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Summary
- Confirmed cases worldwide top 4.5 million. According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, there are 4,531,811 confirmed cases worldwide. The number of people who have lost their lives is 307,001 according to official tolls, but the true number is likely to be much higher.
- The number of deaths in the US is projected to exceed 100,000 by 1 June, according to the CDC director Robert Redfield. The agency came to the conclusion after tracking 12 different forecasting models; all of which predicted at least that number of deaths.Trump has oscillated, but has previously said the toll would be lower.
- Record increase in cases in Brazil. Brazil has confirmed 15,305 new cases; a record for a 24-hour period, as well as 824 related deaths, according to data from the country’s Health Ministry. Brazil has registered 218,223 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic, as well as 14,817 deaths.
- Beijing increases pressure on European states to reject Taiwan’s WHO inclusion. China has stepped up the pressure on European states to reject Taiwan’s call to be represented at next week’s assembly of the World Health Organization, arguing that its presence can only be justified if it accepts that it is part of China.The World Health Assembly is being held virtually on Monday, and Taiwan’s attendance – as well as a possible international inquiry into the start of the pandemic – are likely to be the two big political flashpoints between China and the west.
- US president Donald Trump said on Friday the US government was working with other countries to develop a coronavirus vaccine at an accelerated pace. Trump expressed his hope that a vaccine would be in place before the end of the year at an event in the White House Rose Garden and said his administration would mobilise its forces to get a vaccine distributed once one was in place.
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UK’s reproduction rate still close to 1, bringing lockdown-easing steps into question. The latest official estimate places the national R value - the rate at which people are passing on infections to others – at between 0.7 and 1. An R value above 1 means the epidemic will start to grow exponentially again, which would result in a new surge of cases.
- Europe could face deadly second wave of winter infections, WHO warns. Dr Hans Kluge, director for the WHO European region, warned countries beginning to ease their lockdown restrictions that now is “time for preparation, not celebration”.
- Second health minister resigns in Brazil after less than a month on the job. Brazil’s health minister, Nelson Teich, handed in his resignation on Friday, his office said, after less than a month on the job as the country becomes a world hotspot for coronavirus. Teich is believed to have disagreed with the rightwing president, Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil has now surpassed Germany and France and had more than 200,000 confirmed cases of the virus as of Thursday.
- Spain hails large-scale antibody study as a key tool in the fight against the coronavirus. The Spanish government has hailed a large-scale antibody study as a key tool in the fight against the coronavirus, but warned that any premature or irresponsible relaxation of restrictions could have “enormous consequences” given that only 5% of Spaniards have had the disease.
- Denmark reports zero coronavirus-related deaths for the first time since March. The country reported zero coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours for the first time since 13 March.
Updated
Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now for the next few hours. Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
The number of deaths in the US is projected to exceed 100,000 by 1 June, according to the CDC director Robert Redfield.
The agency came to the conclusion after tracking 12 different forecasting models; all of which predicted at least that number of deaths.
Trump has oscillated, but has previously said the toll would be lighter. Dr Deborah Birx of the White House coronavirus task force has repeatedly asserted the number of deaths by 1 June will be between 100,000 and 240,000 if mitigation strategies continue.
Updated
Hundreds of people are expected to be evicted from their hillside homes in a slum of Colombia’s capital Bogota, despite having nowhere to go during the country’s lockdown.
The informal houses have been declared illegal by local authorities and will be knocked down as part of the evictions, Reuters reports. Residents accuse police accompanying the eviction process of excessive force.
The Altos de la Estancia neighbourhood was home to about 1,000 families when evictions began two weeks ago. Now just some 100 families remain, residents told the news agency. John Parra, 36, moved to Bogota after being displaced by the country’s internal conflict. He said:
The majority of the people that live here are unemployed because of Covid-19 and the pandemic.
Record increase in cases in Brazil
Brazil has confirmed 15,305 new cases; a record for a 24-hour period, as well as 824 related deaths, according to data from the country’s Health Ministry. Brazil has registered 218,223 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic, as well as 14,817 deaths.
As the outbreak in Ecuador’s largest city of Guayaquil begins to stabilise, the government is bracing for worsening spread in the highland capital Quito, where at least six people have died in the streets in the past month.
Guayaquil was at the centre of one of Latin America’s worst outbreaks in March and April. Cemeteries ran out of space and families stored relatives’ dead bodies in their homes or on the streets as the virus strained the health system’s capacity to collect them, Reuters has reported.
But authorities’ attentions are now turning to Quito, whose 2.8 million residents are under a strict lockdown to contain the virus’ spread. The local government said that, between 4 April and 13 May, it had picked up the bodies of six people who had died in the streets, in addition to seven bodies from homes and two from nursing homes.
The government said on Thursday night that 135 of the 164 intensive care beds in the city’s public hospitals are occupied, and that it plans to install about 80 more.
“Quito’s health system is reaching its limit,” the city’s mayor Jorge Yunda said on Friday during the opening of a temporary 380-bed hospital for epidemic patients.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 2,043 more deaths and 27,191 new cases, bringing the totals to 85,990 and 1,412,121, respectively.
Panama has extended its ban on international flights by a month to 22 June, the country’s aviation authority has said.
The possibility that Americans may have to pay to be vaccinated against the virus remains open, though the US president Donald Trump says he is looking at possibly making a future vaccine available for free.
A woman in the American state of Georgia has been arrested for allegedly cheating Medicare – the US health insurance program for those aged older than 65 and the disabled – by submitting fraudulent claims related to coronavirus testing and genetic cancer tests, the US Justice Department has said.
The case against 32-year-old Ashley Hoobler Parris marks one of the first Medicare fraud cases in connection with Covid-19 billings.
The latest Australian politics live blog has been released. After taking a break, Katharine Murphy is back to speak with Labor’s shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, about the post-coronavirus economy.
They discuss the nation’s level of debt and the possible long-term changes to Australia’s welfare system. Will a universal basic income be introduced in the future? How can we stop intergenerational unemployment? What lessons from the global financial crisis can be used?
Soldiers from the British Gurkha regiments have rescued more than 100 Britons stuck in remote parts of Nepal.
Strict lockdown measures and reduced transport in the country meant many travellers were unable to reach chartered repatriation flights last month.
A total of 109 British nationals and 28 foreign nationals stranded in isolated parts of the country were picked up over three weeks.
Using the local knowledge of British Ghurka networks based in Kathmandu, Pokhara and Dharan, staff at the UK Embassy and soldiers were able to locate the travellers and devise plans to reach them.
The Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has accused international media outlets of lying as stories accumulate on the country’s alleged undercounting of its case numbers and death toll.
Investigations by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and El País have all included such suggestions.
In a rambling response to an unrelated question, López Obrador complained about reporters “going to graveyards” and crematoria to verify Covid-19 deaths. The famously stubborn López Obrador, who seldom lets critical comments pass unanswered, also called for the foreign press to practice some “self-criticism”.
There’s a crisis of the lack of ethics in the handling of information in Mexico, in the world. The world’s most famous newspapers lie, slander. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, El País, are very famous, but without ethics.
The outburst came after Reforma, a Mexican newspaper López Obrador frequently criticises, reported it had received threats from someone claiming to be part of the Sinaloa Cartel to blow up its building if it didn’t stop critical coverage.
Mexico has reported 42,595 cases and 4,477 deaths as of Thursday. A Sky News investigation estimated Mexico City’s death rate is five times higher than the official figures.
Still, parts of the country will reopen on Monday and López Obrador says the curve has been “flattened”. The president has said he will ask the health secretariat it is okay for him to resume his tours of the country to check on the progress of mega projects under construction and open branches of a government bank.
Medical experts have questioned if Mexico is ready to reopen; the country has guided its Covid-19 response with disease modelling, rather than testing. Its testing rates rank among the lowest in Latin America at 0.4 per 1,000 people.
English Premier League squads could be quarantined in the event of a single failed test if clubs vote to return to training next week.
Players are to be tested for Covid‑19 twice a week during a first stage of return, with a positive test requiring the player to isolate for seven days under Public Health England guidelines. But the rules also require that a “contact” of a known case should isolate, as someone would if they were living in the same house. That quarantine period should last for 14 days.
The English Football League, in training protocols sent to its clubs this week, confirmed that a “playing group” would be quarantined for 14 days if one of their number tested positive. The Premier League would not comment on the details of its protocols but confirmed it was following PHE guidelines.
Beijing increases pressure on European states to reject Taiwan's WHO inclusion
Beijing has stepped up the pressure on European states to reject Taiwan’s call to be represented at next week’s assembly of the World Health Organization, arguing that its presence can only be justified if it accepts that it is part of China.
The World Health Assembly is being held virtually on Monday and Taiwan’s attendance – as well as a possible international inquiry into the start of the pandemic – are likely to be the two big political flashpoints between China and the west.
Chinese diplomats have been contacting governments across Europe to limit the diplomatic support for Taiwan’s attendance, targeting northern and eastern European states. Maintaining collective EU unity on China is proving difficult.
But in a letter to the Guardian, the former Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former president of Poland Aleksander Kwaśniewski and the former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt argue that Taiwan should be permitted to attend because of its pioneering response to the pandemic, which has drawn on the lessons of the 2003 Sars outbreak.
Updated
Amazon is aiming to gradually reopen its French warehouses from 19 May as it finalises an agreement with unions and work councils to end a spat that led to a more than one-month closure of the sites, Reuters reports.
Its six French warehouses have been closed since 16 April following court rulings that ordered it to restrict deliveries during the pandemic or face hefty fines.
Portugal will reopen its beaches on 6 June, its prime minister Antonio Costa has said. And he encouraged the public to download an app that will tell them if their beach of choice is full or still has space.
Groups must stay 1.5m apart, deck-chairs may only be booked for the morning or afternoon, and beach sports of two people or more will not be allowed, according to the new rules.
But the police will not be keeping watch, Costa said, urging people to adhere to the measures by themselves. “Beaches should be places of leisure,” Costa said. “We have to be checking ourselves.”
There is no agreement yet between European Union countries on how much of the bloc’s proposed new recovery fund should be handed out as grants to member states and how much in loans, a senior EU official has said.
The official spoke to the Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity as the EU executive in Brussels pushed back the unveiling of its new proposal for the bloc’s next long-term budget, and the accompanying recovery fund, until 27 May. The fund aims to kick-start growth on the continent as it heads for its worst-ever economic downturn.
The jackpot question is what is the size and what will be loans and grants. Here there is a lot of work to do... This process is an extremely fragile one.
The official said all the EU’s 27 member states agree that the European commission will raise money on capital markets for the recovery fund. The funds will be channelled through the EU’s next budget, called the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF).
“The question of loans or grants is not quite there,” the person said, adding that some of the northern EU countries continued to oppose handing out money in grants.
Mexico’s automotive industry can exit the lockdown before 1 June if companies have approved safety measures in place, the country’s government has said, seeking to set the record straight after sending out confusing signals on the matter.
Announced in the government’s official gazette, the instructions should allow companies to reconnect key supply chains between Mexico and the rest of North America, which depends considerably on parts made south of the US border.
The directive refers to manufacturers of transportation equipment, as well as the mining and construction industries, all of which the government have designated essential and from 18 May can begin establishing security protocols.
“If the process is concluded and approved before 1 June, the relevant company or industry will be able to begin its operations,” the government said, noting that companies which put workers’ health at risk would be shut down.
In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) is making preparations to roll out its Covid-19 contact-tracing app nationwide before the end of the month, the Guardian understands.
The smartphone app, which alerts people if they have come into contact with an individual who has reported coronavirus symptoms, is being trialed on the Isle of Wight and is a key part of the government’s “test, track and trace” strategy as the country eases out of lockdown.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, previously said the app, which has been beset by privacy issues, fears about its uptake among older people and concern it may be dropped entirely, would be released nationwide in mid-May.
However, Simon Murphy, Heather Stewart, Alex Hern and Denis Campbell write that the wider public in England will now have to wait until at least the week commencing 25 May.
Hancock has been receiving daily progress updates, he said. Asked whether it would be rolled out to Scotland, he replied: “It will be a matter for the Scottish government. It will be available, but public health is a devolved matter.”
Updated
French health authorities have reported 104 more deaths, or a decelerating increase of 0.4%. That brings the total to 27,529 – the fourth worst in the world.
The ministry added that the number of confirmed cases has risen to 141,919 – up from 141,356 on Thursday, which also represents a rise of 0.4% in 24 hours.
Summary
- US president Donald Trump said on Friday the US government was working with other countries to develop a coronavirus vaccine at an accelerated pace. Trump expressed his hope that a vaccine would be in place before the end of the year at an event in the White House Rose Garden and said his administration would mobilise its forces to get a vaccine distributed once one was in place.
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UK’s reproduction rate still close to 1, bringing lockdown-easing steps into question. The latest official estimate places the national R value - the rate at which people are passing on infections to others – at between 0.7 and 1. An R value above 1 means the epidemic will start to grow exponentially again, which would result in a new surge of cases.
- Europe could face deadly second wave of winter infections, WHO warns. Dr Hans Kluge, director for the WHO European region, warned countries beginning to ease their lockdown restrictions that now is “time for preparation, not celebration”.
- Second health minister resigns in Brazil after less than a month on the job. Brazil’s health minister, Nelson Teich, handed in his resignation on Friday, his office said, after less than a month on the job as the country becomes a world hotspot for coronavirus. Teich is believed to have disagreed with the rightwing president, Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil has now surpassed Germany and France and had more than 200,000 confirmed cases of the virus as of Thursday.
- Spain hails large-scale antibody study as a key tool in the fight against the coronavirus. The Spanish government has hailed a large-scale antibody study as a key tool in the fight against the coronavirus, but warned that any premature or irresponsible relaxation of restrictions could have “enormous consequences” given that only 5% of Spaniards have had the disease.
- Denmark reports zero coronavirus-related deaths for the first time since March. The country reported zero coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours for the first time since 13 March
President Donald Trump said on Friday the US government was working with other countries to develop a coronavirus vaccine at an accelerated pace, Reuters reports.
Trump expressed his hope that a vaccine would be in place before the end of the year at an event in the White House Rose Garden and said his administration would mobilise its forces to get a vaccine distributed once one was in place.
Trump also said the government would invest in all the top coronavirus vaccine candidates and said a list had been narrowed to 14 promising possibilities with a plan to narrow further.
Updated
The Spanish government has just announced that the Madrid and Barcelona regions will remain in the first stage of lockdown de-escalation, but says some restrictions will be lifted.
From Monday, small businesses in both regions will be allowed to serve people without prior appointments, and places of worship will be able to reopen at 30% capacity.
Almost three-quarters of the country will be in the second phase by Monday, while 30% - some 14 million people - will remain in the first stage of lockdown loosening.
The coronavirus has prompted almost two-thirds of American believers to feel that God is telling humanity to change how it lives, a poll has found.
Updated
Downing Street has rolled back on the idea of exempting travellers from France from incoming quarantine rules, with only freight drivers and experts working on anti-Covid-19 efforts being able to avoid the 14-day isolation period.
Boris Johnson used his TV address last Sunday to announce that quarantine restrictions would soon be imposed on people entering the UK, but only mentioned those arriving by air. It later became clear that the rules would also apply to arrivals by road, rail and sea.
Later on Sunday, after a call between Johnson and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Downing Street said “no quarantine measures would apply to travellers coming from France at this stage”.
Asked about it on Friday, however, Johnson’s spokesman said: “There isn’t a French exemption. What the statement at the weekend said was they were quoting measures applied to France [at that stage], and that was a joint statement between ourselves and the French.”
UK's reproduction rate still close to 1, bringing lockdown-easing steps into question
Transmission rates of Covid-19 remain dangerously close to the levels that could cause the epidemic in the UK to start to grow again, according to the government’s latest estimates, raising questions about the extent to which restrictions can be safely eased in the coming weeks.
The latest official estimate places the national R value - the rate at which people are passing on infections to others – at between 0.7 and 1. An R value above 1 means the epidemic will start to grow exponentially again, which would result in a new surge of cases.
The range is slightly higher than that quoted by officials in recent weeks. When announcing plans to ease some lockdown restrictions on Sunday, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, said:
We have the R below one, between 0.5 and 0.9 – but potentially only just below one.
The slight increase, and narrowing in the range, is not linked to relaxations that have occurred this week as the estimate is based largely on hospital admissions and deaths data, which reflect the levels of transmission two to three weeks ago.
A likely explanation is that as the overall levels of infection have fallen, hospital and care home settings are making a relatively bigger contribution to the overall estimate of R. Lockdown restrictions have less impact in these settings and there are still concerns about the levels of testing available in care homes.
The figure suggests that, while the lockdown has been extremely effective at bringing down case numbers, R is still close to 1, meaning that it would not be possible to ease restrictions significantly without new measures to contain outbreaks, such as extensive testing and tracing.
Pandemic lockdown measures in New York City have been extended until 13 June under an executive order signed by the state governor, Andrew Cuomo. Stay at home orders will be eased for the state’s five least populated regions, however, allowing businesses there to get back to work gradually.
Updated
New York will join the nearby states of New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware in partially reopening beaches for the Memorial Day weekend, the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, said on Friday.
Reuters reports that Cuomo’s announcement comes one day after the New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, said he was opening the beaches for the traditional 23-25 May start of summer.
Follow the US liveblog on the coronavirus for more information on how the pandemic is unfolding there.
Updated
There were 242 new coronavirus fatalities in Italy on Friday, down by 20 from Thursday, bringing the total death toll to 31,610.
New infections rose by 789, down by over 200 within the last 24 hours, according to the civil protection authority.
Restaurants, bars, hairdressers and beauty salons are due to reopen on Monday as Italy gradually eases restrictions, while the ban on inter-regional travel might be lifted from 3 June.
Italy has had 223,885 confirmed cases of Covid-19 to date, including 120,205 survivors.
Updated
Ireland’s ‘phase one’ of easing coronavirus lockdown will allow construction workers, gardeners and some retail businesses to get back to work on Monday.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said on Friday that farmers’ markets could also open up as well as builders’ merchants, tool suppliers for gardening, farming and agriculture.
Opticians and shops selling hearing aids will open too as well as outlets selling IT, electrical and office goods, the Irish prime minister said.
Varadkar urged anyone using public transport in Ireland to wear a facial covering.
He said that the country may move to lift further restrictions within the next three weeks.
Varadkar warned however that “Covid-19 is an inferno that is raging around the world”.
While in Ireland it is a “fire in retreat” the Irish people will not defeat the virus until every spark and ember is quenched, the Taoiseach added.
Updated
Europe could face deadly second wave of winter infections, WHO warns
European countries could face a deadly second wave of coronavirus infections in the winter, the World Health Organization’s top official in Europe has said.
Dr Hans Kluge, director for the WHO European region, warned countries beginning to ease their lockdown restrictions that now is “time for preparation, not celebration”.
Dr Kluge told the Telegraph that countries should use the current period to build capacity in hospitals and strengthen public health systems.
Dr Kluge said:
Singapore and Japan understood early on that this is not a time for celebration, it’s a time for preparation. That’s what Scandinavian countries are doing – they don’t exclude a second wave, but they hope it will be localised and they can jump on it quickly.
He had also warned about the real risks of a second wave:
I’m very concerned about a double wave – in the fall, we could have a second wave of Covid and another one of seasonal flu or measles. Two years ago we had 500,000 children who didn’t have their first shot of the measles vaccine.
Updated
Turkish teenagers were allowed out for the first time in seven weeks on Friday ahead of a new four-day total lockdown across the country this weekend that will stretch into Tuesday’s national holiday.
People aged over 65 and under 20 have been under a 24-hour curfew as part of Turkey’s efforts to combat one of the world’s largest coronavirus outbreaks, numbering nearly 145,000 confirmed cases.
Youths aged 15-20 were allowed out between 11am - 3pm, with Turkish media showing footage of teenagers playing football in parks, visiting malls and queuing up for takeaway ice cream and drinks from cafes.
The elderly were allowed to leave the house for four hours last Sunday, and children under 14 on Wednesday, as Turkey tentatively seeks to ease lockdown restrictions.
The government has said a “normalisation plan” is dependent on any rise in new infections but is hoping many sectors can reopen after the Bayram (Eid al-Fitr) holiday ends on 26 May. Turkey’s airspace is due to reopen 28 May with a handful of flights operated by the national carrier.
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Aid groups have warned of a looming humanitarian disaster after coronavirus was detected for the first time in the sprawling camps that host about one million Rohingya refugees, report Rebecca Ratcliffe and Redwan Ahmed.
Brazil’s health minister has resigned less than a month after being appointed and the morning after the country announced it had passed 200,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and recorded nearly 14,000 deaths. The sudden resignation of Nelson Teich, an oncologist and partner in a medical service consulting outfit, was announced in a curt WhatsApp message from the health ministry on Friday morning.
Teich took over after Bolsonaro sacked his popular predecessor, Luiz Mandetta, on 16 April following disagreements over social isolation measures, which Mandetta supported and Bolsonaro opposes. Initially he appeared to follow Bolsonaro’s line, arguing that Brazil’s economy was as important as the lives the pandemic is increasingly claiming there.
But in recent weeks Teich had increasingly disagreed with Bolsonaro on social isolation and the use of chloroquine, which he had described as an “uncertainty”. Bolsonaro said on Thursday he wanted to change protocols regulating its use that Mandetta had introduced.
Teich was publicly embarrassed on Monday when he discovered during a press conference that the president had issued a decree that classified gyms, beauty salons and barbers as essential services. “This was not our role. It was the president’s decision,” he said, looking flummoxed.
Brazil reported 844 new deaths in 24 hours on Thursday night, taking the total to 13,993 and it now has 202,918 cases, making it the world’s sixth most impacted country, according to John Hopkins University figures.
Updated
Tedros Adhanom, director general of the World Health Organization, has said vaccines and medicine will not end the Covid-19 pandemic if we can’t ensure equitable distribution.
Updated
Almost half the current Covid-19 hotspots in the US are linked to meat processing plants where poultry, pigs and cattle are slaughtered and packaged, which has led to the virus spiking in many small towns and prompted calls for urgent reforms to an industry beset by health and safety problems.
At least 12 of the 25 hotspots in the US – counties with the highest per-capita infection rates – originated in meat factories where employees work side by side in cramped conditions, according to an analysis by the Guardian.
In Nebraska, five counties have outbreaks linked to meat plants including Dakota county, where about one of every 14 residents has tested positive – the second-highest per capita infection rate in the US. As of Thursday, the Nebraska counties of Dakota, Hall, Dawson, Saline, and Colfax accounted for almost half the state’s 9,075 positive cases, according to data tracking by the New York Times.
Meat processing plants seem to have emerged as incubators for the coronavirus, which has spread rapidly among workers unable to perform physical distancing.
Coronavirus cases in Canada have risen to 73,818 on Friday from 72,536 on Thursday.
The country’s public health agency has recorded a total of 5,499 deaths, up from 5,337.
Updated
Second health minister resigns in Brazil after less than a month on the job
Brazil’s health minister, Nelson Teich, handed in his resignation on Friday, his office said, after less than a month on the job as the country becomes a world hotspot for coronavirus, Reuters reports.
Teich, who disagreed with the rightwing president, Jair Bolsonaro, is expected to hold a press conference later on Friday. Brazil has now surpassed Germany and France and had more than 200,000 confirmed cases of the virus as of Thursday.
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Wisconsin’s supreme court struck down the state’s stay-at-home order on Wednesday, and some residents took immediate advantage – by packing the bars, reports Adam Gabbatt.
Videos and reports from some areas of Wisconsin showed some bars filled with revellers, most of them not wearing masks.
Updated
The slow fall in the numbers being infected by coronavirus in Iran has ended and now gone into reverse with the health ministry reporting official figures for new infections reaching their highest level for a month.
The health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said 2,102 new cases had been confirmed across the country in the past 24 hours, bringing the overall total to 116,635. The number of dead in the last 24 hours was 48, still relatively low in comparison with the pandemic’s high point, bringing the total death toll to 6,902.
The new infections figure is the highest Iran has announced for a single day since 6 April.
The worrying aspect for the government is that there appears to be a steady week-long reversal in the trend in new infections, suggesting ministers may have lifted the lockdown prematurely. But the ministry said 80% of the new infections were mild, and the national press contained little criticism of the government.
The health ministry will now be hoping the growth in infections can be limited to specific provinces in Iran, but with travel restrictions lifted the chances of containing the virus to small areas are slim.
The south-western province of Khuzestan has been named as a problem area for a week, along with Tehran, but Jahanpour for the first time expressed concern about the trends in the provinces of Lorestan, Sistanb and Baluchistan and east Azerbaijan. Iran started relaxing its controls through April and schools are due to open in most provinces from 17 June. Teachers are due to be present in schools on Saturday, but pupils’ attendance is not mandatory. Dormitories in universities are also being opened.
A decision on the full opening of mosques is due next month.
Iran does not publish official province-by-province figures, but has a colour-coding scheme designed to show the seriousness of the pandemic regionally.
Updated
A keenly anticipated Covid-19 vaccine will be priced to allow as wide as possible access to it, if it proves successful, the Oxford University professor co-leading its development told Reuters.
Adrian Hill, director of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, which has teamed up with the drugmaker AstraZeneca to develop the vaccine, said ensuring wide distribution and low cost had been central to the project from the start. He said:
This not going to be an expensive vaccine.
It’s going to be a single dose vaccine.
It’s going to be made for global supply and it’s going to be made in many different locations. That was always our plan.
Updated
The UK death toll has risen by 384 to 33,998 on Friday, the Department of Health and Social Care said.
As of 9am 15 May, there have been 2,353,078 tests, with 133,784 tests on 14 May.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) May 15, 2020
1,663,492 people have been tested of which 236,711 tested positive.
As of 5pm on 14 May, of those tested positive for coronavirus, across all settings, 33,998 have sadly died. pic.twitter.com/t2yIAIU4M9
You can find out more on the UK-specific live blog on coronavirus.
Updated
Single men and women in the Netherlands are being advised to organise a seksbuddy (sex buddy) after criticism of rules dictating that home visitors maintain a 1.5-metre distance from their hosts during the coronavirus lockdown.
In a typically open-minded intervention, official guidance from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) has been amended to suggest those without a permanent sexual partner come to mutually satisfactory agreements with like-minded individuals.
On the advice of scientists at the RIVM, the Netherlands has been on what the government describes as an “intelligent lockdown” since 23 March, allowing up to three visitors into homes on the strict condition that they keep their distance.
But the RIVM now concedes that “it makes sense that as a single [person] you also want to have physical contact” while warning that the risks of such intimacy should be managed.
“Discuss how best to do this together,” the RIVM suggests. “For example, meet with the same person to have physical or sexual contact (for example, a cuddle buddy or ‘sex buddy’), provided you are free of illness. Make good arrangements with this person about how many other people you both see. The more people you see, the greater the chance of (spreading) the coronavirus.”
Updated
Austria has outlined plans to start allowing seated cultural events of up to 100 people in two weeks’ time, ramping up to 1,000 people from 1 August, Reuters reports.
Austria flattened its curve of infections with an early lockdown and has been loosening curbs for a month. Shops have reopened in phases and on Friday, restaurants, bars, cafes, churches and some museums followed suit, under strict social-distancing rules and with face masks required in many places.
Theatres and cinemas, however, have remained closed and the conservative-led government has come under growing pressure from the cultural sector to allow events, to the point that the junior minister for culture resigned on Friday.
“We will in a first step allow cultural events of up to 100 people both indoors and outdoors,” the health minister, Rudolf Anschober, told a news conference. “We will in a second step do the same for artistic and cultural events of up to 250 people from 1 July. That is a big step, a very big step.”
Cinemas would also be allowed to open from 1 July, with the same capacity limit, he added. There will be a general requirement that people in an audience stay 1 metre apart.
From August events of up to 500 people would be allowed, Anschober said, with the possibility of holding events of up to 1,000 people when a “special security concept” is prepared for the event in question.
Updated
US stock market futures have fallen ahead of the opening bell on Wall Street today after worse than expected US retail sales and revived fears of a China-US trade war.
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The Czech Republic is to allow gatherings of up to 300 people later this month as its coronavirus infection rate remains among the lowest in Europe, AFP reports.
Gatherings including sports events will be allowed from 25 May, when businesses including restaurants and pubs will also be allowed to open, the health minister, Adam Vojtech, said.
Shopping centres, cinemas, barbers and restaurant terraces opened on Monday after nearly two months under lockdown.
The country of 10.7 million people had registered 8,352 confirmed coronavirus cases and 293 deaths by Friday morning.
“If the epidemiological situation remains favourable, the limit will grow to 500 people on 8 June and to 1,000 on 22 June,” Vojtech said of the size of gatherings that would be permissible.
He said restaurants and bars would not be allowed to stay open after 11pm after a recent upsurge of cases in South Korea was linked to nightclubs.
Further easing would take place only if daily infection counts did not increase after staying well under 100 cases daily throughout May, said the epidemiologist Rastislav Madar, part of an official advisory team.
Some credit the success in stemming infections to the mandatory face mask rule, which will be eased from 25 May, when they will only be required in shops, offices and on public transport.
Updated
Spain hails large-scale antibody study as a key tool in the fight against the coronavirus
The Spanish government has hailed a large-scale antibody study as a key tool in the fight against the coronavirus, but warned that any premature or irresponsible relaxation of restrictions could have “enormous consequences” given that only 5% of Spaniards have had the disease.
The country’s Socialist-led coalition government is under growing pressure from political opponents to end the two-month state of emergency that underpins one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe.
On Friday, the health ministry was due to decide whether the Madrid region would be granted permission to follow other areas into the next stage of the de-escalation, which allows up to 10 people to meet and permits the reopening of cafe and restaurant terraces at 50% capacity.
Pedro Duque, the former astronaut who serves as Spain’s science minister, told the Guardian that the preliminary results of a nationwide serological study published earlier this week would be crucial to the government’s response.
The study, which involved more than 60,000 people, revealed that around 5% of the population – about 2 million people – had had the coronavirus. It also showed that 33% of those who had caught the virus had not shown any symptoms.
“We think that the seroprevalence test we’ve carried out is the best that’s been done anywhere in the world so far. The most important conclusion we’ve reached is that it is vital to keep acting very prudently when it comes to this illness – there are still a lot of people who haven’t been exposed to the virus,” he said.
Duque said the pronounced geographical variations underscored the need for a region-by-region loosening of restrictions: while Murcia, Melilla, Asturias and the Canary islands showed an infection rate of less than 2%, the proportion rose to more than 10% in the regions of Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha.
“Right now, the only way to act is by making small changes when it comes to relaxing the conditions, by maintaining the distances between people, and by keeping up with the infection precautions,” he added.
“The consequences of acting irresponsibly could be enormous given that we know that only 5% of the population has some degree of immunity against the virus. That means that 95% don’t.”
Duque also dismissed talk of so-called “immunity passports” to allow more freedom of movement to those who had recovered from the disease. The science, he said, simply did not support such a move.
“From a personal scientific point of view, all I can say is that we don’t even know for sure that immunity exists, so we’re very far from all of that. We don’t have scientific information that guarantees that people with the antibodies are immune to future infections. So we’re very far from being able to take legal responsibility for that.”
Updated
Travellers arriving to Germany from the European Union and the Schengen passport-free zone will no longer have to go into quarantine for two weeks as has been the case since March, according to the interior ministry.
The new measure is on condition that the country the visitor has travelled from does not have a high number of coronavirus infections. Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Britain are also included. But as soon as the virus rate in those states rises, the quarantine rule will be immediately reintroduced, the ministry spokesman said. The two-week quarantine still applies to arrivals from all other countries.
Germany’s public health advisory body, the Robert Koch Institute, has said it will monitor other countries even more closely than it has been doing, in order to be aware of danger areas. Details on the precise implementation of the rules is to follow, but the western state of North Rhine Westphalia already applied them on the stroke of midnight on Friday.
Germans are closely watching the gradual easing of travel restrictions wanting to know to what extent they can hope to go on a foreign holiday this year. From May, 25 flights between Germany and Greece will resume. But officially the advice remains that Germans should not travel anywhere abroad, until at least 14 June.
On Monday Heiko Maas, the foreign minister, will hold a video conference with his counterparts from European countries where Germans typically go on holiday, including Spain, Italy, Austria, Greece, Croatia, Portugal, Malta, Slovenia, Cyprus and Bulgaria. The aim is to facilitate a coordinated reopening of borders including mutual agreements on being able to swiftly close them again in case of a rise in cases.
On Wednesday, the interior minister, Horst Seehofer, announced that an opening of the borders with France, Switzerland and Austria was on the cards from 15 June. On Wednesday, border traffic between Germany and Luxembourg is due to normalise again. Discussions with Denmark are still ongoing.
Updated
Updated
Denmark reports zero coronavirus-related deaths for the first time since March
Denmark has reported zero coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours for the first time since 13 March, Reuters reports.
Updated
More than 100 Mexicans have died from drinking adulterated alcohol over the past month in a string of mass poisonings which followed a ban on the sale of liquor during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Deaths from unsafe alcohol have been reported in at least four states. On Thursday, health officials in the central state of Puebla said the death toll there had reached 51 after a batch of moonshine was tainted with methanol – a wood alcohol that can cause blindness and kidney damage.
The deaths in Puebla occurred in several municipalities across the rugged Sierra Madre Oriental mountains, a region where “moonshining is kind of a sport”, said Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez, a sociologist who has worked in the region.
At least 17 people died in the corn-farming village of Chiconcuautla after consuming cheap home-brewed liquor on Mother’s Day, according to the municipal government and a local official.
The drink – known as refino, made from sugarcane – is thought to have originated in the neighbouring community of Zacatlán, which is famed for its cider. No arrests have been made.
Updated
Impressions conveyed abroad that Sweden has adopted a “business as usual” approach to the coronavirus are wrong, its prime minister said on Friday, Reuters reports.
Sweden has not declared a full lockdown, in sharp contrast to many of its European neighbouring countries, instead adopting a mix of legislation and recommendations in response to the virus. Some foreign newspapers and broadcasters have widely labelled a relatively soft policy.
Stefan Lofven said he rejected that narrative: “The image that Sweden is doing so totally different than other countries, that’s not the case.”
The Swedish model for managing society was built on trust between citizens, who had “a responsibility to do the right thing”, and lawmakers and other authorities, he told a briefing with foreign media.
“Life is not carrying on as normal in Sweden. It is not business as usual.”
Current guidelines have banned large gatherings, while high schools and universities are closed. The government has recommend social distancing, protecting the elderly, working from home and staying at home if unwell.
Elementary schools however remain open, people have not been obliged to stay indoors and can meet in small groups, and stores have not been forced to close.
Sweden has registered more than 3,500 coronavirus-linked deaths – a toll far lower than many large EU countries but around five times higher than Denmark and more than 10 times that of its other Nordic neighbours.
Updated
The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s leading public health body monitoring and advising how to tackle the coronavirus, has said it is revising its “R” evaluation, or reproduction rate, which is the number of people an individual infected with coronavirus infects, after much confusion.
It will now release a weekly R value instead, which takes into account all the dips and rises in registered cases in a week and most importantly takes into account the regional differences. The new R value is being referred to as the geglätterte or “smoothed” R.
Germany’s current seven-day R value is 0.88 – every infected person is infecting less than one further person. Under the old system, Tuesday’s value would have been 0.75.
Updated
Slovenia opened its borders on Friday after declaring an end to its coronavirus epidemic, AFP reports, despite new infections.
The government opened borders for all EU citizens, while non-EU citizens will have to stay in quarantine.
People coming from Slovenia will still have to undergo a two-week home quarantine in Austria, however, according to the Austrian interior ministry.
“Today Slovenia has the best epidemic situation in Europe, which enables us to call off the general epidemic,” the prime minister, Janez Jansa, said.
He added “some general and special measures will remain in force” in Slovenia to prevent a resurgence in virus cases.
Updated
Georgia will cancel the state of emergency it declared over the coronavirus after 22 May, the prime minister, Giorgi Gakharia, said on Friday according to a report by Reuters citing the Tass news agency.
Updated
Restaurants in Berlin are allowed to reopen this evening for the first time in two months, and with the weather forecast looking good, it is predicted that they will be very full. Here is a breakdown of the rules governing the new normal here in the world of gastronomy.
People from two separate households will be allowed to share a table, but must keep a distance of 1.5 metres from each other. Whether there is a maximum number of people allowed for each household has not been specified. For those from a single household the distancing rules do not apply.
Waiting staff are required to wear face coverings. Cooks, and other kitchen staff who do not come into contact with diners, are not. Diners are not required to wear masks, although it is recommended they do so. It’s unclear how that is compatible with eating and drinking, as repeatedly taking off and putting on the masks is not recommended by hygiene experts.
While guests are not obliged to make reservations, Berlin’s senate has strongly advised restaurants to take down contact details of their guests, and to keep them for four weeks, in order to enable tracing in case of an infection.
The likelihood is that restaurateurs will soon be allowed to put chairs and tables in front of their establishments without having to gain the necessary permit – on condition that the pavement is wide enough.
In the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, officials have announced a plan to allow restaurants to effectively take over entire streets so that they can maximise the number of tables they can serve, and to ensure pavements do not become crowded. If restaurants submit applications specific to the streets they would like to occupy, officials will move to close the roads to traffic on Fridays and at weekends, between 11am and 10pm.
Some concerns have been expressed that that arrangement may put the safety of diners under threat – with some sceptics making reference to the Berlin Christmas market attack of 2016 when an Islamist terrorist drove a lorry into the crowd, killing 12.
Updated
I’m Aamna Mohdin, taking over the liveblog from my colleague Matt.
If you want to get in touch, you can email me (aamna.mohdin@theguardian.com) or reach me on Twitter (@aamnamohdin).
Summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments so far on Friday:
China marks one month with no new coronavirus deaths announced
China has gone a month without announcing any new deaths from the coronavirus. The National Health Commission reported four new cases of the virus on Friday, all local cross-infections in the north-eastern province of Jilin where a cluster of uncertain origin has been detected in recent days. The last time the commission reported a death was on 14 April.
Virus pushes Germany into recession
German output shrank by 2.2% in the first quarter of 2020, according to new official data. The quarter-on-quarter contraction is “the worst since the financial crisis” in 2009, the federal statistics office Destatis said. The agency also revised its gross domestic product (GDP) figure for the final quarter of 2019 from zero growth to a contraction of 0.1%, meaning Germany has now experienced two consecutive quarters of contraction – the technical definition of a recession.
Slovenia proclaims end to the outbreak
Slovenia has become the first European country to proclaim an end to the coronavirus epidemic at home. It said on Friday that the spread of Covid-19 was under control and there was no longer a need for extraordinary health measures.
Spain announces lowest daily death toll since Monday
Spain’s death toll from coronavirus registered its lowest increase since Monday with 138 new fatalities announced by the health ministry. The overall coronavirus death toll, in Europe’s fourth worst hit country, rose to 27,459 on Friday, while the number of diagnosed cases rose to 230,183 cases from 229,540.
Italy and Germany to ease more restrictions
Italy is set to allow free travel across the country from 3 June, according to a draft decree seen by Reuters. The draft, which could still be modified before it is approved, also said all travel within separate Italian regions would be allowed from 18 May. Germany will loosen quarantine rules for travellers arriving from the European Union and the UK, according to the interior ministry.
China responds diplomatically to Trump threat of cutting off ties
China’s foreign ministry has responded diplomatically to Donald Trump’s threat of cutting ties with Beijing over the virus. The US president said the pandemic had cast a pall over his January trade deal with Beijing and that he had no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping at the moment. China’s foreign ministry said on Friday that steady Sino-US bilateral relations served the interests of both countries.
Baltic states restore free movement
The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have opened their borders to each other to create a mini-Schengen area. Free movement of people will be restored to all 6 million permanent residents of the Baltic states, but arrivals from outside the three countries will have to undergo a two-week quarantine period.
Mexico sees record one-day increase in cases
Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday confirmed 257 additional coronavirus deaths and 2,409 new infections, the biggest one-day rise in cases since the pandemic began.The new infections brought confirmed coronavirus cases to 42,595 and 4,477 deaths in total, according to the official tally.
Brazil confirmed cases pass 200,000
The number of cases in Brazil passed 200,000 on Thursday. The country now has 202,918 confirmed cases, with 13,944 added in the last 24 hours, according to health ministry.The tally means it is the sixth-worst-affected country worldwide in terms of cases, according to Johns Hopkins data. 844 new deaths were reported in last 24 hours, bringing the total to 13,993.
South Korea, China and Japan’s health ministers to hold video conference
The health ministers of South Korea, China and Japan will get together by video conference on Friday to discuss ways to work together in the global campaign against the coronavirus, South Korean officials said. The meeting is the first between top health officials of the east Asian neighbours since the outbreak emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
Covid-19 reaches refugee camps in Bangladesh
Aid groups have warned of a looming humanitarian disaster after coronavirus was detected for the first time in the sprawling camps that host about 1 million Rohingya refugees. The UN confirmed that an ethnic Rohingya refugee and another person had tested positive for Covid-19. “Both patients are in isolation and contact tracing is under way,” the UN’s refugee agency said in a statement.
Updated
Germany will loosen coronavirus quarantine rules for travellers arriving from the European Union, the Schengen passport-free zone and Britain, Reuters reports, citing a spokesman for the interior ministry.
Authorities will only recommend travellers go into quarantine if they arrive from countries with elevated numbers of infections, he said at a regular news conference.
A mandatory two-week quarantine still applies for travellers from countries outside the EU, the spokesman said
Updated
Children in Finland have been returning to school after eight weeks of lockdown, AFP reports. They will return for just two weeks before the summer holidays begin.
VIDEO: Finnish schoolchildren return to class after eight weeks of coronavirus lockdown despite warnings from the teacher's union it may not be totally safe for its staff or the children pic.twitter.com/PuI9T3xDYA
— AFP news agency (@AFP) May 15, 2020
The French health minister, Olivier Véran, has said he has been assured France will benefit from a coronavirus vaccine “if there is one”.
The comment came after Paul Hudson, the British CEO of the French-based pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, said it was working with the Americans to develop a Covid-19 vaccine and the US would be given priority.
Hudson’s remarks caused outrage in France, where Sanofi has received research tax credits. Véran said he had been reassured this would not be the case. “I believe it was a phrase, as far as I can understand, that was slightly clumsy and perhaps taken out of context. I was quite reassured by the conversation I had with Sanofi,” Véran told French television.
Two new studies have reportedly shown that hydroxychloroquine is not particularly effective against Covid-19 despite the claims of the charismatic Marseille epidemiologist Didier Raoult. New studies – one French and one Chinese – found the anti-malarial drug, whose use has been promoted by Donald Trump among others, did not significantly reduce the risk of the disease worsening or killing a patient, nor did it eliminate the virus any quicker than standard treatments.
France is to quarantine arrivals from neighbouring Spain. This is a “reciprocal” measure after Spain imposed 14 days’ quarantine for anyone arriving from the EU/Schengen area.
The French border is currently closed to any visitors other than essential travellers who have a “compelling” professional or personal reason to enter the country and are carrying a sworn declaration to that effect. June 15 has been set for a possible reopening of French borders to European visitors.
Deaths on French roads dropped by just under 56% during April compared with the same month last year. This is hardly surprising as everyone was locked down, but police records suggested those who were on the empty roads drove faster. The drop in road deaths explains why some departements saw fewer deaths even during the coronavirus crisis.
Updated
Italy set to allow free travel from 3 June
Italy is set to allow free travel across the country from 3 June, according to a draft decree seen by Reuters, as the government moves to unwind the coronavirus lockdown and revive the battered economy.
Rigid restrictions were imposed on Italy in March in an effort to halt the disease and, with the death rate now falling, the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, is rolling back the curbs.
The draft decree, which could still be modified before it is approved, also said all travel within separate Italian regions would be allowed from 18 May.
Updated
The phased reopening of America’s national parks has raised concerns about exacerbating the spread of Covid-19 and endangering the residents of rural towns located near parks.
“We don’t want the parks to become super-spreaders,” said Timothy Whitehouse, executive director of the non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “These communities simply do not have the capacity or the medical infrastructure to deal with an outbreak.”
Updated
Spain’s death toll from coronavirus registered its lowest increase since Monday with 138 new fatalities announced by the health ministry, Reuters reports.
The overall coronavirus death toll, in Europe’s fourth worst hit country, rose to 27,459 on Friday, while the number of diagnosed cases rose to 230,183 cases from 229,540 on Thursday, the ministry said.
The UK, Italy and France have all announced more coronavirus deaths than Spain.
📉 Datos actualizados de #COVID19
— Ministerio de Sanidad (@sanidadgob) May 15, 2020
➡️ Situación actual en España:https://t.co/skv9oHroYj
ℹ️ Puedes encontrar información más amplia y explicación técnica de los datos por CCAA en este enlace: https://t.co/ORIxhfmRB5#esteviruslosparamosunidos pic.twitter.com/X22J36MAHr
Updated
Slovenia has become the first European country to proclaim an end to the coronavirus epidemic at home, AP reports.
It said on Friday that the spread of Covid-19 was under control and there was no longer a need for extraordinary health measures. The government says EU residents are free to cross into Slovenia from Austria, Italy and Hungary at predetermined checkpoints, while most non-EU nationals will have to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine.
The first coronavirus case in Slovenia was recorded on 4 March, in someone returning from neighbouring Italy. By 13 May, there were 1,467 confirmed cases and 103 deaths in Slovenia.
Trend obolelosti s koronavirusom v Sloveniji na dan 14. 5. 2020 (00:00-24:00):
— Vlada Republike Slovenije (@vladaRS) May 15, 2020
- Št. testiranj: 1023
- Št. pozitivnih: 1
- Št. hospitaliziranih: 29
- Št. oseb na intenzivni negi: 7
- Dnevno | skupno št. odpuščenih iz bolnišnice: 3 | 270
- Število umrlih: 0 pic.twitter.com/lyX9Tijw9C
Update: Shaun Walker adds:
An easing of restrictions began on 20 April when some shops reopened, while restaurants and bars are now allowed to serve customers on their outdoor terraces. Public transport is slowly resuming and some schools will open on Monday.
Citizens are still advised to stick to social distancing and other virus prevention measures, but visitors arriving from EU countries who show no symptoms will no longer be required to quarantine.
Updated
Russia has announced more than 10,000 new coronavirus infections on Friday, bringing the country’s total to 262,843, the second-highest in the world after the United States.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, this week announced that a nationwide lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of the virus would be eased, even as health officials record a steady increase in new cases.
The country reported 113 new coronavirus deaths on Friday, bringing Russia’s total to 2,418.
On Thursday, Russian officials defended the country against claims that its unusually low mortality rate from Covid-19 was suspicious, saying its method of ascribing cause of death was “exceptionally precise”.
Updated
Virus pushes Germany into recession
German output shrank by 2.2% in the first quarter of 2020, official data showed on Friday, as the coronavirus pandemic tipped Europe’s top economy into a recession, AFP reports.
The quarter-on-quarter contraction is “the worst since the financial crisis” in 2009, the federal statistics office Destatis said.
The agency also revised its gross domestic product (GDP) figure for the final quarter of 2019 from zero growth to a contraction of 0.1%, meaning Germany has now experienced two consecutive quarters of contraction – the technical definition of a recession.
The German economy minister, Peter Altmaier, last month warned that the country was facing “the worst recession” in its postwar history as the pandemic battered the global economy.
Updated
Most New Zealanders have embraced the easing restrictions with the first stop for many being the local hairdresser.
In Auckland, the barber Tomi Cvetanovski said he saw his fair share of unkempt hair coming through his doors. He opened up at one minute past midnight on Thursday with a line outside and he did not close until 4.30am. Then he reopened at 6am and kept going until 7pm.
Oh man, it’s crazy, but I like it when it’s like this. It was a big day, but everyone needs a haircut.
Updated
For over a week Belgians have been allowed to pick just four friends or family who they may host at their home as part of a tentative easing of the lockdown.
But a study from the University of Antwerp has revealed that social embarrassment is holding many back from breaking their lockdown bubbles. The study showed that nearly half (43%) of the 83,000 people who participated in the study had not taken advantage of relaxation and 41% said the “rule of four” forcing them to choose among their friends had made them tense.
Koen Pepermans, faculty director of social sciences at Antwerp University, said:
The confusion and choice stress that this measure brought with it could have led to people being reluctant. I also noticed in my circle that it was a difficult choice. Not making a choice at all was perhaps the best choice that almost half of the participants chose.
There is also a lack of trust with 85% of participants admitting that they did not think their friends would stick to the social distancing rules. “The younger the participant, the more pessimistic they are towards the other,” Pepermans said.
Updated
The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have opened their borders to each other from Friday to create a mini Schengen area, Latvia’s broadcaster LSM.LV reports.
Free movement of people will be restored to all 6 million permanent residents of the Baltic states, but arrivals from outside the three countries will have to undergo a two-week quarantine period. The Latvian president, Egils Levits, said:
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have created a small Schengen area in Europe – an area without internal borders. From today, all of us, the 6 million of the Baltics, are free to cross the borders between our countries, subject to epidemiological rules. This is especially important for Latvia because Lithuania and Estonia are our largest economic partners.
Updated
Life-sized cardboard cutouts of football fans are being used to try to provide atmosphere at empty stadiums in Germany as the suspended Bundesliga gets ready to resume.
Thousands of Borussia Moenchengladbach fans have ordered €18 cutouts of themselves for their first home fixture at Borussia Park next week, Reuters reports.
All eyes on Germany as Bundesliga season restarts, @ossianshine has more pic.twitter.com/uEtT8YTS7O
— Reuters India (@ReutersIndia) May 15, 2020
Belgian Trappist monks who brew one of the world’s most coveted beers have reopened for business after a two-month break, though Covid-19 restrictions mean they can only supply local rather than international demand, Reuters reports.
The Saint-Sixtus abbey, home to 19 monks, launched an online sale on Thursday evening of 6,000 crates, with pick-ups starting on Friday. Exceptionally, customers can buy three crates. Normally it is just two.
Customers can come as usual by car, but are told not to leave their vehicles while queuing until they pass a newly installed traffic light before the pick-up point.
There, a lay worker in mask and gloves passes their 24-bottle crates through a small gap in a plastic screen. Payment must made electronically, not with cash. The nearby cafe serving the beers remains closed.
Demand is no issue. Brother Godfried said 5,000 new online accounts were created from Wednesday to Thursday, bringing the total to 35,000.
“The picture is a bit distorted as for now we can only offer on the Belgian market. The borders are shut, even though the beer draws a certain international interest,” he told Reuters.
The monks sold a few cases in advance to test their new system. Thomas Vuylsteke, a 33-year-old lawyer, was one of the lucky recipients.
“It has been selected a few times as the best beer in the world and it is really tasty. It’s always great,” he said.
Updated
Afghanistan has recorded its worst day of the crisis so far, as the country’s health ministry confirmed 414 new transmissions of Covid-19 and 17 more deaths.
Afghanistan has so far confirmed 6,053 cases, 153 deaths and 745 recoveries. In a WhatsApp message to reporters, Wahid Majroh, the country’s deputy health minister, said 1,122 suspected patients had been tested in the last 24 hours after the ministry pledged to increase the number of tests.
The capital, Kabul, and the western province of Herat recorded most of the new infections. Kabul is the country’s worst affected area with 1,793 cases.
Despite a government authorised lockdown in several provinces, the streets are still crowded, raising fears among experts of a surge in the number of death and infections.
Updated
China’s foreign ministry has responded diplomatically to Donald Trump’s threat of cutting ties with Beijing over the virus.
The US president said the pandemic had cast a pall over his January trade deal with Beijing and that he had no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping at the moment.
Asked what measures he intended to take against China, he said: “There are many things we could do … We could cut off the whole relationship.”
China’s foreign ministry said on Friday that steady Sino-US bilateral relations served the interests of both countries.
But its foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, told reporters during a daily briefing that the US needed to cooperate with China in order to achieve stable relations.
Updated
The environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg has challenged “the myth” that children are not affected by the virus and can’t spread it.
Speaking to CNN, the 17-year-old activist urged children to stick to physical distancing rules.
She said:
It’s sort of a myth right now that children are not being being affected by this virus. And that is very wrong. Children both do get this disease and they also spread it on to others. So we need to be very careful that this misinformation, that it doesn’t affect children, becomes mainstream. We need to make sure that people understand that this affects children.
Thunberg went into isolation in March after displaying mild symptoms of coronavirus. She said:
Many people don’t even notice that they have symptoms and then they might spread the virus without even knowing it. We young people have a very big responsibility because we we might not experience the symptoms as as bad as many others. So we have to be extra careful, because our actions can be the difference between life and death for many others.
She also expressed hope that the crisis would mean that politicians and the public now followed the warnings of scientists. She said:
More people are starting to realise that we are actually depending on science, and that we need to listen to scientists and experts. I really hope that stays for other crises, such as the climate crisis and the environmental crisis, that we understand that we have to listen to the scientists.
Updated
Nearly a quarter of a billion people across 47 African countries will catch coronavirus over the next year, but the result will be fewer severe cases and deaths than in the US and Europe, new research predicts.
A model by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional office for Africa, published in the BMJ Global Health, predicts a lower rate of transmission and viral spread across the continent than elsewhere, resulting in up to 190,000 deaths. But the authors warn the associated rise in hospital admissions, care needs and “huge impact” on services such as immunisation and maternity, will overwhelm already stretched health services.
About one in four (22%) of the one billion people in the countries measured would be infected in the first year of the pandemic, the model suggests. However the disease is likely to linger for longer – possibly for several years.
Aid groups have warned of a looming humanitarian disaster after coronavirus was detected for the first time in the sprawling camps that host about one million Rohingya refugees.
The camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, which are more densely populated than some of the world’s busiest cities, have been under lockdown since 14 March, in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading.
On Thursday, the UN confirmed that an ethnic Rohingya refugee and another person had tested positive for Covid-19. “Both patients are in isolation and contact tracing is underway,” the UN’s refugee agency said in a statement.
Like many children across the world sent home from school, youngsters in Turkey were encouraged to draw pictures of rainbows and place them in windows to cheer up the country in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Orders to teachers from some local education boards to stop because the rainbows were part of a “plot” to turn children gay were met with surprise.
Instead of boosting morale, the lockdown rainbows have become yet another symbol of division, the latest cultural battleground in a country highly polarised along political and religious lines.
“Unfortunately this sort of anti-LGBTQ mentality is widespread amongst policy makers even if ordinary people don’t see a connection between children’s drawings and gay rights,” said Meral Gülsen, a representative for teachers union Eğitim Sen.
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for today. I only wish I knew when that would be it for my neighbour’s music speaker, too.
Thanks, as always, for following along.
Summary
Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:
- Global death toll passes 302,000. The global toll from Covid-19 has passed 300,000, with nearly 4.5 million people infected. According to data collected by Johns Hopkins University, at least 302,452 people have now died as a result of the outbreak. The institution says it has counted 4,443,597 confirmed cases worldwide. It’s important to point out that the actual death toll is believed to be far higher than the tally compiled from government figures.
- China marks one month with no new coronavirus deaths announced. China has gone a month without announcing any new deaths from the coronavirus. The National Health Commission reported four new cases of the virus on Friday, all local cross-infections in the northeastern province of Jilin where a cluster of uncertain origin has been detected in recent days. The last time the commission reported a death was on 14 April.
- Trump threatens to cut China ties. US President Donald Trump signalled a further deterioration of his relationship with China over coronavirus, saying he has no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping at the moment and going so far as to suggest he could cut ties with the world’s second largest economy. Chinese state media has responded saying his comments are “lunacy”.
- Trump visits a mask distribution centre without wearing a mask himself. Donald Trump toured a mask distribution centre in the political swing state of Pennsylvania on Thursday but without wearing a mask himself. Trump, who is running for re-election in November, has resisted wearing a mask in public despite his administration’s guidance to Americans to wear them and new White House rules requiring staff to wear them at work.
- Mexico sees record one-day increase in cases. Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday confirmed 257 additional coronavirus deaths and 2,409 new infections, the biggest one-day rise in cases since the pandemic began.The new infections brought confirmed coronavirus cases to 42,595 and 4,477 deaths in total, according to the official tally.
- Brazil confirmed cases pass 200,000. The number of cases in Brazil passed 200,000 on Thursday.The country now has 202,918 confirmed cases, with 13,944 added in last 24 hours, according to health ministry.The tally means it is the sixth-worst-affected country worldwide in terms of cases, according to Johns Hopkins data. 844 new deaths were reported in last 24 hours, bringing the total to 13,993.
- South Korea, China and Japan health ministers to hold video conference. The health ministers of South Korea, China and Japan will get together by video conference on Friday to discuss ways to work together in the global campaign against the novel coronavirus, South Korean officials said. The meeting is the first between top health officials of the East Asian neighbours since the outbreak emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
- Doctors in Italy and France report spike in rare inflammatory syndrome linked to coronavirus. Doctors in northern Italy, one of the areas hardest hit by coronavirus, and in France have reported spikes in cases of a rare inflammatory syndrome in young children that appears similar to one reported in the US, Britain and Spain, according to a report in the Lancet.The condition shares symptoms with toxic shock and Kawasaki disease including fever, rashes, swollen glands and, in severe cases, heart inflammation.
- Covid-19 reaches refugee camps in Bangladesh. A Rohingya man has become the first person to test positive for Covid-19 in the vast refugee camps in Bangladesh that is home to almost one million people. Local health coordinator Abu Toha Bhuiyan initially said two refugees had been put into isolation. The World Health Organization later said one case was of a Rohingya man, and the other was of a local man who lived near the camp and was being treated at a clinic inside the area.
- 36 million Americans are now unemployed. Another 3 million Americans filed for benefits, bringing the country’s total unemployed to 36 million. The latest figures from the Department of Labor show the rate of claims is slowing but the record-breaking pace of layoffs has already pushed unemployment to levels unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Updated
Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Global report: Trump threat to cut trade ties over Covid-19 branded ‘lunacy’ by Chinese media
An escalation of rhetoric between Donald Trump and China over the coronavirus pandemic has sparked concerns that a trade deal between the nations is in peril, as Chinese state media dismissed as “lunacy” a suggestion by the US president that he could “cut off relations with Beijing.
The US president said he was very disappointed with China’s failure to contain Covid-19 in an interview with Fox Business news. Trump said the pandemic had cast a pall over his January trade deal with Beijing and that he had no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping at the moment.
Asked what measures he intended to take against China, he said: “There are many things we could do … We could cut off the whole relationship.”
“Now, if you did, what would happen? You’d save $500bn,” Trump said, referring to estimated US annual imports from China, which he has previously referred to as lost money.
The state-backed Global Times responded with an editorial titled “Trump turns up election strategy nonsense with China ‘cut-off’ threat”.
“The very idea should not come as a surprise for those who remember when Trump speculated if disinfectants could be used on humans ‘by injection’ to wipe out the novel coronavirus [Covid-19],” it said.
“Such lunacy is a clear byproduct, first and foremost, of the proverbial anxiety that the US has suffered from since China began its global ascension,” it said on Friday. “Trump seems insane right now or may have some psychological problems,” another editorial wrote.
The escalating row between the two countries came as China marked one month with no deaths from Covid-19 and just four newly confirmed cases in the 24 hours to Friday.
Updated
UK front pages: Friday, 15 May
Friday’s GUARDIAN: “Revealed: ‘chaos’ at privately run warehouse of UK’s PPE stockpile” #BBCPapers #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/8dQKxeeIAP
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) May 14, 2020
Friday’s Daily MAIL: “Let Our Teachers Be Heroes” #BBCPapers #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/CBgIcv449F
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) May 14, 2020
Friday’s INDEPENDENT Digital: “Heads rebel against PM’s plan to reopen schools” #BBCPapers #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/bhl40Lmlnh
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) May 14, 2020
Friday’s FINANCIAL TIMES: “Nissan lifts hopes for thousands of jobs with boost for Sunderland” #BBCPapers #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/suOYUhV9Z3
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) May 14, 2020
Friday’s Daily TELEGRAPH: “Just 24 new cases per day in London, says PHE” #BBCPapers #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/sNsjQClaT2
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) May 14, 2020
What coronavirus is doing to stressed US health workers – and why it will be felt for years
Jenn Caldwell is a hospital nurse in Kansas City, Missouri. By her estimate, she has cared for nearly three dozen Covid-19 patients since the pandemic began, and her close friend, a fellow nurse, has died from the virus.
When she developed an upset stomach consistent with Covid-19 she lost her composure. She curled up in a ball, cried and hyperventilated. Later, Caldwell wrote down all her financial account information, put it in her lockbox and texted her 20-year-old daughter the code.
“It’s so random who is getting Covid and dying. There was a definite panic, a definite freak-out,” Caldwell said, a member of the union National Nurses United. “It heightens my anxiety and paranoia … I didn’t feel like I had any before.”
The the airlines Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon saw their passenger loads plummet by 62.3% to 21.7% in April, Reuters reports.
Cathay Pacific & Cathay Dragon carried a total of 13,729 passengers, a decrease of 99.6% compared to April 2019.
In April, the two airlines carried 84,634 tonnes of cargo and mail, a decrease of 48.3% compared to April 2019.
The airlines expect that average daily passenger numbers will remain at around 500 in May.
In a report, the airlines said it is “widely expected that international travel demand will only return to pre covid-19 levels in a few years.”
But, it added, “At this stage, we still see no immediate signs of improvement”.
Updated
This Australian snake doesn’t seem to have heard that there are now more reasons to leave the house:
We don't know where this pipe goes ... 😱🐍 pic.twitter.com/ppt7eujFD2
— Saffron Howden (@saffronhowden) May 15, 2020
Australia is easing restrictions:
BUT WHY ARE THEY TOUCHING EACH OTHER https://t.co/SN0blS0l4o
— Isobel Roe (@isobelroe) May 14, 2020
Summary
- Global death toll passes 302,000. The global toll from Covid-19 has passed 300,000, with nearly 4.5 million people infected. According to data collected by Johns Hopkins University, at least 302,452 people have now died as a result of the outbreak.The institution says it has counted 4,443,597 confirmed cases worldwide. It’s important to point out that the actual death toll is believed to be far higher than the tally compiled from government figures.
- China marks one month with no new coronavirus deaths announced. China has gone a month without announcing any new deaths from the coronavirus. The National Health Commission reported four new cases of the virus Friday, all local cross-infections in the northeastern province of Jilin where a cluster of uncertain origin has been detected in recent days. The last time the commission reported a death was on 14 April.
- Trump says he could cut China ties. US President Donald Trump signalled a further deterioration of his relationship with China over the novel coronavirus, saying he has no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping right now and going so far as to suggest he could even cut ties with the world’s second largest economy.
- Donald Trump visits a mask distribution centre without wearing a mask himself. Donald Trump toured a mask distribution centre in the political swing state of Pennsylvania on Thursday but without wearing a mask himself.Trump, who is running for re-election in November, has resisted wearing a mask in public despite his administration’s guidance to Americans to wear them and new White House rules requiring staff to wear them at work.
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The health ministers of South Korea, China and Japan will gather by video conference to discuss ways to work together in the global campaign against the novel coronavirus, South Korean officials said. The meeting is the first between top health officials of the East Asian neighbours since the outbreak emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
- Mexico sees record one-day increase in cases. Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday confirmed 257 additional coronavirus deaths and 2,409 new infections, the biggest one-day rise in cases since the pandemic began.The new infections brought confirmed coronavirus cases to 42,595 and 4,477 deaths in total, according to the official tally.
- Brazil confirmed cases pass 200,000. The number of cases in Brazil passed 200,000 on Thursday.The country now has 202,918 confirmed cases, with 13,944 added in last 24 hours, according to health ministry.The tally means it is the sixth-worst-affected country worldwide in terms of cases, according to Johns Hopkins data. 844 new deaths were reported in last 24 hours, bringing the total to 13,993.
- Doctors in Italy and France report spike in rare inflammatory syndrome linked to coronavirus. Doctors in northern Italy, one of the areas hardest hit by coronavirus, and in France have reported spikes in cases of a rare inflammatory syndrome in young children that appears similar to one reported in the US, Britain and Spain, according to a report in the Lancet.The condition shares symptoms with toxic shock and Kawasaki disease including fever, rashes, swollen glands and, in severe cases, heart inflammation.
- A vaccine for coronavirus must be available to all countries, the EU has insisted, after the British chief executive of French drugs company Sanofi said it was reserving the first shipments of its vaccine for the US. “The vaccine against Covid-19 should be a global public good and its access needs to be equitable and universal,” said the European commission spokesman, Stefan de Keersmaecker.
- 36 million Americans are now unemployed as another 3 million filed for benefits. The latest figures from the Department of Labor show the rate of claims is slowing but the record-breaking pace of layoffs has already pushed unemployment to levels unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
- The European commission has suspended the delivery of 10 million face masks from China after two countries complained about the poor quality of the batches they received, the Associated Press reports. As part of its efforts to tackle the Covid-19 crisis, this month the commission started dispatching the masks to healthcare workers in its 27 member states and the UK.
Updated
Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Oh my god, this is amazing. A German cafe is making people wear swimming pool noodles as hats to enforce social distancing.
— Katy Lee (@kjalee) May 14, 2020
Pic via Cafe & Konditorei Rothe on Facebook https://t.co/fMgqgbTdt6 pic.twitter.com/ds0whysqqi
Health ministers of South Korea, China and Japan to gather by video conference
The health ministers of South Korea, China and Japan will get together by video conference on Friday to discuss ways to work together in the global campaign against the novel coronavirus, South Korean officials said.
The meeting is the first between top health officials of the East Asian neighbours since the outbreak emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
“The ministers will exchange views on the latest Covid-19 situation and related policy of each country,” South Korea’s Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip told a briefing, referring to the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
“We’re planning to introduce our work on information sharing, special entry procedures and large-scale treatment facilities.”
All three countries are optimistic they have got their outbreaks under control and are looking to get their economics back on track while keeping a wary eye out for any second waves of infection.
China’s Wuhan is seeking to test all of its 11 million residents for the coronavirus after a small cluster of new cases stoked fears after a long lockdown was lifted.
Japan lifted a state of emergency in large swaths of the country on Thursday but major cities remain under restrictions and new testing indicated the outbreak in Tokyo was wider than the figures showed.
South Korea, which suffered the first major outbreak outside China, has been held up as a coronavirus mitigation success story, bringing its daily rate of cases down to near zero without major disruptions, thanks to intensive testing and contact tracing.
But a recent spike in infections linked to nightclubs and bars in some Seoul nightlife districts has led to the re-closing of some night spots and the postponement of the opening of schools by a week.
Updated
Uki Goñi reports for the Guardian:
Coronavirus statistics have started rising sharply in Argentina in line with government predictions that mid-May could see a spike in cases.
Thursday saw a record 24 deaths and 255 new cases, after Wednesday’s record 317 new cases, bringing the total so far to 353 deaths and 7134 cases.
The numbers are being pushed up by a sudden rise in the capital city of Buenos Aires, with 60% of reported new cases Thursday, most of them in the city’s large “villas”, or shanty towns, home to some 400 thousand of the city’s three million inhabitants.
The city’s surrounding Greater Buenos Aires Area, home to another seven million people, was responsible for 30% of the day’s new cases, with the rest of Argentina, total population 44 million, reporting only 10% of the day’s toll.
The national duplication rate of cases showed a worrying fall in recent days, from 25 days just one week ago, to only 17 days Thursday. The duplication rate in the city of Buenos Aires is well below the national average, at only 10 days Thursday.
As Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison mentioned in that press conference earlier, suicides in three Australian states, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania, have not increased during the lockdown.
Christine Morgan, CEO of the National Mental Health Commission and National Suicide Prevention Adviser to Morrison, was asked at the national press conference what she made of Japan’s decline in suicides in April, reported on Thursday. In response she asked:
Is there a protective component in what we are finding (in the lockdown)? Which has been so challenging for so many. But maybe there’s a silver lining. We have stopped. We have connected. We have been at home. We are in communication with people. We don’t know the answer, but that’s really important. “
Helen Sullivan with you here. A short while ago I took a lunchtime stroll around my neighbourhood, which happens to be Bondi, in Sydney, Australia.
The New South Wales state regulations were eased today, which means people can dine in at bars, restaurants and cafes – something in no short supply in the neighbourhoods surrounding one of the world’s most famous beaches. Small restaurants and cafes are allowed 10 patrons at a time.
Blog readers, it was a sight for sore eyes: a family of four walking around a little uncertainly, like they had perhaps been really strict about social distancing, looking for – it seemed – a cafe to go to. Dad patted his back pocket to make sure his wallet was there, and they crossed the road with purpose.
My local repainted its walls for the occasion of the eased restrictions, and was looking pretty schmick:
A nearby bagel shop had both its outside tables – it usually has about seven or so – occupied and a lunchtime queue was forming.
Next door, a barber shop, which had closed completely on 28 March, was doing a roaring trade. All barbers and customers wore masks, and in the window was a laminated poster showing that the business had completed Covid-19 training.
A customer left, and one of the barbers sprayed what I assume was disinfectant to an empty chair and wiped it down vigorously.
There was a very faint drizzle in the air – winter is arriving in Sydney – but the sun was shining. Mate, it was pretty good.
That press conference has now ended.
I spoke too soon. Back to that press conference for a moment, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is talking about the country’s relationship with China now and he’s getting a bit worked up:
When it comes to our relationship with China, it is built on mutual benefit. And we have a comprehensive strategic partnership which we’ve formed. And within that partnership, there are issues that need to be addressed from time to time, and the issues around beef and barley are those matters. And they have been, particularly on the barley issue, been running for some time.
He is speaking after China imposed a ban on beef supplied by four Australian abattoirs and Beijing proposed imposing crippling tariffs on barley imports.
I’d stress again that what the Australian Government is doing is completely unremarkable. We are standing our ground on our values and the things that we know are always important.
...
One of the most important things about our approach to relationship is we’re always consistent. We’re always consistent. We draw very clear lines about things that are very important to us, as does the Chinese government.
And we respect their lines, as we expect our lines to be respected, whether it’s on our foreign investment rules, or our rules around technology, our rules regarding human rights and things of that nature. I don’t think anyAustralian would want us to compromise on those important things. And those things are not to be traded. Ever. Now, our Government is very clear about these things, and we will always continue to be clear. And these are not things to be traded.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Trump and jobs:
Reporter: What’s your response toPresident Trump announcing that he’s “changing all the policies”?
Morrison: We’ll see what occurs there as it rolls out. But we have our contracts and arrangements in place for all of those matters, so we’ll continue to pursue them in the normal way.
Reporter: The “America First” slogan, is that something that Australia should perhaps adopt and prioritise Australian jobs?
Morrison: Australia will always prioritise Australian jobs, and we always have. And one of the ways we’ve always done that is we’ve always had an outward look when it comes to our economic opportunities. Australia is one of the most successful trading nations on earth, and our economic prosperity lies not just here, but continuing to be an open trading nation. This is how we’ve always succeeded in the past.And Australia will continue to look to its prosperity both here at home and overseas to ensure that we can prioritise Australian jobs.
Updated
As Australia adopts its National Mental Health and Wellbeing Pandemic Response Plan, Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt says:
We’ve already had some information from Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania that is heartening, and more heartening than we’d expected. For the first four
months, there has been no known increase in suicide rates in those three states. We watch very carefully, however, because these things can build up. They can brew. People can dwell. And so we want to get ahead of the curve.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says just 1% of the country’s aged care facilities were affected by Coronavirus:
There are two areas that National Cabinet was most concerned at the start of this crisis more than any. One was, of course, our elderly, and the fact that only 1%, or thereabouts, of the aged care facilities in this country have been affected by Covid is a tremendous credit to the aged care sector.
But the other has been the low level of infection that has occurred in Indigenous communities around Australia. And to ourIndigenous leaders in each and everyone of those hundreds of communities, thank you for your leadership. Thank you for keeping your communities, our people, together, safe.
Brendan Murphy, the country’s Chief Medical Officer, is speaking now.
There are just 50 Covid-19 patients in hospitals across Australia, with 12 of those people on ventilators, he says.
My general epidemiology update, with 7,017 cases at the moment. Around about 20 new cases a day over recent days. Still a small number of community-acquired cases in some jurisdictions. Just a reminder this virus is still there, at very low levels in the community, and I reiterate the Prime Minister’s message - as people start to go back to some normal activities and open up, please, please be careful. Please practise all of those new ways of interacting that we’ve talked about on so many occasions.
Updated
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says:
As businesses and cafes and others are opened up this weekend, those businesses, knowing that at just 10patrons at a time, that won’t necessarily be a profitable patronage for them to really sustain that, they’re backing themselves, they’re backing their staff, they’re backing their communities, and they’re backing their country. And I want to commend them for that brave step that they’re taking this weekend. Good on ya for reopening.
Morrison announces decisions made by the national Cabinet:
- Elective surgeries can resume
- The National Mental Health and Wellbeing Pandemic Response Plan was adopted. An additional AI$48.1 million was committed for the implementation of that plan.
- Human biosecurity emergency powers have also been extended under the Biosecurity Act, from June 17 to September 17.
Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is speaking to the media now.
Morrison begins with the usual preamble about the difficulties we all face. Says state leaders have met more in the past two months than the previous 10 years.
But with restrictions easing following the release of the government’s roadmap last week, Morrison says now “the task is to really build that confidence and to get that momentum going, as we move to the next challenge, which is to reset the Australian economy for growth to support Australians and their livelihoods well into the future”.
He says today’s National Cabinet meeting was briefed by the head of the Treasury department, Philip Lowe, the head of the Reserve Bank, and Wayne Byres, the head of APRA.
Top luxury brands from Chanel to Louis Vuitton have increased prices of some of their most coveted products as they seek to make up for sales lost during weeks of coronavirus lockdowns.
High-end houses have all reported brisk business in South Korea and the key Chinese market, where shops began to reopen in March, partly offsetting a slump in Europe and the United States, where restrictions are only just starting to be lifted.
But with consultancy Bain estimating sales for the $300 billion sector to fall by up to 35% this year, bringing to a crushing halt a decade of spectacular growth, luxury groups are moving quickly to protect margins.
Chanel said on Wednesday it was increasing prices on its iconic handbags and some small leather goods by between 5% and 17% around the world as the pandemic had pushed up the cost of certain raw materials.
“These adjustments are made while ensuring that we avoid excessive price differentials between countries,” it said.
Industry powerhouse LVMH’s star fashion label Louis Vuitton - which the company said last month was enjoying sales growth in excess of 50% in China in early April - has also been hiking prices of handbags in the United States and Europe.
In China and South Korea, people were queuing outside Chanel stores as soon as rumours of imminent price increases began to spread on social media. Xie Lan, a documentary maker in Beijing, said she had managed to buy a handbag for nearly 30,000 yuan ($4,225) before the price hike.
“Work is busy and stressful, I wanted to give myself a treat,” she said by phone.
Israel’s children can go back to school and nurseries full-time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, as the country presses on with easing its coronavirus curbs.
Israel, which has a population nine million, has reported 16,579 cases of the novel coronavirus and 265 deaths. With the new case rate levelling out in the past few weeks, it has lifted bans on gatherings, eased travel and reopened malls and markets.
A partial reopening of schools began on 3 May, with the first three grades of elementary school and the last two grades of high school redistributed in classes capped at 15 pupils to enforce social-distancing. Kindergartens joined a week later.
In a written statement, Netanyahu said that from Sunday all children, from the age of zero, may go back to school on a voluntary basis. Those in outbreak epicentres, however, would have to stay home for now.
Schools reopening full time could help the economy contend with the fallout of weeks of coronavirus lockdown, relieving working parents from having to stay at home and mind their children.
More than 1.1 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, which would be equal to a jobless rate of about 27%. They include employees put on unpaid leave, some self-employed, as well as those who have lost their jobs entirely.
We have more from Mexico, which has recorded its biggest daily rise in cases. Assistant health secretary Hugo López-Gatell has called it the “peak moment” when the country is experiencing its fastest growth but also pointed to declines in cities such as Cancún, Villahermosa in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, Culiacán in the northern state of Sinaloa, and the border city of Tijuana.
Mexico recorded 2,409 cases on Thursday, the first time it has exceeded 2,000 in one day. Officials also reported 257 more deaths from Covid-19, making a total of 4,477 since the pandemic began
‘They threw us into chaos’: Wisconsin lockdown ruling is latest in partisan war
A conservative majority on the Wisconsin supreme court struck down a stay-at-home order from the state’s Democratic governor on Wednesday, further illustrating the remarkable amount of power Republicans have in the state and the way they have been able to curb the authority of their Democratic rivals.
The Wisconsin decision is the most significant legal victory for conservatives, egged on by Donald Trump, who are beginning to challenge stay-at-home orders across the country through protests and legal actions. Republican lawmakers in Michigan, where the legislature is extremely gerrymandered, are also challenging the legal authority of a similar order issued by the state’s Democratic governor there. Other suits from businesses challenging stay-at-home orders in other states have been largely unsuccessful, so far.
The decision was the latest in a nasty partisan battle in Wisconsin between Republicans and Democrats that has shaped the last decade. The state is narrowly divided politically and seen as a crucial state to win for both campaigns in the November presidential election.
Stranded without support, international students across Australia rely on free food to survive
International students and other temporary visa holders locked out of federal government support are relying on food banks and restaurants giving away free meals to survive during the coronavirus pandemic.
Images of long lines outside emergency relief services have emerged in the international student hubs of Sydney and Melbourne, as well as smaller cities including Darwin.
Australia has more than 560,000 international students, many of whom have supported themselves with part-time or casual jobs while studying.
But as the economy has shut down and with the federal government declining to offer direct financial support to temporary visa holders, the queues forming outside food banks each day suggest that startling numbers are now struggling to feed themselves.
National food relief charities say the increase in demand has been huge, driven by a surge in requests from temporary visa holders.
Here is the video of US President Donald Trump saying that he could ‘cut off’ the relationship with China following the coronavirus outbreak.
In an interview wth Fox Business, Trump expressed his disappointment with China for failing to contain the Covid-19 outbreak before adding he maintained a good relationship with leader, Xi Jinping, but ‘right now, I don’t want to speak with him’:
China marks one month with no new coronavirus deaths announced
China has gone a month without announcing any new deaths from the coronavirus, AP reports.
The National Health Commission reported four new cases of the virus Friday, all local cross-infections in the northeastern province of Jilin where a cluster of uncertain origin has been detected in recent days. The last time the commission reported a death was on 14 April.
Just 91 people remain in treatment for Covid-19 and 623 others are under isolation and monitoring for being suspected cases or for having tested positive without showing symptoms, including 11 newly detected.
In total, China has reported 4,633 deaths among 82,933 cases since the virus was first detected late last year in the central city of Wuhan.
China has maintained social distancing and bans on foreigners entering the country, but has increasingly opened up the world’s second-largest economy to allow both large factories and small businesses to resume production and dealings with customers. The government plans to hold the ceremonial parliament’s annual session later this month, but with highly limited access for journalists and others.
Beleaguered cruise operators signalled a return in demand for cruises that would set sail late this year or early 2021 after travel restrictions and no-sail orders due to the Covid-19 pandemic raised concerns about the future of the industry.
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd and Carnival Corp said on Thursday customers were booking trips, even though there was no clarity on when the cruises would begin.
Shares of Norwegian, Carnival and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd reversed course following the positive commentary on demand from Norwegian executives on a post-earnings call.
The cruise industry has been hammered by the coronavirus as health officials asked customers to avoid cruises and extended port quarantines in Japan and California.
Norwegian Cruise’s Chief Executive Officer Frank Del Rio said the company noticed a significant amount of new cash bookings in April and collected advanced ticket sales.
“It took decades to build this industry,” Del Rio told analysts on the call. “And in a matter of weeks, we dismantled it. And it’s going to take not decades to build it up again, but a little time. And we just have to be patient.”
This three Michelin star Virginia restaurant has its own innovative solutions to the new normal:
There you are enjoying a nice meal at an ornate, three-Michelin star restaurant, when you spot something odd. The waiter refills the wine glass of the patron sitting next to you. The person does not move, they do not blink. They do not even say “thank you” to the waiter. You are dining with a dummy. Welcome to dining out in the age of coronavirus.
That’s the experience the Inn at Little Washington, a restaurant in northern Virginia, is planning for diners as they experiment with what dining in could look like amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
With the idea that guests may feel lonely eating at a restaurant that can only reach 50% capacity – the maximum mandated by Virginia’s social distancing regulations – the restaurant will be placing mannequins throughout its dining rooms.
A pub with no bar: what visiting a pub in the Australian state of New South Wales will look like now
In Australia, the New South Wales state government has announced that bars and clubs with kitchens will be able to reopen on 15 May, as Covid-19 lockdowns ease. Restaurants and cafes will be permitted to reopen on the same date.
But to say that “pubs are reopening” does not quite capture the truth of the situation. Bars and pubs will be subject to the same social distancing and headcount caps as other venues – with 4 square metres of space for each patron, up to a maximum of 10 patrons. Pubs and clubs will only be allowed to open “an eating area on the premises” according to the public health order issued 14 May, and can serve alcohol “only if any liquor sold is sold with or ancillary to food served”.
The experience most typically associated with a pub – ordering a beer from the counter – will not be back on the menu. “The ability to conduct politics at the front bar of a pub are probably a way away yet,” John Green of the Australian Hotels Association told Guardian Australia:
Updated
Reunions, eating out and a lot of haircuts: New Zealand embraces relaxation of lockdown
Charles Anderson reports for the Guardian from Nelson:
Joshua Young was raring to get to the Tahunanui Beach playground on Friday morning.
For almost two months, the seven-year-old Nelson resident has had to see one of his favourite play spots wrapped up in caution tape, while New Zealand undertook the strictest lockdown in its history.
While Joshua and his mother Claire Young have explored other parts of Nelson, there was no substitute for the popular beachside park.
“We are lucky here that there are plenty of places to play without climbing structures, but he just couldn’t wait to come today,” she said.
Returning to the playground was one of several signs of normality creeping across New Zealand as the nation settled into Covid-19 alert level 2.
It began on Thursday with the re-opening of shops, malls, cafes, restaurants, cinemas, and other public spaces, including playgrounds and gyms. Family members kept apart by the lockdown were also finally allowed to reunite. Next week, schools and early learning centres across the country will also reopen.
Vietnam reported 24 new coronavirus infections on Friday, all of which were imported cases involving Vietnamese citizens returning from Russia who were placed under quarantine on arrival, the country’s health ministry said.
The Southeast Asian country has gone 29 days without a domestically transmitted infection and has registered a total of 312 cases, with no deaths, the ministry said.
Over 90% of Vietnam’s confirmed cases have recovered.
Mexico sees record one-day increase in cases
Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday confirmed 257 additional coronavirus deaths and 2,409 new infections, the biggest one-day rise in cases since the pandemic began.
The new infections brought confirmed coronavirus cases to 42,595 and 4,477 deaths in total, according to the official tally.
Updated
Meanwhile, the EU pledged to step up support for the island’s breakaway Turkish-run north. Commission president Ursula Von Der Leyen, responding to a request for aid from the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mustafa Akinci, said the bloc would provide 2.5 million euro for the immediate purchase of medical equipment. Further assistance will also be sent for the support of 25 health workers over the next three months with additional aid earmarked for farmers, she wrote in a letter to Akinci.
“The pandemic has forced humanity to deal with an unprecedented situation so we must all do our part and work together throughout these difficult times,” the EU chief was quoted as saying in the letter.
A moderate, whose five-year term was due to end in April before the coronavirus caused presidential elections to be postponed, Akinci had requested the support at the end of March.
The leader had been slammed by the self-styled state’s hawkish prime minister and other hardline nationalist politicians for previously accepting aid from Greek Cypriots. One MP described it as a backhanded attempt to “make the Greek side look nice.”
Akinci has said he will be competing for a second term when the polls take place October 11th.
After implementing strict lockdown measures, Cyprus, the EU’s eastermost member, has managed to keep a tight lid on the pandemic reporting 905 confirmed cases in the internationally recognised Greek south and some 108 in the north. To date there have been 24 Covid-related deaths in the south and four in the north.
Another case of coronavirus has been detected in Cyprus’ sovereign British base areas, it was announced on Thursday.
A statement confirmed “one further member of the British Forces Cyprus community” had tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday. The individual was in self-isolation after displaying what were described as “only mild symptoms.”
“This brings the total number of positive tests within the British bases to 12,” the announcement said.
It was unclear if the person had travelled recently from the UK. Despite commercial air traffic being suspended since 21 March by Greek Cypriot authorities in the war-split Mediterranean island, the UK military is believed to have continued airlifting personnel on transport planes from Britain. The Republic’s lockdown regulations are however adhered to on the overseas territories with arrivals from the UK screened for the virus and ordered to self-isolate for two weeks.
The bases – a legacy of Cyprus’ past as a former crown colony – are home to nearly 6,000 British military personnel and their dependents.
Brazil confirmed cases pass 200,000
The number of cases in Brazil passed 200,000 on Thursday.
The country now has 202,918 confirmed cases, with 13,944 added in last 24 hours, according to health ministry.
The tally means it is the sixth-worst-affected country worldwide in terms of cases, according to Johns Hopkins data.
844 new deaths were reported in last 24 hours, bringing the total to 13,993.
Updated
And in other Trump news, in case you missed it:
Donald Trump goes maskless to tour medical equipment facility
Donald Trump traveled to a medical equipment distribution facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, to tout a plan to replenish and upgrade the vital federal stockpile.
According to the pool report, “the president and his entourage were led around by Owens and Minor employees, who explained their distribution system and the products they handle.
“Trump and [White House chief of staff] Mark Meadows did not wear masks. Everyone else did.”
The Pennsylvania event had the trappings of a campaign rally. For his remarks, Trump approached the podium to the sound of God Bless the USA:
Meanwhile a reporter for News 12 Long Island has shared this video of Trump supporters at a protest:
The level of anger directed at the media from these protestors was alarming. As always, I will tell a fair and unbiased story today. pic.twitter.com/5jCR0YY9VH
— Kevin Vesey (@KevinVesey) May 14, 2020
Trump’s remarks drew ridicule from Hu Xijin, editor in chief of China’s influential Global Times tabloid, who referred to Trump’s much-criticized comments last month about how Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, might be treated:
This president once suggested COVID-19 patients inject disinfectants to kill the virus. Remember this and you won't be surprised when he said he could cut off the whole relationship with China. All I can say is he is beyond my imagination for a normal president. pic.twitter.com/nl3icbhgUE
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) May 14, 2020
Trump says he could cut China ties
US President Donald Trump signalled a further deterioration of his relationship with China over the novel coronavirus, saying he has no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping right now and going so far as to suggest he could even cut ties with the world’s second largest economy, Reuters reports.
In an interview with Fox Business Network broadcast on Thursday, Trump said he was very disappointed with China’s failure to contain the disease and that the pandemic had cast a pall over his January trade deal with Beijing, which he has previously hailed as a major achievement.
“They should have never let this happen,” Trump said. “So I make a great trade deal and now I say this doesn’t feel the same to me. The ink was barely dry and the plague came over. And it doesn’t feel the same to me.”
Trump’s pique extended to Xi, with whom the US president has said repeatedly he has a good relationship.
“But I just – right now I don’t want to speak to him,” Trump said in the interview, which was taped on Wednesday.
Trump was asked about a Republican senator’s suggestion that US visas be denied to Chinese students applying to study in fields related to national security, such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
“There are many things we could do. We could do things. We could cut off the whole relationship,” he replied.
“Now, if you did, what would happen? You’d save $500 billion,” Trump said, referring to estimated US annual imports from China, which he often refers to as lost money.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s coverage of the global coronavirus pandemic.
I’m Helen Sullivan, with you for the next few hours. You can get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
US President Donald Trump has said he has no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping right now and going so far as to suggest he could even cut ties with the world’s second largest economy. More on this shortly.
Meanwhile, more than 300,000 people are confirmed to died in this crisis so far, according to Johns Hopkins University figures. The true number is likely to be higher.
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Global death toll passes 300,000. The global toll from Covid-19 has just passed 300,000, with nearly 4.5 million people infected.According to data collected by Johns Hopkins University, at least 301,370 people have now died as a result of the outbreak.The institution says it has counted 4,426,937 confirmed cases worldwide. It’s important to point out that the actual death toll is believed to be far higher than the tally compiled from government figures.
- Nearly 600,000 Australians have lost their jobs during the pandemic. Almost 600,000 Australians lost their jobs between March and April, unemployment rose to 6.2%, the underemployment rate increased by 4.9 points to 13.7% and the underutilisation rate increased by 5.9 points to 19.9%.The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said the figures were “terribly shocking, although not totally unexpected”.
- Doctors in Italy and France report spike in rare inflammatory syndrome linked to coronavirus. Doctors in northern Italy, one of the areas hardest hit by coronavirus, and in France have reported spikes in cases of a rare inflammatory syndrome in young children that appears similar to one reported in the US, Britain and Spain, according to a report in the Lancet.The condition shares symptoms with toxic shock and Kawasaki disease including fever, rashes, swollen glands and, in severe cases, heart inflammation.
- Donald Trump visits a mask distribution centre without wearing a mask himself. Donald Trump toured a mask distribution centre in the political swing state of Pennsylvania on Thursday but without wearing a mask himself.Trump, who is running for re-election in November, has resisted wearing a mask in public despite his administration’s guidance to Americans to wear them and new White House rules requiring staff to wear them at work.
- A vaccine for coronavirus must be available to all countries, the EU has insisted, after the British chief executive of French drugs company Sanofi said it was reserving the first shipments of its vaccine for the US. “The vaccine against Covid-19 should be a global public good and its access needs to be equitable and universal,” said the European commission spokesman, Stefan de Keersmaecker.
- 36 million Americans are now unemployed as another 3 million filed for benefits. The latest figures from the Department of Labor show the rate of claims is slowing but the record-breaking pace of layoffs has already pushed unemployment to levels unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
- The European commission has suspended the delivery of 10 million face masks from China after two countries complained about the poor quality of the batches they received, the Associated Press reports. As part of its efforts to tackle the Covid-19 crisis, this month the commission started dispatching the masks to healthcare workers in its 27 member states and the UK.
- Officials in Bangladesh have announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in the country’s Rohingya refugee camps. Health experts and NGOs have issued warnings that the virus could race through the camps that house almost a million people forced to flee a military offensive in Myanmar almost two years ago.
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Greece will open 515 organised beaches to the public this weekend, but alcohol and music will be banned, along with sports and games. Scientists advising the government also insisted that given the dictates of social distancing there can only be 40 people per 1000 sq meters.
- Governments, health authorities and civil society groups should urgently address mental health problems sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, the UN secretary general has said. Launching a policy briefing on mental health during the outbreak, António Guterres said that “the Covid-19 pandemic is now hitting families and communities with additional mental stress.”
- Ten people in Vietnam, including a 70-year-old military veteran, have offered to donate their lungs to a British man who is the country’s most seriously ill Covid-19 patient. “We are touched by their good intentions, but current regulations don’t allow us to transplant lungs donated by most living people,” a representative of Vietnam’s organ transplant authority said.
