We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date with all the latest news on our new global live blog which you can find below.
New Zealand’s cabinet will meet on Monday to decide the future of the country’s tough but effective lockdown – though Kiwis have been told not to visit their mums this Mother’s Day.
Next week, Ardern’s government will plot a path back to something close to normality, meeting to decide a timetable for the removal of social and business restrictions. The prime minister has already released what level two restrictions will look like, including the re-opening of restaurants, hairdressers, gyms, cinemas and public facilities like museums and libraries.
Social restrictions could end immediately, with provisions for schools, business and personal movement more likely to be phased in.
Any decision will come too late for Kiwi mums to enjoy visits from sons and daughters not already in their household bubbles. Ardern has banned socialising outside of existing households, with few exceptions, and told Kiwis this week to “stick to the plan” ahead of Monday’s review.
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Russia has registered more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases for the sixth day in a row, after emerging as a new hotspot of the pandemic.
A government tally on Friday showed 10,669 new cases over the last 24 hours, fewer than Thursday’s record of 11,231, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 187,859.
The country also recorded 98 new deaths from the virus, for a total of 1,723, and while some officials are considering softening the current lockdown, the WHO warned Russia is going through a “delayed epidemic.”
Russia now ranks fourth in Europe in terms of the total number of cases, according to an AFP tally, behind countries where the epidemic hit considerably earlier: Britain, Italy and Spain.
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said in a virtual briefing that “Russia is probably experiencing a delayed epidemic” and must “learn some of the lessons” which came at great cost in other parts of the world.
On Thursday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced an extension of a lockdown in the capital, where most cases are concentrated, to May 31.
He also brought in a rule that people must wear masks and gloves in public transport and shops and announced that lockdown will be lifted for industries and construction projects.
Residents of the capital are only allowed to leave their homes for brief trips to a shop, to walk dogs or to travel to essential jobs with a permit.
Hello, Rebecca Ratcliffe here in Bangkok, taking over from Molly Blackall.
The White House has instituted daily, as opposed to weekly, coronavirus tests of US president Donald Trump and vice president Mike Pence, Reuters reports.
Earlier today, it was confirmed that Pence’s press secretary, the wife of one of president Donald Trump’s senior advisers, had tested positive for the coronavirus, raising alarm about the virus’ potential spread within the White House’s inner most circle.
The diagnosis of Katie Miller, who is married to White House immigration adviser and speech writer Stephen Miller, was revealed by Trump in a meeting with Republican lawmakers on Friday, a day after news that Trump’s personal valet had tested positive for the virus.
Earlier on Friday, Trump was asked in a Fox News interview whether those who serve him food would now cover their faces. “They’ve already started,” he said on the network’s “Fox and Friends” morning program.
Trump told Fox News he has not yet been tested for antibodies to the coronavirus but probably would be soon. Such a test could confirm previous exposure.
I’m going to be handing over the blog to my colleagues in Australia now, who’ll keep you updated with all of the key coronavirus developments from around the world over the next few hours.
Thank you all for following the blog with me, and a special thanks to those who shared tips and insight over the past few hours - it’s much appreciated.
I hope you’re all staying safe and well, wherever you are in the world. Goodbye from me!
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has said that he will receive a proposal on Monday from his cabinet on the reopening of the country. This would include measures to reopen the economy after more than a month of quarantine measures.
“They’re going to present me with an initial proposal on Monday,” López Obrador told reporters on Friday. “And we want to announce it to you and to the Mexican public on Wednesday or Thursday.”
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Brazil has registered 10,222 new confirmed cases of coronavirus and a further 751 deaths, the health ministry has said. That brings the total number of cases to 145,328 and the death toll to 9,897.
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Thanks to all those sending in tips and pointers, it’s very much appreciated!
Just a reminder that if you spot something you think we should be covering in this blog, you can drop me a message on Twitter - @mollyblackall.
I won’t be able to reply to everything, but will endeavour to read. Thanks again.
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The number of coronavirus cases in Ghana has increased by almost 30% in a single day. More than 500 workers at an industrial facility in the country tested positive, out of 1,300 tested.
The overall number of cases in Ghana rose to 4,012, including 18 deaths, from 3,091 on Thursday. This figure is the highest in West Africa, but it’s important to note that Ghana has conducted many more tests than other countries in the region.
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Boris Johnson will announce on Sunday that all travellers coming to the UK will be quarantined for a fortnight, according to the Times newspaper.
“Passengers arriving at airports and ports including Britons returning from abroad will have to self-isolate for 14 days,” the paper said, citing a government source.
Travellers from Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man will be exempt, as will lorry drivers bringing crucial supplies. The measures are believed to be coming into force in early June.
Authorities will carry out spot checks and hand out to fines of up to £1,000, or possibly deportation, for those found to be breaking the rules, the report said. It added that travellers will have to provide the UK address at which they intend to self-isolate.
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Registered voters in California will receive mail-in ballots for the November election, state governor Gavin Newsom has said. He added that the state was also working to set up safe places for in-person voting.
California’s secretary of state, Alex Padilla, who joined Newsom by phone during the state’s daily coronavirus briefing, said California was the first state to send every voter a ballot in advance of the election. Return postage will be prepaid.
Concerns have been growing about the effect of coronavirus on in-person voting.
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Airline company Delta is to suspend services to 10 US airports until at least September, due to the massive drop in air travel caused by the pandemic.
Delta Air Lines Inc is halting flights to Chicago Midway; Oakland International Airport; Hollywood Burbank; Long Beach; Providence, RI, Westchester County Airport; Stewart International; Akron-Canton, Ohio; Manchester, NH; and Newport News/Williamsburg. It has chosen these airports as it services other airports nearby.
Delta is cutting flights by 85% in the second quarter and seeking permission from American regulators to suspend flights to nine cities that could be served by other airports, including three in Michigan.
According to the company, between April 1 and April 22, between just one and 14 passengers flew daily on the airline’s planes each way from those nine airports.
In the last two weeks, demand for air travel has begun to rise again, but is still down approximately 94% compared to last year.
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The US has accused China and Russia of increasing cooperation to spread false narratives about the coronavirus pandemic, AFP are reporting.
Lea Gabrielle, coordinator of the State Department’s global engagement centre, which tracks foreign propaganda, said Beijing was increasingly adopting techniques honed by Moscow.
“Even before the Covid-19 crisis, we assessed a certain level of coordination between Russia and the PRC in the realm of propaganda,” Gabrielle told reporters. “But with this pandemic the cooperation has accelerated rapidly.
“We see this convergence as a result of what we consider to be pragmatism between the two actors who want to shape public understanding of the Covid pandemic for their own purposes.”
The global engagement centre said earlier that thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts were spreading conspiracies about the pandemic, including notions that the virus, detected in Wuhan, China, was created by the United States.
Tensions have increased recently, as the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, persisted with allegations that coronavirus originated in a Wuhan laboratory – despite the WHO and the US government’s own top epidemiologist saying there was no evidence the virus came from a lab.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping discussed cooperation over the pandemic in a phonecall with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Friday.
Putin told him that Russia “opposes the attempts by some forces to use the epidemic as a pretext to blame China and will stand firmly by China’s side”, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.
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Thousands of cyclists have taken to the streets of the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana, to protest against the government and its coronavirus restrictions.
The demonstration came after allegations of government corruption in purchasing face masks and ventilators surfaced last month. The government has denied wrongdoing. Protesters also accuse the government of using coronavirus to restrict personal freedoms.
Slovenia has confirmed 1,450 coronavirus cases and 100 deaths, and introduced lockdown measures in mid March.
Here are some photographs:
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Second world war soldiers, sailors and airmen would “recognise and admire” the efforts NHS, care and key workers, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth has said in her VE (Victory in Europe) day speech.
She praised the nation’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, saying that empty streets have been filled with “love and care”, as she commemorated 75 years to the day Britain and its Allies formally accepted Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender at the end of the Second World War.
The Queen also highlighted the relevance of the VE day message to the coronavirus pandemic - “never give up, never despair”.
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Peru is extending its lockdown for another two weeks after 54 days of quarantine, Peru’s president Martín Vizcarra announced in a press briefing.
“We are in an extreme situation. We all have to work together,” he said on Friday, stressing that the country had been unable to sufficiently cut the rising rate of infections amid several outbreaks in different parts of the country.
Covid-19 hotspots have flared up on the country’s northern coast, where social distancing rules have been routinely flouted, and in the isolated Amazon city of Iquitos which suffered from a critical lack of medical supplies, particularly oxygen.
Despite one of the most stringent lockdowns in Latin America, Peru recorded more than 58,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 1,627 deaths by Friday.
Even in the capital Lima, medical attention was on the verge of collapse despite the best efforts of hospital workers who lacked PPE. However, Vizcarra announced an increase in the number of intensive care beds to 937.
The popular leader pointed out that banks, bus stops, and, most of all, food markets had been the principal points of contagion. He ordered the closure of 36 “critical” markets where spot tests revealed an infection rate of up to 40% among stallholders, and clampdowns in a total of 380 across the country.
With Mother’s Day looming on Sunday, Vizcarra issued a stark warning to his family-minded compatriots, as he paid tribute to all the Peruvian mothers working through the pandemic.
“The greatest desire is to go to your mother and give her a big hug (…) but we cannot do that, because we are responsible,” he said.
“The best way of protecting your mother is to keep her far away. It’s hard but we will beat this [virus].”
Amid the growing toll on mental health after close to two months of quarantine, Vizcarra said that children under the age of 14 would be allowed to venture out with an adult up to 500m from their homes from Monday 18 May.
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Mike Pence's press secretary tests positive for Covid-19
The press secretary of US vice-president Mike Pence, who is married to one of President Donald Trump’s senior advisors, has tested positive for coronavirus.
The test result of Katie Miller, who is married to White House immigration adviser Stephen Miller, was revealed by Trump in a meeting with Republican members of congress on Friday.
“Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time and then all of a sudden today she tested positive,” Trump said. He noted that he had not personally been in contact with her but that she had spent time with the Vice President. “I understand Mike has been tested...and he tested negative.”
The news comes a day after it was revealed that Trump’s personal valet had tested positive for the virus.
The news of the infections has raised concern about the spread of coronavirus in the White House’s inner circle.
However, a senior administration official stressed that Trump and Pence have not been in recent contact with Miller, according to a media pool report referenced by Reuters.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has sought to defend administration efforts to protect Trump and Pence, including contact tracing and adherence to national guidelines.
“We’ve taken every single precaution to protect the president,” McEnany insisted to reporters at a White House news briefing on Friday.
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Car company Honda says it will gradually resume production at its US and Canadian auto plants from May 11, Reuters are reporting.
However, Tesla has not been approved to resume production, a health official for Alameda County, California, has said. It’s currently unclear exactly where these restrictions for Tesla apply - I’ll update you as I find out more.
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Apple will reopen a handful of stores across four US states from next week.
The company said it will open “some” stores in Alabama, Alaska, Idaho and South Carolina. Its Boise, Idaho location will open Monday, with others to follow later in the week.
However, the company says it will require customers to wear masks and undergo temperature checks before entering its stores.
Social-distancing rules will limit the number of customers in the store at a time, which could create delays for walk-in customers, the company warned.
Apple executives have said they are examining local health data at the county and city level in each community where the company has physical stores to determine when to reopen.
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Barcelona will also be prevented from moving on to the next stage of Spain’s exit from lockdown, Spanish Health Emergency Coordinator Fernando Simon has said.
Like Madrid, reported earlier, the metropolitan areas of Barcelona were not deemed ready to ease lockdown restrictions.
The Spanish government is conducting a four stage end to lockdown, with an easing of restrictions contingent on the measures like the rate of infection in the region.
The second stage allows bars, restaurants and places of worship to open with limited capacity.
The highly populated regions of Madrid and Catalonia - home to Barcelona - account for around half of the confirmed infected cases in the country.
Regional Spanish news reports suggest Malaga and Costa del Sol will also be prevented from moving forward.
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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorised the first diagnostic coronavirus test that allows patients to collect saliva samples at-home, the administration has said.
The test will cost $150 and needs to be fully supervised by a practitioner via telemedicine to ensure proper sample collection.
The decision is part of the FDA’s efforts to expand testing capabilities for the fast-spreading virus, which has caused over 70,000 deaths in the United States.
Here is an update from Will Costa in Asunción on the coronavirus pandemic in Paraguay:
Escalating levels of COVID-19 infection in Brazil are causing concerns in the neighbouring country of Paraguay as large numbers of cases of the disease are being recorded among Paraguayan citizens returning across the border between the two countries.
Of 101 new reported cases of COVID-19 in Paraguay on Friday, 99 were from Paraguayans being held in compulsory quarantine centres after returning from Brazil. This represented by far Paraguay’s largest daily jump in cases of the virus.
Paraguay has recorded some of the lowest levels of COVID-19 in South America—currently 563 cases of infection and 10 deaths. It was one of the first countries in Latin America to implement strict containment measures and on Monday also became one of the first countries in the region to ease total lock-down measures.
In contrast, Brazil has the highest levels of COVID-19 infection in Latin America with 140,023 cases of infection and 9,600 deaths. The handling of the pandemic by the government of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been widely criticised.
In a press conference on Friday morning, Paraguayan health minister Julio Mazzoleni said, “There is a very high risk that Brazil could drag Paraguay down. That’s why we are taking the necessary measures of implementing holding centres, quarantine and restricted access to the country”.
Paraguayan land borders have been closed since March 24.
Local press reports that approximately one hundred Paraguayans are continuing to arrive at the border at Paraguay’s second city, Ciudad del Este, each day in the hope of crossing back into Paraguay from Brazil. According to the Paraguayan Human Rights Coordination Group (CODEHUPY), many of these people have been forced to wait in dire and unsanitary conditions on a bridge between the two countries while waiting to enter Paraguay and be housed in obligatory quarantine centres.
While the Paraguayan government has expressed its concerns about the high possibilities of importing the virus from Brazil, videos circulating on social media have also raised large concerns that very poor conditions within the quarantine centres are contributing to mass transmission among those being held.
President Mario Abdo Benítez travelled to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s second city, on Monday to inspect increased military presence along the Brazilian border. The Paraguayan military has also acted to reinforce the famously open border between the neighbouring cities of Pedro Juan Caballero (Paraguay) and Ponta Porã (Brazil) by digging a trench.
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Colombia’s capital of Bogota will lift restrictions which required men and women to shop on separate days, the city’s mayor has said.
The rule has been in place for nearly a month, but will end on Monday.
Similar measures have been put in place across Latin America, and have been criticised by LGBT groups and transgender people, who say the restrictions have exposed them to discrimination and violence from people questioning their right to be out.
Donald Trump says virus 'will go away without a vaccine'
US president Donald Trump has just said coronavirus “will go away without a vaccine”, but there may be “some flare ups next year”.
However he has said this may not be until after autumn, or next year, and did not offer any scientific evidence for that prediction.
“[Viruses] die too, like everything else,” he said.
On that cheery note - Trump is speaking at the moment with Republican members of Congress. I’ll update you with some of the highlights as we go.
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Local authorities in Germany are set to reimpose some lockdown measures, after seeing a spike in new coronavirus cases.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, there has been a rise in cases at a slaughterhouse in the Coesfeld district, with 150 of 1,200 employees testing positive for coronavirus.
The spike has caused local officials to postpone the lifting of restrictions, which would have seen restaurants, fitness studios, tourist spots and larger shops, open on 11 May, for one week.
However, the gradual reopening of schools and daycare centres will go ahead as planned. The state’s health minister, Karl-Josef Laumann, ordered the closure of the slaughterhouse and testing of all meat processing plant employees in the state.
It comes after Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Wednesday that Germany could slowly return to normal, after the country’s infection rate slowed and mortality rate remained relatively low.
Germany’s 16 federal authorities are able to decide on the lifting of restrictions in their own state.
The coronavirus death toll in France has risen by 243, to 26,230.
Friday’s daily death toll marks an increase on Thursday’s, which was 178.
The number of people in intensive care units (ICU) fell by 93, or 3%, to 2,868, the French Health Ministry said in a statement. This is well below half of the peak of 7,148 people in ICU, seen on April 8.
The number of people in hospital with coronavirus also fell to 22,724 from 23,208. This marks a continuation of an uninterrupted three-week fall, and is down 30% from an April 14 peak of 32,292.
France, which has been in lockdown nationally for almost two months, will begin to lift restrictions on Monday.
My colleague Julian Borger, the Guardian’s world affairs editor, has this update from Washington:
The US has stopped a vote on a UN Security Council resolution to support Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s call for a global ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic.
After more than six weeks of wrangling, France thought it had achieved a breakthrough last night. But the French underestimated the determination of the Trump administration when it comes to demonising the World Health Organisation.
The US mission wanted no references to the WHO in the resolution. So the French watered down the reference in the resolution to “specialised health agencies” of the UN (of which there is really only one - the WHO).
The US mission seemed to be on board last night, but this morning they signalled that the wording was still not acceptable, leaving western diplomats at the UN to suspect that someone high up in Washington must have intervened.
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Hello, I’m Molly Blackall, taking over the blog for the next few hours. I hope you’re all staying safe and well, wherever in the world you’re reading from.
If you spot anything I miss, feel free to drop me a message on Twitter, @mollyblackall. I won’t be able to reply to everything, but will endeavour to read it all! Thanks in advance.
Updated
African Americans in parts of New York City are being arrested for violating social distancing rules at a far higher rate than white people, according to data from the Brooklyn district attorney.
Adam Gabbatt reports that data showed that between 17 March and 4 May, 40 people were arrested in Brooklyn for breaking social distancing rules. One was white, four were Hispanic and 35 were black.
The figures lend weight to anecdotal evidence which suggests that whiter and more affluent areas of the city are less likely to be targeted by police. More than a third of the arrests were made in the predominantly black neighbourhood of Brownsville, while no arrests were made in the predominantly white neighbourhood of Park Slope.
A 43-year-old British man may undergo a lung transplant in Vietnam, where he is critically ill with Covid-19.
The man, a Vietnam Airlines pilot, developed a fever and cough on 17 March, and was later admitted to Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases.
He is on a extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine, a form of life support used when a person’s heart or lungs are unable to function fully, the government’s news portal VGP News reported, and is being treated with antibiotics and dialysis.
Lung ultrasound scans indicate his right lung has collapsed, according to a Ministry of Health report published on Monday. The man is reportedly experiencing cytokine storms, an overreaction of the immune system. Regular updates are published in state media, and many in the country have commented online, wishing him well.
You can read the full story here –
Madrid denied permission to loosen lockdown
The Spanish government has refused the Madrid region permission to loosen its coronavirus lockdown, saying the area is not yet ready to move to the next phase of de-escalation.
The area in and around the capital is the region of Spain that has been hit hardest by the virus. More than 13,500 people have died there from Covid-19, or with associated symptoms, while 64,333 cases have been confirmed.
The health ministry said that while the region had sufficient care capacity, the detection capabilities of its primary medical facilities needed to be strengthened further.
The widely anticipated refusal of permission came 24 hours after the Madrid region’s director of public health resigned in protest at the Madrid regional government’s decision to seek a loosening of the lockdown from Monday.
In her resignation letter, Yoland Fuentes said that the bid to relax restrictions “was not based on health criteria”.
Spain’s deputy prime minister, the Podemos leader, Pablo Iglesias, went further, accusing the Madrid region’s conservative president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, of “playing with people’s lives” for political ends.
Díaz Ayuso hit back, saying Iglesias had no idea of the situation in Madrid and had “never lent a hand” there.
Spain, which has been under one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe following the declaration of a state of emergency on 14 March, is easing its way out via a four-phase lockdown aimed at reaching “a new normality” by the end of June.
Spain reported 221 deaths on Friday, down from daily totals of more than 900 deaths a month ago. To date, the country has confirmed 222,857 cases and 26,229 deaths.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and at one care home in Portugal, under severe coronavirus lockdown, that means employing a crane to facilitate meetings between residents and their loved ones, reports AFP.
“How are you?” Cremilde Pereira asks her older brother Jose from the crane that has parked her level with his first floor window.
“Like a bird in a cage!” replies the 79-year-old who is seated at his window in his wheelchair, flanked by two caregivers wearing clear plastic visors.
“When all this is over, you will have rice pudding and cake,” says 68-year-old Cremilde, regretting that she was not able to celebrate Jose’s birthday.
This visit marks the first time the pair have seen each other in two months of confinement.
“With everything that has happened in retirement homes, I am always worried about him,” says Cremilde, a former grocer.
Portugal as a whole has been relatively lightly touched by the pandemic with just over a thousand deaths. That has prompted the authorities to begin the process of loosening the lockdown from Monday but no date has yet been set for when retirement homes can welcome visitors again.
With far more Indigenous languages than any other country in Central America, Guatemala faces a particular challenge in communicating information on the coronavirus, reports Jeff Abbott in Guatemala City.
“It is critical to inform the people in their language,” said Freddy Gálvez, who works with the Academy of Mayan Languages of Guatemala. “If we want to protect the lives of all Guatemalans, it is important that the state tell them what to do in their own languages,” he said.
Guatemala’s Indigenous populations - the Xinca, the Garifuna, and the 22 Mayan peoples - have historically faced intense discrimination and racism. Indigenous regions suffer from extreme economic inequalities, resulting in higher levels of poverty, lack of opportunity, and extreme levels of malnutrition, as well as lack of access to essential services such as education and health care.
While the 2018 census states that only 44 percent of residents of Guatemala identify as indigenous, according to Gálvez over 60 percent of the Guatemalan population speaks an indigenous language. Many of these people are monolingual or speak little Spanish.
The Guatemalan government has reported 832 confirmed cases of Covid-19, and 23 deaths since 13 March.
The Academy of Mayan Languages of Guatemala is working with local translators to produce videos, radio spots, and materials for social media to provide communities with information and means of prevention.
Local mayors, Indigenous ancestral authorities, and activists have also launched campaigns in Indigenous languages in towns across the highlands to inform communities and to provide translations of government decrees through community radio stations, local television, and via social media.
Mauricio Méndez, the mayor of the Tz’utujil Maya town of San Pedro la Laguna in the Department of Sololá, is working to provide translations.
“The entire message about how to prevent coronavirus is translated to Tz’utujil,” said Méndez. “Our population is indigenous, we have our language, and that is how we communicate within our community.”
Critics say the government’s efforts to inform indigenous communities have largely been limited to information on prevention, leading to criticism.
“The President’s campaign is very weak,” said Byron Paredes, Indigenous Rights Defender with the Human Rights Ombudsman office.
Paredes also points out that there remains limited information about the curfew and other means taken to present the spread of the virus. Added to this, according to Paredes, there exists no state campaign in the Xinca or Garifuna languages.
“The Garifuna and Xinca languages are left out,” he said. “They have not received any information.”
Dr Michael Ryan says that he and his colleagues also long to see and hug their families, but that social distancing is important to “protect those we love and to make sure we end this as quickly as possible”.
He says the WHO is looking at the whole selection of measures that have been introduced in different countries and then lifted, and they will examine the epidemiology of each of those. “A careful and measured return of those kind of normal activities of work and school - especially when they are done with density reduction” seems to work, he says, but mass gatherings are much more tricky.
We may have to live with a significant change to our lifestyles until we have a vaccine, he says. “But that isn’t necessarily all bad.” He says we have seen benefits to the environment and, in some ways, to our connectedness. Ryan finishes:
Through solidarity we will win the fight and nobody is safe until everybody is safe.
Dr Michael Ryan says Russia is experiencing a “delayed epidemic” and could learn lessons from what has happened in asian countries and countries in western Europe. He says the country has increased its testing and and that that could be part of the reason for the increased number of cases, but that they have also seen increased deaths.
Ryan says the Russian government has shifted its approach, introducing strict social distancing rules. He says that the country is struggling, as many countries have struggled, with introducing “systematic contact tracing” when cases begin to rise very rapidly. One of the few countries to manage to do this to get on top of a big outbreak has been South Korea, says Ryan. But you need a “coherent, very well resourced and very well trained public health work force” for that.
The panel is asked about the idea of testing waste water to find traces of the virus. Dr Maria van Kerkhove says there is a unit at the WHO looking at this and that it is possible that this technique could be used to see where the virus is. She adds that it is more important to look at detecting the virus in people.
Dr Michael Ryan, executive director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme, says that we should not lose focus on the simple principles of isolating, contact tracing and locking down the virus. “We indeed to go back to the basic principles of how we control this disease,” he says.
Dr Maria van Kerkhove is asked about a study that suggested smokers were less likely to be hospitalised from Covid 19. She says that research has not been peer reviewed and that there was a lot of evidence that coronavirus – as a respiratory disease – was more likely to kill smokers.
Talking about countries that are lifting lockdown measures, van Kerkhove says that is important restrictions are lifted in a “slow and controlled way”. “There may be a push and pull for some time as we really work to try and suppress this virus across the globe,” she says.
Tedros Adhanom, the director general of the World Health Organization, is making opening remarks. He says it is the 40th anniversary of the official declaration of the eradication of smallpox. He says it is the first, and to date, the only disease we have managed to eradicate completely. It killed 300 million people in the 20th century alone. “It is the biggest public health triumph in history,” he says, and a reminder of what we can achieve when we come together.
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The World Health Organization is due to hold a press conference on the coronavirus pandemic. You can watch it at the top of this blog.
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Fears of a homophobic backlash and the forced outing of gay people are growing in South Korea after a man infected with coronavirus was reported in the media to have attended clubs in Seoul’s gay district.
Nemo Kim reports that a 31-year-old man tested positive on Thursday and a further 14 of his contacts were on Friday confirmed to be infected with the virus.
South Korea has won widespread praise for its “track and trace” model of containing the pandemic, which has used rigorous testing and isolation to reduce new cases to a handful a day – mostly from people arriving into the country – but not without privacy concerns.
Members of the gay community said they fear efforts to out them after a major media outlet, Kookmin Ilbo, reported that the man had been in gay clubs in the capital’s Itaewon district. Some social media users then posted video footage from its bars and clubs, urging followers for donations “to help put a stop to these disgusting goings-on”.
You can read the full story here –
Denmark to reopen theatres and cinemas on 8 June
Denmark will reopen museums, theatres, cinemas, outdoor amusement parks and zoos on 8 June, the country’s government has said.
A restriction on gatherings, currently limited to 10 people, will also be revised to between 30 and 50 people depending on the type of event, AFP reports.
The announcement came hours after the Scandinavian country said it would allow shopping centres to reopen from 11 May, while restaurants, places of worship and schools for 11- to 15-year-olds would resume a week later. Bars, nightclubs and smaller concert venues will have to wait until sometime in August to reopen.
Meanwhile, most office workers will be allowed to return to work as soon as their workplace meets social distancing and hygiene regulations.
The timeline is the result of an agreement reached by political parties in parliament. “The parties note that the reopening is expected to lead to a rise in infections and hospital admissions,” a statement from the office of the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said.
She added that authorities would monitor the situation closely and restrictions would be reimposed in the event of a sharp rise in cases.
Denmark was among the first countries in Europe to roll out measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, doing so in mid-March.
Since the start of the epidemic, the country has recorded 10,281 cases, with 514 deaths. Deaths and infections are higher than its similarly-sized Nordic neighbours Norway, which has 7,995 cases and 209 deaths, and Finland with 5,673 cases and 255 deaths.
Sweden, which is about twice the size but has adopted softer measures than the other Nordic countries, has 24,623 cases and 3,040 deaths.
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Hello, this is Frances Perraudin in London again. I’ll be bringing you the latest updates in the coronavirus pandemic for the rest of the day. You can contact me with comments and tips on frances.perraudin@theguardian.com and on Twitter @fperraudin.
Nearly 20,000 prisoners in South Africa are to be released to help curb the spread of Covid-19 in jails, the country’s president has announced.
Cyril Ramaphosa said around 19,000 low-risk inmates would be freed, following a United Nations call for countries to reduce their prison populations so that social distancing and self-isolation conditions can be observed.
South Africa, beset by high crime rates and violence against women and children, has 155,000 prisoners. The country of 58 million people has recorded 8,232 coronavirus cases of COVID-19 and 161 deaths. Ramaphosa said in a statement:
In South Africa, as in many other countries, correctional facilities have witnessed outbreaks of coronavirus infections among inmates and personnel.”
South Africa has registered 172 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and three deaths at its correctional facilities including inmates and staff, Justice and Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola said at a briefing outlining details of the release.
“We are confronted with a glaring impossibility of maintaining social distancing in our centres due to overcrowding,” said Lamola.
Italian opposition parties have filed a motion of no-confidence in Justice Minister Alfonso Bonafede, who has come under fire over the release of 376 top mafiosi due to the risk of Covid-19 infection.
Since the beginning of the ourbreak, Italian judges set free hundreds of ageing mobsters suffering from specific illnesses because they are “at risk of complications in case of Covid-19 infection.”
Prosecutors, anti-mafia associations and parties have protested against the judges’ decisions, fearing mafia bosses could leverage the coronavirus crisis to secure their release.
Although Bonafede clarified last week that the decision to release Mafiosi was not taken by the government and called for a new norm to revise rules on releasing mafia bosses to house arrest, centre-right opposition filed a motion of no-confidence.
Bonafede, who is a member of the 5-Star Movement (M5S), told ANSA that the centre right’s move would mean “undermining confidence in the fight against corruption, the fight against the mafias, reforms to make trials shorter and more efficient, and measures to make sure no one goes unpunished”.
Mobsters recently released from prison and placed under house arrests include Cosa Nostra’s influential boss Francesco Bonura, 78, who was serving a 23-year sentence, and alleged ’Ndrangheta bosses Vincenzino Iannazzo, 65, and Rocco Santo Flipppone, 72.
Judges feared that a Covid-19 infection could be lethal for Filippone since he suffers from serious cardio-vascular disease. Another Cosa Nostra mafia boss, Franco Cataldo, 85, was released on Monday. Cataldo was among those convicted of kidnapping 15-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo, son of informant Santino Di Matteo. The boy was later strangled and dissolved in acid at the orders of superboss Giovanni Brusca.
In China, tickets for the first days of Shanghai Disneyland’s re-opening, after a three-month shutdown amid the Covid-19 pandemic, have sold out.
Disney fans have snapped up the chance to go to the park from Monday, with tickets no longer available on the park’s online booking service through to next Thursday. Entry to the attraction is also sold out on the following weekend, on May 16 and 17.
But, in a sign there is still some hesitation about large numbers passing in one place, the Chinese government has asked Disney to cap attendance of the re-opened park at 30% of capacity, or roughly 24,000 people, Disney CEO Bob Chapek said on Tuesday.
The park was first closed on January 25 as the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the country, with the attraction among venues forced to shut to comply with social distancing rules. Disney, which later closed its other resorts worldwide as the coronavirus spread, shuttered its other parks across the globe with executives saying the closures will cost the company roughly $1 billion in profits.
In March, Disney re-opened some dining and shopping attractions at its Shanghai site, though its main theme park has remained closed.
Disney will restart operations with “far below” that number for a few weeks while it adjusts to new safeguards including social distancing, masks and temperature screenings for visitors and employees, Chapek said.
Hello readers, it’s Simon Murphy here taking over the global live blog for a short while as my colleague, Frances Perraudin, takes a break.
Here’s an update on the terrible news that a group of migrant workers has been killed by a train in India – from our South Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen.
India may have been under the world’s largest lockdown for almost two months but the exodus of its tens of millions of migrant workers, who, without any transport or any way to earn money have taken to walking sometimes thousands of miles in baking heat to get back home, has continued unabated.
In one of the most tragic incidents so far, it has emerged that 16 exhausted migrant workers, who were attempting to walk the 150 miles home to Bhusaval in the state of Maharashtra, died after falling asleep on the train tracks. According to Virendra Singh, the 22-year-old who was the only one of the group who survived, they had presumed that because trains had been stopped during lockdown, it would be safe to briefly rest on the tracks. They were run over at 5:15am on Friday morning by a train travelling from Mumbai.
“We wanted to go back to our village as for the past month and a half there was no work and no money,” said Singh. “We had started walking at 7pm on Thursday and at 4am everyone’s legs were in pain, and so we took a rest on the tracks. When I heard the train sound from the distance I screamed at them to move, but they were asleep and did not hear, and the train mowed them over.” The train tracks were left littered with the meagre possessions they were carrying, including battered shoes and the few roti they were surviving on.
India’s lockdown of its 1.3bn people has been described as one of the largest and harshest in the world, depriving the 80% of India’s workforce who work in the informal sector of a way of earning a living. Migrant workers who did not attempt to walk home have been confined to camps and reliant on food donations from government and NGOs.
Cases of coronavirus in India currently stand at 56,516, with 1,895 deaths. Experts say the country has not yet reached its peak.
US unemployment surges to record levels
More than 20 million people in the US lost their jobs in April and the unemployment rate more than trebled as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the global economy, triggering a financial crisis unseen since the Great Depression.
My colleagues in New York report an announcement by the Department of Labor that the US unemployment rate rose to 14.7% from just 4.4% in March and a near 50-year low of 3.5% in February before the US was hit by the virus.
A decade’s worth of job gains have now been wiped out in under two months. The latest jobs losses are the worst monthly figure on record. The previous peak for unemployment was 10.8% in 1982 and the largest monthly job loss, close to 2m, came in September 1945 at the end of the second world war, when the country was demobilizing. April’s job losses also easily eclipsed the 800,000 jobs lost in March 2009, the height of the last recession.
“These are truly mind-blowing numbers,” said Jason Reed, professor of finance at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. “We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Depression.”
You can read the full story here –
Hong Kong eases social distancing measures
Hong Kong has begun to ease major social distancing measures today with bars, gyms, beauty parlours and cinemas reopening their doors, reports AFP.
Queues formed outside gyms in the semi-autonomous Chinese city on Friday morning for employees to check temperatures as people celebrated the return of some normalcy to the city.
Doris, a 39-year-old yoga teacher, said her first classes were already filled after weeks of teaching online. “I’m excited to share again... and see my students,” she told the news agency.
“I was quite impatient to get back to the gym,” added Alexandre, a 26-year-old finance worker after completing a workout in the city’s commercial district. “It shows that life is starting to get back to normal even though we haven’t been locked up like in Europe.”
The less health-conscious flocked to watering holes, some of which opened their doors as soon as the clock struck midnight.
“Last month we lost a lot of money,” bar manager Nikita told AFP as he received the first punters in four weeks. “But still, we are just super happy to be back open.”
Most of Hong Kong’s entertainment venues were shuttered in early April when the city suffered a second wave of infections – primarily residents returning from Europe and North America as the pandemic spread rapidly there.
But health officials have made impressive headway against the disease thanks to efficient testing, tracing and treatment programmes with just over 1,000 infections and four deaths.
New Covid-19 cases have been in the single digits for the last 18 days - with eleven days showing a zero tally. All new infections are residents returning from overseas who are quickly quarantined.
The economic fallout from coronavirus has come to Silicon Valley, with major tech firms announcing layoffs in recent weeks, reports Kari Paul in San Francisco.
On Wednesday, Uber became the latest company to announce cuts, revealing in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it will lay off 3,700 workers – roughly 14% of its global workforce.
Uber cited the pandemic in its filing, saying Covid-19 had affected its entire business, including financial performance, investments in new products, ability to attract drivers, and corporate strategy.
Uber’s announcement came after several other tech companies said they were making cuts amid the crisis.
- Uber’s biggest rival, Lyft, announced last week it would lay off 982 members of its staff and furloughing a further 288.
- Airbnb announced this week it would lay off 1,900 people – roughly 25% of its staff.
- The vaping company Juul announced in April it would lay off 800 members of its staff and move its headquarters to Washington DC.
- Yelp announced last month it would lay off 1,000 employees and furlough 1,100 more.
- WeWork announced in March it would lay off 250 employees and is expected to cut more jobs by the end of May.
You can read the full story here:
Updated
The Middle Eastern kingdom Jordan identified 21 cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, a disturbing rise after more than a week in which zero cases were recorded each day.
Jordanians had thought they were successfully eradicating the disease thanks to a harsh lockdown that has gradually started to be eased in the past fortnight.
Mafraq, a town on the Syrian border with a large refugee population, recorded 16 of the new cases and has been sealed off by authorities.
Elements of the lockdown that were supposed to be cancelled this week will remain in place as a result of the surge in infections.
The new cases have underscored that containing the virus is a long-term challenge and that it may be impossible to completely erase it from the country, especially as its borders to the outside world are reopened over the coming months.
Several hundred Jordanians have been repatriated in the past weeks and are being quarantined, including a group of students. They are supposed to be practising social distancing but video footage went viral this week showing them dancing a traditional “dabke” outside their caravans at the Dead Sea.
The video sparked outrage and the government announced on Thursday it had come up with a novel punishment for the young men: they have had their heads shaved.
Updated
The Foreign Office has paid tribute to the British Gurkhas who rescued 109 UK nationals and 28 other nationals stranded in remote parts of Nepal.
Disclosing details of the mission, which took place last month, the government said they travelled more than 4,000 miles through the Himalayas to 13 different districts, negotiating river crossings and landslides, to reach the tourists scattered across dozens of mountainous towns, villages and national parks.
In some instances, the soldiers had to set up camp on the side of the road overnight to reach the tourists.
One, Sgt Prakash Gurung, drove nine and a half hours solo to Manang in the north-west of the country. The journey was almost aborted due to a landslide.
“I stepped up to volunteer because I thought it was a part of my job. Helping people in dire situations gives me a sense of satisfaction. The gratitude people expressed in messages has encouraged me to do more of this sort of work,” said Gurung, who is based in a barracks in Folkestone, Kent.
The UK ambassador in Nepal, Nicola Pollitt, said 700 British travellers were brought home with the help of the Gurkas.
Here is the map the embassy put together ahead of the rescue operation:
My team at @UKinNepal and @Gurkha_Brigade still working hard to help bring you back from remote regions. Over 2000 messages to our email address over the last week. Doing our best to get you on a flight to UK. Stay in touch here for updates. pic.twitter.com/4nKzxDQ6k4
— NicolaPollitt (@NicolaPollittUK) April 1, 2020
Updated
Israel’s weekly confirmed coronavirus cases have dropped below 500 for the first time following a strict eight-week lockdown that is being lifted in stages, reports the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent.
The health ministry said the total number of confirmed cases stood at about 16,300, with 42 new infections during the past 24 hours. In total, 240 people have died.
In recent days, Israel has reported fewer than 50 new cases a day, with recovers vastly overtaking new infections. Hospitals have begun to close coronavirus wards, although they have been kept on standby in anticipation of a possible second wave of infections.
Restrictions have also been reduced, with malls, gyms, hairdressers and some school classes reopening this week. Pre-schools are due to open on Sunday, with class-size limits.
Updated
Summary
Russia’s coronavirus cases rise by more than 10,000 for sixth straight day
The number of new coronavirus cases in Russia rose by 10,699 over the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide tally to 187,859, the coronavirus crisis response centre said on Friday. It also reported 98 new fatalities from COVID-19, bringing the total death toll in Russia to 1,723.
German exports see worst month-on-month decline since 1990 reunification
Exports in Germany plunged by 11.8% in March, their worst month-on-month fall since the country’s 1990 reunification, statistics authority Destatis said Friday.
WHO study: 190,000 people in Africa could die from virus.
Up to 190,000 people in Africa could die of Covid-19 during the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail, according to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO) based on prediction modelling and analysing 47 countries in the region. The organisation also warned that the virus could ‘smoulder’ on the continent for years.
UN chief warns of ‘tsunami’ of hate
The coronavirus pandemic is unleashing a global tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The UN chief said anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread, and Covid-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred.
Facebook and Google allow staff to work remotely until end of the year
Facebook and Google have both said they will allow workers who are able to work remotely to do so until the end of the year. Facebook said it would reopen its offices on 6 July as coronavirus lockdowns are gradually lifted; Google expects to reopen offices at the start of July.
Record daily deaths in Mexico
Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday reported 1,982 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 257 additional fatalities, its most lethal day. The new figures bring the total number of confirmed cases to 29,616 and 2,961 deaths.
Australia prepares to ease coronavirus restrictions in four-week stages
Australia will ease social distancing restrictions in four-week increments, two sources told Reuters, as the country’s national cabinet meets on Friday to decide which curbs to remove first amid dwindling numbers of coronavirus cases
White House reportedly blocking release of CDC guidance on reopening businesses.
A report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was abruptly shelved by the White House. The document includes step-by-step guidance on how and when local authorities should allow businesses to reopen and life to resume as normal.
The Italian province of Bolzano-Alto Adige, located in the northern part of the country, which enjoys a high degree of autonomy in running its affairs, voted overnight to speed up the reopening of activities in phase two of the coronavirus emergency. Shops will reopen on Saturday and hairdressers, bars, restaurants and museums on Monday.
Last Monday, Italy, which has endured Europe’s longest lockdown, entered what the government has described as phase two of its coronavirus emergency.
Italians are now able to travel within regions to visit relatives, provided they wear masks, but schools, hairdressers, gyms and many other commercial activities will stay closed. Cafes and restaurants will offer takeaways only and all travel between regions will be banned except for work, health or emergency situations. Restrictions on funerals have been relaxed, with a maximum of 15 mourners allowed to attend, but masses and weddings will have to wait.
Millions of people were overcome with feelings of anger and disappointment as their hopes were dashed by what many described as a “false reopening”. Expectations had been high for a quick return to normality, especially in the south, where there have been fewer Covid-19 cases than in the north. The mood is sombre, not only because the virus, despite its slackening, continues to claim lives, but also because people are on edge after having been forced to stay at home for more than 50 days.
According to the latest decree introduced by the central government, bars, hairdressers and restaurants should fully reopen on 1 June; museums and retailers from 18 May. Factories already geared towards exports and public construction projects resumed activity last Monday.
Several regions, including Calabria and Sicily, are working on a plan to speed up the reopening before the date set by the central government. In the Italian autonomous province of Bolzano-Alto Adige, the nationwide rules will still apply for the closure of schools and universities and, so far, the ban on sporting events.
Updated
A little bit more on those German export figures from the Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief, Philip Oltermann.
German exports have suffered the biggest collapse since reunification, as the country is starting to feel the effect of a slowdown in both the Chinese and European economy.
In March, German companies exported goods worth €108.9bn, the country’s statistics office announced today – an 11.8% decline from February, the most severe drop since records began in 1990.
Compared with March 2019, exports were down 7.9% year on year.
“Germany’s exports in March were being ground down by two millstones”, said Andreas Scheuerle, an expert for Germany’s saving banks finance group. “German exporters did not just feel the weakness of the Chinese market, but also the increasingly strong collapse of the European single market.”
Updated
Hello, I’m Frances Perraudin, taking over from Alexandra Topping for the rest of the day. You can contact me with comments and tips on frances.perraudin@theguardian.com and on Twitter @fperraudin.
The World Bank has approved $400m in help for Afghanistan to help the war-torn country fight coronavirus.
The number of infections continue to surge amid intensified war across the country, while the health minister has also been infected.
Henry Kerali, World Bank country director for Afghanistan, said:
This assistance will help Afghanistan maintain its reform momentum throughout a difficult period and provide vital financial support to the government to manage revenue shortfalls arising from coronavirus impacts.
Yesterday, the government confirmed that Ferozuddin Feroz, the country’s health minister, has been infected to Covid-19. The minister is in stable condition and isolated at home.
The ministry has recorded 215 new infections and three of Covid-19 overnight, pushing the total number of infections to 3,778 and death toll to 109. There have so far been 472 recoveries.
Total infections: 3,778
— Akhtar Mohammad Makoii (@akhtar_makoii) May 8, 2020
New infections: 215
May7: 171
May6: 168
May5: 330
May4: 190
May3: 235
May2: 179
May1: 164
Apr30: 232
Apr29:110
Ap28: 125
Ap27: 172
Ap26: 68
Ap25: 133
Ap24: 95
Ap23: 83
Ap22:51
Ap21:66
Ap20:30
Death toll: 109
Afghanistan’s struggle with a shortage of diagnostic testing equipment known as “RNA extraction kits”, which scientists use to isolate the RNA (ribonucleic acid) in samples of the novel coronavirus, has been given a lifeline after it received equipment from the WHO. Heath ministry has so far tested around 15,000 suspected patients.
Most of new cases confirmed in western province of Herat, which borders Iran, one of the world’s worst affected countries. 57 new cases confirmed in Herat.
Thousands of Afghans have returned home from neighbouring Iran since the beginning of the year, fanning out across the country without being tested or quarantined. The number of new infections slowed down in Kandahar compared with recent days as 17 new cases were reported in the province.
Concerns are high in the capital, Kabul, which has so far been the country’s worst affected area as one-third of 500 random coronavirus tests in came back positive, health officials said last week.
Wahid Majroh, the deputy health minister, has warned that the threat of the virus is at its “highest level”.
Despite a government-authorised lockdown in several provinces, streets are still crowded, which raises fears of a surge in number of death and infections among experts.
Updated
Facebook and Google allow staff to work remotely until end of the year
Facebook and Google have both said they will allow workers who are able to work remotely to do so until the end of the year.
Facebook was among the first tech firms to ask its employees to begin working remotely. It gave employees $1,000 (£807) bonuses for their work-from-home and childcare costs. In a statement today, a spokesman for the tech firm said:
Facebook has taken the next step in its return to work philosophy. Today, we announced anyone who can do their work remotely can choose to do so through the end of the year. As you can imagine this is an evolving situation as employees and their families make important decisions re: return to work.
Facebook said it would reopen its offices on 6 July as coronavirus lockdowns are gradually lifted, but is still determining which employees will be asked to come in.
The Google chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said employees who need to return to the office will start being able to do so from July with enhanced safety measures in place. Google originally said it would keep its work from home policy until 1 June, but is extending it for a further seven months.
The majority of employees who can carry out their jobs from home will be able to do so until the end of the year, Pichai added.
Updated
An outbreak of coronavirus in the top-security Tehran prison housing most of Iran’s political prisoners has been confirmed by a jailed British-Iranian dual national, Anoosheh Ashoori. Although there have been rumours of an outbreak before, it is the first time the outbreak has been so directly confirmed.
Ashoori said inmate Loghman Roozchang showed symptoms of the disease very soon after returning from furlough this week. He and two of his brothers convicted of embezzlement had been placed in Hall 2 of Wing 4 of the prison on their return as part of a supposed 14-day quarantine.
But he was taken away on Tuesday to hospital and his brother on Thursday confirmed that he had been tested positive. The three brothers Yadollah, Loghman and Anvar are serving sentences of between 20 to 23 years.
Early in Iran’s outbreak in April tens of thousands of prisoners were released on furlough, including as many as half of the political or security prisoners, but with the official figures, until this week, showing a decline in new infections, prisoners have started to be instructed to return to jail.
The 66-year-old Ashoori was never released, since his conviction was longer than five years, although in practice this rule has been frequently overridden by the authorities.
Campaigners for Ashoori’s release say there is no logic to the quarantine in Hall 2 since the 14-day period is widely ignored and newly arrived prisoners are put in alongside those that have been in the hall for a few days. The campaigners say prisoners are also moving between halls so making the quarantine a largely symbolic exercise designed to satisfy the World Health Organization, the UN body that advises national governments on how to defeat the infection.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the best-known of the jailed British-Iranian dual nationals, had been kept in Evin for four years but was released on furlough in April and has spent the time on release at her parent’s home on a tag in Tehran. She is waiting to hear if she will be granted clemency or instead returned to jail. Her husband Richard Ratcliffe has asked the UK ambassador to Tehran to visit her in an act of solidarity.
Tehran itself was hit by 5.1 earthquake on Thursday night, leading to civilians to rush into the streets for safety. Two are reported dead.
Updated
Spain will decide on Friday in which regions bars, restaurants and places of worship will open under the next phase of a gradual exit from the coronavirus lockdown, reports Reuters.
🏖️ | Barcelona's beaches welcomed the public once again this morning as the city council reopened them for individual exercise and sport, including walking, swimming, and paddle surfing
— Catalan News (@catalannews) May 8, 2020
📝 | Read more: https://t.co/dUNRmPRSBe pic.twitter.com/FmN7OYAGEL
It looks likely that Madrid and Catalonia will not reopen further, but in a sign of life returning to normal, Barcelona beaches opened for a short window from 6am to 10am on Friday to allow people to swim and jog. People paddled on boards and swam in the water under the supervision of police.
Spain has been one of the worst-hit countries globally from the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 26,000 fatalities. The regions of Madrid and Catalonia, home to Barcelona, account for around half of all recorded infections.
The government will decide which regions will move to the second phase of its four-stage exit on Friday and the results will be officially published on Saturday. The country is aiming for a return to normality by the end of June.
The government has loosened the terms this week, with people allowed to take exercise and small businesses such as hairdressers receiving clients with restrictions to allow social distancing.
Under the next stage, bars, restaurants and places of worship will be able to open with limited capacity.
In the fourth and final phase, expected around the end of June, beaches will open for sunbathing and restrictions on shops and restaurants will be further loosened.
Updated
The end to the strict lockdown in France does not mean an end to form-filling.
Anyone travelling more than 100km after Monday will need to have an “imperative” professional or personal reason and carry sworn declarations to that effect. To enforce the regulations, extra police and gendarmes will be posted on major roads, motorways, service stations and popular holiday destinations.
We now have more details on what those “imperative” reasons might be.
- Work. If your journey is more than 100km you may – it’s not clear entirely yet – need an attestation from your employer stating the journey is necessary. There are obvious exceptions to the 100km rule including transport workers.
- Family emergency. If you need to travel more than 100km to take urgent care of a child or sick relative. Just visiting a family member is not allowed. People can travel to funerals, but there is a limit on gatherings to 10 people.
- Moving house. Only if this cannot be postponed and you face being homeless ie, your current lease is ending.
- Returning home. Foreign nationals have the right to return to their home country. French people who fled the lockdown to second homes can return to their main residence even if it’s over 100km but journeys in the opposite direction will not be allowed.
- Medical appointments, legal and administrative procedures.
The 100km limit is the total length of the journey as the crow flies from your home address but you can travel between departments whatever its colour on the coronavirus map. The government has helpfully put online a tool that allows people to calculate the distance. As well as the declarations and attestations you will need something proving your principal address like an utility bill or rental contract.
Updated
UK will take "tentative steps" out of lockdown, says government minister
Much of the UK is on tenterhooks, waiting to see what lockdown measures - if any - will be relaxed on Sunday, when the prime minister Boris Johnson will make an announcement.
While the UK government has talked down the extent of any impending changes, this morning the country’s culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, said the prime minister would set out “tentative” steps leading out of the lockdown.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said:
We can start to look to the future but we’ll have to do so in a very tentative and cautious way, so people should not expect big changes.
If there is any indication that things are starting to get out of control, we won’t hesitate to step back.
But people should be able to look forward to the weeks and months ahead to know where we are going and the order in which we are doing it.
Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s first minister, Arlene Foster, reiterated that any changes made to its lockdown measures – extended for another three weeks on Thursday – would be “minor” and “nuanced” in order to keep the “R-rate” of infection below 1.
She said:
We don’t want to take any chances that it will go above the number 1 again. Everything will stay as it is.
We don’t just look at the public health, of course that is the priority, we do have to look at the economic damage that is being done to our country and the societal damage and the wider health issues we have to take into account as well.
We will look to see if we can make minor amendments within those three weeks.
For all updates on the situation in the UK, please do visit our UK coronavirus live blog
Updated
South Korean health authorities are investigating a small but growing coronavirus outbreak centred in a handful of Seoul nightclubs, seeking to keep infections in check as the country moves to less restrictive social distancing measures, Reuters reports.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said on Friday at least 15 people have confirmed cases of the virus linked to the clubs in Itaewon, a neighbourhood popular with Koreans and foreigners in the city.
South Korea has reported only a handful of cases in recent days, the majority of them in people arriving from overseas. The nightclub infections, while still limited, are expected to increase, and come at a time when the country has eased some social distancing restrictions.
KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong said:
These venues have all the dangerous conditions that we were the most concerned about. We think it is necessary to strengthen management for such facilities and we urge you to refrain from visiting such facilities as much as possible.
You can read my colleague Andrew Roth’s report on Russia becoming Europe’s coronavirus hot spot below.
Here’s an excerpt:
Russia has the highest growth rate of infections in Europe and as of Thursday has the fifth highest number of cases in the world, surpassing Germany and France. Mikhail Mishustin, the Russian prime minister, and two other cabinet members have fallen ill.
Putin’s approval ratings have dropped to their nominal lowest in 20 years, the independent Levada Centre said, and the IMF has forecast that the country’s economy will contract by 5.5% this year. Russia’s official death toll has remained mercifully low for the number of cases, although medics are dying at worrying rates.
In discussions with his subordinates, Putin at times has looked deeply bored. As his health minister discussed regional payouts on Wednesday, the president distractedly rolled a pen back and forth across his desk, lost in a moment of reverie broadcast nationwide.
“Putin not only doesn’t control the situation but he cannot even plan how to change the agenda,” said Nikolay Petrov, a senior research fellow at the British thinktank Chatham House. “He cannot adjust … I think partly Putin’s lack of activism is connected to the fact that he is out of his normal position.”
[...]
The Kremlin’s desire to carry out its political programme has appeared at odds with its response to the epidemic. Putin held off on cancelling the symbolic vote until late March and the Victory Day parade until mid-April, with thousands of soldiers being sent into quarantine as a preventive measure.
“It appears the Kremlin was too focused on the constitutional and political reforms and not the epidemic,” said Petrov. “The epidemic came later to Russia and it was possible to be better prepared.”
One thing is clear: this is not the time to hold a public vote that could backfire over the Kremlin’s response to the epidemic. Analysts have suggested that it could be cancelled entirely, or delayed until the autumn when political conditions are more favourable.
Russia's coronavirus cases rise by more than 10,000 for sixth straight day
The number of new coronavirus cases in Russia rose by 10,699 over the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide tally to 187,859, the coronavirus crisis response centre said on Friday.
It was the sixth consecutive day that cases had risen by more than 10,000, but down on Thursday’s record daily rise of 11,231.
It also reported 98 new fatalities from COVID-19, bringing the total death toll in Russia to 1,723.
Over in Greece this morning news has broken that a former health minister, and respected heart surgeon, has succumbed to coronavirus, writes Helena Smith in Athens.
Dimitris Kremastinos, 78, was admitted to a hospital in Athens two weeks ago where he was described as having waged an intense battle against the virus.
Tributes poured in for the British-trained doctor politician, with Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis saying the world of science had lost a respected figure who had worked “with dignity, responsibility and efficacy.”
Kremastinos, an MP until last year, had been health minister under the late socialist leader Andreas Papandreou. As the most high-profile casualty of the virus in Greece his death was announced by the current health minister Vassilis Kikilias.
Greece has recorded one of the lowest infection rates in Europe to date, after enforcing draconian lockdown measures early on. A total of 2,678 confirmed cases of coronavirus have been recorded and 148 deaths with health ministry officials saying the country, which hopes to open up to tourists in July, has almost “flattened the curve.”
WHO: supporting domestic violence victims is not "optional"
Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, the WHO Regional Director for Europe has called for more action from every country that has seen a surge in domestic violence during the coronavirus pandemic, saying “violence remains preventable, not inevitable”. But if steps are not taken the world could see 31 million cases of gender-based violence, he warned.
He said:
WHO is deeply troubled by the reports from many countries, including Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Ireland, Russian Federation, Spain, UK, and others of increases in interpersonal violence – including violence against women and men, by an intimate partner and against children - because of the COVID-19 response.
Although data is scarce, Member States are reporting up to a 60% increase in emergency calls by women subjected to violence by their intimate partners in April this year, compared to last. Online enquiries to violence prevention support hotlines have increased up to 5 times.
Our UN partner UNFPA has sounded the alarm loud and clear – if lockdowns were to continue for 6 months, we would expect an extra 31 million cases of gender-based violence globally. Beyond the figures, only a fraction of cases is ever reported.
He added that governments and local authorities should consider it to be a “moral obligation” to make sure services are available, while calling on communities to look out for their friends, family and neighbours and speak out.
To victims, he said:
Violence against you is never your fault. It is never your fault. Your home should be a secure place. Get in touch -safely- with family, friends, shelters or community groups that have your safety and security at heart.
This is Lexy Topping in the London office taking over the global coronavirus live blog for the next few hours. Please do get in touch with any tips and stories. My email is alexandra.topping@theguardian.com and my twitter handkle is @lexytopping. My DMs are open.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for this week. Thanks for following along, and especially to those of you who got in touch on Twitter and email. Happy VE day!
German exports see worst month-on-month decline since 1990 reunification
Moving away from that very sad news now to Germany, where exports plunged by 11.8% in March, their worst month-on-month fall since the country’s 1990 reunification, statistics authority Destatis said Friday.
The data illustrated the first monthly impact of the coronavirus epidemic on Europe’s biggest economy. The drop was far steeper than a five percent forecast from analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
Some €108.9bn (US$118 billion) of German goods were sold abroad, while the country bought imports worth €91.6bn - down by 5.1% from the level in February. The bigger plunge in exports than imports reduced Germany’s widely-criticised trade surplus to €17.4bn, compared with €22.3bn a year before, Reuters reports.
In Germany, late March brought the first shutdowns of much of public life to limit the spread of the coronavirus. But some vital trade partners like Italy and China had already been battling the disease for weeks or months by the time such decisions fell in Berlin and regional capitals.
In a geographic breakdown, March brought a bigger fall for exports to Germany’s European Union neighbours, at 11.0% from March 2019, compared with a 4.3%-drop in shipments to the rest of the world.
Exports to the eurozone single currency area were particularly hard-hit, falling by 14%.
Updated
14 migrant workers killed by train in India
An Indian train killed 14 migrant workers who had fallen asleep on the track on Friday while they were heading back to their home village after losing their jobs in a coronavirus lockdown, police said.
Tens of thousands of people have been walking home from India’s big cities after being laid off because of the lockdown to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus since late March, Reuters reports. The driver tried to stop the freight train when he saw the workers on the tracks in the western state of Maharashtra, the railway ministry said, adding it had ordered an inquiry.
Fourteen people were killed and five were injured, said a railway spokesman, CH Rakesh.
“I have just heard the sad news about labourers coming under the train, rescue work is underway,” railway minister Piyush Goyal said on Twitter.
Under the lockdown, all public transport has been suspended so migrant workers heading home often have to walk long distances to get there. Police said the labourers worked for a steel company and were walking to their village in the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh.
“They had been walking all night, they were exhausted and fell asleep on the tracks,” a police officer said. Because of the lockdown, they were probably not expecting any trains to be moving, an official said.
Updated
“The Murdoch media’s China coronavirus conspiracy has one aim: get Trump re-elected,” writes Australia’s former prime minister, Kevin Rudd.
This brings us to the Covid-19 pandemic and the public health and economic mayhem it has unleashed across the globe. The sheer magnitude of the damage means that the people of the world have every right to know how this came about. Whether China’s new class of “wolf warrior” diplomats care to recognise it or not, there are fundamental questions we can all legitimately demand answers to.
But amid all these questions, and the parallel debate about the mechanism now needed to conduct an effective international inquiry, we suddenly have a unilateral declaration by the US president and his secretary of state that the body of evidence overwhelmingly points to the virus having leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where research projects have been under way into various categories of coronavirus borne by bats.
Enter the “global exclusive” story of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian Daily Telegraph last weekend, headlined “China’s batty science – bombshell dossier lays out the case against the People’s Republic”.
Summary
- Global death toll nears 270,000. The total number of coronavirus deaths across the world has reached at least 268,999, according to Johns Hopkins University, which has tracked the spread of the virus. There are 3,846,949 confirmed cases.
- White House blocks release of CDC guidance on reopening businesses. A report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was abruptly shelved by the White House, according to Associated Press. The document includes step-by-step guidance on how and when local authorities should allow businesses to reopen and life to resume as normal. US unemployment claims hit 33.3m, while the death toll passed 75,000.
- Trump revives theory that virus originated in a lab. “Something happened,” Trump told US reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the theory that the coronavirus was released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “Probably it was incompetence. Somebody was stupid,” the US president added during a meeting with the Texas governor. It comes after Mike Pompeo claimed he had seen “enormous evidence” that the virus had originated at the lab. No evidence has been produced. China has denied the claims. Trump meanwhile tested negative for coronavirus, after his personal valet was confirmed to be infected.
- The Australian government has pushed back at US claims the coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan lab and has determined that a “dossier” giving weight to the theory is not a Five Eyes intelligence document.
- Australia outlines three-step plan for easing restrictions. Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison outlined the three steps the country will take to achieve a “Covid-safe economy in July of this year”. However, the final decisions on the easing of restrictions remains in the hands of state governments.
- WHO study: 190,000 people in Africa could die from virus. Up to 190,000 people could die of Covid-19 during the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail, according to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO) based on prediction modelling and analysing 47 countries in the region. The organisation also warned that the virus could ‘smoulder’ on the continent for years.
- Record daily deaths in Mexico. Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday reported 1,982 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 257 additional fatalities, the most lethal day since the pandemic reached the Latin America’s second largest country. Infections in Pakistan have risen by 1,764 over the previous 24 hours, officials said on Friday, taking the total to 25,837. Deaths rose by 30 to 594.
Updated
Global report: China ‘open to cooperate’ with WHO on virus origin as Trump repeats lab claim
China has said it is “always open to cooperate” with World Health Organisation (WHO) investigations into the origins of the coronavirus, as Donald Trump repeated claims that the outbreak originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
China has denied the claim, for which the US is yet to provide evidence.
Late on Thursday Trump insisted that “something happened” at the Wuhan lab. “Probably it was incompetence. Somebody was stupid,” he said.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, claimed earlier this week he had seen “enormous evidence” that the virus had originated at the lab, but has not released any evidence.
Pompeo has since walked back his remarks, telling a US radio station on Thursday: “there’s evidence that it came from somewhere in the vicinity of the lab, but that could be wrong.”
Chinese officials and state media have reacted harshly to the claims, accusing Trump, Pompeo, and US officials of blaming China to cover up US failings in its outbreak-response, and seeking to improve Trump’s electoral chances.
Updated
Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Once again a battle-scarred Britain must find a new role in the world
As the UK prepares to celebrate VE Day, the institutional order created by the west following the defeat of Germany, and on which Johnson’s vision rested, seems after 75 years finally to be coming apart. Those institutions, in which the UK thrived, are either paralysed, or a battleground.
Covid-19, an invisible enemy, but deadlier than the blitz, has exacerbated and accelerated trends recalibrating risk, revealing new Great Powers and placing all UK diplomatic alliances under scrutiny. Sir Simon McDonald, the foreign office senior mandarin, says it is a “watershed moment for humanity”, and a chance for “a world reset”.
UN chief warns of 'tsunami' of hate
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday the coronavirus pandemic keeps unleashing a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering and appealed for an all-out effort to end hate speech globally,” AP reports.
The UN chief said anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread, and Covid-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred.
Guterres said migrants and refugees have been vilified as a source of the virus and then denied access to medical treatment.
With older persons among the most vulnerable, contemptible memes have emerged suggesting they are also the most expendable, he said. And journalists, whistleblowers, health professionals, aid workers and human rights defenders are being targeted simply for doing their jobs.
Guterres called on political leaders to show solidarity with all people, on educational institutions to focus on digital literacy at a time when extremists are seeking to prey on captive and potentially despairing audiences.
Updated
UK front pages, Friday 8 May 2020
GUARDIAN: Fears No 10 has lost grip on lockdown exit plans #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/Ds32vsiqxT
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 7, 2020
TIMES:PM to keep Britain in lockdown until June #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/Cro6j2mj13
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 7, 2020
TELEGRAPH: @Keir_Starmer : we owe it to VE Day generation to protect them from virus in care homes #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/59BgkJvG6X
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 7, 2020
INDEPENDENT DIGITAL : maximum caution over lockdown, insists PM #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/aF83k3DTDR
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 7, 2020
FT: Americans signal rising unease over Trump’s handling of crisis #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/Hs4fIC1pzf
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 7, 2020
Coronavirus could ‘smoulder’ in Africa for several years, WHO warns
The Guardian’s Jason Burke and Emmanuel Akinwotu report:
The Covid-19 pandemic could “smoulder” in Africa for several years after killing as many as 190,000 people in the coming 12 months, the World Health Organization has said.
The WHO warned last month that there could be 10m infections on the continent within six months, though experts said the pandemic’s impact would depend on governments’ actions.
A study released by the organisation this week predicts that between 29 million to 44 million people could become infected in the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail. This “would overwhelm the available medical capacity in much of Africa” where there are only nine intensive care unit beds per million people.
“While Covid-19 likely won’t spread as exponentially in Africa as it has elsewhere in the world, it likely will smoulder in transmission hotspots,” said the director of the World Health Organization’s Africa region, Dr Matshidiso Moeti. “Covid-19 could become a fixture in our lives for the next several years unless a proactive approach is taken by many governments in the region. We need to test, trace, isolate and treat.”
The research looked at 47 countries in the WHO African Region with a total population of one billion.
More than 51,000 people in Africa have been infected and 2,012 have died. The total number of cases has risen sharply in the past week.
Podcast: Blind Date takeover – looking for love in lockdown
Lockdown has changed the way we date. Is it possible to form the same kind of connection through a screen? To find out, we set up six strangers on three virtual blind dates ...
Summary
-
Global death toll nears 270,000. The total number of coronavirus deaths across the world has reached at least 268,999, according to Johns Hopkins University, which has tracked the spread of the virus. There are 3,846,949 confirmed cases.
-
US death toll passes 75,000. The US death toll from coronavirus has now surpassed 75,000 people, according to the counter from Johns Hopkins University. Deaths in the US are the highest globally at 75,447, a rise of around 2,000 in a day, followed by the UK at 30,689 deaths.
- Record daily deaths in Mexico. Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday reported 1,982 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 257 additional fatalities, the most lethal day since the pandemic reached the Latin America’s second largest country.
-
US President Donald Trump continues to push theory that virus originated in a lab, without evidence. “Something happened,” Trump told US reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the theory that the coronavirus was released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “Probably it was incompetence. Somebody was stupid,” the US president added during a meeting with the Texas governor. It comes after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed he had seen “enormous evidence” that the virus had originated at the lab. No evidence has been produced. China has denied the claims.
- White House reportedly blocking release of CDC guidance on reopening businesses. A report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was abruptly shelved by the White House, according to AP News. The document includes step-by-step guidance on how and when local authorities should allow businesses to reopen and life to resume as normal.
- Australia hits back at US claim linking coronavirus to Wuhan lab. The Australian government has pushed back at US claims the coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan lab and has determined that a “dossier” giving weight to the theory is not a Five Eyes intelligence document.
- Australia outlines three-step plan for easing restrictions. Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison outlined the steps the country will take to achieve a “Covid-safe economy in July of this year”. However, the final decisions on the easing of restrictions remains in the hands of state governments.
- Trump tests negative for coronavirus after report valet was infected. Donald Trump and his vice-president, Mike Pence, have tested negative for coronavirus after finding out that a member of the US military who worked on the White House campus had become infected, a White House spokesman said. The military official was identified by CNN as personal valet to the US president.
- US unemployment claims hit 33.3 million. A further 3.2 million Americans sought unemployment benefits last week as the economic toll from coronavirus continued to mount.
- WHO study: 190,000 people in Africa could die from virus. Up to 190,000 people could die of Covid-19 during the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail, according to a study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) based on prediction modelling and analysing 47 countries in the region.
- France virus deaths fall. France reported 178 new coronavirus deaths, a fall on the previous day, and saw its number of patients in intensive care drop under 3,000 for the first time since late March.
- International tourism to plunge by up to 80%. The number of international tourist arrivals could plunge by 60-80% in 2020 owing to the coronavirus, the World Tourism Organization has said.
- Russia overtakes Germany and France after record rise in cases. Russia overtook France and Germany for coronavirus cases on Thursday, giving it the fifth-highest total in the world at 177,160. Donald Trump offered to send medical aid to Moscow during a phone call with Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said.
Thailand reported eight new cases of coronavirus on Friday, and no new deaths.
The country has almost 3,000 cases and 55 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
Stock markets in Asia have enjoyed a good day so far helped by news of trade talks between US and Chinese trade officials. The Nikkei was up nearly 2% in Tokyo while the FTSE100 is expected to be 0.5% higher in London later. Wall Street looks like rising even further, by around 1.5%.
Markets rallying in Asian session.
— IGSquawk (@IGSquawk) May 8, 2020
Australia reopening earlier than expected. US and China seem to be getting along better. Disney, Ford reopening.#DOW 24214 +1.42%#SPX 2920 +1.36%#NASDAQ 9213 +1.25%#RUSSELL 1306 +1.87%#FANG 3622 +1.07% pic.twitter.com/x3qEAx9jUA
There are concerns that the war of words about the origin of the virus between Washington and Beijing could derail phase one of their trade deal. But investors are betting that things are looking up, despite the prospect of data in the US on Friday that is expected to show the highest unemployment rate for more than 70 years.
Remarkably, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index in New York has regained all the losses incurred since the crisis began earlier this year.
Read the full story here:
India boosts output of anti-malarial drug hyped by Trump
India has ramped up output of an anti-malarial drug hailed by US President Donald Trump as a “game-changer” in the fight against coronavirus, even as its pharmaceutical industry struggles to make other key medicines in a lockdown, AFP reports.
Drug companies have seen demand for hydroxychloroquine soar since March when Trump’s remarks sparked a run on the medication and caused a global shortage - despite health agencies warning over its safety in the treatment of Covid-19.
India accounts for 70% of global production of hydroxychloroquine, which is also used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Despite the challenges, Indian companies have managed to export the medicine to 97 countries during the pandemic, the health ministry said.
To meet the growing demand, Ipca Laboratories, one of four key makers of hydroxychloroquine, is increasing output by a third to 130 million tablets a month in May - despite having only 40% of its 18,000 workers on deck.
Zydus Cadila, another major producer, said it would boost production tenfold to about 150 million tablets a month in May.
Coronavirus cases in Pakistan surged past 25,000 on Friday, just hours before the government was due to lift lockdown measures, with the country reporting some of the biggest daily increases in new infections in the world, Reuters reports.
Officials reported 1,764 new Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours on Friday, taking the total to 25,837. Deaths rose by 30 to 594.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has announced plans to begin lifting Pakistan’s poorly enforced lockdown from Saturday, amid fears for the country’s economy as it sinks into recession.
Khan said the easing of restrictions, aimed at helping the country’s most impoverished citizens, would be lifted in phases and warned people that the epidemic could get out of control if they did not take precautions. He added that restrictions could be restored if the outbreak worsens.
The government’s handling of the virus has been strongly criticised by scientists and doctors who fear the outbreak will gather pace among a population of around 210 million and overwhelm the country’s struggling health system.
After reporting just a handful of Covid-19 cases in late February, Pakistan’s numbers began to surge from mid-March. It has reported an average of just over 1,000 cases and around 27 deaths per day for the past week, according to a Reuters tally based on official data.
North Korea condemned the South on Friday for holding military drills, saying the situation was returning to before the diplomatic rapprochement of 2018, as leader Kim Jong Un - whose health was the subject of intense speculation in recent weeks - reached out to traditional ally Beijing, Reuters reports.
Kim sent Chinese leader Xi Jinping a diplomatic communication congratulating him for China’s “success” in controlling the novel coronavirus epidemic, the state news agency KCNA reported.
The nuclear-armed North has closed its borders to try to protect itself from the disease that first emerged in its giant neighbour, and insists it has not had any cases even as the virus has swept across the world.
Kim told Xi he was as pleased with China’s successes as his own, KCNA reported, adding he “sent militant greetings to every member of the Communist Party of China”.
Rumours swirled for weeks about Kim’s health after he failed to appear at the 15 April celebrations for the birthday of his grandfather, the North’s founder – the most important day in the country’s political calendar – until he reappeared at the weekend at a factory opening.
Kim’s temporary disappearance triggered a series of unconfirmed reports and fevered speculation over his condition, while the United States and South Korea insisted they had no information to believe the conjectures were true.
New Zealand on Friday weighed in on the debate around whether Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Organisation saying the country has a lot to offer given its success in limiting the spread of the coronavirus.
“Taiwan has something to offer at the WHO right at the moment,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said at a news conference when asked if New Zealand would support Taiwan’s inclusion in WHO as an observer.
Robertson was addressing a daily media briefing on the country’s fight against the coronavirus.
Taiwan’s exclusion from the UN body, due to objections from China which claims the island as one of its provinces, has infuriated the Taiwanese government which has reported fewer cases of coronavirus than many neighbours due to early detection and prevention work.
That press conference with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has now ended.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is speaking now about Australia’s position on the theory repeated by Trump and Mike Pompeo that the virus emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan.
As my colleagues Daniel Hurst and Ben Doherty wrote, Scott Morrison has carefully declined to buy into the lab origin theory over the past week, saying he had “not seen anything that suggests that conclusively”.
First of all, in terms of Secretary Pompeo, I want to extend my best wishes to him and his family. He just lost his father, andI know from recent experience how difficult that must be. He’s an extraordinary fellow and I’m sure his father would have been incredibly proud of him. So, all my best to you, Mike.
I’ve already made comment on these matters. I think what is important is we find out, and the world doesn’t yet know – I raised this at the meeting with international colleagues last night.
...
It’s not directed at anyone, we just want to know what happened so it doesn’t happen again. It’s a pretty honest question, with an honest intent and an honest motive.
Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, says international travel will not be happening in the foreseeable future.
Updated
Australia’s treasury says that 850,000 jobs will be restored in coming months. Morrison says:
Those 850,000 jobs I’m advised by treasury, that includes those who may be on JobSeeker or JobKeeper now. People stood down, going back to full employment. And those, that work is being done based on the steps you can see here today.”
Australia’s process for easing restrictions will still ultimately be up to states and territories, Prime Minister Scott Morrison says.
Morrison is taking questions now. On the timing of step one, he says the premiers and chief ministers will announce their own timetables.
They’ll be announcing their own timetables for when they’re making those statements. I think you can expect to see some of them later today, making some initial comments and I’d expect to see them making further comments in the days ahead, over the weekend, and early next week. That’s when you can expect them to outline those timetables.
There’s some states like Western Australia where step one has ticked the box. They’re very much well advanced on that. South Australia, Northern Territory, quite similarly. But those on the east coast, a very different situation. They all got different starting points. The whole country has the same end point, to get to a COVID safe economy
Australia outlines three-step plan for easing restrictions
Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison is speaking now. He is outlining the steps the country will take to achieve a “Covid-safe economy in July of this year”.
There are three steps:
Step one will “enable greater connection with friends and family”
Things that will be allowed include:
- Gatherings up to 10 people, and five guests in your own home.
- Children back in classrooms and in playgrounds in their communities.
- Recreational activities such as golf, lap swimming and boot camps.
- Retail and small cafes and restaurants reopening.
- Interstate recreational travel, starting again.
- An easing of restrictions for funerals.
Step two, Morrison says, “will allow larger size gatherings up to 20 people, including for venues such as cinemas and galleries, more retail openings on sector-based Covid-safe plans, organised community sport, and beauty parlours, and you’ll be pleased to know, barre classes open once again.”
Step three, Morrison says, will see gatherings of up to 100 people. But its timing, he says, will depend on the success of the previous steps.
“But most workers, by then, will be back in the workplace. Interstate travel will likely resume. Pubs and clubs with some restrictions will be open. And also possibly gaming venues. As I said, steps three, step three, but also step two, will get greater definition as we move through the success of step one.”
Updated
Rebecca Ratcliffe, the Guardian’s South-east Asia correspondent, and Aanya Piyari have this report:
Trouble is brewing for the world’s tea producers as the coronavirus lockdown shut down the harvest in several important regions, including the picking of India’s “champagne of teas”.
Despite forecasts of increased demand from drinkers stuck at home across the world, producers have become frustrated by the enforced quarantining of their workforce, with India’s output expected to drop by 9% in 2020.
Lockdown measures in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam halted work for more than a month. The global coronavirus outbreak escalated at the worst possible time for Indian tea producers, just as the most valuable harvest of the year was ready to be plucked.
India has very specific production periods, experts said, called flushes. The prized first flush of Darjeeling, the “champagne of teas” harvested in the country’s north-eastern, has been severely hit. This harvest, which is generally picked between March and April, accounts for as much as 40% of annual revenue.
Other tea exporting countries, including China, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, have also experienced disruption, though Kenya - the main supplier of tea to the UK - has so far avoided major problems. The International Tea Committee has predicted the country may see output rise by 15% this year.
Also Thursday, the government said four unaccompanied Guatemalan minors tested positive for the novel coronavirus after being deported by Mexico this week, AP reports.
The cases are the first that the government has acknowledged for deportees arriving from Mexico. The three boys and one girl all teenagers arrived by bus Monday, said Anaeli Torres, director of Special Protection and Non-Residential Attention for Guatemala’s social welfare agency.
All four arrived with paperwork from Mexico certifying that they were asymptomatic and Torres said they continue to be asymptomatic. But the government is testing all minors when they arrive before sending them back to their families, she said.
Since the cases were identified, the adolescents have been moved to the appropriate health services, Torres said. She also called on Guatemalans living near shelters where deported children are housed to not stigmatise them.
Virus fears have led to aggressive rejection of deportees in some communities.
They have the right to return to their country and a dignified family reunification,” Torres said.
Ten other children who arrived with them from Mexico were still awaiting their test results, according to Torres.
A Guatemalan man deported from the United States tested positive for the new coronavirus, the government said Thursday, despite assurances from US authorities that the Guatemalans had been tested and were negative before being flown back to their country, AP reports.
The man arrived Monday on a flight carrying 75 Guatemalan migrants, all of whom had paperwork stating they had been tested and were not infected.
But an employee of Guatemala’s Health Department speaking on condition of anonymity said the man was one of 10 migrants chosen at random for a test after he returned. He was the only one who came back positive.
There was no immediate explanation for the conflicting results, but it appears some of those tests may have been done a week before they were deported.
Prior testing had been a condition for Guatemala to accept the resumption of deportation flights, after the Guatemalan government reported at least 100 deportees from the United States tested positive for the virus after arriving in Guatemala in recent weeks. Those cases led the government to twice suspend deportation flights from the US.
US senators propose renaming street outside Chinese embassy after Wuhan whistleblower
US lawmakers have proposed renaming the street in front of the Chinese embassy in Washington after the late Wuhan doctor punished for warning about the spread of coronavirus, a step sure to outrage Beijing.
The measure would rechristen the section of the Washington street in front of the embassy “Li Wenliang Plaza”, instead of the innocuous current name of International Place.
Li was one of a group of doctors who shared posts on social media in December warning that a virus was spreading in Wuhan.
He was reprimanded by police and made to sign a statement promising not to commit any more “law-breaking actions.”
He died from the illness in February, triggering a nationwide outpouring of grief and a rare apology by police for his treatment.
“We’ll ensure the name Li Wenliang is never forgotten – by placing it permanently outside the embassy of the nation responsible for the deaths Dr Li tried to prevent,” said Tom Cotton, a Republican senator known for his hawkish views on China.
Here’s the full story on News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch giving up his bonus, as the global media empire loses US$1bn in the three months to the end of March – and is expecting more financial pain:
A black lawmaker came to Michigan’s capitol with an escort of armed black citizens on Wednesday, days after white protesters with guns staged a volatile protest inside the state house, comparing the Democratic governor’s public health orders to “tyranny”.
The state representative Sarah Anthony, 36, said she wanted to highlight what she saw as the failure of the Michigan capitol police to provide legislators with adequate security during the protest, which saw demonstrators with rifles standing in the legislative chamber above lawmakers.
“When traditional systems, whether it’s law enforcement or whatever, fail us, we also have the ability to take care of ourselves,” she told the Guardian. Anthony became the first African American woman elected to represent her district in Lansing, Michigan’s capital, in 2018.
One of Anthony’s constituents, a black firefighter, organized Wednesday’s capitol escort. While early reports focused on three black men with large rifles escorting Anthony, there were six participants, including two women, and some of them were armed with handguns, Lynn said. Five of the participants are black and one is Hispanic. Michael Lynn Jr, a Lansing resident, said he was frustrated to see his legislator being violently intimidated in her workplace. He said the escort was the first time he had ever chosen to openly carry his AR-15 rifle.
France’s Safran, the world’s third-largest aerospace supplier, said on Thursday it had laid off 3,000 employees in Mexico as the aerospace industry faces an unprecedented crisis stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.
Safran’s two plants in Queretaro, an industrial city in the center of the country, are part of a vast network of export-focused factories that have turned Mexico into a key player for global manufacturing supply chains.
Those factories have been bleeding jobs in recent months as manufacturers across the globe scale down production amid forecasts of the biggest global recession in many generations.
The National Confederation of Industrial Chambers, an influential industry association, estimates about 700,000 Mexican jobs were lost in March and April, and another 650,000 could be lost in May if the reopening of Mexico’s economy does not start until June.
Record daily deaths in Mexico
Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday reported 1,982 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 257 additional fatalities, the most lethal day since the pandemic reached the Latin America’s second largest country.
The new figures bring the total number of confirmed cases to 29,616 and 2,961 deaths. However, the government has said the real number of infections is significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
Mexican officials are asking residents to observe social distancing measures ahead of Mother’s Day on Sunday and have closed Mexico City’s main flower market and cemeteries, where people tend to congregate for the holiday.
They have even suggested moving the holiday to July.
Considered one of Mexico’s most important holidays, Mother’s Day coincides this year with what health officials calculate is the peak week for the spread of the novel coronavirus.
China reported one new coronavirus case for 7 May, down from the two cases the day before, data from the national health authority showed on Friday.
No new imported cases were recorded on 7 May, the National Health Commission said in a statement.
The commission also reported 16 new asymptomatic cases for 7 May, versus six the previous day.
China’s total number of coronavirus cases now stands at 82,886, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,633, the national health authority said.
Two piglets for a kayak: Fiji returns to barter system as Covid-19 hits economy
Talei Tora reports for the Guardian from Suva:
Two piglets for a pre-loved kayak, a taxi fare in exchange for fresh produce, hot cross buns for online tutoring, an old carpet for a professional photography session, vegetable seedlings for homemade pies, and offers to have backyards cleaned for prayers.
These are just a few examples of the hundreds of barter trades that are taking place across Fiji since a Facebook page “Barter for Better Fiji” was created a few weeks ago in response to sharp falls in employment due to coronavirus. The page now has more than 100,000 members, in a country of just under 900,000 people.
The Pacific region has largely been spared the Covid-19 outbreak. According to the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, as at the end of April, there had only be recorded cases in six Pacific countries and territories, which between them have reported 260 cases and seven deaths.
However, most Pacific nations closed their borders due to coronavirus fears and are feeling the impact of the suspension of international travel. The IMF has forecast a 2.7% decline in growth for the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) with a 40% decline in tourism across the region.
Australia prepares to ease coronavirus restrictions in four-week stages
Australia will ease social distancing restrictions in four-week increments, two sources told Reuters, as the country’s national cabinet meets on Friday to decide which curbs to remove first amid dwindling numbers of coronavirus cases.
Australia in March imposed strict social distancing restrictions, which coupled with the closure of its borders, are credited with drastically slowed the number of new infections of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
With fewer than 20 new infections each day, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday began talks with state and territory leaders to decide which restrictions will be eased.
The easing will be staggered to ensure measures do not lead to a resurgence in infections, two sources familiar with the plan told Reuters.
“The restrictions will be removed in four-week increments,” one source told Reuters.
Confirming the approach, New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the gradual removal of curbs was needed to ensure fresh restrictions did not have to be introduced.
Home to nearly a third of Australia’s 25.7 million population, NSW reported just four new cases of Covid-19 on Friday.
Australia has had fewer than 7,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and fewer than 800 people are still sick with the disease. Almost 100 people have died from the virus.
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South African Breweries, one of the world’s largest brewers, says it may have to destroy 400 million bottles of beer as a result of the country’s ban on alcohol sales that is part of its lockdown measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus, AP reports.
South Africa stopped all sales of alcohol when its lockdown came into effect on March 27 and the brewery has seen beer pile up at its production facilities. The brewer is seeking special permission from government to move the beer to other storage facilities. The transport of alcohol has also been outlawed in South Africa.
SAB told news station eNCA on Thursday that if it’s not able to move the beer, which amounts to about 130 million litres (34 million gallons), it’ll be forced to discard it at a loss of about $8 million. That loss would put 2,000 jobs at risk, SAB said.
It would also be frustrating news for millions of thirsty South African beer drinkers who are going without.
South Africa is one of just a handful of countries that have prohibited alcohol sales as part of its fight against the coronavirus. India and Thailand also had bans on alcohol sales, but recently lifted their restrictions. Panama and Sri Lanka still have bans in place.
The South African government has also banned the sales of cigarettes.
Professor Salim Abdool Karim, one of the government’s top health advisers in the Covid-19 pandemic, defended the alcohol ban at a briefing with reporters on Wednesday.
He said alcohol is a significant contributing factor to violent crime and road accidents in South Africa and banning its sale has reduced pressure on medical services.
Representatives of the alcohol industry say the government should allow alcohol to be purchased for consumption at home only.
News Corp Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch will forgo his cash bonus for the current fiscal year due to the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on business, the company said on Wednesday.
Murdoch, who is also the chairman of Fox Corp, last month agreed to forgo his Fox salary through 30 September, in response to the coronavirus crisis.
Chief Executive Officer Robert Thomson will also forgo 75% of his annual cash bonus, the Wall Street Journal owner added. The collective cuts in bonuses and other cost initiatives will have a positive impact on the company’s profitability and cash position, News Corp said.
US President Donald Trump on Thursday said Russian President Vladimir Putin had accepted his offer to provide ventilators to aid in the fight against the novel coronavirus causes a potentially deadly respiratory illness, adding that Russia is having a hard time with the disease, Reuters reports.
Trump and Putin spoke by phone on Thursday, where they discussed the coronavirus as well as arms control, according to the White House.
In case you missed it, here is the full story on the Trump administration’s decision to bury a document from the US Centers for Disease Control:
The Trump administration shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.
The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework, was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
The AP obtained a copy from a second federal official who was not authorised to release it. The guidance was described in AP stories last week, prior to the White House decision to shelve it.
The Trump administration has been closely controlling the release of guidance and information during the coronavirus pandemic that scientists are still trying to understand, with the president himself leading freewheeling daily briefings until last week.
Traditionally, it’s been the CDC’s role to give the public and local officials guidance and science-based information during public health crises. During this one, however, the CDC has not had a regular, pandemic-related news briefing in nearly two months. Dr Robert Redfield, the CDC director, has been a member of the White House coronavirus task force, but largely absent from public appearances.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live global coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
I’m Helen Sullivan, and I’ll be taking you through the latest news from around the world for the next few hours.
The White House has reportedly shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.
Meanwhile Trump has again claimed the virus came from a laboratory in Wuhan, but provided no evidence.
The Australian government has hit back at the claim, saying that it has determined that a “dossier” giving weight to the theory is not a Five Eyes intelligence document, but instead a compilation of open-source material – reports and studies that were publicly available. The identity of the author remains unclear.
Here are the most important recent developments:
- Global death toll passes 265,000. The total number of coronavirus deaths across the world has reached at least 268,999, according to Johns Hopkins University, which has tracked the spread of the virus. There are 3,836,215 confirmed cases.
- US death toll passes 75,000. The US death toll from coronavirus has now surpassed 75,000 people, according to the counter from Johns Hopkins University. Deaths in the US are the highest globally at 75,447, a rise of around 2,000 in a day, followed by the UK at 30,689 deaths.
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US President Donald Trump continues to push theory that virus originated in a lab, without evidence. “Something happened,” Trump told US reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the theory that the coronavirus was released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “Probably it was incompetence. Somebody was stupid,” the US president added during a meeting with the Texas governor. It comes after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed he had seen “enormous evidence” that the virus had originated at the lab. No evidence has been produced. China has denied the claims.
- White House reportedly blocking release of CDC guidance on reopening businesses. A report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was abruptly shelved by the White House, according to AP News. The document includes step-by-step guidance on how and when local authorities should allow businesses to reopen and life to resume as normal.
- Australia hits back at US claim linking coronavirus to Wuhan lab. The Australian government has pushed back at US claims the coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan lab and has determined that a “dossier” giving weight to the theory is not a Five Eyes intelligence document.
- Trump tests negative for coronavirus after report valet was infected. Donald Trump and his vice-president, Mike Pence, have tested negative for coronavirus after finding out that a member of the US military who worked on the White House campus had become infected, a White House spokesman said. The military official was identified by CNN as personal valet to the US president.
- US unemployment claims hit 33.3 million. A further 3.2 million Americans sought unemployment benefits last week as the economic toll from coronavirus continued to mount.
- WHO study: 190,000 people in Africa could die from virus. Up to 190,000 people could die of Covid-19 during the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail, according to a study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) based on prediction modelling and analysing 47 countries in the region.
- France virus deaths fall. France reported 178 new coronavirus deaths, a fall on the previous day, and saw its number of patients in intensive care drop under 3,000 for the first time since late March.
- International tourism to plunge by up to 80%. The number of international tourist arrivals could plunge by 60-80% in 2020 owing to the coronavirus, the World Tourism Organization has said.
- Death toll rises by 539 in UK. The UK coronavirus death toll has reached 30,615 after a further 539 people died, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, revealed at the government’s daily coronavirus briefing.
- UK minister warns against abandoning social distancing rules. Raab said that if people “abandon the social distancing rules” the virus “will grow again at an exponential rate”.
- Russia overtakes Germany and France after record rise in cases. Russia overtook France and Germany for coronavirus cases on Thursday, giving it the fifth-highest total in the world at 177,160. Donald Trump offered to send medical aid to Moscow during a phone call with Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said.
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France to keep borders closed until at least mid-June. France’s borders will remain closed until further notice following the lifting of the coronavirus lockdown on Monday, said the interior minister, Christophe Castaner. He said the restrictions would remain in place until at least 15 June.
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