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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Helen Sullivan (now and earlier); Kevin Rawlinson, Damien Gayle, Gregory Robinson and Jessica Murray (earlier)

US reports more than 25,000 new cases – as it happened

Indian paramilitary soldiers patrol a street during lockdown in Ahmedabad, India.
Indian paramilitary soldiers patrol a street during lockdown in Ahmedabad, India. Photograph: Ajit Solanki/AP

We’ve launched a new blog at the link below. Head there for a summary of the days’ events and all the latest developments:

Some Canadian hospitals are collecting used N95 masks so that they can be decontaminated and worn again should new ones become impossible to find amid a global scramble for personal protective equipment caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The issue has become more pressing in Canada after the United States blocked some exports of protective gear. On April 5, Canada’s chief medical officer, Theresa Tam, said hospitals should not throw away medical masks, including N95 respirators, because it may be possible to disinfect and re-use them.

The CHEO Research Institute in Ottawa is preparing to sterilize the masks with ultraviolet light for the CHEO pediatric health center.

US President Donald Trump has directed federal agencies to use any authority necessary to keep highly sought-after medical supplies in the country, kicking off a diplomatic spat with Canada over N95 masks produced by 3M Co.

Canada’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, has characterized the market for medical equipment as “a Wild West,” and the government is encouraging more domestic production of medical supplies.

That press conference has now ended.

Meanwhile back at the White House, Trump says the WHO has “treated the US very badly for decades.”

Shortly afterwards he tells the press tomorrow will be a “big day” and leaves the podium.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday he regrets US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull funding for the agency, but that now is the time for the world unite in its fight against the new coronavirus.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference that the United States “has been a long-standing and generous friend of the WHO, and we hope it will continue to be so.”

“WHO is reviewing the impact on our work of any withdrawal of US funding and we will work with partners to fill any gaps and ensure our work continues uninterrupted,” Tedros added.

Global health campaigner and donor Bill Gates tweeted that “Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds ... The world needs WHO now more than ever.”

But Washington showed no sign of softening its stance, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pressed China’s top diplomat on the need for full transparency and information sharing to fight the pandemic.

Trump is asked why the US has 20% of the world’s deaths when it makes up just 4% of the global population.

“Does anybody really believe the deaths in China?” Trump responds.

There are some countries “that are in big big trouble,” says Trump. “And they don’t report the facts.”

“We report the facts and we’re getting better.”

Trump says he will execute constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress so he can make recess appointments to fill vacancies.

“If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress,” Trump said.

No president has ever used that authority.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in NLRB v. Noel Canning that the president cannot use his or her authority under the Recess Appointment Clause of the Constitution to appoint public officials unless the Senate is in recess and not able to transact Senate business.

Trump is asked now why his name was added to the coronavirus relief checks

“I don’t know much about it he says,” but he understands it’s not delaying anything and “people will be very happy to get a big fat beautiful check with my name on it.”

Updated

US Vice President Mike Pence says new guidelines will be given to governors tomorrow and then released to the public. Some areas of the country will need continued mitigation while others will be given greater flexibility, he says.

Pence says people who have recovered from the virus have antibodies that can attack the virus and that the Mayo clinic is working to ensure patients will have access to these antibodies.

Everybody who has recovered should contact their local blood plasma centre and donate. He says 1000s of people have already done so.

Updated

In other US news:

New York residents will be required to wear face coverings when they are out in public and coming in close contact with other people, Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday.

The new outbreak-fighting mandate will require a mask or face covering on busy streets, subways, buses or any situation where people cannot maintain 6 feet of social distancing. The promised executive order from Cuomo echoes recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a way to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

The order takes effect Friday, the governor said, and either a mask or a cloth covering such as a bandanna will work.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s Coronavirus Response Coordinator, is speaking now. She says there has been a decline in the rate of new cases.

There are nine states with fewer than 30 new cases per day.

California and Washington State “never really had a peak” because of the hard work that was done by people there to self isolate, she says.

Speaking more generally:

There are those of you who might just want to “have that dinner party for 20” she says. Don’t do it.

There are states with very few cases, which have been relatively “silent” throughout the pandemic, says Dr Birx, and these are the ones President Trump is speaking about when he says some states may open before 1 May.

Trump says we will have information tomorrow (Thursday) on which states will be reopening and when.

You can watch today’s White House press briefing live here:

Trump threatened to close both houses of Congress for “obstructing” his ability to appoint judges and other positions.

He claimed he has confirmed close to 250 judges through the Senate, but said there are 129 positions stuck in Congress that could be working on coronavirus solutions.

He specifically called out stalling of his appointee to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, says Voice of America’s coverage is “disgusting.”

“The things they say are disgusting toward our country”, he said.

Trump has this morning reiterated the decision to halt funding to the WHO while an investigation is conducted into whether there was a “cover up”, Trump said, among other mistakes.

“I have a feeling they knew exactly what was going on”, he said. “The US government has put a hold on funding to the World Health Organization pending a review of the organization’s cover up and mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak”.

Updated

You can get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan – questions, comments and news tips welcome.

Hi, Helen Sullivan with you now. I’ll be bringing you the most important developments from the White House press conference, where Donald Trump has just said he believes some states will be able to open before 1 May.

There are governors “champing at the bit” to reopen, he said.

In opening remarks at his press briefing in Washington, the US president Donald Trump has said it is “clear our aggressive strategy is working”, citing numbers of new coronavirus cases in New York and Detroit falling.

Data suggests we have passed the peak in new cases.

He added that, in a news conference on Thursday, his administration will be announcing guidelines for reopening the United States. CDC director Robert Redfield said on Wednesday 19 or 20 of the 50 states may be ready to reopen by 1 May.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, says he hopes the five permanent members of the UN security council can endorse the secretary general’s call for a ceasefire in all conflicts to tackle the pandemic in the coming days.

Macron, who has been pushing for more international cooperation in fighting the virus, said in an interview with French radio RFI that he is only waiting for agreement from the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to hold the five-country video conference to discuss António Guterres’ call.

In England, the National Health Service (NHS) has generated 33,000 extra beds after giving unprecedented free rein to individual trusts to transform both their processes and infrastructure, healthcare chiefs have said.

A report from NHS Providers, a body representing more than 200 NHS trusts in England, said media focus on the new field hospitals ignored how much spare capacity had been created in hospitals in a matter of weeks.

The 33,000 beds are the equivalent of building 53 more district general hospitals across the country.

The report found that by “tearing up red tape” and ditching “the myriad of regulations that have ossified existing structures and ways of doing things”, the NHS has been able to adapt at incredible speed.

Healthcare provision carries lots of risk so some level of regulation will always be necessary. But it’s amazing how much has been achieved how quickly with a significantly lighter, and more flexible, approach to regulation.

Drone footage from Ireland shows the streets of Dublin eerily empty after the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, announced lockdown restrictions would be extended for another three weeks.

The measures, which prevent people from leaving home in all but limited circumstances, were due to expire on Easter Sunday.

Venezuela’s government is employing harsher measures in one of Caracas’ largest barrios to ensure residents comply with a quarantine, as many poor Venezuelans continue to head outside in search of scarce food and water.

Over the past few days, local Socialist party councils have issued permits to thousands of families living in the Catia barrio that allow only one family member out at a time, and deployed a feared special police unit to enforce the measure, community leaders and residents told the Reuters news agency.

Public Health England has said it is working to support a nursing home where 24 residents have died; including eight who tested positive.

Staffordshire county council said a total of 18 residents and one staff member had tested positive at the area’s largest care home, Bradwell Hall Nursing Home in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

The local authority said there have been 24 deaths in just over three weeks at the home, including 16 who were not tested for the virus.

The home, which has around 140 residents, has been working closely with the council, Public Health England and the NHS during the outbreak, and has been closed to new admissions for more than three weeks.

Despite Brazil’s backlog of more than 90,000 specimens awaiting testing and a rising death toll, laboratories are idle due to a lack of materials, the agriculture ministry has said.

Brazil’s agriculture ministry has told Reuters that seven labs it had made available and that were cleared by the health regulator two weeks ago are still not being used for tests.

The ministry said the facilities could process an initial 12,000 tests per week but are not receiving the necessary reagents for testing.

In an emailed response to questions, Brazil’s Health Ministry did not directly address why the available labs were not being used. It said it was striving to increase testing capacity despite a “shortage of inputs and the high global demand for testing kits.”

In the UK, a medical ventilator to help patients breathe has been granted regulatory approval, meaning hundreds could be rolled out to hospitals from next week.

Penlon’s ESO2 device, developed under the codename Project Oyster, will become the first model to get the green light from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), with an announcement expected as soon as Thursday.

Formal approval comes amid mounting concern that tens of thousands of ventilators ordered by the government are still awaiting regulatory clearance.

Companies rescued by EU state share-buying programmes during the pandemic will be barred from paying executives bonuses, according to a leaked document from the European commission seen by the Guardian.

The restrictions, which would extend to a ban on dividend payments and share buybacks, could be imposed on companies where the government has taken an equity stake in order to keep the business afloat through the global pandemic.

If backed by the EU’s 27 member states, the rules would apply to the UK – under the Brexit transition period, which is due to end on 31 December, the UK follows all EU rules but is not able to help decide them.

Ireland’s highest number of daily cases so far is due to increased testing and not as a result of the virus spreading more quickly among the population, the country’s chief medical officer has said.

Ireland’s total number of cases rose to 12,547, including 657 positive results processed domestically and 411 more that were mostly taken in March and were sent to a German laboratory to help clear a backlog.

The diplomatic spat between France and China is widening as French senators demand to know why the article that sparked it is still on the Chinese embassy’s website, despite Beijing’s envoy having been summoned by the French foreign minister.

The French language article is part of a series of posts and tweets by the embassy defending Beijing’s response to and criticising the West’s handling of the pandemic.

The timing of the dispute is especially awkward for Paris because it is still awaiting delivery of the 600m masks it has ordered from China.

The French presidency and foreign ministry were initially cautious in their response to the article. But, after a growing clamour, the foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian summoned China’s ambassador to stress his disapproval, while underscoring the good relationship they have.

During a parliamentary hearing with Le Drian on Wednesday, several senators expressed their dismay and demanded to know why the controversial article was still live.

Updated

The French Armed Forces Ministry says 668 people have tested positive in the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle naval group; the majority of them on the carrier.

US reports more than 25,000 new cases

Washington’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 605,390 cases of coronavirus – an increase of 26,385 cases from its previous count – and said the number of deaths has risen by 2,330 to 24,582.

The CDC reported its tally of Covid-19 cases as of 4pm ET (9pm BST) on 14 April, compared with its count a day earlier. The figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

Summary

Here’s a summary of the latest news:

You can read a summary of earlier events here.

Campaigning groups and NGOs are beginning to issue their responses to the G20’s announcement that it would suspend poorer countries’ debt payments from 1 May until the end of the year.

It’s a positive step, they say. But overall they are not hugely impressed.

Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said:

Suspending debt owed to rich countries is only one piece of the puzzle. Huge sums are owed by poor countries to rich private banks and investors in New York and London. They should be pushed to cancel debts by enforcement and not left to voluntary action. Other debt payments are owed to multilateral institutions including the IMF and World Bank, and these too should be cancelled for the year.

The IMF can sell some of its huge gold reserves that have risen in value by $20 billion in just the last three months —the windfall profits of that alone would more than cover multilateral debt payments owed this year by the poorest countries.

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said:

We’re pleased there is consensus that many developing countries should not being forced to service their debts this year. The coronavirus crisis would make this impossible. But what the G20 has offered falls well short of real debt cancellation. For a start, the G20’s moratorium means interest continues to accrue and debt would still need to be paid after 2020. This will create a new crisis-point for many countries which were already encumbered with debts run up since the 2008 financial crash.

Second, this cancellation, it seems, will come out of the money already designated for developing countries in aid money. So these countries are effectively paying for their own debt relief.

Third, some of the most egregious debt is owned to the private sector. Tough action needs to be taken so this debt is also written down. Unless this happens, we will see the obscene spectacle of this debt being sold and speculated on, with vulture funds suing impoverished countries in courts here in London.

France reports 1,438 more Covid-19 deaths

France has reported 1,438 more deaths from Covid-19, including 924 from care homes, bringing the total death toll from the coronavirus outbreak to 17,167.

At a daily briefing on the situation in France, Jérôme Salomon, the head of the health authority, also announced 2,632 new confirmed cases of the virus, bringing the total tally of infections to 106,206 so far.

The number of patients in hospital with Covid-19 was down 513, while the numbers in intensive care fell by 273. The number in intensive care has now fallen for the seven days in a row.

Salomon said more than 30,000 people have returned home after hospital treatment.

Updated

Belgium’s lockdown will remain almost unchanged until 3 May, after a warning the health system might not cope with a sudden end to restrictions, writes Jennifer Rankin in Brussels.

The prime minister, Sophie Wilmès, announced the decision following a recommendation from an expert group, who warned that ending the measures too quickly could overwhelm hospitals.

“We wish to warn against too rapid and too-little-thought-through relaxation of the mesures,” said the group’s report seen by state broadcaster RTBF. “It can only take place within the framework of a long-term strategy clearly communicated.”

The group said its modelling showed a risk that too-rapid easing of measures could overwhelm the healthcare system, where pressure is already “high”.

From the 20 April there will be a gentle easing of a few measures. Garden centres and DIY shops will join supermarkets and pharmacies on the list of businesses permitted to open. Residents in care homes for older and disabled people will also be allowed visits from one single member of their family, as long as neither have shown symptoms of the virus in the previous two weeks. But schools will remain closed.

Sophie Wilmès, Belgium’s prime minister, holds a news conference to announce the extension of the lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19
Sophie Wilmès, Belgium’s prime minister, holds a news conference to announce the extension of the lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 Photograph: Reuters

Belgium has been one of the hardest-hit countries in Europe, with one of the highest per-capita death rates. According to the latest official data, 4,440 people have lost their lives to the virus. However unlike the UK, Belgium includes in the total deaths in care homes, which account for 49% of victims. Belgium also includes people suspected of having died from coronavirus, even when no conclusive test has taken place, which may also elevate the numbers.

The number of new daily arrivals in hospital has been declining since the end of March, with the latest figures also showing a slight decrease in people in intensive care.

On Wednesday Belgium recorded a significant jump of 2,454 cases taking the total to 33,573. This reflects a big expansion in testing in care homes and not an increase in transmission rates, stated the national crisis centre, which compiles the statistics.

Updated

Lone migrant children relocated from Greek camps

Accelerated by fears over Covid-19, migrant children have begun being evacuated from Greece, reports Helena Smith in Athens.

The first unaccompanied migrant children, forced to endure appalling conditions in overcrowded Aegean island camps, have been relocated to Luxembourg. The twelve youngsters flew out of Athens today in what is seen as a seminal moment for the resettlement of minors to other EU member states.

“The importance of this crucial initiative is amplified now due to the challenges we are all facing from Covid-19,” said Ola Henrikson regional director at the International Migration Organisation.

“Relocation of vulnerable children especially at a time of heightened hardship, sends a strong message of European solidarity and we hope to see this expand soon.”

Unaccompanied children from overcrowded migrant camps arrive at the port of Piraeus ahead of their relocation to Luxembourg
Unaccompanied children from overcrowded migrant camps arrive at the port of Piraeus ahead of their relocation to Luxembourg Photograph: Costas Baltas/Reuters

The organisation conducted what it described as standard health assessments and medical examinations on the children, including tests for the novel virus with “all results returning negative.”

It also arranged “predeparture orientation sessions” for the children to prepare them psychologically for the journey and in this case, Luxembourg, the country that will now adopt them.

Ten EU member states and Switzerland have agreed to take in 1,600 minors, many of whom made long and perilous journeys to get to Greece.

Following today’s departure of eleven boys and a single girl, a further 50 girls also arrived in the Greek capital from Chios, Samos and Lesbos, before continuing onto Germany at the weekend.

“Twelve children are today looking at a brighter future in a new country,” said Philippe Leclerc, the UN refugee agency’s permanent representative in Greece. “European countries must work together to share the responsibility with Greece and ensure that all unaccompanied children are safe and faced for.”

Concerns have mounted over island camps after Greek authorities were forced to quarantine two refugee facilities on the mainland following the detection of coronavirus among detainees.

Updated

Health authorities in Iraq have reported 1,378 confirmed cases of coronavirus as of Tuesday, and 77 deaths, according to a situation report by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Most of the country’s cases are concentrated in the capital, Baghdad, followed by Basrah and Kerbala. Curfews and movement restrictions across Iraq remain in place until 18 April, except for life-saving and humanitarian activities

UNHCR says:

For the time being, no cases have been identified affecting UNHCR persons of concern ... The widespread respect to the postponement of religious gatherings where millions of pilgrims were expected to assemble has helped contain the spread of the virus and has given the country a wider margin of time to stabilise the outbreak.

A health worker checks her phone in between treating patients with suspected Covid-19 at a hospital in the central Iraqi of Karbala on Monday
A health worker checks her phone in between treating patients with suspected Covid-19 at a hospital in the central Iraqi of Karbala on Monday Photograph: Mohammed Sawaf/AFP via Getty Images

Sierra Leone had recorded two new cases of coronavirus as of Tuesday night, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 13.

“All cases are in the treatment facility and are in stable condition,” the country’s government said in a statement on Wednesday.

South Africa’s minister for health has announced seven more deaths from Covid-19 in the country. The total number of confirmed cases of coronavirus so far detected is 2,506.

The grand duchy of Luxembourg has become the latest European country to order its citizens to wear face masks.

The grand duchy’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, said:

Mouth protection will be obligatory, whether it be a scarf, a bandana or a mask.

Belgium has extended its stay-at-home order until at least 3 May, and banned mass gatherings – concerts, festivals and sporting events – until the end of August, AFP reports.

Schools, bars and restaurants have been closed since mid-March, while the country’s per capita death rate has risen to among the highest in the world.

By Wednesday, Belgium had recorded 4,440 deaths among a population of 11.4 million, one of the highest rates in the world, although Belgian officials say they have kept closer track of deaths in retirement homes than some countries.

Updated

Riding high on an outpouring of global support, Tedros is now trolling Trump.

Updated

While some people have lost their incomes entirely as a result of the coronavirus lockdowns around the world, others are doing just fine.

The Amazon CEO and entrepreneur, Jeff Bezos, has grown his vast fortune by a further $24bn so far during the coronavirus pandemic, a roughly 20% increase over the last four months to $138b, reports Kenya Evelyn in Washington.

Bezos owns an 11% stake in the company and has been the world’s richest person since 2017.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau says his government will widen the scope of eligibility for financial aid during the coronavirus pandemic, addressing mounting frustration that current guidelines penalize students, freelance and contract workers, writes Leyland Cecco in Toronto.

In his daily address Wednesday morning, Trudeau said that anyone making $1,000 or less per month would now be eligible for the ‘Canada Emergency Response Benefit’, which pays $2,000 CAD (1,400 USD) each month for four months. He said:

Maybe you’re a volunteer firefighter, or a contractor who can pick up some shifts, or you have a part-time job in a grocery store. Even if you’re still working, or you want to start working again, you probably need help making ends meet.

Previously, applicants had to have sustained two weeks of no income — and could not have any subsequent income after applying for the benefit.

Trudeau also announced plans to top up the income of essential workers who make less than 2,500 per month, including those working in long-term care homes, which have been hard hit by the virus.

Nearly six million people have applied for the emergency benefits, according to the federal government.

Trudeau also reiterated his call for patience as the federal government works with provinces to determine when physical distancing requirements might be eased. He said Canadians should expect weeks more of the measures, warning of “terrible” consequences if changes were made too early, allowing a new wave of infections to hit the country.

Italy reports 578 new Covid-19 deaths

The number of deaths from coronavirus in Italy rose by 578 on Wednesday, 24 less than on Tuesday, taking the death toll to 21,645, Angela Giuffrida reports.

The number of people who are currently infected rose by 1.1%, or 1,127, in a day, 525 more than on Tuesday. Italy’s civil protection authority said the number of intensive care beds in use continues to fall, with 1,000 fewer people in intensive care than two weeks ago.

To date, there have been 165,155 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Italy, including the victims and 38,092 survivors.

Updated

G20 finance ministers have agreed to suspend poorer countries’ debt payments from 1 May until the end of the year, as they prepare for increased spending on healthcare systems during the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s according to a communiqué issued earlier today. The G20 said that it will be time-bound (so not quite a jubilee) and it also said that private creditors should match the terms. From the communiqué:

We support a time-bound suspension of debt service payments for the poorest countries that request forbearance. We agreed on a coordinated approach with a common term sheet providing the key features for this debt service suspension initiative, which is also agreed by the Paris Club.[...]

We call on private creditors, working through the Institute of International Finance, to participate in the initiative on comparable terms.

For more economics news, read our business blog.

Updated

NYC death toll revised to over 10,000

New York City has revised its Covid-19 death toll sharply upwards to more than 10,000 people, with the city now firmly established as being at the heart of the global coronavirus crisis, Oliver Milman reports from the Guardian’s US office.

The soaring death toll has been fueled by the adding of 3,778 people who weren’t tested for Covid-19 but are presumed to have died from it. Last week, Bill de Blasio, New York City’s mayor, admitted that the official death toll was probably too low as many people who died at home or in nursing homes weren’t included.

Adding these likely Covid-19 deaths to bring the official death toll to 10,367 will help New York City determine the scope of the crisis, according to Oxiris Barbot, the city’s health commissioner. She said:

Behind every death is a friend, a family member, a loved one. We are focused on ensuring that every New Yorker who died because of Covid-19 gets counted.

New York City’s per capita death toll from the virus now outstrips Italy, with its total number of deaths only slightly behind that of the UK. The coronavirus has been a punishing blow to the city, where a procession of wailing ambulance sirens is often the only sound on eerily quiet streets.

Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s foreign minister, has announced that Finland will increase its support and funding for the World Health Organization, in response to Donald Trump’s decision to withhold funding from the US.

He writes:

[The] US decision to suspend @WHO funding is a big setback. Finland will continue its support and will increase its funding for the organisation this year. It is in these times that the WHO is most needed to defeat the coronavirus.

Refugees applying for asylum in Germany fear the government is failing to shield them from coronavirus as infections at one crowded reception centre have risen sharply in recent days, Philip Oltermann, the Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief, reports.

Confirmed cases of coronavirus at a facility in the south-western town of Ellwangen where refugees are accommodated while their asylum applications are processed had increased from seven to 251 in five days, authorities confirmed on Tuesday.

None of the residents at the centre, which holds 606 people from 26 nations including China, Ghana and Syria, are currently believed to be in a critical condition, though one person has been transferred to a nearby hospital.

Even though the Ellwangen centre has been under lockdown since 5 April and authorities say they have tested new arrivals for Covid-19 since early March, residents complain crowded conditions, shared facilities and a lack of protective equipment and disinfectant makes it impossible to avoid contact with people already infected with the virus.

Germany’s number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 2,486 to 127,584 on Wednesday, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday, meaning the number of new infections rose after four days of decline.

The reported death toll has risen by 285 to 3,254, the tally showed.

UK hospital Covid-19 death toll rises by 761

The UK department of health has reported 761 new deaths from Covid-19, slightly down on the equivalent figure reported yesterday, 778.

It is worth noting that the UK, unlike countries elsewhere in Europe, does not include deaths outside of hospital in its daily statistics, so it cannot be handily compared with equivalent statistics published in, for example, France or Spain.

Care home leaders have accused the government of vastly underestimating the deaths of elderly people from coronavirus.

In a time of coronavirus, sometimes you have to make do with what is at hand, writes Kim Willsher, the Guardian’s Paris correspondent.

Faced with a shortage of sanitising gel for his workers, Burgundy vineyard owner Nicolas Rossignol, from Gevrey-Chambertin, drew off some of the “head” distillation from a batch of Marc de Bourgogne, a strong eau-de-vie made from grape skins and seeds after the juice has been extracted to make wine.

“It’s around 80% alcohol, so it’s ideal for disinfecting hands and equipment,” the winemaker said.

Workers checking the vines, ploughing out weeds and repairing the trellises are also following social distancing rules. Rossignol added:

In the vines, it is one to a plot, or else we leave two or three rows between us (2 to 3m) if we have to work in the same place. In addition to tying up and fixing trellising, we are also starting to plow. I have two tractors, so each driver has their own.

Canadian economy slides 9% in a month

Canada’s statistics agency has said the country’s economy suffered a decline of nearly 9% in March – the worst figure ever recorded – as the country battles the coronavirus, Leyland Cecco in Toronto reports.

In a “flash estimate” of the country’s GDP figures released Wednesday morning, Statistics Canada said it hoped to capture the scale and depth of disruption resulting from a lockdown of the nation’s economy. The agency said:

Even though the basis of calculation is different, in a relative sense, this would be the largest one-month decline in GDP, since the series started in 1961. Overall for the quarter, this flash estimate of GDP leads to an approximate decline of 2.6% for the first quarter of 2020.

While the agency says its March numbers are calculated differently than normal GDP figures, the data nonetheless capture the scope of economic contraction.

The hardest hit sectors have been travel and tourism related, alongside retail, restaurants and entertainment. The health sector, food distribution, online retailing and streaming services all experienced growth.

In recent days, as many as six million Canadians have applied for government aid measures to blunt the effects of the recession. Most Canadians who have lost their jobs are eligible for government assistances totalling $2,000 CAD (1,400 USD) every month for four months.

Updated

Five more people have died from Covid-19 in Serbia in the past 24 hours, said health authorities as they reported 408 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, local news site Telegraf reports.

The death toll from Covid-19 is 99 in the central Balkan country, while the total number of cases of coronavirus recorded so far is 4,873. Health minister Zlatibor Lončar said 557 medical workers have been infected.

Updated

Andrea Bocelli’s Easter Sunday livestream from Milan Cathedral reached over 2.8 million peak concurrent viewers, making it one of the biggest musical live streamed performances of all time and the largest simultaneous audience for a classical music live stream in YouTube history, writes Guardian reporter Gregory Robinson.

Bocelli, who has seemingly become a YouTube superstar, sang a selection of carefully chosen and arranged pieces including Ave Maria and ended with a performance of Amazing Grace.

On Easter Sunday, Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli broke records with an emotionally-charged solo performance, Music for Hope, streamed live via YouTube from the Duomo in Milan
On Easter Sunday, Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli broke records with an emotionally-charged solo performance, Music for Hope, streamed live via YouTube from the Duomo in Milan Photograph: Luca Rossetti, Courtesy Sugar SRL, Decca Records

The video received more than 28m views from across the globe in its first 24 hours. The performance has received coverage in more than 100 countries worldwide and reached the top of YouTube’s trending charts in multiple countries, including the US, UK, Italy, Canada, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Colombia. The video continues to trend globally across YouTube and other social media platforms.

The online concert was part of this year’s virtual Easter celebrations as millions of worshipers came together remotely and through the internet due to having to stay indoors due to lockdown rules.

In a statement, Bocelli said:

I am moved and delighted to have received such an overwhelming reaction, that has gone beyond our highest expectations. For an artist, yesterday’s event is the reason for the sacrifices of a lifetime; for a believer and a Catholic as I am, it was further confirmation of the benevolent smile with which the Heavenly Father looks to his children.

It was an immeasurable honour and privilege to lend my voice to the prayers of millions of people, gathered in a single embrace – a small, great miracle of which the whole world was the protagonist and which confirms my optimism about the future of our planet.

Updated

WHO director calls for "unity" after US funding cut

The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has called for unity against the “common threat” posed by coronavirus, after Donald Trump announced he would withhold US funding.

In the opening statement of the WHO’s daily press conference Ghebreyesus reaffirmed the principles of the organisation’s founding ideals and constitution, “to protect and promote the health of the world’s people”.

Addressing Trump’s decision to withhold funding, he continued:

The United States of America has been a longstanding and generous friend to WHO and we hope it will continue to be so. We regret the decision of the president of the United States to order a halt in the funding to WHO. With support from the people and government of the United States, WHO works to improve the health of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

… This is a time for all of us to be united in our struggle against our common threat. When we are divided the virus exploits the cracks between us.

Ghebreyesus said the WHO would work with its other member states and partners to try to make up any shortfall in funding, but he would not be drawn in questioning into saying just how much the organisation would be left out of pocket.

Any issues with or criticisms of the WHO’s work could be addressed in due course, he said:

This is part of the usual process put in place by our member states. No doubt areas for improvement will be identified and there will be lessons for all of us to learn. But for now, our focus – my focus – is on fighting the virus … WHO is getting on with the job.

Concluding his statement, Ghebreyesus added:

Since the beginning WHO has been fighting the pandemic with every ounce of our soul and our spirit. We will continue to do that until the end.

Updated

The World Health Organization’s daily coronavirus briefing is about to start.

We are expecting to hear director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus respond to Donald Trump’s decision last night to withdraw US funding from the UN health body, which has already been sharply criticised by world leaders, scientists and doctors.

Earlier, Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said there was no justification for Trump’s decision; Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, called it “indefensible”, while his counterpart in Iran, Javad Zarif, said the world was finally learning what his country already knew about the US: “It kills people.”

You can watch the briefing in the player embedded at the top of the blog.

Updated

The UK has said it will not follow the US in withholding funding for the World Health Organization, but the government’s spokesman refused to directly criticise the decision by Donald Trump to do so.

Asked in a daily briefing for journalists for the UK’s response to the president’s move, the spokesman said:

Our position is that the UK has no plans to stop funding the World Health Organisation which has an important role to play in leading the global health response. Coronavirus is a global challenge and it’s essential that countries work together to tackle this shared threat.

When asked if the government was disappointed by Trump’s decision to freeze payments to the WHO, the spokesman said:

I can only set out the UK’s position, and that is that we have no plans to stop funding the World Health Organisation.

Follow the Guardian’s UK live blog for the latest updates.

New measures are being implemented in South Africa to crackdown on disinformation spreading on social media about coronavirus, AFP reports.

A “hi-tech monitoring and evaluation process” is being rolled out to intercept misinformation about the virus and government responses to the outbreak, said a statement by the communications department.

South Africa has the continent’s highest number of confirmed coronavirus infections, with 2,415 cases detected so far and 27 deaths.

Acting communications minister Jackson Mthembu said:

We are stepping up our campaign against digital misinformation, particularly in relation to Covid-19 and related actions such as the national lockdown.

... We also need to remind South Africans that spreading fake news or disinformation about Covid-19 is a punishable offence. Arrests have already been made, and they will continue if people persist in spreading fake news.

A soldier hands out pamphlets informing township residents about Covid-19 during the national lockdown in South Africa
A soldier hands out pamphlets informing township residents about Covid-19 during the national lockdown in South Africa. Photograph: Kim Ludbrook/EPA

Under emergency laws enacted last month aimed at curbing growing infections, peddling misinformation on the deadly coronavirus in South Africa will attract up to six months in jail or a fine.

A strict 21-day lockdown imposed on 27 March has since been extended by two weeks to the end of April, despite a slowdown in the daily rise of recorded infections.

Updated

One more person has died in Kenya after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing the total death toll from Covid-19 in the country to 10. So far, Kenya has reported 225 confirmed cases of coronavirus.

Updated

Orthodox Christians in North Macedonia and Serbia are preparing for an Easter weekend with closed churches, AFP reports.

The two Balkan nations introduced nationwide curfews in March to halt the spread of the Covid-19 disease – including a total weekend lockdown from Friday afternoon until Monday morning.

A worshipper leaves Belgrade’s cathedral in this photo taken late last month
A worshipper leaves Belgrade’s cathedral in this photo taken late last month. Photograph: Oliver Bunic/AFP via Getty Images

In Serbia, the Orthodox church wanted the curfew to be lifted on Easter Sunday to enable believers to attend Mass. But officials in Belgrade and Skopje instead tightened the measures for the Easter weekend, extending the usual lockdown until Tuesday morning.

Serbia has 4,456 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 94 deaths. In North Macedonia, 908 people have been infected and 44 have died.

In neighbouring Montenegro, several priests, including Archbishop Amfilohije, leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the country, were detained on Sunday for violating a ban on Masses implemented in March.

Updated

Confirmed cases worldwide top 2m

The latest numbers from Johns Hopkins University, which has tracked the spread of the virus during the pandemic, puts the confirmed global total of cases at 2,000,984.

Updated

In Hawaii, people who know how to sew are making face masks with the same colourful prints used for aloha shirts, known as Hawaiian shirts. Many of the masks are made from scraps of material or old aloha shirts from their homes.

Disposable surgical masks are in short supply, and people want to preserve whats available for nurses and doctors working with Covid-19 patients.

Candy Suiso, a high school teacher, wears masks made by her sister. Her husband also wears the masks. She said:

Its another way of really showing the love and aloha spirit for each other. Especially in these times right now, when we cant see our family, we cant see our friends, we cant see our co-workers.”

Hawaii reported 517 people had tested positive for the coronavirus and nine people had died as of Tuesday.

Aloha shirts first emerged in Hawaii in the 1930s and became accepted businesswear locally in the 1960s. They often feature brightly coloured fabric and island motifs such as hibiscus flowers, fruit, seashells and palm trees.

A Hawaiian wearing a mango print cloth mask made by her sister. Face masks made with the same colourful prints used for aloha shirts are the latest fashion trend in Hawaii as islanders try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus
A Hawaiian wearing a mango print cloth mask made by her sister. Face masks made with the same colourful prints used for aloha shirts are the latest fashion trend in Hawaii as islanders try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Photograph: Candy Suiso/AP

Updated

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio urged a cautious and deliberative approach to reviving the economy, saying that moving too quickly could create an opportunity for the coronavirus to resurface.

De Blasio said that some parts of Asia have experienced a resurgence of the virus after reopening. He told Fox and Friend after President Trump said he would work with governors on a plan to return things to normal nationwide by the end of the month or even sooner, AP reports.

We cannot allow that. We get one chance to get it right.

I think we have to be smart about doing it in stages, making sure that we can confirm that were containing the disease more and more, getting it back to where it was a month or two ago, before we start to open up a lot.

The first thing to think about is the human reality of thousands more human beings we lost and families that are in pain. But then we also have to think about what it means for all of us and to really recognise the sheer ferocity of this disease.”

Updated

H&M, the world’s second-biggest fashion retailer, has announced it has begun producing protective aprons at a supplier and would deliver 1m aprons to the Swedish healthcare system over the coming two weeks.

The company is one of a number of fashion retailers mobilising to help fight the coronavirus pandemic.

H&M Mandatory Credit: Photo by IBL/REX/Shutterstock (10602215a) - 02 Apr 2020
H&M
Mandatory Credit: Photo by IBL/REX/Shutterstock (10602215a) - 02 Apr 2020 Photograph: IBL/REX/Shutterstock

The apron for H&M is being produced in accordance with the ISO13485 quality standard and requirements set by Swedish healthcare authorities, a H&M spokeswoman said in a statement.

H&M also started production of protective face masks for hospital staff.

Updated

Millions of South Koreans wore masks and disposable gloves as they voted in parliamentary elections on Wednesday, the highest turnout in nearly three decades despite the coronavirus, reports Reuters

The government resisted calls to postpone the elections billed as a “midterm referendum on President Moon Jae-in”, who enters the final two years of his single five-year term in the midst of a historic public health crisis that is leading to a large effect on the economy.

South Korean National Election Commission officials count ballots for the parliamentary election in Seoul, South Korea. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
South Korean National Election Commission officials count ballots for the parliamentary election in Seoul, South Korea. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) Photograph: Ahn Young-joon/AP

In an initial count, the National Election Commission said more than 17.2 million people voted on Wednesday. Combined with the 11.8 million who cast their ballots during early voting or by mail, the overall turnout was 66.2%, the highest since 71.9% turnout in a 1992 general election.

To hold the elections as scheduled, South Korean officials and health authorities carefully prepared safeguards to reduce the risk of the virus being transmitted.

Duct tape or stickers marked a metre (three feet) of social distancing space from nearby streets to ballot booths. Masked poll workers checked temperatures of arriving voters and whisked anyone with a fever or not wearing a mask to separate areas to vote, sanitising the facilities after each one. Voters who passed the fever screening were given sanitising gel and disposable plastic gloves before entering booths.

This is Gregory Robinson taking over the live blog for the next hour. If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter to share insight or send tips, I’m on @Gregoryjourno or send me an email at gregory.robinson@guardian.co.uk

Updated

Javad Zarif, the foreign minister of Iran, has become the latest leading voice to condemn the US’s defunding of the World Health Organization (perhaps unsurprisingly).

Iran itself is battling the Middle East’s most deadly outbreak which has left over 4,700 dead and more than 76,300 infected.

‘Mixed with prejudice’: calls for ban on ‘wet’ markets misguided, experts argue

Their suspected role in the first transmission of the coronavirus to humans, at the outset of the pandemic that has circled the world, has made so called “wet markets” a target for those looking for someone to blame.

But experts say attacks and calls to ban wet markets because of their potential for spreading diseases such as Covid-19 may be missing the point, reports Michael Standaert in Shenzen, China.

Last week more than 60 US lawmakers called for a global ban on what are referred to interchangeably as “live wildlife markets” or “wet markets”. And animal welfare groups have also been calling for a ban. They were followed this week by Sir Paul McCartney, a long-time vegetarian campaigner, who called wet markets “medieval” and said that it made sense to ban them.

But experts who know the markets well say that they are just one link in a chain of both legal and illicit wildlife trade that needs intensive regulation, monitoring and enforcement to reduce heath risks, demand and consumption.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Netherlands rose by 734 to 28,153, health authorities said on Wednesday, with 189 new deaths.

The total death toll in the country is 3,134, the Netherlands’ Institute for Public Health (RIVM) said in its daily update.

At the end of March the Dutch government extended lockdown measures, including the closure of sports facilities, establishments serving food and drink and childcare centres until 28 April. Schools remain closed until at least the end of the May school holidays.

A son meets his mother in the first “quarantainer” in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In this container, people who cannot visit each other due to coronavirus can still see and speak to each other
A son meets his mother in the first “quarantainer” in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In this container, people who cannot visit each other due to coronavirus can still see and speak to each other Photograph: Jeroen Jumelet/ANP/AFP via Getty Images

A former head of Britain’s spy agency, MI6, has accused China of concealing information about its coronavirus from the rest of the world.

Sir John Sawers, who ran MI6 between 2009 and 2014, was responding to Donald Trump’s decision to withhold US funding from the World Health Organisation, on the grounds it had “covered up” the spread of the Covid-19. He told the BBC it would be more appropriate to criticise Beijing. He said:

There is deep anger in America at what they see as having been inflicted on us all by China, and China is evading a good deal of responsibility for the origin of the virus, for failing to deal with it ... initially.

... Intelligence is about acquiring information which has been concealed from you by other states and other actors. Now, there was a brief period in December and January when the Chinese were indeed concealing this from the West.

Sawyers, who has also served as the UK’s permanent representative to the UN, said the pandemic would have an impact on international relations.

The trends that are under way anyway, the growing dependence on technology, the weakening of international bodies like the United Nations, the shift of economic power to Asia - I think these are all going to move forward more rapidly now as in the context of this pandemic.

Drinking alcohol does NOT protect you from coronavirus, sadly.

Sweden has reported 170 more deaths from Covid-19, bringing the total death toll from the coronavirus in the country to 1,203.

On Wednesday, the Nordic country passed the grim milestone of 1,000 coronavirus deaths, far exceeding the tolls of its nearest neighbours, as scientists continue to question the government’s light-touch approach to the pandemic, writes Jon Henley, the Guardian’s Europe correspondent.

An advert in Stockholm instructs people to stay 2m apart to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus
An advert in Stockholm instructs people to stay 2m apart to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

The Public Health Agency on Wednesday announced a total death toll of 1,203 from Covid-19, a rate of 101 per million inhabitants compared to 51 in neighbouring Denmark and just 11 in Finland, both of which imposed strict early lockdowns to curb the virus’s spread.

Sweden’s per-million tally is also significantly higher than the 37 recorded in Germany and the comparable US figure of 79 – but remains lower than the UK’s rate of 182 and far below Italy’s 348 and Spain’s 386.

A group of 22 doctors, virologists and researchers on Tuesday criticised the health agency in an op-ed published by Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

“The approach must be changed radically and quickly,” the group wrote. “As the virus spreads, it is necessary to increase social distance.”

Updated

Oil slumps despite production cuts

Global oil prices have slumped as traders fear plans for the biggest production cuts in history will fail to offset the deepest fall in demand in 25 years, Jillian Ambrose, the Guardian’s energy correspondent, reports.

US oil prices tumbled to 18-year lows of $19.20 a barrel on Wednesday morning and the benchmark price for Brent crude dropped by 5% to $28 a barrel amid gloomy forecasts for demand during the coronavirus pandemic.

The world’s energy watchdog told the market to brace for the lowest oil demand in 25 years because of the global lockdown across numerous countries and territories to contain the virus.

Oil demand will this month hit its lowest levels for the year, according to the International Energy Agency, falling 29m barrels a day below last year’s average to levels not seen since 1995. The IEA said:

Even assuming that travel restrictions are eased in the second half of the year, we expect that global oil demand in 2020 will fall by 9.3m barrels a day versus 2019, erasing almost a decade of growth.

The singer Rita Wilson has claimed to have suffered “extreme side effects” after being treated with the experimental Covid-19 drug chloroquine in an Australian hospital, writes Guardian Australia reporter Naaman Zhou.

Wilson, who was touring Australia, and her husband, Tom Hanks, who was filming a Baz Luhrmann film about Elvis Presley, both tested positive for Covid-19 on 12 March while in Australia.

The drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are used to treat malaria, but their ability to treat Covid-19 is still disputed by experts, despite being touted by the US president, Donald Trump, as a “gamechanger”.

Wilson and Hanks were admitted to Gold Coast University hospital in Queensland for treatment, where Wilson said she was given chloroquine after she developed a fever of 38.9C. Describing the experience to US broadcaster CBS, Wilson said:

They gave me chloroquine. I know people have been talking about this drug. But I can only tell you that – I don’t know if the drug worked or if it was just time for the fever to break.

My fever did break but the chloroquine had such extreme side effects, I was completely nauseous, I had vertigo and my muscles felt very weak … I think people have to be very considerate about that drug.

Angela Merkel’s government is pushing to extend the “contact ban” introduced in Germany to slow down the spread of Covid-19 until 3 May, German media reported at lunchtime on Wednesday, writes Philip Oltermann, the Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief.

Under Germany’s federalised system the closure and reopening of schools and nurseries falls under the jurisdiction of the 16 Länder, meaning any concerted exit strategy from the lockdown will require cooperation from state premiers.

Ahead of a conference call between the German chancellor and the 16 regional heads at 2pm CET, Bild newspaper reported that Merkel wanted to take “small steps to work on starting public life again”.

Social distancing restrictions, which in Germany ban gatherings of more than two people, are to be extended until 3 May, however.

A man wearing a protective face mask waits at a bus stop in Berlin’s city centre
A man wearing a protective face mask waits at a bus stop in Berlin’s city centre. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Political clashes over the timetable for an exit route out of the lockdown have cut across German party line in unusual ways. Markus Söder, the conservative premier of Bavaria, who has until now ruled himself out of the race to lead the CDU, has become the most prolific advocate of extending restrictions and holding off reopening schools.

The Bavarian has seen his popularity ratings in the country surge to unprecedented levels, now ranking above Merkel.

The state premier of North-Rhine Westphalia, Armin Laschet, until now seen as the Merkel continuity candidate, is now the leading advocate of reopening schools and has faced criticism for calling to reopen schools as soon as next week.

Updated

Summary

Here is a summary of the key headlines in world coronavirus news today.

Updated

Tour de France postponed until August

The Tour de France has been postponed by two months due to the coronavirus pandemic, world governing body the UCI has announced, AFP reports.

The 107th edition of the race was due to begin in Nice on 27 June and conclude in Paris on 19 July, but the UCI on Wednesday issued new dates, with the opening stage on 29 August and the finale on 20 September.

Postponement of the race became inevitable on Monday when French president Emmanuel Macron announced there could be no mass gatherings in the country until mid-July.

The fate of the Tour was seen as critical for the economics of cycling given team’s reliance on sponsorship, which is turn reliant on the exposure brought by the world’s biggest race.

Updated

Here’s the World Health Organization’s latest breakdown on confirmed coronavirus cases in Africa.

South Africa has the most confirmed cases, followed by Egypt, then Algeria.

The death toll from coronavirus in Iran rose by 94 to 4,777 in the past 24 hours, the health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour has said.

In a statement broadcast on state television, Jahanpour said that 1,512 new cases of infection have been detected since yesterday, bringing Iran’s cumulative total number of coronavirus cases to 76,389.

Iran was one of the first countries to suffer a serious outbreak of the coronavirus after it was first identified in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019. Jahanpour said that overall 299,204 coronavirus tests have been carried out in Iran so far

There are currently 3,643 Covid-19 patients in a critical condition in hospitals in the country, he added.

People wearing protective masks cross a main road in Tehran Tuesday
People wearing protective masks cross a main road in Tehran Tuesday Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images

Updated

'One year before vaccine,' says EU agency

The European Union’s medicine regulator has estimated it could take one year before a coronavirus vaccine is available for widespread use.

“The European Medicines Agency estimates that it might take a year before a vaccine against Covid-19 is ready for approval and available in sufficient quantities to enable widespread and safe use,” reported the EU executive in a strategy paper published on Wednesday.

The European commission president Ursula von der Leyen has previously claimed a vaccine could be on the market “before autumn”, following a meeting with executives at the German company CureVac, one of many organisations working on a vaccine.

The EU has already promised more money for vaccine research, as well as speeding up usual regulatory steps, such as clinical trials and authorisations.

The statement was part of a report billed as a roadmap on lifting the Covid-19 lockdowns. The commission, which has no power to end border closures or reopen shops and businesses, is advising countries to consider three factors before easing restrictions:

  • Disease progression – is there a sustained reduction in the number of new infections, hospitalisations and patients in intensive care?
  • Health system capacity – can healthcare systems cope with any future increases if measures are relaxed?
  • Monitoring – does a country have “large-scale testing” programmes to detect and monitor the spread of the virus?

Von der Leyen also urged countries to talk to each other and Brussels before lifting measures to avoid unintended consequences, such as a surge in the number of cross-border shoppers if restrictions are lifted on one side of the border and not another.

The paper warned:

A lack of coordination in lifting restrictive measures risks having negative effects for all member states and creating political friction.

Updated

A call by NGOs for increased protection of domestic workers in Lebanon during the coronavirus crisis has cast a fresh spotlight on the predicament of migrant workers across the Middle East – many of whom are highly vulnerable to the pandemic, and without support, writes Martin Chulov, the Guardian’s Middle East editor.

In parts of the Levant, the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, workers from south Asia and south-east Asia account for a large proportion of labor forces. Closed airports, bonded labour, or other forms of unbreakable employment contracts, and little access to funds, have made it close to impossible for those who want to leave to do so.

In Lebanon, where an economic meltdown had already shattered household incomes before the coronavirus lockdown, both Amnesty International and the International Labour Organisation fear that many domestic workers are no longer being paid. There are concerns that with families confined to homes, workers have been forced into more intensive and dangerous work, facing obsessive demands to clean inside the house, and dangerous xenophobia on rare trips outside.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa regional director, said:

As one of the most marginalised groups in Lebanon, the government needs to clearly warn that it will prosecute employers who exploit or abuse migrant domestic workers. It should also ensure they are granted access to health care during the pandemic.

In Lebanon, the 250,000 strong migrant workforce consists primarily of domestic workers who usually live in the homes of their employers.

In the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC), where foreign workers make up 90% of the population of the UAE, 60% in Kuwait, 50% in Bahrain, and 33% in Saudi Arabia, large numbers of migrant workers are instead housed in labor camps. Many have been stood down since the corona outbreak, and can neither depart for their home countries or leave their compounds. Social distancing is very difficult and access to advanced health care is often limited.

While official coronavirus numbers in the Gulf states are relatively low, compared with the region’s most seriously affected state, Iran, there are concerns that migrant camps are dangerous incubators for the virus, and are not adequately checked by authorities who give precedence to citizens and expatriate residents.

When the region’s airports eventually open, potentially by the end of Ramadan in late May, some GCC countries are expecting many laid off skilled and unskilled workers – who can still afford to leave – to attempt to do so. In the meantime, several million others face what NGOs believe to be a heightened risk and increasing uncertainty

The coronavirus crisis has crippled employment across the Gulf and could spell ruin for construction, retail and other sectors. The upshot could threaten the very future of migrant labour in all countries – and in turn threaten the viability of some of the world’s richest economies.

Updated

The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has slammed the US decision to withhold funding from the World Health Organization.

I expect there will be more criticism of Donald Trump’s latest mercurial move before the day is out. In a few hours we will have the WHO’s daily briefing, in which we expect to hear a response from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organisation’s director general. In previous briefings he has not pulled his punches when responding to US criticism.

The Philippines reports 230 new confirmed cases of coronavirus on Wednesday, and 14 deaths.

In a bulletin, the health ministry said coronavirus deaths have reached 349 while total confirmed cases have increased to 5,453, keeping the Philippines as the country with the most infections in Southeast Asia, Reuters reports.

But 58 patients have recovered, bringing the total to 353, it added.

Three new confirmed cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Zambia, the country’s national public health institute reports, bringing the total so far in the country to 48. All the latest statistics from the country are in this Twitter thread.

More than half of the total confirmed cases of coronavirus so far have been in Europe, according to a tally kept by AFP.

The French news agency reports that as of 8.30am on Wednesday, Europe had at least 1,003,284 cases, including 84,465 deaths, making it the worst hit continent. Globally, 1,991,019 COVID-19 infections and 125,955 deaths have been registered.

The Guardian usually relies on the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, which does not aggregate the numbers by continent. The Maryland, US- based university was was reporting a global total of 1,988,143 just before 11.30am.

With many countries testing only the most serious cases, the tallies probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

German foreign minister Heiko Maas is the latest to join the chorus of criticism aimed at Donald Trump after the US president suspended payments to the World Health Organization. Maas wrote on Twitter:

Blaming others won’t help. The virus knows no borders ... One of the best investments is to strengthen the UN, above all the under-financed WHO... in the development and distribution of tests and vaccines.

Maas has previously taken aim at the Trump administration’s reaction to the virus crisis, AFP reports.

In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine last week, he said the US had “played down the virus for a very long time”.

“There really isn’t any dispute, even in the USA, that many of the measures were taken too late,” he told Spiegel.

This is Damien Gayle taking control of the live blog now, with the latest updates from around the world, but particularly Europe, the Middle East and Africa. If you have any tips or suggestions for things we could be covering please email me at damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or send me a direct message via Twitter to @damiengayle.

Countries that ease restrictions imposed to fight the spread of the coronavirus should wait at least two weeks to evaluate the impact of such changes before easing again, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

In its latest strategy update, the UN agency said the world stands at a “pivotal juncture” in the pandemic and that “speed, scale, and equity must be our guiding principles” when deciding what measures are necessary.

Every country should implement public health measures to maintain a sustainable state of low-level or no transmission and prepare its surge capacity to react rapidly to control any spread, the WHO said.

Some of the countries hardest hit by the virus are now considering lifting lockdowns and beginning the transition toward a resumption of normal life.

“To reduce the risk of new outbreaks, measures should be lifted in a phased, step-wise manner based on an assessment of the epidemiological risks and socioeconomic benefits of lifting restrictions on different workplaces, educational institutions, and social activities …” the WHO said.

“Ideally there would be a minimum of two weeks (corresponding to the incubation period of Covid-19) between each phase of the transition, to allow sufficient time to understand the risk of new outbreaks and to respond appropriately,” it added.

It warned that the “risk of reintroduction and resurgence of the disease will continue”.

Updated

Amazon said on Wednesday it planned to appeal against a French court ruling limiting deliveries to essential goods in order allow for a deeper assessment of coronavirus risks at its sites in the country.

“We’re puzzled by the court ruling given the hard evidence brought forward regarding security measures put in place to protect our employees”, the US online retailing giant said in a statement.

“We’re assessing the consequences of this decision and our options and we think we will appeal,” the company added.

Updated

Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, has said Trump’s halting of funding to the World Health Organization is an “indefensible decision”.

On Twitter, Coveney said:

This is indefensible decision, in midst of global pandemic. So many vulnerable populations rely on ⁦WHO – deliberately undermining funding and trust now is shocking.

Now is a time for global leadership and unity to save lives, not division and blame!

Updated

Calls and messages to Italy’s biggest network of women’s shelters have surged during the coronavirus lockdown.

Between 2 March and 5 April, 2,867 women turned to centres operated by D.i.Re, the Women against Violence Network, 74.5% more than the monthly average registered during 2018.

“This figure confirms how much forced co-existence exacerbates situations of violence that women were experiencing,” said Paola Sdao, who collates annual data for D.i.Re.

About 806 calls or messages were from woman who had never previously turned to the network for support, a fall compared to previous months.

Calls to the national helpline, 1522, have also decreased during the period because many women fear being overheard by abusive partners, or are stopped from leaving home.

“One thing that worries us is the new requests for help, which represent only 28% of the total, when in 2018 they represented 78% of the total number of women accommodated,” added Sdao.

“Although we have asked for extraordinary resources and necessary protections to help manage reception, in most cases anti-violence centres and shelters have had to autonomously ensure women’s safety and find emergency accommodation.”

Spain's daily death toll falls again

The number of deaths from the coronavirus in Spain in 24 hours fell again on Wednesday to 523, from 567 reported the previous day, the country’s health ministry said.

The daily death toll brought the total number of fatalities to 18,579.

The overall number of cases in the country rose to 177,633 on Wednesday from 172,541 the day before.

With more than 5,000 more cases logged overnight, the increase in new cases appears to be holding at 3% a day, well down from a daily average of 12% at the end of March and 20% in mid-March.

Updated

Germany will consider easing coronavirus-related restrictions on the retail sector from 20 April, according to several participants in a call held on Tuesday between the chancellery and state chancelleries.

They also told Reuters that the rules on social distancing and travel could be extended until 3 May.

At a press conference on the EU’s response to the coronavirus crisis, the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has outlined three criteria for lifting lockdown restrictions.

She said member states should consider infection rates, the capacity of healthcare systems and the level of testing available before lifting restrictions that could trigger a rise in cases.

She also said the European commission’s plan should not be seen as a signal that countries should start lifting lockdown measures now.

Updated

China is trying to exploit the global crisis triggered by the coronavirus outbreak by wresting control of companies such as Imagination Technologies and changing the way the internet works, a senior British lawmaker said on Wednesday.

Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs select ommittee, told Sky:

We’re seeing quite a lot of action by the Chinese state, or state-owned companies, that seem to be exploiting this moment.

Companies like Imagination Technologies … it’s been facing a rather hostile change in management in the last few weeks, which happened to coincide not just with the Covid crisis but also the prime minister being taken into hospital and the Easter weekend.

Tugendhat said he was concerned by US president Donald Trump’s decision to suspend funding for the World Health Organization.

“I’m concerned by this,” he said. “This is of course an important time for the WHO to be doing its job.

“I understand his concerns with the way that the WHO has failed to call out China or indeed recognise the success that has been going on in Taiwan amongst other places.”

Updated

Amazon faces having its operations reduced to a bare minimum in France, after a court ruled the e-commerce giant can deliver only essential goods while the company evaluates its workers’ risk of coronavirus exposure.

The court in Nanterre, outside Paris, said Amazon France had “failed to recognise its obligations regarding the security and health of its workers”, according to a ruling seen by AFP.

While carrying out the health evaluation, Amazon can prepare and deliver only “food, hygiene and medical products”, the court said.

The injunction must be carried out within 24 hours, or Amazon France could face fines of €1m (£873,500) per day.

Amazon has one month to carry out the evaluation.

An Amazon delivery driver delivers packages in Paris, France.
An Amazon delivery driver delivers packages in Paris, France. Photograph: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

The ruling comes as consumers around the world flock to Amazon during the coronavirus lockdown. But concern has grown over the safety precautions taken by the company, and dozens of workers protested in the US last month.

Amazon has been hiring thousands of workers as business booms in countries affected by the coronavirus outbreak, after authorities imposed business closures and stay-at-home orders to try to limit infections.

Updated

EU sets out roadmap for members to ease lockdowns

The European Union moved on Wednesday to head off a chaotic and potentially disastrous easing of restrictions that are limiting the spread of the coronavirus, warning its 27 nations to move very cautiously as they return to normal life and base their actions on scientific advice.

With Austria, the Czech Republic and Denmark already lifting some lockdown measures, the EU’s executive arm, the European commission, was rushing out its roadmap for members to coordinate an exit from lockdown, which it expects should take several months.

Eighty thousand people have died in Europe from the disease, about two-thirds of the global toll, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

The commission said those scientists should be relied upon to guide national exit strategies in the weeks and months to come.

The European Commission said the easing of lockdowns should take several months.
The European commission said the easing of lockdowns should take several months. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters

Brussels is deeply concerned about the damage that could be done if each EU nation charts its own course, given the panic that reigned after the pandemic first spread in Italy, with unannounced border closures that sparked massive traffic jams and export bans that deprived hard-hit countries of medical equipment.

The EU is very much split in its approach. France this week renewed its lockdown until 11 May, and Belgium appears headed in a similar direction. Spain also recently renewed its state of emergency a second time, for an additional two weeks.

In a draft of its roadmap, seen by the Associated Press, the EU commission says easing restrictions will unavoidably lead to a corresponding increase in new cases.

It warns this should only happen when the spread of the disease has dropped for some time and when hospitals can cope with more patients.

While the commission, which proposes EU laws and ensures that they are enforced, does not spell out exactly how EU countries should make the transition, it does underline that the exit should be gradual.

Business operations should be phased in by sectors, based on factors such as how much can be done over the internet, the economic importance of the industry, or the kinds of shift work that could be introduced.

Social distancing should be maintained and there should be no general return to work, it says.

Shops could gradually reopen, with possible limits on the number of people who can enter, and schools could start again, although the commission recommends smaller classes to allow students to work at a safer distance from each other.

Brussels says a gap of around one month should be left between any steps as their effect can only be measured over time.

Updated

Crowds and long lines have formed in the Moscow metro today as the city’s new electronic permission system may have backfired by trapping thousands of people at bottlenecks on public transport.

Russia on Wednesday announced a record 3,388 new cases of coronavirus, a 16% increase, bringing the country’s total to 24,490.

At this rate, the confirmed caseload will double every five days.

Starting today, Muscovites are required to carry a QR-code giving them permission to travel to work or other destinations in the city. The permission slips became mandatory on Wednesday for drivers and passengers in taxis or on public transport.

Demand is high: the city on Monday said it had already issued 3.2m passes. But the system’s clumsy rollout has sparked outrage, with critics saying the government has created a potential new hotbed for infections.

On Wednesday, large traffic jams formed coming into Moscow as police began checking all cars for the mandatory passes, while metro passengers were forced into queues that could last more than an hour as police individually checked passes.

Sergey Elkin, a popular cartoonist, posted a photo from the Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad metro station comparing the current situation to the outrage at Muscovites flocking to the parks several weeks ago when Vladimir Putin declared a non-working week.

“Now this is the work of the government,” he wrote.

Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, blamed the police for creating the queues. “I spoke with the head of the police department and asked them to organise their work so that further checks would not lead to a mass gathering of people,” he wrote.

Updated

In a first step towards easing coronavirus-related restrictions, Finland will lift roadblocks in the region around Helsinki on Wednesday, the prime minister, Sanna Marin, said.

Travel restrictions to and from Uusimaa, the capital region, to the rest of the country began on 28 March, to prevent people from spreading the virus to other parts of the country.

Marin said the government no longer had legal grounds to continue the lockdown, considering it an extreme measure to restrict people’s freedom of movement so strictly.

“It is no longer an absolutely necessary restriction measure in the way required in the Emergency Powers Act,” Marin said.

The government nevertheless recommended people avoid all unnecessary travel, she said.

The Finnish army had set up roadblocks on all routes that connect the Uusimaa region with the rest of the country.
The Finnish army had set up roadblocks on all routes that connect the Uusimaa region with the rest of the country. Photograph: Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images

Uusimaa has been the centre of the coronavirus outbreak in Finland, but the spread of the disease has levelled out across regions in the past weeks, making the capital region’s lockdown less effective and less justifiable.

The other measures in place include the closure of schools and public places such as libraries until 13 May. Restaurants will remain closed until the end of May, except for takeaway sales.

By Tuesday, Finland had 3,161 confirmed coronavirus cases and 64 deaths, with 232 Covid-19 patients hospitalised, 162 of them in the capital region.

Updated

Kandahar province went into full lockdown on Wednesday morning as Afghanistan reported its second biggest daily rise of new coronavirus cases in a week, triggered by a surge of infections in Kabul.

Afghanistan’s health ministry has reported 70 new positive cases of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, pushing the total number of infections to 784.

Most of the new cases were in Kabul, which has so far recorded 201 cases, 31 today.

Kabul went into full lockdown last week, as all roads to the city of six million were blocked and 1,600 police officers were appointed to monitor movement inside the city.

Of the new Covid-19 cases, 22 were confirmed in the western province of Herat, the worst affected area in Afghanistan so far with 313 cases.

The southern province of Kandahar went into full lockdown on Wednesday morning in a bid to contain the spread of coronavirus in one of Afghanistan’s most populated areas.

A firefighter sprays disinfectant in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan.
A firefighter sprays disinfectant in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

The heath ministry said there were three new cases in Kandahar in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number to 89.

Concerns about infection spread are particularly high in Kandahar, as thousands of Afghan migrants poured back from Pakistan in recent days.

Germany’s government will extend restrictions on movement introduced last month to slow the spread of the coronavirus until at least 3 May, Handelsblatt business daily reported on Wednesday, citing the dpa news agency.

The chancellor, Angela Merkel, is holding a video conference on Wednesday, first with cabinet ministers and later with the leaders of Germany’s 16 states, who will try to agree on whether to ease the measures given some improvement in the situation.

A women walks past street art painted by Kai ‘Uzey’ Wohlgemuth featuring a nurse as Superwoman in Hamm, Germany.
A women walks past street art painted by Kai ‘Uzey’ Wohlgemuth featuring a nurse as Superwoman in Hamm, Germany. Photograph: Lars Baron/Getty Images

Meanwhile, around 725,000 companies in Germany had applied for short-time work by 13 April, the labour office said on Wednesday.

That marked around a 12% increase compared with the previous week, it said, adding that applications had come from almost all sectors but particularly retail and catering.

Short-time work is a form of state aid that allows employers to switch employees to shorter working hours during an economic downturn to keep them on the payroll.

Updated

India will allow industries located in the countryside to reopen next week, as well as resuming farm activities, to reduce the pain for millions of people hit by a lengthy shutdown in its coronavirus battle, the government said on Wednesday.

The prime minister, Narendra Modi, ordered India’s population of 1.3 billion to stay indoors for a further 19 days, after a strict three-week lockdown, saying it was critical to save lives amid the pandemic.

But he said he felt the pain of the poor and on Wednesday the home (interior) ministry released guidelines allowing limited resumption of commerce and industry in the hinterland, which has been less affected by the pandemic.

“To mitigate hardship to the public, select additional activities have been allowed, which will come into effect from April 20,” it said.

Migrant workers and homeless people stand in a queue for food aid on the banks of the Yamuna River during a 21-day nationwide lockdown in India.
Migrant workers and homeless people stand in a queue for food aid on the banks of the Yamuna River during a 21-day nationwide lockdown in India. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Millions of people have been thrown out of work across south Asia since the lockdowns began last month, and growing anger in some areas was reflected in the commercial capital of Mumbai on Tuesday, when hundreds mobbed a train station demanding transport home.

Neighbouring Pakistan, which also announced a two-week extension to its shutdown to halt the virus, said it would reopen construction activity that provides a lifeline for the largest number of its people, after agriculture.

Export industries, such as garments, will also be permitted to begin production, said industries minister Hammad Azhar, adding that the government had made an assessment of the sectors least vulnerable to infection.

“The low-risk industries, meaning where there is less danger of the epidemic’s spread as compared to others, they were identified,” he said.

India has 11,439 infections, government data showed on Wednesday, a jump of 1,076 from the previous day. These include 377 who died.

Pakistan’s caseload is 5,988, including 107 deaths.

Health experts fear the small numbers relative to some Western nations are a result of low levels of testing in the region and that actual infections could be far higher.

Updated

Cases in Russia near 25,000 after record daily rise

Russia reported 3,388 new cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday, a record daily rise, bringing its overall nationwide tally to 24,490.

The country’s coronavirus response centre said 198 people in Russia diagnosed with the virus had now died, an overnight rise of 28.

China urged the United States on Wednesday to fulfill its obligations to the World Health Organization (WHO), after Donald Trump halted funding to the body over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, told reporters during a daily briefing that the situation with the pandemic, which has infected nearly two million people globally, was at a critical stage and the US’s decision would affect all countries across the world.

Updated

A German zoo has said it may have to feed some of its animals to others as it runs low on funds amid the coronavirus lockdown.

Neumünster Zoo’s Verena Kaspari told Die Welt:

If it comes to it, I’ll have to euthanise animals, rather than let them starve.

At the worst, we would have to feed some of the animals to others.

Kaspari said it would be an “unpleasant” last resort, but the zoo is not covered by the state emergency fund for small businesses and the zoo’s loss of income this spring is estimated at about €175,000 (£152,400).

Germany’s zoos are jointly requesting government aid worth €100m, DPA reports, as well as seeking donations from the public.

The national zoo association in Germany argued that zoos, unlike many other businesses, cannot go into hibernation to reduce costs as animals still have to be fed daily, while tropical enclosures need to be heated above 20C.

The Japanese city of Osaka has issued an urgent plea for citizens to donate plastic raincoats to hospitals running short of protective gear for staff treating coronavirus patients, with some doctors resorting to wearing garbage bags.

Japan last week imposed a state of emergency in Tokyo and six other areas, including Osaka, but the number of cases has continued to rise, now standing at around 8,200, with 166 deaths.

By Wednesday afternoon there were nearly 900 cases in Osaka city and the prefecture that surrounds it, making it the second hardest-hit after Tokyo, media said.

Desperately trying to bridge the gap in supplies of protective gowns for its hospitals, a notice on the Osaka city web site said any colour and style of raincoat was acceptable, including ponchos, as long as they were meant for adults.

Ichiro Matsui, Osaka’s mayor, told a gathering in the city on Tuesday that medical facilities were running dangerously short of all sorts of protective gear.

Some people are even wearing garbage bags. We ask anybody who has unused plastic raincoats in their house, or who might have a stockpile of them, to please get in touch.

Japanese medical workers have been warning for weeks that the medical system could soon be pushed to the brink, with nurses telling Reuters they were unsure whether their hospitals had enough advanced PPE such as N95 masks and plastic gowns. Some in Tokyo said they had been told to reuse masks.

The health minister, Katsunobu Kato, met with industry leaders last week, pressing them to ramp up production of masks and other key medical supplies.

Amid the shortage, social media users said they were starting to receive the reusable cloth face masks that the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, pledged to send two weeks ago to every household in Japan, a plan widely ridiculed on social media.

Under the hashtag ‘Two Masks’ - a reference to the number of masks being distributed to each household regardless of the number of residents - many Twitter users said they appeared too small for adults to use and were a waste of tax money when other things, such as subsidies, were needed.

The number of foreign visitors to Japan sank 93% in March from a year earlier as the coronavirus pandemic decimated the tourism industry, government data showed on Wednesday.

Total foreign arrivals, which include tourism and business arrivals, plunged to just 193,700 from 2.76 million in the same month last year, the Japan National Tourism Organization said.

A deserted Tokyo International Airport as the country’s tourism industry plunges.
A deserted Tokyo International Airport as the country’s tourism industry plunges. Photograph: Kimimasa Mayama/EPA

World will need more than one Covid-19 vaccine, GSK chief

The world will need more than one Covid-19 vaccine so drug companies must partner in the race to develop the weapons to fight the coronavirus, the GlaxoSmithKline chief executive officer, Emma Walmsley, said on Wednesday.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Sanofi SA said on Tuesday they would develop a vaccine to fight the fast-spreading coronavirus. The drugmakers said they expect to start clinical trials for the vaccine in the second half of this year.

If successful, the vaccine would be available in the second half of 2021.

Walmsley said GSK’s partnership with Sanofi brings scale to the attempt to get a Covid-19 vaccine but that there was still an enormous amount of work to do.

Emma Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, said the vaccine GSK is developing with Sanofi could be available in 2021.
Emma Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, said the vaccine GSK is developing with Sanofi could be available in 2021. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

“The world’s going to definitely need more than one vaccine when you think about demand in this hugely challenged global health crisis,” she told the BBC.

The adjuvanted vaccine will be developed by combining Sanofi’s S-protein Covid-19 antigen and GSK’s pandemic adjuvant technology. Walmsley added:

It normally takes a decade, sometimes even more, to develop a vaccine but obviously we are in an unprecedented situation, the need is incredibly urgent.

We are partnering with regulators to try and go as fast as we safely can.

Updated

A poster thanking healthcare staff, shopkeepers, security forces, post office workers and farmers in Paris, on the 29th day of lockdown in France.
A poster thanking healthcare staff, shopkeepers, security forces, post office workers and farmers in Paris, on the 29th day of lockdown in France. Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images

Denmark begins reopening schools

Denmark began reopening schools on Wednesday after a month-long closure over the coronavirus, becoming the first country in Europe to do so.

Nurseries, kindergartens and primary schools were reopening, according to an AFP correspondent, after they were closed on 12 March in an effort to curb the Covid-19 epidemic.

However, classes are only resuming in about half of Denmark’s municipalities and in about 35% of Copenhagen’s schools, as some have requested more time to adjust to health protocols still in place.

All are expected to reopen by 20 April.

In early April, the country’s government announced that schools would be reopened “on the condition that everyone keeps their distance and washes their hands”.

Schools are required to ensure that a distance of two metres is maintained between desks in classrooms, and recesses must be organised for small groups.

Claus Moeller, principal at the Stengaard School, checks facilities as he prepares for the reopening of his school for pupils from first to fifth grade, in Gladsaxe, Denmark.
Claus Moeller, principal at the Stengaard school, checks facilities as he prepares for the reopening of his school for pupils from first to fifth grade, in Gladsaxe, Denmark. Photograph: Liselotte Sabroe/EPA

To adhere to guidelines, many schools are favouring outdoor classes, presenting a challenge for schools in urban areas.

Some parents have opposed the reopening of schools, citing health concerns. A petition titled “My child is not a guinea pig” has garnered some 18,000 signatures.

Henrik Wilhelmsen, principal of a school in the Norrebro district said that they “expect quite a lot of children to be kept at home”.

Middle and high school students, will continue remote classes and are only expected to return to classrooms on 10 May.

As of Tuesday, Denmark had 6,691 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 299 deaths.

The country has banned gatherings of more than 10 people and bars, restaurants, hairdressers, shopping malls and clubs have been closed.

Before Denmark, Austria was the first European country to unveil its roadmap for a return to a “new normal”. On Tuesday, it allowed small non-food shops to open up, while maintaining social distancing rules and requiring masks to be worn in shops and on public transport.

Austria plans to keep schools, cafes and restaurants closed until at least mid-May.

Updated

Support for Burkina Faso and Niger has been approved by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) executive board under its Rapid Credit Facility, to help the West African nations confront the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In statements released late on Tuesday, the IMF said the board had approved a $115m disbursement for Burkina Faso and another $114m for Niger.

Updated

The International Rescue Committee has published a report into the possible impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in countries already facing a humanitarian crisis.

The report considered South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, countries where nearly half (46%) of people already lack access to basic health services

Venezuela has only 84 ICU beds nationwide and its existing crisis had forced more than half of doctors to leave the country, while nine out of 10 hospitals face shortages of medicine and critical supplies.

Venezuelan migrants improvise protective masks before being transferred to the border, in Cali, Colombia.
Venezuelan migrants improvise protective masks before being transferred to the border, in Cali, Colombia. Photograph: Ernesto Guzman/EPA

In South Sudan, there are just 24 ICU beds and four ventilators, and only half of Yemen’s hospitals are still fully functional.

North-east Syria has only 28 ICU beds and 11 ventilators, and across northern Syria there were 85 attacks on health facilities last year alone.

It also noted that camps in Syria, Greece and Bangladesh represent some of the most densely populated areas in the world – up to 8.5 times more densely populated than the Diamond Princes cruise ship, where transmission of the virus was four times faster than in Wuhan, China.

In parts of Moria camp, Greece, over 1,300 people share one tap and over 200 share a latrine.

The report’s recommendations included funding for Covid-19 frontline responders to reach the most vulnerable, removing constraints to humanitarian action and coordinating a harmonised global response.

The report states:

Covid-19 is in the early stages of spreading to less developed and fragile countries, which means there is still time to mount a coordinated response that can ease suffering today and guard against dangerous secondary impacts tomorrow.

But the time to act is now.

Updated

The French government has hiked the expected cost of its measures to support the economy though the coronavirus crisis to €110bn ($120.6bn), its finance minister said on Wednesday.

“We are going to go from 45 billion euros in a first economic support plan ... to about 110 billion euros,” Bruno Le Maire said on RTL radio.

He added that the package included €20bn euros to help big companies and said that support would be offered to Air France KLM in the coming days.

I’m Jessica Murray, taking over the blog from Helen and guiding you through the latest coronavirus developments across the globe over the next few hours.

As always, feel free to get in touch via email (jessica.murray@theguardian.com) or Twitter (@journojess_). I might not have time to reply to all messages, but I certainly will read them all.

In New York City, the hardest hit US city in the coronavirus pandemic, the official Covid-19 death toll was revised on Tuesday to include victims presumed to have died with the virus but never tested.

As a result, the new cumulative figure for “confirmed and probable Covid-19 deaths” included an increase of over 3,700 deaths formally attributed to the coronavirus since 11 March, taking the total to over 10,000.

The city’s revised count, 10,367 in all, raised the number of coronavirus deaths nationwide to more than 28,300 - New York accounting for the biggest share of deaths.

With only a tiny fraction of the US population tested for coronavirus, the number of known infections climbed to more than 600,000 as of Tuesday, according to a running Reuters tally.

US public health authorities have generally only attributed deaths to Covid-19 when the patients had tested positive for the virus.

New York City’s Health Department said it will now also count any fatality deemed a “probable” coronavirus death, defined as a victim whose “death certificate lists as a cause of death ‘Covid-19’ or an equivalent.”

The starting point date of 11 March was used because that was the date of the first confirmed coronavirus death, the city said.

Paramedics take a patient into the emergency center at Maimonides Medical Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York.
Paramedics take a patient into the emergency center at Maimonides Medical Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

“Behind every death is a friend, a family member, a loved on,” said health commissioner Dr Oxiris Barbot. “We are focused on ensuring that every New Yorker who died because of Covid-19 gets counted.”

The new approach in New York City could pave the way for similar policies elsewhere across the country, possibly leading to a surge in reported US coronavirus deaths.

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for today. I’m now handing over to my colleague Jessica Murray in London to continue our round-the-clock coverage.

Updated

Donald Trump’s name to be printed on Covid-19 stimulus cheques - report

In case you missed it: the US Treasury has ordered Donald Trump’s name be printed on cheques to be sent to tens of millions of Americans affected by the coronavirus outbreak, a decision that will slow their delivery by several days, according to the Washington Post.

Citing unnamed senior officials at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Post reported the $1,200 cheques – being sent by the as part of a $2.3tn package enacted last month to cushion the economic blow from the pandemic – will “bear Trump’s name in the memo line, below a line that reads, ‘Economic Impact Payment’.”

The Post said the “unprecedented decision” to include Trump’s name was announced to the IRS information technology team on Tuesday.

Trump is seeking re-election in November.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is under pressure to take bolder steps to soften the economic blow of the coronavirus, with calls from his political partners to hand out more cash to more people.

The government announced a nearly US$1 trillion stimulus package last week including cash payouts of 300,000 yen ($2,800), but only for households whose income is judged to have been hit by the coronavirus.

But Natsuo Yamaguchi, head of the Komeito party - the junior partner in the coalition government - urged Abe’s administration to make a payment of 100,000 yen ($935) to every citizen.

On Tuesday, Toshihiro Nikai, a top member of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, called for the government to compile a second supplementary budget to fund a 100,000 yen cash payout to every citizen.

A man checks a notice of a department store in Yokohama near Tokyo, Wednesday, 15 April 2020.
A man checks a notice of a department store in Yokohama near Tokyo, Wednesday, 15 April 2020. Photograph: Koji Sasahara/AP

Government officials have ruled out across-the-board payouts, arguing that targeted support to low-income households hit hardest by the outbreak would be a more effective use of taxpayers’ money.

Abe’s administration is hoping to pass through parliament later this month an extra budget worth 16.8 trillion yen to fund part of the stimulus package.

Japan had 8,191 cases of infections of the coronavirus as of Wednesday, excluding those from a cruise ship quarantined in February, and 162 deaths, according to public broadcaster NHK.

What issues will be considered over lockdown lifting?

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), an expert led government panel, is meeting this week to assess the effect of the lockdown and review whether the conditions are right to relax restrictions.

The panel’s recommendations will inform ministers, who will have the difficult task of deciding what to do next – and then explaining their decision to the public.

Here are some of the key metrics that Sage is likely to consider, why they matter and how they may contribute to the decision-making process.

Here is our list of the main developments in the coronavirus crisis over the past few hours:

More now on Iraq suspending Reuters news agency’s licence:

Iraq has suspended the licence of the Reuters news agency after it published a story saying the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the country was higher than officially reported.

Iraq’s media regulator said it was revoking Reuters’ licence for three months and fining it 25m dinars ($21,000) for what it said was the agency’s violation of the rules of media broadcasting.

In a letter to Reuters, the Communications and Media Commission (CMC) said it had taken the action “because this matter is taking place during current circumstances which have serious repercussions on societal health and safety.”

Germany’s confirmed coronavirus cases have risen by 2,486 to 127,584, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday, meaning the number of new infections rose after four days of decline.

The reported death toll has risen by 285 to 3,254, the tally showed.

Hamburg, Germany on 25 Mar 2020.
Hamburg, Germany on 25 Mar 2020. Photograph: Pixathlon/REX/Shutterstock

As the UK wakes up, here are some of the front pages of the papers:

Thailand reported 30 new coronavirus cases and 2 deaths on Wednesday.

Of the new cases, 19 patients were linked to previous cases, and three had no links to old cases, said Taweesin Wisanuyothin, a spokesman for the government’s Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration.

One of those infected was in state quarantine, and the cases of seven people who tested positive were being investigated.

Since the outbreak escalated in January, Thailand has reported a total of 2,643 cases and 43 fatalities, while 1,497 patients have recovered and gone home.

A man wearing a protective mask walks past Wat Samian Nari temple in Bangkok, on 15 April 2020.
A man wearing a protective mask walks past Wat Samian Nari temple in Bangkok, on 15 April 2020. Photograph: Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP via Getty Images

‘Crime against humanity’: Trump condemned for WHO funding freeze

Leading health experts have labelled Donald Trump’s decision to cut funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) as a “crime against humanity” and a “damnable” act that will cost lives.

The move also drew a rebuke from the head of the United Nations, who said the WHO was “absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against Covid-19”.

Late on Tuesday Trump declared US funding would be put on hold for 60-90 days pending a review “to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus”. The US is the single largest contributor to the WHO.

Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, wrote that Trump’s decision was “a crime against humanity … Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.”

Summary

  • US President Donald Trump announced the suspension of funding to the World Health Organization, as well as an investigation into the WHO’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Trump also walked back his comments yesterday regarding “absolute power” over the states, saying states would have the authority to reopen when it is appropriate.
  • Trump added his name to relief checks, delaying delivery. The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump’s name will be added to to $1,200 relief checks being sent to 70 million Americans – and that this “unprecedented” decision will “slow their delivery by several days.”
  • The US registered a record 2,228 deaths in the last 24 hours. On Friday last week, US daily deaths exceeded 2,000 for the first time with 2,069 people dying in 24 hours.
  • UN Secretary General António Guterres released a statement on the World Health Organization, following Trumps’ decision, saying now “is not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus.
  • The International Monetary Fund slashed its forecasts for global growth and warned of a slump in output this year unparalleled since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It said the “Great Lockdown” is likely to cause a drop in activity more painful than the recession that followed the banking meltdown of the 2008.
  • China reported on Wednesday a decline in new confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the mainland, although an increasing number of local transmissions in its far northeast bordering Russia remained a concern for authorities, Reuters reports.
  • A Zimbabwe court ordered the government to provide protective gear to healthcare workers and roll out mass testing against coronavirus.
  • A German zoo has said it may have to feed some animals to others.Zoos are making contingency plans, including killing some of the animals, should the lockdown continue without a solution to their financial troubles.
  • Italy, Spain and Austria allowed partial returns to work as countries across Europe report further falls in new cases and begin taking the first cautious steps out of lockdown to revive their battered economies.
  • Britain’s economy could shrink by 35% and unemployment rise by more than 2 million people due to the crisis, the official economics forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility warned, as it forecast a 13% fall in GDP for 2020.
  • British charities have said thousands of homeless people are still on the streets despite the government’s aim to house all rough sleepers by the end of last month.
  • France summoned the Chinese envoy. France’s foreign minister has summoned the Chinese envoy after the embassy published a second article on its website criticising western handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Below is New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern announcing she and her ministers along with public service CEOs will take a 20% pay cut for six months.

In Australia meanwhile:

The latest on lockdowns and restrictions elsewhere in the world:

India, the world’s second-most populous country after China, extended its nationwide lockdown of 1.3 million people until 3 May as the number of coronavirus cases crossed 10,000. Neighbours Pakistan and Nepal also extended their curbs.

Russia might need to call in the army to help tackle the crisis, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday. Moscow warned the capital might run out of hospital beds in coming weeks.

South Africa is currently in the middle of a five-week lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus which has so far infected more than 2,400 people.

Updated

More on restrictions being lifted and continued in Europe:

Italy, which has the world’s second-highest death toll at 21,067, maintained some tight restrictions on movement, while Denmark, one of the first European countries to shut down, will reopen daycare centres and schools for children in first to fifth grades on Wednesday.

The Czech government will gradually reopen stores and restaurants from next Monday, although people will continue to be required to wear masks.

Thousands of shops across Austria reopened on Tuesday, but the government cautioned that the country was “not out of the woods”.

Austria acted early to shut schools, bars, theatres, restaurants, non-essential shops and other gathering places about four weeks ago. It has told the public to stay home.
The Alpine republic has reported 384 deaths in total, fewer than some larger European countries have been suffering each day. Hospitalisations have stabilised.

Britain, where the government has come under criticism for its slow approach to testing and for not getting protective equipment to the frontlines of health care, has the fifth-highest death toll globally.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has said there would be no easing of lockdown measures when they come up for review this week.

The Times newspaper said on Tuesday that Raab, deputising for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is recuperating from a COVID-19 infection, would extend the curbs until at least 7 May.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron on Monday extended a virtual lockdown to 11 May.

Spain is allowing partial returns to work, as the WHO said the number of new cases was tailing off in some parts of Europe, including Italy and Spain, but outbreaks were growing in Britain and Turkey, Reuters reports.

“The overall world outbreak - 90% of cases are coming from Europe and the United States of America. So we are certainly not seeing the peak yet,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a briefing in Geneva.

Some Spanish businesses, including construction and manufacturing, were allowed to resume. Shops, bars and public spaces are to stay closed until at least 26 April.

Hospital workers cheer during the tribute to essential health care workers at Hospital Universitario de Mostoles Tribute to healthcare workers, Mostoles, Spain.
Hospital workers cheer during the tribute to essential health care workers at Hospital Universitario de Mostoles Tribute to healthcare workers, Mostoles, Spain. Photograph: A Perez Meca/REX/Shutterstock

Spain was flattening the curve on the graph representing the rate of growth of the outbreak, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Tuesday. The overnight death toll from the coronavirus rose to 567 on Tuesday from 517 a day earlier, but the country reported its lowest increase in new cases since March 18. Total deaths climbed to 18,056.

Some Spanish workers expressed concern that the relaxation of restrictions could trigger a new surge of infections. But for Roberto Aguayo, a 50-year-old Barcelona construction worker, the restart came just in time.

“We really needed it. Just when we were going to run out of food, we returned to work,” he told Reuters.

Updated

A cult comic from Spain’s 1970s counter-culture has been relaunched online to help relieve the tedium of the nation’s lockdown.

The subversive comic El Víbora (The Viper) published 300 issues between 1979 and 2005 but now it’s back – briefly – by popular demand, according to the comic’s Barcelona-based publisher, Emilio Bernárdez.

A cult comic from Spain’s 1970s counter-culture has been relaunched on line to help relieve the tedium of the nation’s strict and protected lockdown.
A cult comic from Spain’s 1970s counter-culture has been relaunched on line to help relieve the tedium of the nation’s strict and protected lockdown. Photograph: Emilio Bernárdez.

“It’s an act of solidarity with people who are bored at home,” Bernárdez said. “We wanted to do something. But we’re not health workers so this is what we came up with. We’re very close to our readers and so many of them asked us to revive El Víbora we decided to bring out a special issue that brings together our contributors’ favourite strips. The response from the cartoonists has been fantastic.”

Ballet dancers find new ways to keep fit – but how long can they hold on?

Every morning at 11am, the 81 dancers of the Australian Ballet log into Microsoft Teams to join their morning quarantine class. They can’t see each other but they can see their ballet teacher in the studio.

This week is the company’s fourth in lockdown.

The dancers are maintaining their fitness with daily class and online strength training sessions with the company’s health team. Spirits seem high but the dancers are keenly aware that this is exercise, not dance.

Updated

Fortnite maker Epic Games has delayed the release of a new season of the wildly popular online video game – which is played by more than 250 million people worldwide – instead choosing to extend Chapter 2, Season 2.

In an announcement on its website, the company wrote:

We’re extending Chapter 2 - Season 2 of Fortnite beyond the original April 30 date. Our plan is to launch Chapter 2 - Season 3 on June 4.

Before then, there’s lots of content coming in the current Season. We have multiple game updates on the way that will deliver fresh gameplay, new Challenges, bonus XP, and a couple more surprises up our sleeve!

Fortnite.
Fortnite. Photograph: PR HANDOUT

Updated

South Korean voters wore masks and moved slowly between lines of tape at polling stations on Wednesday to elect lawmakers in the shadows of the spreading coronavirus, AP reports.

A South Korean woman wears plastic gloves cast her vote in a polling station on the Parliamentary election amid the coronavirus outbreak on 15 April 2020 in Seoul, South Korea.
A South Korean woman wears plastic gloves cast her vote in a polling station on the Parliamentary election amid the coronavirus outbreak on 15 April 2020 in Seoul, South Korea. Photograph: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

The government resisted calls to postpone the parliamentary elections billed as a midterm referendum for President Moon Jae-in, who enters the final years of his term grappling with a historic public health crisis that is unleashing massive economic shock.

While South Korea’s electorate is deeply divided along ideological and generational lines and regional loyalties, recent surveys showed growing support for Moon and his liberal party, reflecting the public’s approval of an aggressive test-and-quarantine program.

To hold the parliamentary elections as scheduled, South Korean election officials and health authorities drew up a deliberate set of preventive measures to reduce risks of the virus being transmitted.

The government also mapped out a voting process for citizens quarantined at their homes, a number that ballooned after the country began enforcing two-week quarantines on all arrivals from overseas on 1 April.

While dozens of parties have registered candidates, the elections are seen largely as a two-way race between Moons ruling Democratic Party and the main conservative opposition United Future Party, which both have registered satellite parties in a bid to win more proportional representative seats.

Updated

The Australian government has avoided the possibility a court might knock down an order by the health minister, Greg Hunt, that all foreign-registered cruise ships leave Australian waters as soon as possible by settling a lawsuit brought by the tour company APT.

During a brief federal court hearing held via video link on Wednesday morning, the counsel for Hunt and other government entities, Jeremy Kirk SC, told the court the two sides had reached an in-principle deal.

If the deal holds, it will leave intact a determination Hunt issued on 27 March under the Biosecurity Act ordering foreign-flagged cruise ships out of Australian waters “as soon as reasonably practicable” owing to the coronavirus crisis.

While most cruise ships have already left the country, a few, including the Covid-19-riddled Ruby Princess, remain in Australia.

Some pictures from the pandemic:

A girl wears a mask to help protect herself from the new coronavirus jogs as the sun sets over the Mediterranean Sea coastline, in Beirut
A girl wears a mask to help protect herself from the new coronavirus jogs as the sun sets over the Mediterranean Sea coastline, in Beirut Photograph: Hassan Ammar/AP
A worker bee, the symbol of Manchester is seen painted onto the floor with a message Thank You NHS outside the new NHS Nightingale North West hospital inside Manchester Central
A worker bee, the symbol of Manchester is seen painted onto the floor with a message Thank You NHS outside the new NHS Nightingale North West hospital inside Manchester Central Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA
Lines of laundry are seen hanging between apartments behind barricades, which have been built to block buildings from a street, after the lockdown was lifted in Wuhan
Lines of laundry are seen hanging between apartments behind barricades, which have been built to block buildings from a street, after the lockdown was lifted in Wuhan Photograph: Aly Song/Reuters
A toilet issue roll is attached to a drone as a funny stunt, on the south bank of the River Thames
A toilet issue roll is attached to a drone as a funny stunt, on the south bank of the River Thames Photograph: Alberto Pezzali/AP

In Australia, a man who ignored a coronavirus quarantine directive and repeatedly snuck out of a hotel to visit his girlfriend has become the first person jailed for the offence. He will serve one month behind bars.

Jonathan David, 35, pleaded guilty in Perth magistrates court to two counts of failing to comply with a direction.

He was sentenced on Wednesday to six months and two weeks in prison but the majority of the term was suspended. That means if he commits another crime over the next 12 months, he could be forced to serve the rest of the prison sentence. He was also fined $2,000.

New Zealand’s prime minister has said she and other ministers will take a 20% pay cut to show solidarity with those affected by the coronavirus outbreak, as the death toll continues to rise.

Jacinda Ardern said it was important the government’s most highly paid politicians show “leadership and solidarity” with workers on the frontline and those who had lost their livelihoods. Ardern, government ministers and public service chief executives will take a 20% cut for six months, effective immediately.

The pay cut will reduce Ardern’s annual salary of $470,000 by $47,000.

Updated

Increasing local transmission in far northeast China, near Russia border

China reported on Wednesday a decline in new confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the mainland, although an increasing number of local transmissions in its far northeast bordering Russia remained a concern for authorities, Reuters reports.

China reported 46 new confirmed cases on Tuesday compared with 89 cases a day earlier, according to the National Health Commission. Of the new cases, 36 involved travellers arriving in China from overseas, compared with 86 a day earlier.

Medical supplies at a makeshift hospital converted from an office building, in Suifenhe, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.
Medical supplies at a makeshift hospital converted from an office building, in Suifenhe, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

The 10 remaining cases were new locally transmitted infections, with Heilongjiang province accounting for eight of them and southern Guangdong province two.

The northeastern province of Heilongjiang has become a front line in China’s fight to keep out imported cases as infected Chinese nationals return overland from Russia.
China has closed the border with Russia at Suifenhe, a city in Heilongjiang with a checkpoint into Russia.

New infections involving travellers arriving from Russia have also hit other parts of China such as the northern autonomous region of Inner Mongolia and the financial hub of Shanghai.

The ward at a makeshift hospital converted from an office building, in Suifenhe, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.
The ward at a makeshift hospital converted from an office building, in Suifenhe, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

South African police clash with Cape Town township residents

More from South Africa now, where police on Tuesday fired rubber bullets and teargas in clashes with Cape Town township residents protesting over access to food aid during a coronavirus lockdown.

People run away as a South African Police Services armoured vehicle drives into a street during clashes with residents of Tafelsig, an impoverished suburb in Mitchells Plain, near Cape Town, on 14 April 2020.
People run away as a South African Police Services armoured vehicle drives into a street during clashes with residents of Tafelsig, an impoverished suburb in Mitchells Plain, near Cape Town, on 14 April 2020. Photograph: Rodger Bosch/AFP via Getty Images

Hundreds of angry people fought running battles with the police, hurling rocks and setting up barricades on the streets with burning tyres in Mitchells Plain over undelivered food parcels.

“We have small children. We want to eat. They must also eat,” said resident and mother Nazile Bobbs.

South Africa is currently in the middle of a five-week lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus which has so far infected more than 2,400 people.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised to provide basics such as water and food supplies to the poorest South Africans.

Many people, especially those working in the informal economy, are unable to ply their trade and have lost income due to the lockdown which came into effect on March 27.

Updated

South Africa’s flag carrier was Tuesday denied more government funding for its state-led rescue plan,, as resources are directed toward lessening the economic impact of Covid-19 on citizens and businesses.

A passenger is seen at the South African Airways (SAA) customer desk at the OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg.
A passenger is seen at the South African Airways (SAA) customer desk at the OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. Photograph: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

South African Airways was placed under a state-approved rescue plan in December and its government-appointed independent business administrators had since requested an additional 10 billion rand ($550 million) in funds toward the rescue plan.

But minister of public enterprises, Pravin Gordhan said “government is unable to provide additional funding to sustain the business rescue process beyond the funding that has already been provided to the airline,” in a letter quoted by local media and dated April 10.

The decision deals a severe blow to SAA, which has since 2011 failed to make a profit, surviving on government bailouts.

SAA has grounded all of its passenger flights, apart from charters to repatriate stranded citizens, due to the Covid-19 lockdown which is further crippling the ailing carrier.

South Africa has the highest recorded numbers of coronavirus infection in sub-Saharan Africa, with 2,415 cases including 27 fatalities.

Zimbabwe court orders government to provide protective gear to healthcare workers

A Zimbabwe court on Tuesday ordered the government to provide healthcare workers with protective gear and roll out mass testing against the deadly coronavirus.

An association of human rights doctors brought the case to compel the government to beef up protection for public hospitals and healthcare workers. The court also ordered extensive screening “including mobile or door to door testing” to detect asymptomatic carriers.

Police patrol during a 21-day nationwide lockdown called to help curb the spread of coronavirus in Harare, Zimbabwe, 3 April 2020.
Police patrol during a 21-day nationwide lockdown called to help curb the spread of coronavirus in Harare, Zimbabwe, 3 April 2020. Photograph: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters

The court, according to the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, called for more testing laboratories to be set up across the country and to increase the turnaround time for tests. Zimbabwe has only one public Covid-19 test centre, situated at a government hospital in Harare.

The southern African country has so far recorded 17 cases, including three fatalities, although independent sources suggest the number of infections is understated. The spread of Covid-19 could prove devastating for a country whose economy is crippled by hyperinflation of 676 percent and whose social health care systems are crumbling.

The public healthcare system faces shortages of basic drugs and lacks essential equipment and even running water. Doctors and nurses staged a walkout last month in protest over a lack of protective clothing to care for coronavirus patients.

Updated

African countries are seething over accounts that Africans are battling stigma and discrimination in China over the coronavirus pandemic, apparently linked to a cluster of cases in the Nigerian community in the southern city of Guangzhou.

A deserted mall and African restaurant are seen in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China, 13 April 2020.
A deserted mall and African restaurant are seen in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China, 13 April 2020. Photograph: Alex Plavevski/EPA

The African residents say they have suffered forced evictions, arbitrary quarantines and mass coronavirus tests and face discrimination in restaurants and hotels.

“We saw images of Nigerians in the streets with their possessions and this was of course extremely distressing for us at home,” Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama told Chinese ambassador Zhou Pingjian on Tuesday.

He said the situation was “unacceptable” to Nigeria’s government and people, and demanded “immediate action” from the Chinese authorities.

The African Union on Saturday expressed its “extreme concern” about the situation in Guangzhou and called on Beijing to take immediate corrective measures.

The controversy coincides with a Chinese charm offensive in Africa.

Diplomats said around 20 African countries are drawing up a joint letter to Beijing to say that mass virus tests and quarantines imposed specifically on Africans amount to “racism”.

The draft letter, a form of diplomatic correspondence called a note verbale, describes this as a “clear violation of human rights”, the sources say.

Podcast: Working in disaster zones from Liberia to Spain

Luis Encinas is a nurse and Médecins Sans Frontières coordinator. He has treated patients in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, in Sierra Leone as Ebola took hold, and now in Spain, battling Covid-19. He and the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent, Sam Jones, describe how the virus has transformed Spain.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has expressed her admiration for the skills of a New Zealand comedian who has kept herself busy during the national lockdown by impersonating the prime minister on Tik Tok.

Melanie Bracewell has been in self-isolation for nearly five weeks, and after repeated comments regarding her likeness to the prime minister, decided to experiment with copying the prime minister’s make-up, hairstyle, clothes and speech.

The secret weapon in the fight against coronavirus: womenArwa MahdawiRead more

Bracewell describes Ardern – who had led New Zealand during a terrorist attack, a deadly volcanic eruption and the coronavirus pandemic – as “the mother of the nation”:

In Italy, one of the worst affected countries, dozens of doctors and nurses have died from Covid-19 and thousands of healthcare workers have become infected.

A nurse leaves the intensive care unit of the hospital of Brescia, Italy, in March 2020.
A nurse leaves the intensive care unit of the hospital of Brescia, Italy, in March 2020. Photograph: Claudio Furlan/AP

Silvana de Florio, nursing coordinator in the Covid-19 intensive care unit of the Tor Vergata Hospital in Rome, underlined the importance of being appropriately kitted out with masks, visors, gloves, scrubs and suits to avoid contagion, AFP reports.

“We don’t set aside a specific amount of time for it, but we have estimated that for a seven-hour shift, about 40-50 minutes is spent just on getting dressed,” she said.

“In terms of hand washing and hand decontamination, we are talking about 60-75 minutes per day,” she said after scolding a care worker for not wearing a mask.

“Medical staff can’t get sick - not so much because of their ability to work, but because it would not be fair.”

Here are the latest cases from the around the world.

The total number of cases is drawing closer to two million, according to Johns Hopkins University figures, with 1,979,477 known coronavirus cases.

A staggering 126,539 people are known to have lost their lives in the pandemic, and the real number is likely to be much higher.

These are the ten worst-affected countries in terms of infections.

  1. US: 608,377
  2. Spain: 174,060
  3. Italy: 162,488
  4. Germany: 132,210
  5. France: 131,361
  6. United Kingdom: 94,845
  7. China: 83,321
  8. Iran: 74,877
  9. Turkey: 65,111
  10. Belgium: 31,119

Rio de Janeiro’s Governor Wilson Witzel said Tuesday he has tested positive for the new coronavirus after a month of pushing for confinement measures in the Brazilian state, AP reports.

Brazilian soldiers in protective gear disinfect an ambulance, demonstrating their preparations to fight against the new coronavirus during a media presentation, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, 14 April 2020.
Brazilian soldiers in protective gear disinfect an ambulance, demonstrating their preparations to fight against the new coronavirus during a media presentation, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, 14 April 2020. Photograph: Silvia Izquierdo/AP

In a video posted to his official Twitter account, Witzel said he has experienced fever and sore throat since Friday. His positive test results came back on Tuesday, he said, adding that he feels well.


Witzel, 52, has been one of Brazil’s foremost proponents of self-quarantine and last month he imposed restrictions on business, transit and gatherings to contain the spread of Covid-19. This week he extended shutdown measures through the end of the month.
That stance has put him at odds with President Jair Bolsonaro, who has played down the severity of the virus that has thus far killed more than 1,500 people in Latin America’s largest country.

Rio has the second-largest incidence of COVID-19 of any Brazilian state, with 3,410 cases and 224 deaths.

You can get in touch with me directly on Twitter @helenrsullivan. We really do appreciate your tips and comments.

Trump turns against WHO to mask his own stark failings on Covid-19 crisis

Donald Trump’s declared suspension of funding of the World Health Organisation in the midst of a pandemic is confirmation – if any were needed – that he is in search of scapegoats for his administration’s much delayed and chaotic response to the crisis.

The US is the WHO’s biggest donor, with funding over $400m a year in both assessed contributions (membership fees) and donations – thought it is actually $200m in arrears.

Theoretically the White House cannot block funding of international institutions mandated by Congress. But the administration has found ways around such constitutional hurdles on other issues – by simply failing to disburse funds or apply sanctions, for example.

Public health officials generally agree that the WHO’s response to the pandemic has not been perfect, but much improved on the organisation’s lambasted performance in the face of the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and immeasurably better than how the US has handled Covid-19.

The dollar nursed losses on Wednesday as investors cautiously returned to riskier currencies after US President Donald Trump edged toward rolling back some restrictions put in place to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

The greenback also remains under pressure following heavy measures by the Federal Reserve to boost dollar supply, however, analysts say it is too early for a full-scale retreat from safe-havens with the public health threat not yet eliminated.

“There’s been a flood of money from the Fed, which is the backdrop behind market moves,” said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney.

“Trump has made it clear he wants to lift restrictions, and this is what the market wants to hear, but we are nowhere near the all-clear when it comes to this virus.”

The dollar traded at 107.11 yen in Asia on Wednesday, close to its lowest level in a month.

Against sterling, the dollar was last quoted at $1.2626, near a five-week trough.
The dollar also briefly slipped to $1.0994 per euro , the lowest in two weeks.

Mexico registered 385 new cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, bringing its total to 5,399 cases and 406 deaths, the health ministry said.

Panama registered 102 new cases of the coronavirus on Tuesday, bringing the country’s total to 3,574 cases, the health ministry said. Officials also confirmed one more death, raising Panama’s death toll from the coronavirus to 95.

More on US staffing agencies saying some healthcare workers are no longer needed – from Reuters:

Lindsey Scott, a spokesperson for staffing agency Trusted Health, said in an email that the agency had “multiple nurses who left their families and in some cases full-time jobs,” to travel to New York, only to find that they are no longer needed.

Karla Guerra, 27, an emergency room nurse from Arizona, said her contract at New York’s Mt Sinai hospital system was abruptly cancelled on Monday, the day she completed her onsite orientation. She had expected to earn $32,000 for eight weeks’ work.

Now, she is $3,000 out of pocket for her travel and first month’s rent, and is trying to find a new contract as soon as possible.

“Every day I am here I am losing money,” she said. “It’s disappointing because I came out here with the intention to help but unfortunately things didn*t pan out.”
Mt Sinai did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

US staffing agencies, which have deployed thousands of healthcare workers in recent weeks to travel to jobs at hospitals in New York City and other areas hit hard by the new coronavirus, say some of those workers are no longer needed, Reuters reports.

Northwell Institute for Nursing welcomes 46 Cross Country nurses who crossed America to support local nursing staff, New Hyde Park, New York, United States, 14 Apr 2020.
Northwell Institute for Nursing welcomes 46 Cross Country nurses who crossed America to support local nursing staff, New Hyde Park, New York, United States, 14 Apr 2020. Photograph: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/REX/Shutterstock

The trend, coupled with a flattening in the number of New Yorkers hospitalised with coronavirus infection, reinforces the sense that New York may have reached the peak of the health crisis.
Demand for so-called “travel nurses” had during March and early April in cities like New Orleans, and especially New York, which saw the nation’s largest spike in cases of COVID-19, the serious respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus.
But New York, which ramped up its hospital bed capacity to around 90,000, has for the last several days had only around 18,000 patients hospitalised.

When the $1,200 payments to individual Americans were being debated, advocates were raising concerns about what it would take to get the payments to homeless people, particularly if they had been homeless a long time:

Updated

Trump adds his name to relief checks, delaying delivery

The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump’s name will be added to to $1,200 relief checks being sent to 70 million Americans – and that this “unprecedented” decision will “slow their delivery by several days.”

The Treasury Department has ordered President Trump’s name be printed on stimulus checks the Internal Revenue Service is rushing to send to tens of millions of Americans, a process that is expected to slow their delivery by several days, senior agency officials said.

The unprecedented decision, finalized late Monday, means that when recipients open the $1,200 paper checks the IRS is scheduled to begin sending to 70 million Americans in coming days, “President Donald J. Trump” will appear on the left side of the payment.

It will be the first time a president’s signature appears on an IRS disbursement, whether a routine refund or one of the handful of checks the government has issued to taxpayers in recent decades either to stimulate a down economy or share the dividends of a strong one.

Updated

UN Secretary General responds to Trump suspension of WHO funding

UN Secretary General António Guterres has just released a statement on the World Health Organization, following Trumps’ decision earlier to suspend funding to the WHO.

Most of the statement repeats his comments from 8 April.

“As I said on 8 April,” he writes, ‘Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis. The lessons learned will be essential to effectively address similar challenges, as they may arise in the future.

But now is not that time.’

“As it is not that time, it also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus.

As I have said before, now is the time for unity and for the international community to work together in solidarity to stop this virus and its shattering consequences.”

Updated

US registers record 2,228 deaths

AFP reports that the US has registered a record 2,228 deaths from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours.

Reuters is also reporting the record increase. On Friday last week, US daily deaths exceeded 2,000 for the first time with 2,069 people dying in 24 hours.

Updated

San Francisco cancels 50th anniversary LGBTQ+ Pride parade amid pandemic

San Francisco has cancelled its famed Pride parade this summer, which would have marked the event’s 50th anniversary, due to the coronavirus, organizers announced on Tuesday.

For the first time since it began, there will be no march along the city’s Market Street, no rainbow-clad revelers celebrating the LGBTQ+ community, no outdoor concerts or drag shows. The events had been scheduled for 27 and 28 June.

“This was not a decision we arrived at lightly – we are sincerely heartbroken”, Fred Lopez, the executive director, told the Guardian. “But what it came down to is that the wellbeing of our community is always going to be our top priority.”

California enters ‘optimistic’ phase but coronavirus restrictions won’t ease soonRead more

San Francisco’s Pride parade is one of the largest in the world, and this year upward of 1 million people were expected to attend as part of its 50th anniversary.

The cancellation comes as other Pride events – including Boston and Toronto have already been cancelled or moved online due to fears surrounding the pandemic.

In the US, the tornado onslaught in the Southern states began Sunday has killed more than 30 people.

The coronavirus outbreak is affecting how the states are able to respond, AP reports. About 550 people in four states are staying in hotel rooms funded by the Red Cross since mass shelters were not an option, said Brad Kieserman, a vice president of the organization.

Mississippi governor Tate Reeves, who toured damaged areas, said the pandemic was making a bad situation worse.

“The fact that the coronaviruses exist is complicating the recovery from the tornado, while the tornadoes are complicating our efforts to make sure that we do everything in our power to stop the spread of the virus,” Reeves said during a stop in tiny Soso.

Family, friends and neighbours sit in front ope a destroyed home on April 13, 2020 in Nixville, South Carolina.
Family, friends and neighbours sit in front ope a destroyed home on April 13, 2020 in Nixville, South Carolina. Photograph: Sean Rayford/Getty Images

The storms claimed lives in at least six states, and the National Weather Service said preliminary assessments found evidence of at least 27 twisters. The strongest confirmed so far was an EF-4 tornado that devastated southeastern Mississippi with winds as strong as 170 mph (273 kph).

Hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed across the region, and heavy rains caused flooding in some areas. Nashville, Tennessee, broke a 71-year-old record by receiving 2.23 inches (5.66 centimeters) of rain in a day, the weather service said. A day later, on Tuesday morning, the city saw snow flurries.

Damage occurred up the East Coast, with a flurry of tornado warnings issued in Delaware after storms left the Southeast.

Here is everything we know so far about US president Donald Trumps’ decision to suspend funding for the World Health Organization:

Donald Trump has announced he is halting funding to the World Health Organization, at least temporarily, after condemning its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The US president told a White House news conference on Tuesday that the WHO had “failed in its basic duty and it must be held accountable”.

He said the group had promoted what he called China’s “disinformation” about the virus that likely led to a wider outbreak than otherwise would have occurred.

Having previously threatened to withhold funding, Trump abruptly announced on Tuesday within moments of beginning the daily White House coronavirus briefing that he would cut off American funding to the World Health Organization while the US conducts a “review”.

Three potential Covid-19 vaccines are making fast progress in early-stage testing in volunteers in China and the US, the Associated Press reports, but its still a long road to prove if they’ll really work.

Chinas CanSino Biologics is beginning the second phase of testing its vaccine candidate, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology said Tuesday.

In the US, a shot made by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc. isn’t far behind. The first person to receive that experimental vaccine last month returned to a Seattle clinic Tuesday for a second dose.

NIH infectious disease chief and key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force Dr Anthony Fauci told The Associated Press there are no red flags so far and he hoped the next, larger phase of testing could begin around June.

A third candidate, from Inovio Pharmaceuticals, began giving experimental shots for first-step safety testing last week in the US and hopes to expand its studies to China.

Looking ahead, Fauci said if the new coronavirus continues to circulate widely enough over the summer and fall, it might be possible to finish larger studies slightly sooner than the 12 to 18 months he’d originally predicted maybe toward “mid to late winter of next season.

“Please let me say this caveat: That is assuming that its effective. See, thats the big if, Fauci stressed. “It’s got to be effective and it’s got to be safe.”

Asked about the Reuters suspension in an interview with Christiane Amanpour on CNN, Iraqi President Barham Salih said it was a “regrettable decision” taken by a commission which is independent of the government.

“From my vantage point you would not get me in a situation where I would defend that. I’m working with our legal team in order to revoke that and manage the situation,” Salih said.

Iraq has suspended the licence of the Reuters news agency after it published a story saying the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the country was higher than officially reported.

A soldier feeds birds in a nearly empty street during a curfew to help fight the spread of the coronavirus, in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, 13 April 2020.
A soldier feeds birds in a nearly empty street during a curfew to help fight the spread of the coronavirus, in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, 13 April 2020. Photograph: Hadi Mizban/AP

The Reuters report, published on April 2, cited three doctors involved in the testing process, a health ministry official and a senior political official as saying Iraq had thousands of confirmed Covid-19 cases, many times more than the 772 it had publicly reported at that time.

The report was updated on 2 April to include a denial from a health ministry spokesman, sent by text message, who dismissed the sources’ assertions about the spread of the disease, describing them as “incorrect information”.

Iraq’s media regulator said it was revoking Reuters’ licence for three months and fining it 25 million dinars ($21,000) for what it said was the agency’s violation of the rules of media broadcasting.

In a letter to Reuters, the Communications and Media Commission (CMC) said it had taken the action “because this matter is taking place during current circumstances which have serious repercussions on societal health and safety.”

Summary

Hello and welcome to today’s live coronavirus pandemic coverage with me, Helen Sullivan.

Over the course of a particularly tone deaf and worrying press conference, US President Donald Trump announced that he will be temporarily suspend funding to the World Health Organization. US deaths meanwhile have passed 25,000 – a fifth of the global total – and its confirmed cases number more than 600,000.

We’ll be bringing you analysis of the repercussions of Trump’s decision regarding the WHO as well as the main stories from around the world.

You can get in touch with me directly on Twitter @helenrsullivan. We really do appreciate your tips and comments.

Below are the key developments from the last few hours:

  • US President Donald Trump announced the suspension of funding to the World Health Organization, as well as an investigation into the WHO’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Trump also walked back his comments yesterday regarding “absolute power” over the states, saying states would have the authority to reopen when it is appropriate.
  • The International Monetary Fund slashed its forecasts for global growth and warned of a slump in output this year unparalleled since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It said the “Great Lockdown” is likely to cause a drop in activity more painful than the recession that followed the banking meltdown of the 2008.
  • The UK government is being urged to publish its lockdown exit strategy this week. The leader of the opposition Labour party, Sir Keir Starmer, has written to Dominic Raab, who is deputising for the prime minister, to say his party would support an extension – but that ministers need to explain their plan.
  • British charities have said thousands of homeless people are still on the streets despite the government’s aim to house all rough sleepers by the end of last month.
  • France summoned the Chinese envoy. France’s foreign minister has summoned the Chinese envoy after the embassy published a second article on its website criticising western handling of the coronavirus crisis.
  • “We think we are at the apex,” the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced after the state recorded a small decrease in its the number (1,600) of new patients coming into New York hospitals on Monday.
  • Amazon has fired two employees after they publicly denounced the company’s treatment of warehouse workers during the pandemic. Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa said they were fired after internally circulating a petition about health risks for Amazon warehouse workers during the Covid-19 crisis.
  • A German zoo has said it may have to feed some animals to others. Zoos are making contingency plans, including killing some of the animals, should the lockdown continue without a solution to their financial troubles.
  • Italy, Spain and Austria allowed partial returns to work as countries across Europe report further falls in new cases and begin taking the first cautious steps out of lockdown to revive their battered economies.
  • Britain’s economy could shrink by 35% and unemployment rise by more than 2 million people due to the crisis, the official economics forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility warned, as it forecast a 13% fall in GDP for 2020.

Updated

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