese have died from Covid-19 overseas, including 40 in France alone.
On Thursday, their lawyers said that the Supreme Court’s decision had caused deep distress.
They had argued during the proceedings that the health risk of bringing back bodies was “non-existent,” and that the ban infringed religious rights.
Updated
After weeks of mounting pressure, Toronto’s mayor has pledged to make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists as residents are encouraged to spend more time outside.
In the coming weeks, the city plans to curtail traffic along select residential streets, expedite the creation of temporary bike lanes and close major roadways near to parks.
The city’s plan, dubbed ‘ActiveTO’, is an attempt to remedy growing frustration among residents that Toronto has been too slow to adjust its infrastructure to the coronavirus pandemic.
Health officials have suggested residents spend time outside, but narrow sidewalks in Canada’s largest city make physical distancing difficult.
Part of the project involves curtailing the amount of cars allowed on residential streets while giving preference to pedestrians and cyclists. The new plan is modelled on the approach other urban centres have taken to ensure people can safely move around the city.
“These quiet streets will roll out fairly quickly, and our initial target will be 50 kilometres of quiet streets,” mayor John Tory said. “Oakland, Portland and San Francisco ... have already adopted similar quiet street projects.”
Tory also said the city will likely close major roads near parks on weekends to ensure pedestrians can safely enjoy time outside.
Toronto has lagged behind other major cities like New York and London, who have shut down not only major roadways to provide residents with more walking space, but also started making permanent changes to city infrastructure.
“Better late than never, and if you’re going to do it later, it’s good to see that it’s quite vast,” Amanda O’Rourke, head of 8 80 cities, a non-profit that advocates for accessible cities, told the Toronto Star.
Updated
The US House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, laid out the broad outlines of the next massive coronavirus-response bill Democrats will seek, with possible votes as soon as next week.
Pelosi said the bill’s major components will include additional aid to state and local governments, more money for coronavirus testing and help for the financially-troubled US postal service.
Just before she spoke, house minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, said such a bill was premature.
Zoom plans to offer end-to-end encrypted meetings to all paying subscribers, as it seeks to quash criticism of its platform over security.
The company, which has faced backlash from users for failing to disclose that its service was not fully encrypted, is planning to develop tools that will give more controls to meeting hosts and allow users to securely join a meeting.
It also said on Thursday it had bought Keybase, a secure messaging and file-sharing service, for an undisclosed price as it sought the encryption engineering expertise to deliver complete encryption for its conferencing platform.
After preparing the draft design, Zoom plans to host discussions with cryptographic experts and customers, and integrate feedback into a final design before rolling the feature out to users.
Founded in 2014, Keybase is key directory that maps social media identities to encryption keys.
Zoom has seen an extraordinary jump in users, now numbering 300 million a day, since the coronavirus crisis forced millions of people and students to work from home.
But concerns about the security of its platform have led companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Sweden’s Ericsson to ban employees from using the platform.
To address security concerns, Zoom embarked on a 90-day plan which has included hiring former Facebook security chief, Alex Stamos, and other known industry figures while launching new versions of its software with better encryption.
France to keep borders closed until at least 15 June
France’s borders will remain closed until further notice following the lifting of the coronavirus lockdown on 11 May, interior minister, Christophe Castaner, has said.
During a news conference, he said:
Since the start of the crisis the closure of the borders is the rule, and the authorisation to cross a border is the exception.
We have to keep this protection in place, this will not change soon.
He said that the restrictions would remain in place until at least 15 June.
Updated
The US president, Donald Trump, offered to send medical aid to Moscow during a phone call on Thursday with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said.
In a readout of the phone call, the Kremlin said the two presidents had also discussed global oil markets, noting their support for last month’s output deal between OPEC and non-OPEC producers, something they said had helped stabilise oil prices.
Times are truly strange when a man dressed in a grim reaper’s costume in 90F (32C) heat is the most sane person around. But last week, as people flocked to Florida’s recently reopened beaches, Daniel Uhlfelder had a message for beachgoers.
“The grim reaper represents death. This is a deadly virus. It’s a global pandemic,” he said in a televised news broadcast.
It’s not in Uhlfelder’s nature to want to keep beaches closed – as a lawyer, he has campaigned to keep beaches publicly accessible in the past. But as the coronavirus death toll reaches 75,000 in the US and global shutdowns help to slow the spread of the deadly virus, Uhlfelder felt he had to say something.
“I’m worried about the pandemic getting out of control and killing a lot of people … I couldn’t sleep at night [if I just did nothing],” he says.
And so, he came up with an idea to dress up with a cloak and scythe, and take a Grim Reaper tour of Florida’s beaches.
The protest has garnered national attention: Uhlfelder has appeared on Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show and CNN, and has raised thousands of dollars, which he will donate to Democrats who run for Congress.
Updated
A coronavirus outbreak that has infected more than 30% of inmates at a prison in Colombia has sparked fear among local officials, neighbours and prisoners’ families that the virus may spread further.
The prison in Villavicencio, Meta province, houses 1,756 inmates, of whom 599 have tested positive for Covid-19. Fifty-six guards and administrative staff have also tested positive.
The prison currently has nearly double the 899 inmates it is meant to hold, creating an environment in which the virus can easily spread.
Prison populations in Colombia average overcrowding of 50%, according to prison agency INPEC.
“The prison in Villavicencio worries us, it is enormously overpopulated,” Meta’s governor, Juan Guillermo Zuluaga, told Reuters. “Right now we don’t have anyone in hospital, everyone inside the prison is asymptomatic.”
So far, Colombia has reported almost 9,000 Covid-19 cases and 397 deaths.
While infected prisoners are isolated from the rest of the population, Villavicencio mayor, Juan Felipe Harman, fears the outbreak could spread into surrounding neighborhoods where thousands of people live.
“It’s a fact that the prison is a public health problem,” Harman said. “We need to keep controlling that risk factor by guaranteeing isolation conditions within the prison are the same as the city.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned this week that growth of coronavirus infections in crowded and unhygienic prisons in Latin America and the United States was a source of grave concern.
Protests by prisoners fearing infection have led to riots and the deaths of dozens of inmates in Venezuela, Peru and Colombia in recent weeks.
The Afghan health minister, Ferozuddin Feroz, has tested positive for Covid-19, the ministry’s spokesman said, as the number of transmissions continued to surge in the war-torn country.
Wahidullah Mayar said Feroz is in a stable condition and has isolated himself at home.
The country has so far recorded 3,563 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 106 deaths.
Fighting coronavirus is challenging in Afghanistan as despite government-authorised lockdowns, cities are crowded and war has intensified in recent days.
Canada and the 10 provinces have agreed to boost the pay of essential workers, such as those working in seniors’ residences where many coronavirus cases have occurred, prime minister Justin Trudeau said.
Trudeau told a briefing that Ottawa would contribute $4bn CAD, which he said represented 75% percent of the total cost.
The provinces will be responsible for determining who is essential and how much they receive, he added.
London’s Notting Hill Carnival, held annually over a long weekend in late August, has been cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, organisers announced.
They said in a statement:
After lengthy consultations with our strategic partners and our advisory council, the board has taken the decision that this year’s carnival will not take place on the streets of Notting Hill as it has done for over 50 years.
This has not been an easy decision to make, but the reality of the Covid-19 pandemic and the way in which it has unfolded means that this is the only safe option.
Everyone’s health has to come first.
The west London carnival traces its roots back to Caribbean music festivals in the 1950s after the first surge in arrivals from former British colonies post-World War II.
Feathered dancers, steel bands and earth-shaking sound systems feature in the vibrant two-day celebration of British Caribbean culture.
Organisers added they were planning “an alternate” event this year “that we hope will bring the Carnival spirit to people from the safety of their homes, and make them feel connected and engaged”.
“We will share more information on how it will take shape soon,” they said, adding they looked forward to welcoming revellers back to the streets of Notting Hill in 2021.
Trump tests negative for coronavirus, after report valet was infected
The US president, Donald Trump, and vice president, Mike Pence, have tested negative for coronavirus after finding out a member of the US military who worked on the White House campus had become infected, a White House spokesman said.
The military official was identified by CNN as personal valet to Trump.
Spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement:
We were recently notified by the White House Medical Unit that a member of the United States Military, who works on the White House campus, has tested positive for coronavirus.
The President and the Vice President have since tested negative for the virus and they remain in great health.
Trump has now been tested at least twice for the coronavirus, with previous results on 2 April, and both times tested negative.
On 3 April, the White House said that anyone expected to be near Trump or Pence would be given a rapid Covid-19 test out of an abundance of caution.
Updated
The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, Andrew Roth, reports on the cancelled Victory Day celebrations in Russia, and what the coronavirus crisis means for Putin’s political plans.
If all had gone to plan, Vladimir Putin would have marked Victory Day in Red Square this weekend, hosting Emmanuel Macron and Xi Jinping as columns of soldiers and artillery passed by to honour the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The 9 May celebrations would have crowned a historic political season in Russia, including a symbolic referendum to amend Russia’s constitution and reset Putin’s term limits, allowing him to remain in the Kremlin until 2036.
Instead, the coronavirus pandemic has brought on Russia’s toughest crisis in years, scrapping the Kremlin’s political agenda and putting the country’s economy in peril amid a collapse in oil prices.
Chinese researchers who tested sperm of men infected with Covid-19 found that a minority of them had the coronavirus in their semen, opening up a small chance the disease could be transmitted sexually, scientists have said.
A study of 38 men hospitalised with the disease found that six of them, or 16%, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in their semen.
The doctors at China’s Shangqiu Municipal Hospital said the findings were preliminary and based on only a small number of infected men, and more research is needed to see whether sexual transmission might play a role in the spreading Covid-19.
The team wrote in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA):
Further studies are required with respect to the detailed information about virus shedding, survival time and concentration in semen.
If it could be proved that SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted sexually ... (that) might be a critical part of the prevention, especially considering the fact that SARS-CoV-2 was detected in the semen of recovering patients.
Independent experts said the findings were interesting but should be viewed with caution and in the context of other small studies that have not found the coronavirus in sperm.
A previous small study of 12 Covid-19 patients in China in February and March found that all of them tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 in semen samples.
Allan Pacey, a professor of andrology at Britain’s Sheffield University, said the studies should not be seen as conclusive, since there were some technical difficulties in testing semen for viruses.
He said the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in sperm did not show whether it is active and capable of causing infection.
“However, we should not be surprised if the virus which causes Covid-19 is found in the semen of some men, since this has been shown with many other viruses such as Ebola and Zika,” he said.
Sheena Lewis, a professor of reproductive medicine at Queen’s University Belfast, stressed that this was a “very small study” and said its findings were in keeping with other small studies showing low or no SARS-CoV-2 in tests of semen samples.
“However, the long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 on male reproduction are not yet known,” she said.
This is Jessica Murray, taking back over the blog after a short break.
The European Union executive will next week outline plans on lifting internal border controls within the passport-free travel zone.
EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson told MEPs the commission will present guidance on lifting internal border controls in the 26-country Schengen free-travel zone, although she added that unwinding national restrictions would take some time.
The Swedish commissioner said she had received dozens of letters from “desperate people” about border closures, citing pensioners in Spain who had been planning to move to France, a Franco-Belgian couple separated by the border and people stranded in another EU member state. Speaking to the parliament’s home affairs committee, Johansson said:
The situation is now stable, but it does not mean that it is acceptable, preferable or viable for the future. People are understandably sad, angry, they are frustrated, which shows that free movement has become part of our everyday lives.”
EU member states have the ultimate power to open and close borders, but signatories of the European border-free travel zone are obliged to consult Brussels when they take measures to seal their frontiers. The UK and Ireland have never been part of the zone, which includes non-EU states, such as Norway and Switzerland.
The EU executive is urging countries to coordinate on lifting restrictions, unlike when the pandemic first unfolded and governments hastily imposed restrictions.
The commissioner also warned governments against any selective re-opening of borders: “No discrimination: member states cannot open borders for citizens from one EU country, but not from others. This is essential.”
France will gradually end its lockdown from Monday, French prime minister Edouard Philippe has confirmed but warned some restrictions will remain in place in the more densely-populated Paris region where Covid-19 is circulating quicker.
“From Monday we will progressively unwind the lockdown that started on March 17... but the country is cut in two, with the virus circulating more quickly in some regions, notably in the Ile de France region, which is very densely populated,” he said.
In other parts of France, secondary schools, cafes and restaurants may open from early June if the infection rate remains low.
Updated
An outbreak of Covid-19 in a remote prairie community in a Canadian province has left health officials scrambling to halt further spread of the virus and protect vulnerable residents.
In recent days, La Loche, Saskatchewan and the surrounding area have recorded 138 new cases of the coronavirus — representing 70% of all active cases in the province.
“People are taking it extremely seriously because these are more
vulnerable situations,” said Theresa Tam, the country’s chief public health officer said Wednesday. The region is remote and home to a number of Indigenous communities, which expertise are likely to be a greater risk to the coronavirus. A sustained outbreak would likely overwhelm the region’s limited health care capacity.
Officials believe the virus was first transmitted into the town of La Loche from a nearby oil-sands work camp and is now spreading quickly. The province hopes to scale up testing, warning that numbers will rise as more tests are conducted.
To date, two residents living in long term care homes have died of the virus. Part of the driving force behind the spread is likely the tightly-knit nature of the La Loche, which has a population of 2,800 people.
“Everybody knows everybody. Everybody visits everybody. Somebody new comes to town and we’re there with open arms to say, ‘Hi!’” Amanda Black told CBC News. “I don’t know of even having a rule around here where you knock on the door before you walk into someone’s house.”
One in five people aged under 35 is feel lonely as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown, according to a Europe-wide survey which suggests the young are feeling the strain of the lockdown more than older adults.
The report, which surveyed 85,000 people across the continent, found a sharp deterioration in the quality of life among all ages but even more so among younger people, 20% of whom now said they were lonely – up from just 4% in normal times.
With most Europeans confined to their homes by the coronavirus outbreak, overall 16% said they were lonely “all or most of the time” over the past two weeks – compared to 6% who described themselves as lonely in surveys before the crisis.
The report was conducted by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, an agency of the EU. The agency said:
This probably implies that young people feel they have been more affected by the restrictions than other age groups, with social events being cancelled and their inability to meet their friends and family outside the household.”
Younger adults also reported lower levels of overall happiness and satisfaction, and lower mental health scores than their older peers, although they were more likely to be optimistic about the future.
The report found differences across countries, with Greeks and Bulgarians reporting the lowest level of life satisfaction. Meanwhile, loneliness was most common among the French.
Updated
Good afternoon folks, it’s Simon Murphy here taking over the live blog while my colleague, Jessica Murray, takes a break.
The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, will announce a very limited easing of Britain’s coronavirus lockdown next week, adopting a cautious approach to ensure there is no second peak of infections that could further hurt the economy.
Johnson is due to announce the next steps in Britain’s battle to tackle Covid-19 on Sunday following a review by ministers of the current measures that have all but shut the economy and kept millions at home.
His government has been criticised for moving too slowly to tackle the outbreak which has led to more than 30,000 deaths in Britain, and after more than six weeks of lockdown, ministers are judging how and when to relax it.
Ministers, who say they have taken the right decisions at the right time, fear a swift easing could lead to a second peak in infection rates, which might overwhelm hospitals and force a second shutdown of the economy.
At a cabinet meeting of his top ministers, Johnson said Britain would advance “with maximum caution” and be guided by the science and data when considering whether any of the strict social distancing measures could be eased.
His spokesman told reporters:
Any easement to the guidelines next week will be very limited.
We are at a critical moment in the fight against the virus and we will not do anything which risks throwing away the efforts and sacrifices of the British public.
Earlier, the Bank of England underlined how deeply the lockdown had hurt the economy, saying Britain could be headed for its biggest economic slump in over 300 years.
Johnson, who says he fought for his life after himself contracting Covid-19, has ploughed money into a support programme for businesses, but appears to be erring on the side of caution of immediately firing up the economy.
Bulgaria’s football league will resume on 5 June, the Bulgarian Football Union (BFU) has decided, with clubs allowed to start training as early as mid-May.
The league was stopped on 13 March when the country declared a state of emergency over the spread of coronavirus.
“Provided that the training process restarts in mid-May, the First Professional Football League will resume on June 5 with the matches from the 25th round of the regular season,” the BFU said in a statement.
“The plan is for the 2019/2020 season to end on July 11,” it added.
The matches will be played behind closed doors.
If new “force majeure circumstances” lead to a new stoppage of the league, it will not resume again and the final round results will be considered as final, the federation said.
Last year’s champions Ludogorets Razgrad currently lead the league table with 55 points and a match less than Lokomotov Plovdiv, Levski Sofia and CSKA Sofia, who have 46 points each.
The German airline giant Lufthansa has confirmed that it is in talks for Berlin to offer support worth €9bn euros in exchange for a 25% stake in the company, as the coronavirus batters the world’s carriers.
The “stabilisation package” under discussion with the Federal Economic Stabilisation Fund (WSF) launched in March would include “a silent participation and a secured loan”, Lufthansa said.
“The conditions are currently being discussed. A stake by the German government in the company’s share capital is also part of the negotiations.”
Earlier on Thursday, the economy minister Peter Altmaier had told the tabloid newspaper Bild that Lufthansa was part of Germany’s “family silver” and that Berlin aimed to avoid a “fire sale” of valuable firms.
Meanwhile Bloomberg news reported that some members of Altmaier and chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right CDU/CSU parliamentary group were holding up talks with opposition to a direct government stake in Lufthansa.
“The negotiations and the process of political decision-making are still ongoing,” the airline said in its statement.
Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr has previously warned that the group is bleeding cash and might have to declare insolvency.
Like airlines worldwide, Lufthansa and its subsidiaries that include Swiss and Austrian Airlines have been essentially grounded and face an uncertain future once operations are fully up and running again.
Italy’s government and Roman Catholic bishops have signed an agreement to allow people to attend Masses again from later this month, ending a standoff between the Church and state over the coronavirus lockdown.
The government banned attendance at Masses in early March, part of its prohibition on gatherings as it sought to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Many Catholics asserted that church services should have been permitted along with other essential activities such as food shopping.
Tensions ran high again late last month when the government announced a gradual staged easing of the lockdown, but did not include a return to Masses in a phase that began on 4 May.
The bishops told the government they could “not accept seeing the exercise of freedom of religion being compromised”. Most of Italy’s churches have remained open during the crisis, but only for individual prayer.
Catholics have been following Masses on television or on the internet as priests led them from empty churches.
With Thursday’s agreement, Masses for the public can resume on 18 May but under strict conditions outlined in a protocol signed by prime minister Giuseppe Conte and Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, president of the Italian Bishops Conference.
Individual pastors will determine the maximum number of people who can fit in a church while staying at least a metre apart.
If there is demand, additional Masses should be held, rather than allowing more people into the church for one service, the protocol says.
The faithful will have to wear masks in church. Priests can celebrate most of the Mass without masks but they will have to wear one, as well as gloves, when they distribute the communion wafer.
Initially, choirs will be banned, holy water fonts will remain dry, and the traditional exchange of a sign of peace - usually in the form of a handshake - will be eliminated.
The collection, in which a basket is passed around for offerings of money, will be replaced by containers where the faithful can make contributions.
The Masses will resume on the same day Italian museums and libraries can reopen.
The Vatican, which for the most part has been mirroring Italy’s containment measures, has not yet said when St Peter’s Basilica or the Vatican museums will reopen.
Updated
Coronavirus restrictions in Moscow have been extended until 31 May, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said on in a blog post on his personal website.
Some measures in place since late March will be eased from 12 May, he said, including the return to work for industrial and construction companies.
But Sobyanin added it was still too early to reopen sports facilities, restaurants and theatres.
Moscow is the centre of Russia’s coronavirus crisis, with 92,676 of the country’s 177,160 cases, though Sobyanin said earlier the real number of cases in the capital was around 300,000.
Blood tests have begun in the region around Rome to allow authorities to gauge how many people have been exposed to the coronavirus since the epidemic struck Italy.
More data will help to map out how the virus has travelled through the population, as the country begins to emerge from the health crisis that has killed nearly 30,000 of its citizens.
Over the following few days, the region of Lazio - of which Rome is the capital - will perform some 150,000 blood tests on health workers and police, those assumed to be most exposed to the virus.
Such tests have already begun in other regions, especially Lombardy in Italy’s north which has been hardest hit by the coronavirus.
Sergio Bernardini, a professor in biochemistry and director of the lab at Rome’s Tor Vergata hospital, said the large-scale screening efforts will produce a closer estimate of the number of people who have been infected with the virus.
“In reality, they’re probably much more numerous, eight to ten times more than the figures we have today,” Bernardini told AFP.
The tests, which require just a finger prick of blood, look for the presence of antibodies indicating that the person has been exposed to the virus at some point. The hope is that the person has developed immunity to the virus, although that is not guaranteed. Bernardini cautioned:
[A positive result] does not mean that you are protected, it is not a licence to return to normal daily life.
It’s absolutely necessary to continue using ... masks, which are still the most important thing, even more important than knowing if you have antibodies.
The blood tests differ from the more common swab tests, which check molecules from nasal secretions to know whether a person currently has the virus.
Updated
Pakistan will begin easing its nationwide lockdown over the weekend, prime minister Imran Khan has said, citing the economic havoc the measures have wreaked, even as increased testing shows a rise in new coronavirus cases.
Khan called on the public to continue following social distancing guidelines as businesses start to reopen in phases, saying another lockdown would be imposed if cases spiked again.
“We need to discipline ourselves,” said Khan in a televised address announcing the easing of the lockdown would begin on Saturday. “We can’t send the police to make raids. In an independent society this doesn’t happen.”
Schools will remain closed until mid-July, while there were no plans to restart public transportation or domestic flights just yet.
The easing of the lockdown comes with many across the country already openly flouting its restrictions and gathering in public, especially during the evenings as people celebrate the holy month of Ramadan.
Last month, authorities buckled under pressure from religious groups ahead of Ramadan and allowed mosques to hold daily prayers and evening congregations after clerics promised to instruct religious leaders to clean their facilities regularly.
Thousands of shoppers have also thronged popular markets, including many without wearing protective gear, to buy food for the evening iftar meal that celebrates the end of each day’s fasting.
Infections have been rising steadily as testing has increased, with over 23,000 cases recorded in the nation of over 210 million people.
The death toll in Pakistan however remains low, at 564, according to government figures.
Japan has approved Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir as a treatment for Covid-19, the health ministry said, making it the country’s first officially authorised drug for the coronavirus.
Remdesivir will be give to patients with severe Covid-19 symptoms, a Japanese health ministry official said at a press briefing.
With no other approved treatments for Covid-19, interest in the drug is growing around the world. Gilead on Tuesday said it was in discussion with several companies, including generic drugmakers in India and Pakistan to produce remdesivir in large quantities.
Remdesivir was granted authorisation last week by the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use in treating Covid-19.
Japan, with just over 16,000 infections and under 800 deaths, has recorded fewer cases than other major industrialised nations.
However, a steady rise in cases has put pressure on medical facilities in some parts of the country, and a drug that helps patients recover more quickly could help in freeing up hospital beds.
On Monday, Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, extended a month-long state of emergency until the end of May.
After standing empty for two months, Greece’s ancient sites, including the Acropolis hill towering over Athens, will reopen to visitors on 18 May, authorities said.
The ancient monuments were closed along with museums in mid-March as part of Greece’s lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Restrictions have gradually been eased this week. Museums will open again in mid-June while open-air performances will resume in mid-July, the culture minister, Lina Mendoni, said. Distance and safety rules will apply.
The many historical sites are one of the mainstays of Greece’s vital tourism sector and efforts will now kick in to encourage visitors, after travel restrictions and widespread closures caused a collapse in bookings.
Hundreds of musicians, actors and art workers rallied outside parliament to demand more support for their sector.
“We are here,” read a message drawn in chalk on the street. Protesters waved a giant theatre puppet.
In the northern city of Thessaloniki, musicians performed tied up in a red and white cordon tape.
Many artists have performed live online for those staying home since Greece reported its first case of the new coronavirus in February.
“We stayed home but we didn’t stay silent,” artists’ unions said in a statement.
Poland plans to test 1,000 miners a day for coronavirus at drive-through sites, as data showed a rapid growth in new cases in the coal region.
The country has reported 14,898 infections, including 737 deaths. Earlier this week the Silesia mining region in southern Poland showed the highest number of infections at 3,025.
“I have become acquainted with the situation in Silesia. It is very complicated, because it is a large agglomeration, with a huge density of workplaces,” the chief sanitary inspector said in a statement.
Poland’s biggest coal group, PGG, which employs around 40,000 people, has reported 384 cases of coronavirus among its workers, its spokesman said, adding that 1,516 were in quarantine.
In the last 24 hours, there were 1,494 tests in the Silesia region.
In total 481 miners are infected in Poland, which generates most of its electricity from coal.
PGG, which is also struggling with falling prices and demand for coal and rising stockpiles, closed three of its eight mines due to the epidemic.
Another three million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe and Lauren Aratani report.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to extract its terrible toll on the US jobs market, some 33 million jobless Americans have now made claims in the past seven weeks.
The latest figures from the US labor department come ahead of the first official monthly report on the American jobs market since the pandemic triggered lockdowns across the country.
In March, the official unemployment rate in the US was 4.4%, close to a 50-year low, but economists predict it could now be as high as 20%, a level unseen since the 1930s Great Depression.
The pace of layoffs has overwhelmed state unemployment systems across the country. Over a million people in North Carolina have now made unemployment insurance benefit claims, equivalent to 20% of the state’s workforce. S
ome four million have applied in California and the state’s jobless benefits fund is “very close” to running out, governor Gavin Newsom said this week.
Germany will have to learn to live with the coronavirus, building tactics such as physical distancing and strict hygiene into normal daily life, the country’s leading public health institution has said, as it wound up its regular press briefings on the pandemic as a result of a continued fall in new infections.
Lars Schaade, the vice-president of the Robert Koch Institute, said that as Germany’s infection rate had been “substantially pushed back”, the decision to drop its briefing – which has attracted millions of viewers since it began in February, first daily and later twice weekly – marked a “new phase”. He said:
The epidemic is of course not over.
But having substantially pushed the virus back so that the number of new cases are between 600 and 1,300 a day … our approach now has to be to learn to live with the virus and to control it.
Journalists attending the briefing strongly voiced their opposition to it being scrapped.
It has provided the public and media with detailed information on Germany’s infection rates, up-to-date information on the virus’s development, and explanations on preventive measures and the science behind public health decisions, free of any political colouring.
Schaade said the media could continue to put questions to the institute’s press department and there would be press conferences in the event of significant developments.
International tourism to plunge up to 80% due to coronavirus
The number of international tourist arrivals could plunge by 60-80% in 2020 owing to the coronavirus, the World Tourism Organization said, sharply lowering its previous forecast.
Widespread travel restrictions and the closure of airports and national borders to curb the spread of the virus had plunged international tourism into its worst crisis since records began in 1950, the UN body said in a statement.
Tourist arrivals fell by 22% in the first three months of the year, and by 57% in March alone, with Asia and Europe suffering the biggest declines, according to the Madrid-based organisation.
“The world is facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis. Tourism has been hit hard, with millions of jobs at risk in one of the most labour-intensive sectors of the economy,” the body’s secretary general, Zurab Pololikashvili, said.
Airlines have suffered the most since the outbreak began in China in late 2019 with most flights grounded, but hotel groups, cruise operators and tour operators are also reeling.
The UN body had forecast at the beginning of the year that international tourism would grow by 3-4% in 2020 but then revised its forecast at the end of March, predicting a 20-30% decline.
It now said the full extent of the fall in international tourism will depend on the duration of travel restrictions and shutdown of borders.
Under a best-case scenario, with travel restrictions starting to ease in early July, international tourist arrivals could fall by just 58%
If borders and travel restrictions are only lifted in early December the fall would be more on the order of 78%.
Updated
Saudi Arabia has formed a police unit to monitor violations of rules banning gatherings of more than five people imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the state news agency SPA said.
The kingdom had previously said such gatherings were prohibited and said on Thursday that those breaching the rules would be punished by law.
It also encouraged people to report in breach of the restrictions.
Russia overtakes Germany and France after record rise in cases
The number of coronavirus cases in Russia overtook France and Germany on Thursday to become the fifth highest in the world after a record daily rise.
Moscow’s mayor said the real figure, not captured by official statistics, was much higher.
The official tally surged to 177,160, meaning Russia now has more registered cases than Germany or France, as the number of new coronavirus cases jumped by 11,231 in the past 24 hours.
More than half of all cases and deaths are in Moscow, the centre of Russia’s outbreak, which on Thursday reported a record overnight increase of 6,703 new cases, bringing its official total to 92,676.
But Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said research showed the real number of cases in the Russian capital was around 300,000, or more than triple the official figure.
Sobyanin, a close ally of president Vladimir Putin, said the number of cases was rising steeply because authorities had doubled the amount of tests they were carrying out in Moscow.
Nationwide, Russia says it has conducted over 4.8 million tests.
“The fact that we’ve identified so many sick people is a huge plus, not a minus,” Sobyanin told state TV. Identifying people who were infected meant they could be quarantined and the spread of the virus slowed, he said.
Russia’s official death toll, which remains far lower than in many countries - something that has been called into question by some Kremlin critics - rose to 1,625 on Thursday after 88 people died overnight, official figures showed.
Despite rising infections, Sobyanin said there were some encouraging signs and that the number of people being hospitalised in Moscow in the past two weeks had stabilised.
More people had been discharged than hospitalised on Thursday, he said.
Putin on Wednesday backed a plan put forward by Sobyanin to gradually begin lifting some lockdown restrictions after 12 May, allowing certain industrial facilities to begin working.
Sobyanin said on Thursday that anyone who used public transport after 12 May would need to wear a mask and gloves to offset the risks that came with the partial easing.
Updated
Egypt has extended a nationwide nighttime curfew until the end of the holy month of Ramadan to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, the prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, announced.
Finland’s government will work remotely at least until the end of this week as a precaution, it said, after two ministers were possibly exposed to the coronavirus this week.
The minister of social affairs and health, Aino-Kaisa Pekonen, and the minister of employment, Tuula Haatainen, were on Tuesday in the same room with a person suspected to have contracted the disease.
They met with some of the government’s other ministers on Wednesday.
A virtual meeting of South African lawmakers has been disrupted by hackers who flooded the video call with pornographic images, Associated Press reports.
In the the incident on Thursday, the hackers also hurled racial and sexual insults at the meeting’s chairwoman, Thandi Modise, who is the speaker of the National Assembly.
South Africa’s parliament is closed and all its meetings are currently held by video conference calls, as the country remains under strict lockdown restriction.
A shocked Modise said that she had earlier warned about using the virtual video call platform Zoom for the meeting. The parliamentary meeting later continued with a different link.
At least one other South African parliament video call has been similarly hacked.
Zoom has been facing criticism internationally as a result of reports of hackers who disrupt meetings by posting offensive content - being referred to as ‘Zoom-bombing’.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Netherlands have risen by 455 to 41,774, with 84 new deaths, health authorities have said.
The country’s death toll stands at 5,288, the National Institute for Health (RIVM) said in its daily update.
The RIVM cautioned that it only reports confirmed cases, and actual numbers are higher.
The first wave of a massive exercise to bring home hundreds of thousands of Indians stuck abroad is underway, with two flights preparing to leave from the United Arab Emirates.
India banned all incoming international flights in late March as it imposed one of the world’s strictest virus lockdowns, leaving vast numbers of workers and students stranded.
Some 15,000 nationals will be repatriated from 12 countries on planes and naval ships, in a mammoth exercise which saw the civil aviation ministry’s website crash on Wednesday as panicked citizens rushed to register.
Two warships have steamed to the Maldives and another to the UAE - home to a 3.3-million-strong Indian community which makes up some 30% of the Gulf state’s population.
The consulate in Dubai said that it alone had received almost 200,000 applications, appealing on Twitter for “patience and cooperation” as India undertakes the “massive task” of repatriation.
As Indian citizens with coveted tickets arrived at Abu Dhabi and Dubai airports for the first two flights on Thursday, the consulate said medical assessments were underway and that so far all passengers were cleared in antibody tests.
The EU’s foreign affairs wing, the European external action service (EEAS), is embroiled in an embarrassing row after allowing the Chinese government to censor an open letter from EU ambassadors published in Beijing’s China Daily newspaper.
The letter, calling for closer relations with China, was published without the original references to coronavirus having emerged first in China.
A spokesperson for the EEAS spoke of regret that the letter was “not published in full by the China Daily”, after the editing was highlighted in a report by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The change was said to have been agreed with “considerable reluctance”. The sentence deleted referred to “the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months”.
The row follows claims last month that an EEAS report about Chinese disinformation over Covid-19 had been watered down in response to pressure from Beijing. The allegation has been denied.
Black men and women are more than four times more likely to die with coronavirus than white people in England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics said.
The data, compiled from analysis conducted between 2 March and 10 April, is the latest to indicate marked differences in how the outbreak affects different ethnic groups.
A University College London study also indicated a disproportionate effect on people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.
The ONS analysis suggested black males in England and Wales were 4.2 times more likely to die after contracting Covid-19. The figure rose to 4.3 for black women.
It also found people of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian, Chinese and mixed heritage had an increased risk of death compared to those from white backgrounds.
The ONS said its findings suggested differences were in part a result of geographic and socioeconomic factors, such as deprivation.
“However, these factors do not explain all of the difference, suggesting that other causes are still to be identified,” it added.
Vietnam reported 17 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, all of which were imported infections involving Vietnamese citizens repatriated from virus-hit areas, the health ministry said.
The southeast Asian country has registered a cumulative total of 288 infections and has recorded no deaths, the ministry said.
Nearly 21,000 people have been quarantined.
A new report suggests that January’s Sundance film festival, the annual gathering of cinephiles in Park City, Utah, may have been a key early hub for coronavirus in the US.
The article, in the Hollywood Reporter, cites numerous attendees who experienced Covid-19-like symptoms either during or immediately after the festival. None were believed to have been tested for the disease.
Sundance this year attracted about 120,000 people to the small mountain resort, to watch films and party in confined spaces. The snowy conditions that make Park City perfect for skiing mean that socialising indoors is common, as are some flu-like symptoms as a result of the low temperature and high altitude.
Yet this year’s “Sundance plague” appears to have been more virulent for regular attendees than earlier iterations, with many complaining of considerable difficulties breathing, multiple trips to hospital and at least a fortnight bedbound.
The Hollywood Reporter cites – but declines to name – one major actor who apparently became “gravely ill” after the festival, as did members of his entourage.
Syria has postponed a parliamentary election for a second time as part of measures to protect the war-battered country from the coronavirus pandemic.
The Syrian government has recorded 44 cases, including three deaths in areas under its control, while the Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria has reported three cases, including one death.
The president’s office said on its official social media accounts that the vote will be pushed back to 19 July, from the scheduled date of 20 May as “part of preventive measures” to combat the virus.
The polls, to be held across government-run areas, are the third since the start of a conflict nine years ago that has killed at least 384,000 people.
They were initially supposed to happen on 13 April before the government in March enforced a lockdown to slow the spread of the virus.
President Bashar al-Assad warned on Monday of a “catastrophe” if the easing of lockdown measures in the country is mishandled.
A night-time curfew is still in force and travel is prohibited between provinces. But the government last week started to gradually lift restrictions by allowing markets and businesses to reopen during the day.
This week, it said sermons would resume in mosques from Friday.
The Israeli government has continued to relax its lockdown restrictions, going further than many countries by opening shopping centres, market and gyms on Thursday. It also announced that preschools would restart on Sunday.
Imposing early and stringent lockdowns, while also virtually shutting down its borders, the small country of 9 million has seen significant drops in reported coronavirus cases over the past two weeks.
Around 16,300 people in Israel have tested positive for the coronavirus, with 239 fatalities. Recent counts have seen less than 50 new confirmed cases per day, with twice as many recoveries as people with the virus.
For malls and markets, patrons will be required to wear masks, have their temperature taken and remain two metres apart, with a limited number of people allowed in at any time. Preschools will be limited to 17 children in one group. Gyms will also cap the number of participants.
The Israeli government also relaxed regulations on people arriving in the country. Previously, almost all arrivals were ordered to isolate for two weeks in government-run hotels. Now, some people will be allowed to self-isolate in their own homes if they can prove they won’t infect others.
Calls to domestic violence hotlines soar amid lockdowns - WHO Europe
Calls to domestic violence hotlines in Europe are up by as much as three-fifths, as alcohol and drug abuse combine with close confinement in coronavirus lockdowns to fuel abuse of the most vulnerable, the World Health Organization has said.
WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, cited reports from many countries including Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Ireland, Russia, Spain and Britain of increases in violence against women and men by an intimate partner and against children during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Although data is scarce, member states are reporting up to a 60% increase in emergency calls by women subjected to violence by their intimate partners in April this year compared to last,” he told an online briefing from Copenhagen.
Online enquiries to violence prevention hotlines had increased by up to five times, the agency said, calling the issue a global problem.
Kluge noted some countries had provided examples of how to address the issue. Italy has an app to ask for help without a phone call, while victims can alert pharmacists in Spain and France through code words.
Hotels in France and Belgium have converted to shelters, and Greenland has limited the sale of alcohol to make homes safer for children. Kluge said:
With job losses, rising alcohol-based harm and drug use, stress and fear, the legacy of this pandemic could haunt us for years.
US scientists are working to understand a rare, life-threatening inflammatory syndrome in children associated with exposure to the coronavirus by quickly assembling clinical trials and patient registries.
Cases were first reported in Britain, Italy and Spain, but now doctors in the United States are seeing clusters of children with the disorder, which can attack multiple organs, impair heart function and weaken heart arteries.
At least one child in Britain has died. No children are believed to have died so far in the US, “but that could change,” said Dr Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital Colorado who serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious disease.
O’Leary said efforts are getting underway to collect information on the disorder: “Every academic centre I know of is looking for these cases and trying to systematically track them.”
The New York department of health reported 64 cases of the new syndrome as of 5 May, and is calling on hospitals to immediately report any cases to the department.
It did not say how many children tested positive for the coronavirus, but said it believes the syndrome is potentially associated with Covid-19.
Georgia will lift its lockdown of the capital Tbilisi on 11 May and allow shops to reopen next week as part of a gradual easing of coronavirus-related restrictions, prime minister Giorgi Gakharia has said.
He told a televised cabinet meeting that a lockdown imposed in another large Georgian city, Rustavi, would be lifted on 14 May, and that the ex-Soviet republic of 3.7 million people would reopen to foreign tourists from 1 July.
Tbilisi, Rustavi, Batumi and Kutaisi were locked down on 15 April, with bans on entry or exit of vehicles, to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Batumi and Kutaisi were taken out of lockdowns last week.
Georgia reported 615 cases of coronavirus infections as of Thursday, with nine deaths.
Antonio González Pacheco, the Spanish former policeman accused of being the most notorious interrogator and torturer of the Franco era, has died from the coronavirus in a Madrid hospital, according to reports in the local media.
González Pacheco, who was 73, was nicknamed Billy El Niño (Billy the Kid) for his habit of spinning a gun around his finger while brutalising those he questioned.
Efforts to extradite him to Argentina to face trial on torture charges under the principle of universal jurisdiction failed in 2014 after judges in Spain ruled that the statute of limitations had expired.
González Pacheco could not be tried in Spain because of the amnesty law that helped the country return to democracy following Franco’s death in 1975.
Spain’s socialist-led coalition government had been attempting to strip González Pacheco of his medals and the pension increases to which they entitled the former officer, but had not managed to do so by the time he died.
One of González Pacheco’s most outspoken victims died from the coronavirus at the end of March.
José María “Chato” Galante, a veteran campaigner for truth, justice and historical memory in Spain, was imprisoned and tortured under the dictatorship. By a quirk of fate, the two men ended up living just a 10-minute walk from each other in Madrid.
Speaking to the Guardian in 2018, Galante recalled his torture by “that idiot Billy the Kid, who’d killed other people and could kill you while making Bruce Lee noises”.
He also said that he was still unable to fathom how the regime and its torturers had treated himself and others.
“I couldn’t treat an animal the way they treated me,” he said. “I just couldn’t. No animal could do that; only human beings are capable of torture.”
Despite his experiences, Galante remained optimistic and was determined to see justice done for all Franco’s victims. He was also never deserted by his sense of humour.
When asked how he had come to spend so much time in prison for trying to oppose the regime. he replied: “They arrested me a lot of times; I’ve always been more of a dreamer than an expert.”
InterContinental Hotels expects sales to have plunged by a record 80% in April as the coronavirus outbreak shuts its chains, including Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn.
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), the world’s largest hotel operator by number of rooms, added that global revenue per available room - a key industry measure - tanked 55% in March, when the world implemented mass lockdowns to contain the deadly Covid-19 outbreak.
“Covid-19 represents the most significant challenge both IHG and our industry have ever faced,” said chief executive, Keith Barr.
With around 15% of its hotels currently shut, IHG has offered facilities to frontline health workers and the homeless.
The group franchises, leases, manages or owns about 5,900 hotels, which together comprise almost 882,000 rooms in more than 100 countries.
Iran said on Thursday its coronavirus outbreak was “relatively stable” as it announced another 68 deaths, as well as more than 1,000 infections for a fourth straight day.
The Islamic republic has battled to contain the Middle East’s deadliest outbreak of Covid-19 since reporting its first cases in mid-February.
On Saturday, the government’s official tally of daily infections hit 802 - its lowest level since 10 March.
Iran’s count stayed below 1,000 again on Sunday, however its caseload has bounced back up above that mark on each day since then.
Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said the situation was “relatively stable” as he announced that the latest fatalities took the overall death toll to 6,486.
Jahanpour said there were 1,485 new cases of infection, putting the country’s outbreak total at 103,135.
“More than 986 of these individuals had mild to moderate symptoms, or they were outpatients, or family members of infected patients,” he said.
Of all those infected, he added, 82,744 people had recovered from the illness and been discharged from hospital.
Updated
A European coalition is forming around an approach to using smartphone technology to trace coronavirus infections that, its backers hope, could help to reopen borders without unleashing a second wave of the pandemic.
As countries rush to develop apps that would use Bluetooth short-range wireless to identify those who have come into contact with people infected with the virus, controversy has erupted over how best to handle the personal data they collect.
Britain and France argue people should trust their health authorities to hold such information on a central computer server.
A loose coalition of other nations, led by Switzerland and including Germany and Italy, believe data should be kept only on handsets so that it would be impossible for governments to spy on their citizens.
Crucially for the coalition, its approach is compatible with that of US technology giants Apple and Google, whose iOS and Android operating systems run 99% of the world’s smartphones.
Apple has, on privacy grounds, erected a roadblock to centralised apps by preventing the Bluetooth low energy function on its iPhones from monitoring other devices while running in the background.
That means for such apps to work, they would need to be open while the phone is unlocked - a pain for the user and a drain on the battery. Attempted workarounds have proven to be unreliable.
Supporters of the phone-based approach from Austria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland this week backed a roadmap view to enable national apps to ‘talk’ to each other and handle infections when people travel abroad.
“Everything about these projects has from day one been about how we can make it work on an international level,” said Marcel Salathe, a digital epidemiologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
My colleague Dan Collyns has this dispatch from Lima:
In the final hours before Covid-19 claimed her life, Cecilio Sangama watched helplessly as his eldest sister Edith gasped for breath.
Hospitals across Peru’s largest Amazon city had run out of oxygen, and the shortage had pushed the black market price of a cylinder well above $1,000 (£810).
“Her body could not hold on. She needed oxygen but we just couldn’t afford it,” said Sangama, 49, a municipal worker, speaking by telephone from Iquitos.
“I had promised her: ‘Don’t worry sister, today I will find you a cylinder,’… but in the end, there was nothing I could do.” His voice broke and he fell silent for a few seconds. “My sister died just a few hours ago, we are trying to find the way to give her a Christian burial.”
Read the full story here:
Updated
A key US senate democrat pushed back on republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell’s, drive to protect employers from coronavirus-related lawsuits when the economy begins to reopen, saying it would be unnecessary if the White House set clearer standards.
Republicans and business groups warn that companies could face a flood of litigation from employees and customers who become infected after operations resume.
Plaintiff advocates counter that employers are protected by legal barriers, including the difficulty of demonstrating where Covid-19 infections occur.
McConnell has made a bill protecting employers a top priority as Congress weighs what next steps to take to address a pandemic that has killed more than 71,000 Americans and thrown more than 26 million out of work.
Republicans, led by president Donald Trump, have pushed for a reopening of state economies, saying Americans can no longer endure the toll of shuttered businesses and lost livelihoods.
“The president is forcing workers back into unsafe plants and Mitch McConnell is trying to slam the courthouse door on the workers who get hurt,” democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse told Reuters.
Whitehouse, a member of the senate judiciary committee that will hold a hearing on liability protection next week, said clear guidance on worker safety would give employers “a strong ‘standard of care’ defense in court” and would “keep people safer, so there weren’t lawsuits in the first place”.
Virus exposes shortages across Africa's health care systems
African nations are facing a surge of Covid-19 cases with less than one intensive care bed and one ventilator per 100,000 people, a Reuters survey has found.
Even in a best-case scenario, the continent could need at least 10 times the numbers it has now as the outbreak peaks, an analysis of researchers’ projections showed.
The shortages across Africa’s national health systems are among the starkest elements to emerge from the survey, which polled 54 countries and received responses from health officials or independent experts in 48 of them.
The results provide the most detailed public picture to date of the continent’s key resources, testing and personnel for the coronavirus, which has killed more than 262,000 people worldwide.
The World Health Organization has warned that Africa, home to 1.3 billion people, could become the next centre of the pandemic.
The continent has recorded over 51,000 Covid-19 cases, a fraction of the 3.76 million recorded globally.
But low levels of testing make it impossible to know the true scale of infection. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) has said Africa could see nearly 123 million cases this year, causing 300,000 deaths.
Assuming a complete lockdown for an indefinite period, at least 121,000 critical care beds will be needed continent-wide when the pandemic peaks, according to a Reuters analysis of the projections by scientists at Britain’s MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, on which the UNECA forecasts are based.
That compares with just 9,800 available intensive care beds found in the survey, conducted through April and May. The survey also revealed severe shortfalls in testing, personnel and oxygen supplies.
Many African nations moved quickly to contain the virus, launching high-profile public health campaigns, restricting movement and repurposing factories to produce protective equipment.
Updated
Bewley’s cafe, described by the poet Brendan Kennelly as “the heart and hearth of Dublin”, is likely to permanently close after concluding it will not be able to operate post-lockdown under Ireland’s social distancing rules.
Managers at the historic cafe on Grafton street, long associated with James Joyce and other writers, told employees “with deep regret and great sadness” that it was likely to permanently close in coming weeks, with the loss of 110 jobs.
The cafe closed temporarily in mid-March due to the Covid-19 restrictions and would be allowed to reopen next month under the government’s lockdown easing blueprint.
However social distancing measures, along with high rent and a collapse in tourist numbers, made the business no longer viable, the managing director, Cól Campbell, said in a note to staff.
Opened in 1927, the aroma of coffee and the promise of sticky buns and cakes drew crowds of artists, students and tourists, a bustle that created a unique atmosphere no longer viable under social distancing rules.
The loss of Bewleys Cafe Theatre effects more then Dublin, this is where we get to see new work from around the country and playwrights & actors access press reviews. I can remember theatre from @ConalCreedon @annblake78 @CoraFenton but I’m sure there’s many more... https://t.co/7bZqebSFaJ
— pamela mcqueen (@pamelamcq) May 7, 2020
Thanks Amy, it’s Jessica here - I’ll be running the live blog for the next few hours as countries across the world tentatively start to ease their coronavirus restrictions after weeks of lockdown.
As always, please do get in touch with your observations and experiences, via email- jessica.murray@theguardian.com - or via Twitter - @journojess_ - and I’ll do my best to respond to as many messages as I can.
For UK-specific coronavirus news, my colleagues Andrew Sparrow and Lucy Campbell are heading up the UK live blog, following the news from the ONS that black people are more likely to die from Covid-19.
That’s it from me, Amy Walker. I’ll be handing over to my colleague Jessica Murray now, who will steer you through global coronavirus updates for the rest of the day.
Summary
- Coronavirus cases in India have risen past 50,000 according to the country’s health ministry, with the pace of infection showing no sign of abating.
- A gas leak at a chemical factory in India has killed at least nine people and led to hundreds of others being taken to hospital, amid warnings that the death toll could climb higher.
- China’s exports saw a shock 3.5% rise in April despite a hit to external demand from the coronavirus pandemic, official figures showed on Thursday.
- The number of people who have died after contracting Covid-19 in Europe has surpassed 150,000, with most in the UK, Italy, Spain and France, a tally of official figures by the AFP news agency showed.
- Mayor’s in many of the world’s leading cities have warned there can be no return to “business as usual” in the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis if humanity is to escape catastrophic climate breakdown.
- The United Nations has warned that the global pandemic could cause “multiple famines”, as it appealed for a further $4.7bn in funding to help more than 50 vulnerable countries.
- Poland has postponed Sunday’s presidential election amid the outbreak. The postal-only ballot will now take place “as soon as possible”, but is likely to not happen until at least June.
- Every one of the 400,000 protective gowns that were flown to the UK from Turkey has failed to conform to the country’s health standards, with the shipment due to be flown back.
The coronavirus lockdown in Lebanon has sent an economy already in deep trouble into financial freefall, with many people struggling to survive.
In a new video, our multimedia team follow Gino Raidy – an activist who was prominent during the October 2019 anti-government protests – as he helps to keep demonstrators safe during the pandemic.
Covid-19 deaths in Europe pass 150,000
The number of people killed by Covid-19 in Europe has surpassed 150,000, with most deaths occurring in the UK, Italy, Spain and France, according to a tally compiled from official sources by the AFP news agency.
Updated
Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has said that the number of coronavirus cases in the Russian capital is around 300,000, according to the TASS news agency.
The figure is more than three times higher than the official total of 92,676 reported by authorities.
As of Thursday, the reported case tally across Russia was 177,160.
A cruise ship which had been at the centre of Australia’s biggest coronavirus cluster has arrived off the Philippines to repatriate more than 200 crew members.
Just under a quarter of Australia’s 97 Covid-19 deaths have been traced back to Carnival Corp’s Ruby Princess, leading to outrage over why symptomatic passengers were allowed to disembark.
It has also become the focus of a criminal investigation after a spike in cases followed its March 19 arrival in Sydney.
The 19-deck ship reached Manila Bay on Thursday, joining a group of around a dozen other cruise ships that will be subjected to onboard coronavirus testing before any Filipino crew members can disembark.
Mayors in many of the world’s leading cities have warned there can be no return to “business as usual” in the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis if humanity is to escape catastrophic climate breakdown.
City leaders representing more than 750 million people have published a “statement of principles”, which commits them to putting greater equality and climate resilience at the heart of their recovery plans.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said: “Half-measures that maintain the status quo won’t move the needle or protect us from the next crisis.
“We need a new deal for these times – a massive transformation that rebuilds lives, promotes equality and prevents the next economic, health or climate crisis.”
You can read the full report, which includes the measures which have already been announced by some cities, from my colleague Matthew Taylor here:
The UN urged for a united front to fight against Coronavirus in Afghanistan as number of confirmed Covid-19 cases reached 3,563 amid high threat of continued transmissions across the war-torn country.
United Nations Special Representative Deborah Lyons has highlighted the need for “deep collaboration with all partners to create a united front against Covid-19”, in a meeting with Afghan vice president.
Together they discussed the Covid-19 pandemic and its socio-economic impacts on people’s lives in Afghanistan.
“Both agreed that the collective efforts of all Afghans are needed to tackle this pandemic that has already killed nearly a quarter million people around the world”, according to a UN mission statement.
The country’s health ministry has confirmed 171 new infections over past 24 hours as the testing capacity increased and more people are getting tested.
The country had a shortage of testing kits early this month which paused testing process for several days. The ministry has also confirmed two deaths of Coronavirus in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 106.
Total infections: 3,563
— Akhtar Mohammad Makoii (@akhtar_makoii) May 7, 2020
New infections: 171
May6: 168
May5: 330
May4: 190
May3: 235
May2: 179
May1: 164
Apr30: 232
Apr29:110
Ap28: 125
Ap27: 172
Ap26: 68
Ap25: 133
Ap24: 95
Ap23: 83
Ap22:51
Ap21:66
Ap20:30
Death toll: 106
Afghanistan’s struggle with a shortage of diagnostic testing equipment known as “RNA extraction kits”, which scientists use to isolate the RNA (ribonucleic acid) in samples of the novel coronavirus, had been solved after it recieved the equipment from WHO.
The health ministry has so far tested 14,389 suspected patients. Most of new cases confirmed in western province of Herat which borders Iran, one of the world’s worst affected countries.
More than 250,000 Afghans have returned home from neighbouring Iran since the beginning of the year, fanning out across the country without being tested or quarantined.
Number of new infections slowed down in Kandahar compared with recent days as 16 new cases were reported in the province.
Capital Kabul, which is Afghanistan’s worst affected area with a population of nearly six million, reported 34 new cases overnight, raising the total number to 943 confirmed cases.
Concerns are high in the capital as one-third of 500 random coronavirus tests in came back positive, health officials said last week.
Wahid Majroh, deputy health minister has said the result of 500 tests are concerning though. He has warned that the threat of the virus is its “highest level”.
Despite a government authorised lockdown in several provinces, streets are still crowded which raises fears of a surge in number of death and infections among experts.
Meanwhile, war intensified across the country, Defense ministry said the insurgents carried out attacks in around 20 provinces on Tuesday as the Taliban rejected multiple offers of ceasefire.
The United Nations Mission in Afghanistan has said that more than 533 civilians including 152 children were killed in first quarter of 2020.
A team of Indonesian engineers have said they have produced a compact ventilator from plastic drinking tumblers to sell at a fraction of the usual cost.
The 40 engineers from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) have developed the Vent-I ventilator, which is the size of a mini-oven.
The institute will aim to sell the machines for $1,000 each, one-twentieth or less than the typical $20,000 to $25,000, said team leader Syarif Hidayat.
“The structure of this ventilator is much simpler compared to the ventilator we see in the intensive care unit,” Hidayat told Reuters.
Like many countries across the globe, Indonesia has also experienced a shortage of the mechanical breathing devices during the pandemic.
India: cases rise past 50,000
Coronavirus cases in India have risen past 50,000, according to the health ministry.
The update comes as the pace of infection in the country shows no signs of slowing, despite a strict lockdown.
On Thursday, India reported 3,561 new cases, taking its total to 52,952. The country’s death toll rose by 89 to 1,783.
The figures are still low compared to western countries including the US, UK and Italy.
Indian officials have attributed the low toll to the government’s move to impose a stay-at-home order on the nation’s 1.3bn people early in the crisis.
However, they noted an eruption in cases within the densely packed economic centres of Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad.
Health minister Harsh Vardhan said Maharashtra, the state in which Mumbai is located, was an area of particular concern and that the federal government was on standby to help.
“The [government] is ready to help in every way possible. Be it manpower increase, capacity building, technical assistance etc. or any kind of handholding that is required to manage the situation,” he said at a meeting with state health officials.
Updated
UN warns of multiple famines caused by pandemic
The United Nations has warned that the coronavirus pandemic could cause “multiple famines”.
The comments came as the UN appealed for a further $4.7bn (£3.8bn) in funding for its global humanitarian response plan.
Under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Mark Lowcock, said the worst effects of the crisis would be felt in the world’s poorest countries.
“Unless we take action now, we should be prepared for a significant rise in conflict, hunger and poverty. The spectre of multiple famines looms,” he said.
More than 50 vulnerable countries are to receive donations bought with the funds by the UN including medical equipment to test and treat the sick and hand-washing stations.
In March, the UN initially requested $2bn to be donated to the response plan, of which $900m has already been received.
Updated
The chief of staff to German chancellor Angela Merkel has said the coronavirus pandemic will last for at least the rest of the year.
“We are not living after the pandemic now - rather we are living in the middle of a pandemic, one that will be with us for a while - at least for this year and that’s being very optimistic,” Helge Braun told Deutschlandfunk radio on Thursday.
Yesterday, Merkel announced steps to ease the coronavirus lockdown in Germany but simultaneously launched an “emergency brake” mechanism allowing for restrictions to be renewed if Covid-19 infections rise again.
Every one of the 400,000 protective gowns flown to the UK from Turkey has failed to conform to the country’s health standards.
The UK’s Department for Health and Social Care confirmed on Wednesday that the items were being held in a facility near Heathrow airport.
It is understood that they are due to be flown back to Turkey, and the DHSC intends to seek a refund.
The shipment was first announced by UK ministers last month amid dire warnings of personal protective equipment for health workers.
You can read the full story from my colleague Kevin Rawlinson here:
Poland’s governing coalition parties have postponed Sunday’s presidential election amid the coronavirus outbreak.
Although ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party wanted the vote to go ahead, its coalition partner Agreement and the opposition said it was prioritising political gain over public health.
The election – which will be a postal-only ballot – will now to be rescheduled to a date “as soon as possible”. However, the deputy prime minister said the earliest it could take place would be in June.
PiS had received criticism both nationally and internationally over concerns that the ballot would not be sufficiently fair while candidates were suspended from campaigning due to the country’s lockdown.
According to John Hopkins University, Poland has reported 14,740 cases of Covid-19 while 733 people have died after contracting the virus.
But while figures are lower than in most Western European countries, the Polish health minister has previously warned that cases have not yet peaked.
I’m Amy Walker, steering you through the next few hours of global coronavirus updates. You can get in touch with me on Twitter @amyrwalker.
Yesterday, the Guardian published its views on the upcoming election:
More than 15,000 Indian citizens are expected to be brought home over the next week as part of the Vande Bharath (hail India) mission, local media report. Eventually, as many as 200,000 citizens will be brought home on flights, before being quarantined.
The BBC reports that, “If successful, this would be India’s biggest evacuation mission since 1990, when it rescued 170,000 civilians from Kuwait during the Gulf War.
“Air India, the country’s national airline, will carry out the mission and fly planes to the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Qatar and Malaysia, among other countries.”
In the UAE alone, the Indian mission has received 197,000 repatriation applications.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan in Sydney. Thank you for following along – I’ll be handing over to my colleague Amy Walker now in London. She will be bringing you the latest from around the world for the next few hours.
Gas leak at chemical factory in India kills at least nine and hospitalises hundreds
A gas leak at a chemical factory in southern India has killed at least nine people and led to hundreds being taken to hospital, amid warnings that the death toll could climb higher.
Styrene leaked from the Korean-owned LG Polymers plant during the early hours of Thursday morning when families in the surrounding villages were asleep, a local official in Andra Pradesh state said.
The leak was from two 5,000-tonne tanks that had been unattended due to India’s coronavirus lockdown in place since late March, according to a local police officer.
Footage on Indian television channels showed people, including women and children, lying in the streets of Visakhapatnam, an industrial port city halfway between Kolkata and Chennai on India’s east coast.
Swarupa Rani, an assistant commissioner of police in Visakhapatnam, said that at least nine people had died and between 300-400 had been hospitalised. Another 1,500 people had been evacuated, mostly from a neighbouring village.
But B K Naik, district hospitals coordinator, said that at least 1,000 people had been sent to different hospitals, and that it was feared many others may be unconscious in their homes.
Global report: deaths are price of reopening, says Trump, as China warns risks remain
Donald Trump has again suggested the US may need to accept the reality of more deaths in order to start reopening the economy, as governments around the world continued to ease out of lockdown restrictions.
After backtracking on earlier indications that he would wind up the White House coronavirus taskforce, the Trump spelled out a potentially brutal approach to kickstarting the world’s biggest economy. “We have to be warriors,” Trump told Fox News when asked if Americans should expect additional deaths as the country looks to reopen. “We can’t keep our country closed down for years.”
The president added: “Hopefully that won’t be the case … but it could very well be the case.”
By Thursday morning the number of cases in the US stood at more than 1.2 million and 73,431 deaths, with infections still on the rise in some states. Worldwide there were more than 3.75 million cases and 263,831 people had died from the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
But there were more signs of light at the end of the tunnel for people around the world still constrained by lockdown rules.
The United Nations announced Thursday it is increasing its appeal to fight the coronavirus pandemic in fragile and vulnerable countries from $2bn to $6.7bn, AP reports.
UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock reiterated that the peak of the pandemic is not expected to hit the worlds poorest countries for three to six months. But he said there is already evidence of incomes plummeting and jobs disappearing, food supplies falling and prices soaring, and children missing vaccinations and meals.
Since the original appeal on 25 March, the United Nations said $1bn has been raised to support efforts across 37 fragile countries to tackle Covid-19.
The updated appeal launched Thursday includes nine additional vulnerable countries: Benin, Djibouti, Liberia, Mozambique, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Togo and Zimbabwe.
Lowcock said in the poorest countries we can already see economies contracting as export earnings, remittances and tourism disappear.
“Unless we take action now, we should be prepared for a significant rise in conflict, hunger and poverty,” he warned. “The spectre of multiple famines looms.”
Updated
Patterns of pain: what Covid-19 can teach us about how to be human
We are learning a whole new etiquette of bodies. We swerve around each other, hop into the near-empty street, calculate distances at entrances to parks, avoid body contact, even eye contact, and keep a look out for those obliviously glued to their phones, whose lack of attention threatens to breach the two-metre rule. It’s odd and disconcerting and isn’t quite second nature.
Until the pandemic arrived, many of us were finding texting, email and Whatsapp more suitable to our speeded-up lives. But now we are coming to reuse the telephone, and to enjoy the sounds in our ears and the rhythm of conversation, instead of feeling rushed and interrupted. A few of my sessions as a psychoanalyst are now conducted on the phone but, for the most part, I am spending my time looking into a screen, and seeing faces rather than whole bodies. Until I learned to turn off the view of myself, I, like others, was disconcerted by the oddness of catching sight of myself – a view I don’t think we are meant to see.
UK papers Thursday, 7 May 2020
GUARDIAN: ‘Landmark’ test target that keeps being missed #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/1ajmuOeXN2
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 6, 2020
TIMES: Double risk of hospital for patients with obesity #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/I49DmzhoNQ
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 6, 2020
TELEGRAPH: ‘Stay home’ advice to be scrapped #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/MQmMLy83kX
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 6, 2020
INDEPENDENT DIGITAL: testing for key workers restricted over shortages #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/S6HvGxHTMO
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 6, 2020
FT: Johnson looks to border checks as price of lockdown relaxation #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/npsoKzH5FI
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 6, 2020
MAIL: Hurrah! Lockdown freedom beckons #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/KUWDO82nLV
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 6, 2020
Summary
- There are 3.75 million confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The number of confirmed cases stood at 3,755,341 on Thursday, with 263,831 deaths.
- China exports see surprise 3.5% jump in April, imports fall. China’s exports saw a shock 3.5% rise in April despite a hit to external demand from the coronavirus pandemic, official figures showed Thursday. But imports fell 14.2% from a year ago, a steeper drop from last month, according to the Customs Administration.A forecast of analysts by Bloomberg had predicted an 11% dive in exports and a 10% plunge in imports.
- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the country will consider easing restrictions to “Level 2”. “Alert Level 2 will see significantly more activity open up across the country requiring New Zealanders to play it safe and remain vigilant so the virus doesn’t bounce back,” the government announced in a statement. It would include allowing for gatherings of up to 100 people.
- Brazil sees record daily cases and deaths. Brazil, one of the world’s emerging coronavirus hot spots, registered a record number of cases and deaths on Wednesday, prompting the health minister to flag the possibility of strict lockdowns in particularly hard-hit areas.
- Trump said the White House coronavirus taskforce would “continue on indefinitely,” a reversal from his comments yesterday suggesting the group’s work would be winding down. The president said today he “had no idea how popular the taskforce is.”
- Trump suggests more deaths a necessary price. US President Donald Trump has again suggested the country may need to accept the reality of more deaths in order to start reopening the economy.“We have to be warriors,” Trump told Fox News’ John Roberts when asked if Americans should expect additional deaths as the country looks to reopen. “We can’t keep our country closed down for years.”
- Diplomatic split widens amid virus origin row and China shrugs off US claims and calls for focus on beating pandemic.China will not invite international experts in to investigate the source of Covid-19 while the pandemic is still raging, its UN ambassador says. China’s foreign ministry says the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is wrong to claim he has evidence suggesting the virus originated in a Chinese lab. The US-China relationship is one of “disappointment and frustration”, the White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has said, highlighting the deepening rift between Washington and Beijing.
- US sees 1st detained immigrant death from coronavirus. A 57-year-old person in immigration custody died Wednesday from complications related to the coronavirus, authorities said, marking the first reported death from the virus among about 30,000 people in immigration custody.
- Coronavirus threatens eurozone’s future, Brussels warns. The eurozone faces an existential threat if the economic recoveries of its 19 member states are insufficiently even, the EU’s economic commissioner warns. Some countries are expected to suffer significantly more than others during what is expected to be the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
- WHO warns of more lockdowns if transition not managed carefully. The director general of the World Health Organization warns of the risks of returning to lockdown if countries emerging from pandemic restrictions do not manage transitions “extremely carefully and in a phased approach”. preparedness.
- Germany eases restrictions but retains “emergency brake”. The country’s top football league, the Bundesliga, is set to resume this month – one of various restrictions to be lifted as Germans are once again allowed to meet a limited number of friends and family and some shops are allowed to reopen.
- UK could start easing virus lockdown next week. The British government will set out details of its plan to ease lockdown on Sunday, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, says, adding his hope that some measures could come into force the following day. Speaking in parliament for the first time since being hospitalised with Covid-19, Johnson says “every death is a tragedy”, calling the statistics “appalling”.
- Spain extends state of emergency after bitter political dispute. Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist-led coalition government secured an extension until 24 May. Congress’s approval for the latest extension of the crisis powers comes after days of bitter rowing and frantic negotiations.
Updated
China exports see surprise 3.5% jump in April, imports fall
China’s exports saw a shock 3.5% rise in April despite a hit to external demand from the coronavirus pandemic, official figures showed Thursday.
But imports fell 14.2% from a year ago, a steeper drop from last month, according to the Customs Administration.
A forecast of analysts by Bloomberg had predicted an 11% dive in exports and a 10% plunge in imports.
Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics noted that “April shipments may have been boosted by exporters making up for shortfalls in the first quarter due to supply constraints then”.
In the January-February period, the height of the coronavirus outbreak in China, exports had plummeted 17.2%.
But in spite of the bounceback this time - the first return to positive territory this year - Kuijs does not expect the trend to last as China’s key trading partners fall into recession.
Updated
Professional rugby and netball are close to returning to action in New Zealand after the government unveiled its rules for sport when the country next eases its coronavirus restrictions.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday announced a range of new societal rules that will apply when the country moves from alert level three to level two, including changes to professional and community sport.
Sam Cane named All Blacks captain as new coach Ian Foster makes first major moveRead more
Cabinet will announce a date on Monday for the shift to alert level two, which could happen as soon as Wednesday.
The announcement was enormous for rugby and netball, the country’s two professional winter competitions which have suffered significant financial damage.
Under Boris Johnson, Putin and Trump the world has uncanny parallels to 1945
Victory in Europe was made possible by a remarkable military collaboration between the main anti-Axis powers – the US, Russia and Britain. But the three-way relationship, between Franklin D Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, was never easy, and it set a pattern of national rivalry, suspicion, fear and distrust that persists to this day.
Today’s world bears some uncanny similarities to the world of 1945. Post-Soviet Russia under Vladimir Putin is again on the offensive, employing asymmetrical means such as info-wars and cyberhacks instead of armoured divisions to project its influence across Europe.
Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit Britain, having rejected the concept of a common European home, stands alone in ways not seen since 1940. Brexiters’ calls for a stronger US security, economic and trade relationship, to offset the EU rupture, are the modern-day equivalent of Churchill’s desperate “darkest hour” appeals for Roosevelt’s help.
EU to propose process for how WHO can learn from Covid-19 outbreak
The European Union is to put forward proposals for a mechanism to learn from the coronavirus pandemic at the next meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) but will stop short of calls from the US and Australia for a full international inquiry.
Brussels is trying to steer a course between the US and China in the blame game between the superpowers. Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has blamed China for tens of thousands of deaths and demanded the WHO hold an inquiry into what it was told by the country about the outbreak. At issue in any inquiry would be timing and whether it would focus on what happened in China, China’s communications with the WHO or the WHO’s own response.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said the bloc’s proposal, to be put forward at a virtual meeting of the WHO on 18 May, would “provide access to how to learn more about the origin of this disease to prevent the next pandemic. Because it wasn’t going to be the last. Lessons will have to be learned from it.”
There is support within Europe, including from the UK, for an examination of the WHO’s role. The US has reduced its leverage in calling for a full inquiry, however, by suspending its payments to the WHO in a move widely seen as counterproductive.
Meanwhile Indians in the UAE have voiced scepticism about a “massive” operation announced by New Delhi to bring home some of the hundreds of thousands of nationals stranded by coronavirus restrictions, AFP reports.
“It is just propaganda,” said Ishan, an Indian expatriate in Dubai, one of seven emirates in the UAE and long a magnet for foreign workers.
He was reacting to his government’s announcement this week that it would deploy passenger jets and naval ships to bring home citizens stuck in a host of countries.
India’s consulate in Dubai said it received about 200,000 requests from nationals seeking repatriation - mostly workers who have lost their jobs in the pandemic.
One vessel was heading to the UAE, India’s government said, while two flights were scheduled to depart the UAE for India on Thursday.
India banned all incoming commercial flights in late March as it imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns to tackle the spread of coronavirus.
The UAE is home to a 3.3-million-strong Indian community, who make up around 30 percent of the Gulf state’s population.
Our New Zealand correspondent Eleanor Ainge Roy has this full report of the announcement today about the country’s potential path out of lockdown.
Hairdressers, bars and competitive sport could be back on the agenda for New Zealanders from next week as the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the country was “half-way down Everest” in its fight against Covid-19.
New Zealand has been under strict lockdown restrictions for more than five weeks, but the low number of cases this week – zero for two consecutive days – means restrictions will soon be lifted.
Ardern and her cabinet will make a decision on downgrading the country’s alert level from three to two on Monday, and by Wednesday, life could begin to look much more normal – and fun – for millions of cooped-up Kiwis.
Public spaces such as playgrounds and libraries would be reopened, bars and restaurants would be able to accept patrons, and domestic travel and competitive sport allowed to resume, including the professional leagues.
Widespread social-distancing rules would continue to apply, including patrons being seated two metres apart in public spaces, strangers keeping their distance from one another, and hairdressers, barbers and beauticians being required to wear PPE.
Updated
In Dubai’s ritzy Marina district, white yachts are tethered to docks, standing idle - like many companies behind a luxury lifestyle industry battered by the coronavirus crisis. The boardwalks that snake around the precinct’s artificial bays and canals, once packed with tourists, mostly from China, Russia and Britain, are now deserted, AFP reports.
“Nearly 95 percent, if not 100 percent, of turnover has been lost,” the manager of a yacht charter company told AFP.
When the United Arab Emirates halted all commercial flights and enforced a strict curfew to stem the spread of the disease, fishing trips and sightseeing excursions dried up “without warning”, the young Frenchman said.
Dubai, one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, lacks the oil wealth of its neighbours.
But it has the most diversified economy in the Gulf, building a reputation as a financial, commercial and tourism hub that draws some 16 million visitors a year.
The cosmopolitan city state’s services sector is fuelled by hundreds of thousands of foreigners, ranging from the super-rich to low-income migrant workers behind the scenes of the highlife.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,284 to 166,091, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday.
The reported death toll rose by 123 to 7,119, the tally showed.
At least 47 residents and three workers have been infected with coronavirus at a retirement home in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, authorities said on Wednesday, in one of the biggest outbreaks yet reported in the country, Reuters reports.
Nuevo Leon’s health minister, Manuel de la O, said the infections were registered among the 98 residents and 48 workers at the Casa de Retiro Luis Elizondo in the municipality of Guadalupe, east of the state capital, Monterrey.
He told a news conference that the average age of residents at the home is 84, that 40% of them had diabetes and 45% suffered from hypertension, calling them a “high-risk group”.
De la O later said that all 50 who tested positive for coronavirus were “stable” and that three of the residents had been taken to a hospital for treatment.
The home’s medical director, Fernando Coindreau, said staff began to notice symptoms among some older residents on Saturday before tests were carried out.
Nursing homes have been some of the worst-hit places during the pandemic, particularly in continental Europe.
Mexico has so far registered 27,634 cases of coronavirus and 2,704 deaths. Nuevo Leon, which borders the United States, has reported 909 cases and 29 fatalities.
De la O said that authorities believed the virus could have spread from a cook who worked at the home.
Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
In China, at a meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s highest political group, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, Xi Jinping said the spread of coronavirus overseas was ongoing, and that while Hubei province had successfully contained the outbreak and was no longer an emergency, prevention and control measures had to stay in place.
Reports of the meeting in Chinese media were largely non specific, but said Xi urged the implementation of new policies to promote economic and social development, and to improve healthcare structures, reform disease prevention and control systems, increase epidemic monitoring and early warning capabilities, and strengthen public health and emergency laws.
The Central Committee also decided to send a liaison group to to Hubei and Wuhan to support follow-up work.
On Thursday Chinese authorities reduced the risk level of Linkou County in the city of Mudanjiang to “low”, meaning there were no medium or high risk areas anywhere in the country, Beijing News reported.
A separate meeting of the State Council executives, chaired by premier Li Keqiang, determined a set of 90 financial support and stimulus measures was working, with production “steadily returning to the usual capacity”, state media report.
Additional reporting by Lillian Yang.
In Australia meanwhile, premiers of the country’s two most populous states have warned that social distancing restrictions will not be eased before Mother’s Day on 10 May, despite Queensland’s decision to allow up to five members to visit a household from Sunday.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has attempted this week to build the case for opening up the economy by pointing to the accumulating costs of the restrictions, and Friday’s national cabinet meeting is expected to try to land a timetable for easing the lockdowns implemented to try and flatten the curve of Covid-19 infections.
But before Friday’s deliberation, premiers in New South Wales and Victoria have warned that Australia risks throwing away the successful containment of the pandemic.
Washington state sees sudden rise in Covid parties
Moving away from New Zealand now to bring you this story:
You can call them BYOC parties. That’s bring your own Covid-19.
Health officials in Walla Walla, Washington, are admonishing the sudden rise in so-called “Covid-19 parties” where non-infected guests mingle with those who have tested positive for the virus, ostensibly in hopes of speeding up the process of catching, and overcoming, the virus.
“Walla Walla County health officials are receiving reports of Covid-19 parties occurring in our community, where non-infected people mingle with an infected person in an effort to catch the virus,” the county said in a press release Tuesday.
As of Tuesday, 94 people in the county have tested positive for Covid-19, including employees who worked at a nearby Tyson Fresh Meats plant who were infected.
Some of those cases can be linked back to parties, Meghan DeBolt, director of the county’s Department of Community Health, told the Walla Walla Bulletin.
“We don’t know when it is happening. It’s after the fact that we hear from cases. We ask about contacts, and there are 25 people because: ‘We were at a Covid party’.” She added: “It’s unacceptable. It’s irresponsible.”
Washington state, hit early and hard by the coronavirus, has tallied 15,185 cases and 834 deaths that have been attributed to the coronavirus.
More from that statement by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern now:
On Monday, 11 May, we will make a decision on whether to move, taking into consideration the best data and advice we can, recognising the impact of restrictions, and ensuring we don’t put at risk all of the gains we have made.
We need to balance the risk of the virus bouncing back against the strong desire to get the economy moving again.
We will continue to act with caution and not move before it is safe to do, so entry into Level 2 could be phased, with higher risk activity occurring when there is stronger evidence it is safe to do so.”
Some reactions now to the possible Level 2 restrictions in New Zealand:
The fact we could potentially be back on campus in 10 days and for many of us back in our halls even sooner is beyond exciting. The light at the end of the tunnel becomes even brighter #level2 #nzpol
— Flynn Symonds (@Flynn_Symonds) May 7, 2020
😂😂😂 i feel like this will cause so much drama amongst Tongan families. Haha. But heyyyy more money for the couple & enjoying it with those who mean a lot to them
— 🌸N I A (@asileT23) May 7, 2020
PUB TIME #level2
— cave goblin (@em_ma_maguire) May 7, 2020
Updated
New Zealand’s Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson says professional sports will be able to resume domestically under Covid-19 Alert Level 2 with the necessary public health measures in place.
“Moving to Alert Level 2 continues to expand the opportunities for sport and recreation and reintroduces the opportunity for competitive sport – both at a local and professional level,” he said in a statement.
“Obviously, the paramount concern is that a return to competitive sport is done safely. This means ensuring there are systems in place to implement public health measures such as contact tracing and hygiene requirements to create a safe environment.”
The statement also said that Super Rugby and the Premiership Netball League had confirmed their intention to resume domestic competition at Alert level 2.
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said if the decision is made on Monday to move to Level-2 restrictions, that would start on Wednesday next week.
New Zealand to consider easing restrictions to 'Level 2'
New Zealand has announced that it will take the decision of whether to ease restrictions to “Alert Level 2” on Monday, 11 May.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a statement, “Every alert level to fight Covid-19 is its own battle. When you win one, it doesn’t mean the war is over.”
“In a nutshell, Level 2 is a safer normal designed to get as many people back to work as possible and the economy back up and running in a safe way, made possible only by our collective actions at Levels 4 and 3 to beat the virus and break the chain of transmission.
“Strong public health measures such as physical distancing, good hygiene and contact tracing will be essential to making Level 2 work.”
Level 2 restrictions would mean:
- Businesses can restart for staff and customers
- Bubbles can cease
- Domestic travel recommences
- Schools and early learning centres can open
- Gatherings both indoors and outdoors are limited to 100 people
- Public places reopen
- Sport and recreation comes back on-stream, including professional sports competitions
- Home gatherings must be kept small
- Hospitality must follow the three S’s – seated, separated, single-server
Updated
Five US Senate Republicans introduced a bill on Wednesday seeking a review of US participation in the World Health Organization and other international institutions, Reuters reports, after President Donald Trump’s administration suspended US contributions to the UN health agency and accused it of mishandling the coronavirus pandemic.
Introduced by Chairman Jim Risch and four other Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the “Multilateral Aid Review Act of 2020” would establish a task force to assess how well multilateral institutions carry out their missions and serve American interests.
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China reported two new coronavirus cases for 6 May, unchanged from the same number of increases the day before, data from the national health authority showed on Thursday.
Both were so-called imported cases involving travellers from overseas, the National Health Commission said in a statement. The two cases from the day before were also imported.
The commission also reported 6 new asymptomatic cases for 6 May, versus 20 from the previous day.
China’s total number of coronavirus cases now stands at 82,885, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,633, the national health authority said.
Live and Let Die plays as Trump visits mask factory without a mask
During a pandemic that has seen more than 70,000 deaths in the US (almost a quarter of the global amount), there is probably no worse song the president could walk out to than Live and Let Die, a cover by the rock band Guns N’ Roses. But these are strange times, and so as Donald Trump walked around an N95 mask manufacturing plant in Phoenix, Arizona, that’s exactly what happened.
Mexico’s health ministry on Wednesday reported 1,609 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 197 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 27,634 cases and 2,704 deaths.
The government has said the real number of infected people is significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
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US sees 1st detained immigrant death from coronavirus
A 57-year-old person in immigration custody died Wednesday from complications related to the coronavirus, authorities said, marking the first reported death from the virus among about 30,000 people in immigration custody, AP reports.
The detainee had been held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego and hospitalized since late April, said Craig Sturak, a spokesman for the San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would neither confirm nor deny the death. CoreCivic Inc., the private company that operates the detention center, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Otay Mesa has been a hotbed for the spread of Covid-19, with nearly one of five detainees who have tested positive nationwide. As of Wednesday, 132 of ICE’s 705 positive cases were at the San Diego facility. Additionally, 10 of 39 ICE detention employees who have tested positive are at Otay Mesa.
Two guards at an immigration detention centre in Monroe, Louisiana, died late last month from the coronavirus Carl Lenard, 62, and Stanton Johnson, 51. Until Wednesday, no detainees had been reported dead.
A Justice Department attorney, Samuel Bettwy, said at a hearing on Monday that the San Diego detainee was intubated at a hospital with a prognosis that was not good. While the death came as no surprise, advocacy groups that have been pressing ICE to release detainees on bond swiftly criticized the agency.
Last month, amid dire warnings of shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers, ministers publicised the imminent arrival from Turkey of a fleet of RAF cargo planes bringing in a “very significant” shipment of PPE for the NHS.
More than a fortnight later, it has emerged that every one of the 400,000 protective gowns that arrived has been impounded for not to conform to UK standards.
The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) confirmed on Wednesday evening that the items were being held in a facility near Heathrow airport. It is understood that they are due to be sent back and that DHSC intends to seek a refund, as it has done in similar situations.
The announcement of the shipment by the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, on 18 April came as unions and professional bodies warned that NHS staff may refuse to work without PPE. An internal assessment seen by the Financial Times warned the UK was potentially only days away from running out of aprons altogether.
Jenrick told the daily Downing Street press briefing that healthcare workers should be “assured that we are doing everything we can to correct this issue”, saying they would have the equipment they “need and deserve”.
Sources later told the Guardian that the DHSC had advised No 10 not to allow him to publicise the shipment in case it backfired, but was overruled.
The necessary clearances, it turned out, had not been sought. When the consignment did not arrive on time as promised, the delay prompted hospital leaders to directly attack the government for the first time during the pandemic.
El Salvador will from Thursday temporarily suspend public transport in a bid to strengthen efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the government said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
A decree published by the government on Wednesday said the measure would remain in place for 15 days.
El Salvador, which has reported 15 deaths from the pandemic, has applied some of the toughest measures in the Americas to tackle the coronavirus. That has sparked complaints by some human rights groups that the government is overreaching itself.
Brazil sees record deaths
Brazil, one of the world’s emerging coronavirus hot spots, registered a record number of cases and deaths on Wednesday, prompting the health minister to flag the possibility of strict lockdowns in particularly hard-hit areas.
According to health ministry data, the nation registered 10,503 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours, well above the previous record of 7,288 cases on April 30. Brazil also registered 615 deaths, up from the previous record of 600 on Tuesday.
There are over 100,000 completed coronavirus tests that still have not been registered in the national database, Wanderson Oliveira, a health ministry sub-secretary warned, meaning the number of cases could continue to rise steeply in the coming days.
Overall, Brazil has registered 125,218 cases and 8,536 deaths due to the virus.
As part of Brazil’s bid to combat the coronavirus outbreak, officials said on Wednesday they were attempting to dramatically ramp up testing capacity, which stands at 2,700 tests per day.
“At the most elevated level of (test) production, which we think we’ll get to in the middle of July, we’ll get to 70,000 per day,” Oliveira said.
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Coronavirus-related border controls, lockdowns and flight shortages are making illegal drugs more expensive and difficult to obtain around the world, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in a report published on Thursday.
The pandemic is having a mixed effect on drug production in different regions and on smuggling by air, land and sea, but the overall trend in countries where drugs are consumed appears to be relatively uniform, the UNODC said in the report on Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
While opioids like heroin are almost entirely transported by land, where increased checks may be disrupting deliveries, cocaine is mainly shipped by sea. A recent rise in heroin seizures in the Indian Ocean might indicate an increase in heroin shipments to Europe by sea, the UNODC said.
The current lack of flights will probably have a “particularly drastic” effect on smuggling of synthetic drugs including methamphetamine to countries such as South Korea, Japan and Australia, it added.
In Afghanistan, the world’s biggest producer of heroin, the opium harvest between March and June might be disrupted if workers are unable or unwilling to travel, the UNODC said, though it provided little evidence to support that.
In Bolivia, recent challenges related to the spread of COVID-19, combined with political turbulence in late 2019, appear to be limiting the ability of state authorities to control coca bush cultivation, the UNODC said.
NBA teams are expected to get the go-ahead to reopen practice facilities for limited use as early as Friday, less than two months after the coronavirus outbreak forced the suspension of the season.
With head and assistant coaches barred and scrimmages forbidden, the workouts are unlikely to resemble business as usual for the NBA but would nonetheless be a step towards normalcy for a league whose season was upended in dramatic fashion in March.
Players will be required to wear face masks inside team facilities, “except during the period when they are engaged in physical activity”, according to a league memo.
Teams must also thoroughly disinfect any equipment used, from basketballs to weight-room equipment.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
I’m Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest news from around the world.
In a reversal of yesterday’s statements confirming the reports that the White House’s coronavirus taskforce would be winding down, US President Donald Trump said in an Oval Office meeting that the taskforce would continue “indefinitely”. Trump also said the taskforce would “add or subtract people” as necessary, which raised some concerns about whether health experts would be pushed off the team.
- Trump said the White House coronavirus taskforce would “continue on indefinitely,” a reversal from his comments yesterday suggesting the group’s work would be winding down. The president said today he “had no idea how popular the taskforce is.”
- Trump suggests more deaths a necessary price. US President Donald Trump has again suggested the country may need to accept the reality of more deaths in order to start reopening the economy.“We have to be warriors,” Trump told Fox News’ John Roberts when asked if Americans should expect additional deaths as the country looks to reopen. “We can’t keep our country closed down for years.”
- Coronavirus threatens eurozone’s future, Brussels warns. The eurozone faces an existential threat if the economic recoveries of its 19 member states are insufficiently even, the EU’s economic commissioner warns. Some countries are expected to suffer significantly more than others during what is expected to be the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
- WHO warns of more lockdowns if transition not managed carefully. The director general of the World Health Organization warns of the risks of returning to lockdown if countries emerging from pandemic restrictions do not manage transitions “extremely carefully and in a phased approach”. preparedness.
- Germany eases restrictions but retains “emergency brake”. The country’s top football league, the Bundesliga, is set to resume this month – one of various restrictions to be lifted as Germans are once again allowed to meet a limited number of friends and family and some shops are allowed to reopen.
- UK could start easing virus lockdown next week. The British government will set out details of its plan to ease lockdown on Sunday, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, says, adding his hope that some measures could come into force the following day. Speaking in parliament for the first time since being hospitalised with Covid-19, Johnson says “every death is a tragedy”, calling the statistics “appalling”.
- Spain extends state of emergency after bitter political dispute. Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist-led coalition government secured an extension until 24 May. Congress’s approval for the latest extension of the crisis powers comes after days of bitter rowing and frantic negotiations.
- Diplomatic split widens amid virus origin row and China shrugs off US claims and calls for focus on beating pandemic. China will not invite international experts in to investigate the source of Covid-19 while the pandemic is still raging, its UN ambassador says. China’s foreign ministry says the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is wrong to claim he has evidence suggesting the virus originated in a Chinese lab. The US-China relationship is one of disappointment and frustration, the White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has said, highlighting the deepening rift between Washington and Beijing.
- Sweden nears 3,000 deaths. “We are starting to near 3,000 deceased, a horrifyingly large number,” Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, says. The country’s public health agency reports that a total of 23,918 cases have been confirmed and 2,941 deaths recorded; an increase of 87 deaths from the day before. Rather than enforcing a lockdown, Sweden has allowed many businesses to remain open, while asking citizens to keep their distance.
- Iran warns of “rising trend” as virus cases top 100,000. Iran records 1,680 new infections, the highest daily figure since 11 April, taking its overall caseload beyond the 100,000 mark. The country’s apparent success in controlling the epidemic has gone into reverse, with a sharp rise in the number of new daily infections over the past four days.
- “More than 90,000 health workers infected worldwide”. At least 90,000 healthcare workers globally are believed to have been infected, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) says, noting that the the true figure could be as much as twice that. It says more than 260 nurses have died amid reports of continuing shortages of protective equipment, as it urges authorities to keep more accurate records.
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