We’ve launched a new global coronavirus liveblog at the link below – head there for the latest:
Britain needs to ensure its stockpile of medicines is replenished to deal with a second wave of coronavirus and any shocks to a supply chain dominated by China and India, the trade committee warned in a report released today.
The cross party committee said the pandemic had revealed that 70% of the active ingredients used in pharmaceuticals in the UK are made in China – while India manufactured “virtually all” the paracetamol in British shops.
Drug supplies had held up during the first wave of the pandemic despite interruptions to the supply chains, helped partly by stockpiles of medicines lasting anywhere between three to six months:
Brazil recorded 40,816 additional confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, as well as 921 deaths from the disease, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
Brazil has registered nearly 2.5 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 88,539, according to ministry data.
US president Donald Trump abruptly ended a press conference on Tuesday after a sustained question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins over a video he had shared by a doctor who said masks don’t work and that there is a cure for Covid-19. In past videos, said Collins, the doctor has claimed that medicines are made from “alien DNA”.
“I thought she was very impressive,” Trump said of the woman in the disinformation video he promoted.
Here’s more background from colleagues Joan E Greve and Martin Pengelly:
The video in question featured Dr Stella Immanuel, a physician from Houston, Texas, speaking on the steps of the US Capitol in Washington, surrounded by members of a rightwing doctors’ group.
Immanuel made baseless claims about coronavirus, including hailing hydroxychloroquine as a “cure”, even though the drug, which has been repeatedly touted by the president, has not been found to be an effective treatment.
The Houston doctor has also dismissed mounting evidence that face masks substantially help limit the spread of coronavirus.
Before Trump walked off, he said he did not know why Twitter and Facebook removed the hydroxychloroquine video he promoted:
.@kaitlancollins: The woman you say is a 'great doctor' said masks don't work & doctors make medicine using DNA from aliens-
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2020
TRUMP: "I can tell you this: She was on air, along with many other doctors, & they were big fans of hydroxychloroquine. I thought she was very impressive" pic.twitter.com/nSui8DOLDL
Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now. I’ll be bringing you the latest developments from around the world for the next few hours.
Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com.
Summary
- WHO says Covid-19 pandemic is “one big wave”, not seasonal. It warned against complacency in the northern hemisphere summer since the infection does not share influenza’s tendency to follow seasons.
-
Air travel not expected to recover until 2024. Global air travel is recovering more slowly than expected and it will take until 2024 to return to pre-pandemic levels, the trade association for the airline industry has said.
- Italy extends state of emergency until October. This means the prime minister will continue to have the power to impose a lockdown and other safety measures without needing the approval of parliament.
- Over half people living in Mumbai slums have had Covid-19, according to a city-commissioned study. Blood tests on 6,936 randomly selected people found that 57% of slum-dwellers had virus antibodies.
- Covid-19 infection rate higher among California Latinos. Latinos make up 39% of the population in the US state, but account for 56% of Covid-19 infections and 46% of deaths, prompting new outreach and data collection efforts as cases surge.
- Spain insisted it was still a safe destination for tourists despite tackling 361 active outbreaks and more than 4,000 new cases. Several countries have nonetheless imposed quarantines on people returning from Spain, including its biggest tourist market, Britain.
- An urgent track and trace operation is under way in Berlin after a couple tested positive for coronavirus after returning from Manchester. Fifty people who have had contact with the couple since their return are in quarantine, of whom 13 have so far tested positive.
Britain has announced a £500m ($647m) fund to help television and film companies restart productions, after companies complained they were unable to get insurance because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Shoots shut down abruptly in March as Covid-19 spread and the government imposed a lockdown. As filmmakers try to get back to work, they are finding some insurers have stopped providing the Covid-19 coverage they need to secure financing.
The government said the insurance fund will be available to all productions made by companies where at least half the production budget is spent in the UK, and is estimated to cover more than 70% of the film and TV production market.
“From award-winning dramas, to iconic comedies and revered documentaries, the UK makes the films and TV shows the world can’t wait to watch. Today’s announcement means more clapperboards snapping into action,” said Oliver Dowden, Britain’s culture minister.
The decision comes after months of discussions with the TV and film industry and was warmly welcomed by it.
“The issue of securing coronavirus-related insurance quickly emerged as the biggest hurdle for independent producers,” said Ben Roberts, chief executive of the British Film Institute, describing the new fund as “really great news for our production business, jobs and for the economy”.
Updated
Over half the people living in the slums of Mumbai have had Covid-19, according to a city-commissioned study released on Tuesday that raises fresh doubts about India’s official case numbers.
India is already the third worst-hit country after the US and Brazil, with nearly 1.5 million cases, though experts have previously said the lack of testing could mean the true tally is much higher.
Blood tests on 6,936 randomly selected people conducted by Mumbai’s city authorities found that 57% of slum-dwellers and 16% of non-slum residents had virus antibodies.
Mumbai, where about 40% of the population lives in slums, has reported just over 110,000 infections and more than 6,000 deaths so far.
The western city of 20 million people is home to India’s largest slum, Dharavi, where an estimated one million people live.
But deaths in the sprawling slum have not exploded, with local officials saying their aggressive efforts to stem the spread of the virus have been effective.
The survey results suggested asymptomatic infections were “likely to be a high proportion of all infections” and also indicated the virus death rate was likely to be “very low”, the study said.
The Mumbai survey came a week after an antibody study commissioned by the government suggested that almost a quarter of people in the capital New Delhi, home to 20 million people, have had the virus.
Covid-19 infection rate higher among California Latinos
Latinos in California are becoming ill and dying from Covid-19 at far greater rates than other groups, the state’s top health official has warned, prompting new outreach and data collection efforts as cases surge.
Latinos make up 39% of the population in the US state, but account for 56% of Covid-19 infections and 46% of deaths, the California health and human services secretary, Dr Mark Ghaly, said.
Of particular concern is the heavily Latino Central Valley agricultural region, where cases continue to soar and hospitals are becoming overwhelmed even as the rate of new infections may be slowing in the state overall, Ghaly said.
Experts said a perfect storm of workplace issues and cultural traditions in the Central Valley has led to a crush of cases that has devastated many families.
Many Latinos in the Central Valley are poor, working in industries such as agriculture that have been deemed essential during the pandemic.
Many employers have not reliably provided protective equipment to workers or implemented social distancing or rules requiring masks to be worn, measures essential to containing the virus, state officials say.
In addition, cultural norms that foster large family gatherings and include many multi-generational households have led to fast and deadly transmission of the virus, often to older relatives who are less able to survive.
On Tuesday, Ghaly said California would implement a new method of tracking Covid-19 as well as other infectious diseases by requiring labs to ask the ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity of those they test.
Also of concern is a high death rate for African-Americans who contract the disease, although progress has been made lowering the group’s overall infection rate, Ghaly said.
African-Americans make up 6% of California’s population and account for 4% of Covid-19 infections but 8.5% of deaths, he said.
Whites, who make up 37% of the population, account for 17.5% of cases and 30% of deaths, state data show.
With states like Florida, Arizona and Texas in dire condition, the virus has also been spreading farther north in recent days, causing alarm among public health officials who fear states are not doing enough to avoid catastrophic outbreaks like those in the Sun Belt.
The surge in the Midwest has been fuelled largely by a rise in cases among young adults, who have been visiting bars, restaurants and health clubs again.
Florida reported 191 new deaths, another one-day high for the state, while Arizona recorded 104, and Arkansas had a single-day record with 20.
There are approximately 4.3 million confirmed infections and about 150,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Republican governors in Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri and South Carolina have all resisted calls to close bars and gyms, or issue statewide mask requirements, though local officials have imposed some of their own restrictions.
In Mississippi, nine of the states biggest hospitals had no open intensive care beds as of Monday, and officials are considering opening pop-up facilities to provide more space.
More than 24% of coronavirus tests have come back positive in Mississippi over the past week, the highest rate in the nation and triple the national average.
Mississippi Republican governor Tate Reeves has gone so far as to argue that because mask-wearing has become political, a statewide mandate could actually discourage people from covering their faces. Instead, he is requiring masks only in the most seriously stricken counties.
In Missouri, larger cities are growing rattled by a spike in cases after the state fully reopened. The state reported another single-day record increase in cases, with nearly 1,800.
St Louis is curtailing bar hours and reducing restaurant seating capacity starting Friday, and Kansas City may follow suit.
The 23rd edition of Shanghai International Film Festival will be held both offline and online in a bid to minimise the risk of virus spread, from 25 July to 2 August. Venues will be restricted to 30% capacity. Photograph: Yifan Ding/Getty Images
Spain and Germany were among the countries tightening restrictions on Tuesday in a bid to cool coronavirus hotspots that have sparked fears of a second wave.
The World Health Organization warned that the virus did not appear to be affected by seasonality, as the global death toll from the pandemic passed 654,000 – nearly a third of the dead in Europe, according to an AFP tally.
More than 100,000 deaths have been recorded since 9 July and the global toll has doubled in just over two months.
The UN’s World Tourism Organization said the sector lost $320bn in revenue globally during the first five months of 2020, threatening millions of livelihoods.
This is “more than three times the loss during the global financial crisis of 2009”, the Madrid-based body said in a statement.
The International Air Transport Association meanwhile warned that global air traffic would not return to levels seen before the coronavirus pandemic until at least 2024.
Spain, one of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic, insisted it was still a safe destination for tourists despite tackling 361 active outbreaks and more than 4,000 new cases.
Several countries have nonetheless imposed quarantines on people returning from Spain, including its biggest tourist market, Britain.
The strict lockdown in Spain destroyed more than a million jobs during the second quarter of the year, the National Statistics Institute (INE) reported on Tuesday - mainly in tourism.
Updated
US Republicans’ $1tn coronavirus relief proposal includes billions of dollars for the military, with hundreds of millions to restore funding shifted from the defense department to pay for president Donald Trump’s Mexican border wall.
Trump has made strict controls on immigration a signature issue of his presidency, and fight for re-election in November.
To fund the wall he has promised to build on the border with Mexico, the president declared a national emergency to redirect funds from the Pentagon to the project.
Republicans and Democrats both objected, but were unable to gather enough votes to override Trump’s veto of a bill to stop it.
The $1tn plan Republicans announced on Monday provided $30bn for the Department of Defense, including hundreds of millions of dollars that Democrats rejected as a bid to “backfill” accounts the Trump administration had emptied to help pay for the border wall.
For example, the Republican proposal includes $260m for the Expeditionary Fast Transport ship program, from which the Trump administration shifted $261m as it reprogrammed funds to pay for the wall.
Democrat Adam Smith, chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said in a statement:
It is ... no secret that earlier this year the Trump administration abused the reprogramming authority to divert funding from military equipment and modernization accounts to pay for the President’s vanity wall.
Now, Republican Senators are trying to capitalize on the urgency of the moment to backfill these accounts while in the same breath arguing that unemployment benefits should be cut in the name of fiscal responsibility.
Republicans defended the funding as necessary to support major employers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, as the country struggles to recover from the pandemic.
Starbucks has reported a smaller-than-expected drop in quarterly comparable store sales, as more people used its drive-thru and delivery options to buy coffee and food during coronavirus lockdowns.
The Seattle-based company, like many restaurants and coffee chains, took a big hit from government-imposed restrictions to check the spread of the pandemic, prompting it to rely more on its delivery and drive-thru services to make up for lost business.
Third-quarter comparable sales fell 40% globally and 41% in the Americas. Analysts had forecast a worldwide decline of 42.05% and a 42.82% drop for the Americas, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Chief executive officer Kevin Johnson said global business was steadily recovering and a vast majority of its stores around the world had reopened.
Total net revenue slumped about 38% to $4.22bn, but still beat the average analyst estimate of $4.07bn.
Travelers from 34 states, as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, must now quarantine for 14 days when they travel to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Illinois, Minnesota, Puerto Rico and DC are among the states that face quarantine restrictions under a travel advisory issued last month.
The advisory includes states if their seven-day rolling average of positive tests exceeds 10%, or if the number of positive cases exceeds 10 per 100,000 residents. The list has included Texas, California and Florida for weeks.
New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo has expressed worry for weeks that infection rates in hard-hit New York could once again rise because of travel from high-risk states.
New York hospitals saw over 18,000 patients with Covid-19 at a time in mid-April when infections surged and more than 750 Covid-19 patients died each day in hospitals and nursing homes.
Those figures plunged in May, and rates of hospitalisations and new positive Covid-19 cases have been relatively stable since June.
Cuomo said 0.93% of 57,000 tests conducted on Monday were positive, and nursing homes and hospitals reported nine people with Covid-19 died.
Updated
Summary
Here are the latest global coronavirus updates from the past few hours:
- The Covid-19 pandemic will be “one big wave” not seasonal, the WHO warned. Cautioning northern hemisphere countries to not become complacent this summer, Dr Margaret Harris said we are still in that first wave, which will “go up and down a bit” as opposed to behaving like infuenza, which follows seasonal trends.
- The number of Covid-19 cases doubled worldwide in the past six weeks. This serves as a reminder that the pandemic is still accelerating.
- Italy has extended its state of emergency until October. This means the prime minister will continue to have the power to impose a lockdown and other safety measures without needing the approval of parliament.
- An urgent track and trace operation is under way in Berlin after a couple tested positive for coronavirus after returning from Manchester. Fifty people who have had contact with the couple since their return are in quarantine, of whom 13 have so far tested positive.
- Twitter restricted Donald Trump Jr’s account after a post violated the site’s misinformation policy on Covid-19. Twitter confirmed it had taken the video down and while it had not suspended his account, it had “limited some account functionality” for 12 hours following the violation.
- The Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said he had recovered from the coronavirus without any symptoms. He has previously provoked outrage after dismissing fears about the pandemic as a “psychosis” and suggesting remedies such as drinking vodka or taking saunas to battle the virus.
- North Korea introduced tougher lockdown and quarantine measures after its first publicly confirmed case.
- Chile’s government launched a five step coronavirus prevention program to gradually reopen the country. The whole of Santiago, where most of the country’s cases are concentrated, had been under strict quarantine since 16 May — and some neighbourhoods were locked down from as early as March.
- New York’s governor said there will be an investigation following social distancing violations at a Chainsmokers concert in the Hamptons last weekend. Andrew Cuomo said he was “appalled” at the “egregious” and “reckless” violations. See here.
Updated
An urgent track and trace operation is under way in Berlin after a couple tested positive for coronavirus after returning from a holiday to visit friends in Manchester.
Fifty people who have had contact with the couple since their return are in quarantine, of whom 13 have so far tested positive for Covid-19.
The Turkish couple, a 50-year-old taxi driver and his 45-year-old wife, arrived home on a Ryanair flight on 16 July. They were not diagnosed until six days after their return.
The whole family is now infected, including the couple’s four children, aged nine to 21, and their grandmother.
Gudrun Widders, an official at the local health office in Berlin’s Spandau district, told the Bild newspaper that no one in the family has required hospital treatment.
French health authorities reported 725 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Tuesday, below the daily average of 924 over the past week but unlikely to alleviate fears of a second wave.
In a statement, authorities said “viral circulation is still sustained in France”, stressing the reproduction rate was steady at 1.3.
A reproduction rate, or R number, of 1.3 means that 100 people with the virus infect, on average, 130 other people. A rate of less than 1 is needed to gradually contain the disease.
France also reported 14 new deaths from the virus, taking the total to 30,223, and twice the daily average deaths of seven seen over the past week.
The number of people in hospital with Covid-19 went down by 104 to 5,551, continuing a two-month downward trend.
Updated
A further 54,448 Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the US, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), taking the total to 4,280,135.
It said the number of deaths had risen by 1,126 to 147,672.
The CDC reported its tally as of 4 pm ET on 27 July versus its previous report a day earlier. Its figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
Updated
Space Camp, an educational programme in the US attended by nearly 1 million people, including a dozen who went on to become astronauts or cosmonauts, said it is in danger of closing without a cash infusion because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Part of the state-owned US Space and Rocket Centre in Huntsville, Space Camp was shut down for weeks earlier this year and has been hampered by low attendance since reopening in June with limited capacity, officials said.
With staff numbers reduced and the normal flow of international students and school groups drying up because of the virus, leaders held a news conference announcing a Save Space Camp drive.
Officials hope to raise at least $1.5m in donations they said were needed to keep the museum open through October, the end of the fiscal year, and to reopen Space Camp in April.
“We are now struggling for our very survival,” said John Nerger, chair of a state board that oversees the centre.
Donors gave nearly $100,000 within a couple hours of the announcement.
Located near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre, the museum features exhibits including an authentic Saturn V rocket, the Apollo 16 command module and a full-sized model of a space shuttle.
Space Camp students have access to that area, plus classes and mockups where they participate in simulated space missions.
Since opening in 1982, Space Camp has had almost 1 million youth and adult attendees, and it was the inspiration for a 1986 movie of the same name.
Ten people selected as astronauts and two who went on to become cosmonauts attended the camp, promoters said.
Italy extends state of emergency until October
Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, has extended the country’s state of emergency until October, meaning he will continue to have the power to impose a lockdown and other safety measures without needing the approval of parliament.
Conte told the Senate that the extension was “inevitable” despite the infection rate falling significantly.
Contagion has fallen, but the numbers show that the virus continues to circulate, giving rise to outbreaks at local level which have been identified and contained.
The international situation remains worrying and what is happening in countries close to us obliges us to be watchful...this way the country is more secure.
Italy on Tuesday reported 181 new infections, bringing the total to 246,488, and 11 further deaths.
Conte was attacked by opposition parties for extending the state of emergency.
Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League, told reporters: “Keeping Italians terrorised, distant from each other and locked up is an attack on our democracy and economy.”
Salvini, who refused to wear a mask during a conference at the Senate on Monday, said the “emergency seemed to be over” and so the state of emergency didn’t need to be extended.
Updated
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray taking over the coronavirus live blog for the next few hours.
Please do get in touch with any suggestions or story tips.
Email: jessica.murray@theguardian.com
Twitter: @journojess_
Summary
- The Covid-19 pandemic will be “one big wave” not seasonal, the WHO warned. Cautioning northern hemisphere countries to not become complacent this summer, Dr Margaret Harris said we are still in that first wave, which will “go up and down a bit” as opposed to behaving like infuenza, which follows seasonal trends.
- The number of Covid-19 cases doubled worldwide in the past six weeks. This serves as a reminder that the pandemic is still accelerating.
- Twitter restricted Donald Trump Jr’s account after a post violated the site’s misinformation policy on Covid-19. Twitter confirmed it had taken the video down and while it had not suspended his account, it had “limited some account functionality” for 12 hours following the violation.
- The Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said he had recovered from the coronavirus without any symptoms. He has previously provoked outrage after dismissing fears about the pandemic as a “psychosis” and suggesting remedies such as drinking vodka or taking saunas to battle the virus.
- North Korea introduced tougher lockdown and quarantine measures after its first publicly confirmed case.
- Chile’s government launched a five step coronavirus
-
prevention program to gradually reopen the country. The whole of Santiago, where most of the country’s cases are concentrated, had been under strict quarantine
since 16 May — and some neighbourhoods were locked down from as early as March. - New York’s governor said there will be an investigation following social distancing violations at a Chainsmokers concert in the Hamptons last weekend. Andrew Cuomo said he was “appalled” at the “egregious” and “reckless” violations. See here.
Sixty-five migrants who were in a group of 94 people rescued at sea and taken to Malta on Monday have tested positive for Covid-19, Malta’s health ministry said on Tuesday.
It was the single largest cluster of positive cases detected on the Mediterranean island since the first case came to light there on 7 March.
The health ministry said 85 of the migrants had been tested so far, with nine awaiting an examination. It gave no further information about their condition. The nationalities of those infected were not given, but their dinghy was believed to have set sail from Libya.
“Migrants arriving by boat are immediately quarantined for 14 days and tested. The migrants who are positive will continue to be isolated and the rest will remain in quarantine and followed up,” the ministry said.
“This group arrived in Malta together and were in contact with very few other people before they were tested,” it added, playing down the likelihood of locals getting infected.
The migrants had issued a distress signal from their packed dinghy on Sunday but it took more than 30 hours for rescuers to reach them.
Non-governmental agencies have accused both Malta and Italy of deliberately slowing down rescue missions in an effort to dissuade people from putting to sea and seeking a better life in Europe.
The discovery that so many of the group had Covid-19 will bolster concerns in both countries that a recent increase in new arrivals will undermine local efforts to eliminate the disease.
French health authorities reported 14 new deaths from Covid-19 on Tuesday, taking the total to 30,223, a figure twice as high as the daily average increase of seven seen over the last week.
In a statement, authorities said the number of people in hospital for Covid-19 went down again, pursuing a two-month downward trend.
More than 150 Brazilian bishops have attacked what they called president Jair Bolsonaro’s sluggish, inept and negligent response to the coronavirus pandemic, as a prominent leftist theologian likened the country’s leader to the Antichrist.
In a withering letter leaked to the press this week, the Catholic leaders warned Brazil faced a “perfect storm” of an unprecedented health emergency, a devastating economic slump and a profound political crisis caused in large part by the country’s far-right president.
The bishops criticised what they called the Bolsonaro administration’s incompetent and anti-scientific response to the pandemic and said they were appalled by its “contempt for education, culture, health and diplomacy”.
“Socio-economic chaos” was on the horizon, the bishops warned, denouncing efforts “to normalize the scourge of thousands of Covid-19 deaths”.
Citing the New Testament’s Letter to the Romans, the bishops urged believers to resist “one of the most difficult moments in Brazilian history”:
Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light.
The signatories include Claudio Hummes, the emeritus archbishop of São Paulo, Brazil’s worst-hit city, where more than 9,000 people have died. Nearly 90,000 deaths have been officially recorded nationwide, making Brazil the second worst-hit country in the world after the US.
In a separate intervention the prominent theologian and philosopher Leonardo Boff also slammed Bolsonaro’s coronavirus response.
”The country is directionless and being governed by someone with the characteristics of the Antichrist,” said Boff, a longtime friend of Bolsonaro’s political nemesis, former left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte asked parliament on Tuesday to extend a state of emergency, which expands his government’s powers as it tackles the coronavirus health crisis.
Opposition parties objected that Conte was trying to keep too much power in his own hands despite a dramatic fall in the rate of contagion.
Conte announced a six-month state of emergency on 31 January, when the first two cases of coronavirus were confirmed in Rome. He told the Senate:
The virus continues to evolve and has not run its course. It would be incongruous to abruptly suspend such an effective measure.
However, he drew back from requesting an extension until the end of the year, saying he only wanted a renewal until October.
The state of emergency gives greater powers to both regional and central government, including making it easier for ministers to declare red zones should the disease flare up again, and to bolster hospital resources.
It would also cut bureaucracy as officials prepare schools to reopen in September after being shut for six months.
Italy has been one of the worst-affected countries in Europe, registering more than 35,000 deaths from around 246,500 cases. However, new infections have fallen sharply over the past three months and Conte’s critics said he needed to involve parliament in key decisions.
“I’m shocked. Conte is arguing in the Senate that without a state of emergency the government is unable to make normal decrees, bills, ordinances. This is a gross lie and a very dangerous assault on liberty,” tweeted Giorgia Meloni, head of the far-right Brothers of Italy party.
The Senate, where the coalition has only a paper-thin majority, is due to vote on the request on Tuesday evening.
Greece has reported a leap in coronavirus cases with public health officials confirming 52 new infections in the last 24 hours.
The increase brings the total number of cases to 4,279 in a country that, through enforcement of early lockdown measures, has managed to keep cases and casualties low.
Seven people were found to have the virus after being tested at land frontiers, airports and other entry points, according to the National Organisation of Public Health organisation, EODY.
The death toll has risen to 203, the state body announced adding that 66 or 32.5 % of the fatalities are women. The uptick – attributed in part to tourists - has prompted growing concern among officials.
Earlier on Tuesday Greece’s deputy civil protection minister, Nikos Hardalias, said mask wearing would become mandatory as of tomorrow in almost all indoor spaces where social distancing was difficult, including shops, banks, public offices and elevators. Churches will remain exempt.
Hardalias said:
The rise in infections in Athens and Thessaloniki proves the virus is still here. The requirement [of facial coverings] is for the collective good. The situation must not cause panic but neither complacency.
Spain reported 905 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, with the regions of Catalonia, Aragon and Madrid accounting for most of them.
The cumulative total number of coronavirus cases stood at 280,610, up from 278, 782 on Monday, the country’s health ministry said. That is a rise of 1,828 from the previous day, and includes results from antibody tests on people who may already have recovered.
Chile’s government has today launched its five step coronavirus
prevention program to gradually reopen the country.
The whole area of capital Santiago, where most of the country’s Covid-19 cases are concentrated, has been under strict quarantine since 16 May — and some neighbourhoods were locked down from as early as March.
Under these measures, residents can leave the house twice a week with police permission and only shops selling essential goods, such as supermarkets and pharmacies, are allowed to function.
On Tuesday, seven Santiago neighbourhoods will transfer to Step 2 — they will be allowed to leave their houses freely on weekdays, with local shops allowed to reopen. The quarantine remains in place on weekends and holidays, along with a nighttime curfew every day.
La Araucanía joins fellow southern regions Los Ríos and Aysén in Step 4 of the prevention program. Here, rates of infection are
significantly lower than other parts of the country. Restaurants,
cafés, shops and cinemas can reopen with up to 25% capacity, while bars, clubs and gyms remain shut and the curfew stays in place.
“Each step progresses according to risk of exposure of getting
infected” said Paula Danza, the Ministry of Health’s sub secretary.
However, with the coldest month of August still to come, health
professionals have voiced fears that the government is prematurely
reopening the country.
Concerns include new outbreaks, repeating the mistakes made last April when quarantines were lifted and infection rates spiralled to 6000+ cases a day. By June, Chile had the highest Covid-19 infection rates per capita in the world, forcing the health minister Jamie Mañalich’s resignation.
On replacing Mañalich, the incumbent health minister Dr Enrique Paris pledged greater transparency over death toll numbers and stronger cooperation with academics and health professionals over Covid-19 prevention strategies.
On Tuesday Chile logged 1,876 new cases of coronavirus and 53 deaths, bringing the total to 349,800 cases, which includes 9,240 deaths.
Updated
New York’s governor says he is appalled by videos showing crowds standing close together at a Hamptons concert featuring electronic music duo The Chainsmokers over the weekend.
Andrew Cuomo said the state Department of Health will conduct an investigation into egregious social distancing violations.
“We have no tolerance for the illegal reckless endangerment of public health,” read the governor’s Monday night tweet.
The Saturday night concert called Safe & Sound was billed as a charity drive-in show where Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneidermans band also performed.
Cuomo shared a video on Twitter, which has close to 7 million views, that showed crowds of people standing and swaying near the stage. The video shows attendees who appeared to be wearing masks, but many individuals were standing closer than 6 feet (2 meters).
Videos from a concert held in Southampton on Saturday show egregious social distancing violations. I am appalled.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) July 28, 2020
The Department of Health will conduct an investigation.
We have no tolerance for the illegal & reckless endangerment of public health.pic.twitter.com/gf9kggdo8w
The governor’s criticism comes as he argues local governments largely in downstate New York have failed to enforce social distancing and mask rules.
State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker chided Schneiderman in a Monday letter and questioned how Southampton could have issued a permit for an event that posed a public health threat.
Schneiderman and the concert’s organisers, In the Know Experiences, didn’t immediately respond to the Associated Press’ requests for comment by email and phone Tuesday.
Twitter restricts Donald Trump Jr's account after 'misleading' coronavirus post
Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it limited access to Donald Trump Jr’s account for 12 hours because a tweet he had posted violated the social media site’s misinformation policy on Covid-19.
The eldest son of the US president on Monday posted a video of doctors talking about the drug hydroxychloroquine. The video was taken down by the social media company for breaking its rules on Covid-19 misinformation.
Trump also retweeted a post late on Monday accusing Fauci and Democrats of suppressing the use of the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the novel coronavirus and included a link to the video, in which the doctors discount the need for face masks amid the pandemic.
The video was also taken down by Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc-owned YouTube after being widely shared.
“It is beyond the pale for Twitter to silence someone for sharing the views of medical professionals who happen to dissent with their anti-hydroxychloroquine narrative,” said Andy Surabian, a spokesman for the president’s son, after sharing a screenshot that showed Twitter had temporarily limited some of @DonaldJTrumpJr’s account features.
“We did not suspend the account. The screenshot shared directly says that Twitter required the Tweet to be deleted because it violated our rules, and that we would limit some account functionality for 12 hours,” a Twitter spokesman told Reuters.
Updated
The Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday he had had the coronavirus without any symptoms and had already recovered from it, the BELTA news agency quoted him as saying.
“Today you are meeting a man who managed to survive the coronavirus on his feet. Doctors came to such a conclusion yesterday. Asymptomatic,” Lukashenko said during a meeting with the military.
The 65-year-old leader has resisted calls to impose lockdown measures or close the borders to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in the eastern European country.
He has previously dismissed fears about the pandemic as a “psychosis” and suggested remedies such as drinking vodka or taking saunas to battle the coronavirus.
As of Tuesday, 67,366 cases of coronavirus were registered in Belarus, a country of 9.5 million people, with 543 deaths, according to the health ministry.
Frustration over his handling of the pandemic has fuelled opposition protests against Lukashenko ahead of an election on 9 August.
Updated
North Korea introduced tougher curbs against the coronavirus on Tuesday, state media reported, after it locked down the town Kaesong, on the border with the South, to tackle what could be its first publicly confirmed infection.
Strict quarantine measures and the screening of districts were in progress and test kits, protective clothing and medical equipment were being supplied, the North’s KCNA state news agency said.
The measures come after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared an emergency on Sunday after a person who defected to South Korea three years ago returned across the highly fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ) to Kaesong this month with symptoms of Covid-19, KCNA reported.
Reclusive North Korea had reported testing 1,211 people for the virus as of 16 July with all returning negative results, the World Health Organization said in a statement sent to Reuters. The report said 696 nationals were under quarantine.
All those under quarantine were working at the Nampo seaport and Sinuiju-Dandong land border with China, Dr Edwin Salvador, WHO representative to North Korea, told Reuters by email, noting that the country has been quarantining labourers coming into contact with goods arriving into the country.
Updated
Useful 60 second update from the BBC. And a reminder that the pandemic is still accelerating - with the number of Covid-19 cases worldwide doubling in the past six weeks.
The number of Covid-19 cases worldwide has doubled in the past six weeks alone - proof (if we needed it) that the pandemic is still accelerating...
— BBC World Service (@bbcworldservice) July 28, 2020
Get the latest coronavirus updates from around the world in 60 seconds ⏰ https://t.co/v9o8oTolCR pic.twitter.com/hjfEZHXR2d
NHS England has record a further 12 coronavirus hospital deaths. The full details are here.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson today said that there are signs of a second wave of coronavirus appearing in Europe. As Sky News reports, Johnson said:
What we have to do is take swift and decisive action where we think that the risks are starting to bubble up again.
Let’s be absolutely clear about what’s happening in Europe, amongst some of our European friends, I’m afraid you are starting to see in some places the signs of a second wave of the pandemic.
Meanwhile Northern Ireland has recorded its 15th day with no coronavirus deaths.
Coronavirus updates: Northern Ireland records 15th day without Covid death#coronavirus | #COVID19 https://t.co/Ssn5ao0WwC pic.twitter.com/39J4XxtBvr
— Belfast Telegraph (@BelTel) July 28, 2020
In Scotland, no further coronavirus deaths have been recorded, and four more people have tested positive for the virus.
349,223 people in Scotland have now been tested for #coronavirus
— Scottish Government (@scotgov) July 28, 2020
The total confirmed as positive has increased 4 to 18,558
The number of deaths of patients who tested positive remains at 2,491
Latest update ➡️ https://t.co/bZPbrCoQux
Health advice ➡️ https://t.co/l7rqArB6Qu pic.twitter.com/8lCfkcWGm2
At her press briefing today the First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon also strongly indicataed that Scots should take their holidays at home .
She said she would not be booking a holiday abroad herself, and that she would be urging people to be “very cautious” about planning a trip themselves.
She said:
As the prevalence of Covid in Scotland continues to fall, we must guard against the risk of cases coming into the country from outside. So, if necessary, the Scottish government will reimpose quarantine restrictions on travel from certain countries, as we did at the weekend with Spain, if those countries see a sharp increase in cases.
People planning an overseas holiday need to be aware of that. You cannot assume that the rules and regulations applying to or in your destination when you book a holiday will stay the same while you’re there, or will be the same when you come to travel.
I want to reiterate this point very strongly today, my advice to you remains to be very cautious about non-essential foreign travel at this time.
And if you are in a position to have a holiday, and want to take a holiday, the safest way of doing so is to stay here in Scotland so you avoid the risks of foreign travel. You are also, as an added bonus, helping the Scottish tourism industry.
There have been no reported new coronavirus deaths in Wales in the last 24 hours, but 21 new cases have been reported.
There are no new coronavirus deaths in Wales but 21 new cases reported pic.twitter.com/HQyvBGbKLA
— BBC Wales News (@BBCWalesNews) July 28, 2020
The latest number of confirmed cases of Coronavirus in Wales has been updated.
— Public Health Wales (@PublicHealthW) July 28, 2020
Data dashboard:
💻 https://t.co/zpWRYSUbfh
📱 https://t.co/HSclxpZjBh
Find out how we are responding to the spread of the virus in our daily statement here: https://t.co/u6SKHz0zsG pic.twitter.com/LO2bNKxR2V
Meanwhile the Welsh government’s finance minister, Rebecca Evans, has encouraged people to stay at home for their summer holidays, writes my colleague Steve Morris.
Echoing what Nicola Sturgeon said at the Scottish government’s briefing Evans said:
I would absolutely encourage people to staycate here in Wales and make the most of everything that we have on our doorstep, especially since we know how difficult the tourism industry and the hospitality industry has had it here.
Evans also said she understood the disappointment some people are facing after it was announced those visiting Spain would have to self-quarantine on their return to the UK.
Speaking at the Welsh government’s weekly press conference she said:
I completely understand how disappointing this is for people who have booked a holiday and potentially have worked really hard in difficult jobs all the way through coronavirus and now this comes along.
Updated
The vast white marble floors surrounding Islam’s holiest site, the cube-shaped Kaaba in Mecca, would normally be packed with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from around the world the day before the hajj.
On Tuesday, however, only a few officials and workers putting last minute preparations in place were seen at the Grand Mosque housing the Kaaba, the Associated Press reports.
In place of the 2.5 million pilgrims who preformed the hajj last year, only a very limited number of faithful anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 are being allowed to take part in what is largely a symbolic pilgrimage amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The select few approved for this year’s hajj have been tested for the virus and are self-isolating in hotel rooms in Mecca, where they will experience an ancient pilgrimage albeit tailored this year for a modern-day global pandemic.
Amr Al-Maddah, the chief planning officer at the Ministry of Hajj, is helping incorporate the latest technology into the pilgrimage such as thermal scanners and electronic ID cards. “Right now, technology is our black horse to developing the whole hajj journey,” said al-Maddah.
We are taking every step possible to make sure that this hajj will end with zero cases of Covid-19 and also with zero deaths in our total hajj numbers.
Before pilgrims could enter Mecca, they were given wristbands by the Saudi health ministry to monitor their movements and ensure the mandatory quarantine was observed. Thermal scanners are being used across the holy sites to monitor people’s temperatures.
Each pilgrim is assigned to a group of around 20 others. A group leader will guide them throughout the hajj to each destination at a specified time, to avoid crowding in places like the Grand Mosque, where Muslims circle the Kaaba and follow a path travelled by the Prophet Abrahams wife, Hagar, who Muslims believe ran between two hills searching for water for her dying son.
While on Mount Arafat, where the Prophet Muhammad delivered his final sermon nearly 1,400 years ago and where pilgrims will spend Thursday in deep prayer and repentance, the pilgrims will be wearing high-tech ID cards that connect to an application on their phones.
The card and app allows the government to easily monitor the pilgrims, and gives them a way to reach out to their group leader and make special meal requests. The card stores the pilgrims personal information, health status, residence and other hajj-related details. In the future, al-Maddah said the cards will be fitted with a location tracker to follow individual pilgrims movements. The tracker will be managed by a control room, and can be used as a pay card in place of cash.
Pilgrims have also been given special attire to wear during the hajj laced with silver nano technology that helps kill bacteria and makes clothes water resistant. Al-Maddah said the measure is a precaution, even if it can affect almost nothing” or has a minimal chance of improving health conditions.”
All the pilgrims’ meals, hotel accommodation, transportation and health care is also being paid for by the Saudi government. Typically, the hajj can cost thousands of dollars for pilgrims who save for a lifetime for the journey.
This year marks the first time in nearly a century of Saudi rule over Mecca that people from outside the kingdom will not take part in the five-day hajj, which is a once in a lifetime requirement of Muslims. Al-Maddah, who sits on the hajj planning committee, said allowing people to enter Saudi Arabia from abroad would have posed a global health risk.
Two-thirds of pilgrims this year are foreigners already residing in Saudi Arabia from among the 160 different nationalities that would have normally been represented at the hajj. The other one-third are Saudi security personnel and medical staff. All pilgrims had to be between the ages of 20 and 50 with no terminal illnesses and showing no symptoms of the coronavirus.
Negligence is to blame for a worrying rise in coronavirus cases in Germany, the head of the country’s disease control agency has said in his first news conference in weeks.
Over the past seven days, Germany has registered an average of 557 new cases a day, up from around 350 in early June.
“We must prevent the virus from once again spreading rapidly and uncontrollably,” Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), said on Tuesday morning.
The new developments in Germany make me very worried. The rise has to do with the fact that we have become negligent.
Germany has fared better than many of its neighbours in suppressing the virus, but Wieler urged citizens not to squander the progress following the recent rise in numbers.
“It’s in our hands how the pandemic evolves in Germany,” Wieler said, calling on Germans to stick with prevention measures such as washing hands and keeping a safe distance.
Face masks should be worn not only indoors, but also outdoors, if the recommended 1.5-metre (5ft) distancing cannot be maintained, he said, in a subtle update of the prior advice.
The warning comes as countries around the world grapple with a surge in infections, fuelling fears of a dreaded second wave.
More on this story here:
Vietnam’s health ministry on Tuesday reported seven new locally transmitted coronavirus cases in the central city of Danang and surrounding province, taking it to 22 infections since the virus resurfaced at the weekend.
Vietnam has registered a total of 438 coronavirus cases altogether, with no deaths. The southeast Asian nation is back on high alert after authorities on Saturday confirmed an outbreak in Danang, the first community infections since April.
Nearly 12,000 people in Vietnam are currently undergoing quarantine, the health ministry said in a statement.
Updated
A video posted by far-right news site Breitbart, in which a group of doctors claimed hydroxychloroquine was a “cure” for Covid-19 and that masks were useless, reached 20 million views on Facebook, and was retweeted twice by Donald Trump on Twitter, before it was taken down has been taken down from both sites for spreading false information about the pandemic.
Reposts of the video, a livestream of a Friday press conference held by a group calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors”, are already hitting millions of views again on both platforms.
The press conference, which had racked up millions of views on Facebook over the weekend without attracting a significant amount of mainstream attention, gained sudden notoriety overnight when Trump retweeted a clip of the video posted by alt-right personality Melissa Tate. Tate’s caption of the footage, in which Dr Stella Immanuel claims that hydroxychloroquine is a “cure” for Covid-19, said that the “suppression” of the drug was a scandal by [White House medical advisor] “Fauci and the democrats to perpetuate Covid deaths to hurt Trump.”
Following the US president’s retweet, both Twitter and Facebook appeared to become aware of the footage, and removed it from their platforms, with a Facebook spokesperson saying that it was removed “sharing false information about cures and treatments for Covid-19.”
Dr Immanuel warned Facebook against taking down the footage, lest God begin causing computer problems for the company.
Hello Facebook put back my profile page and videos up or your computers with start crashing till you do. You are not bigger that God. I promise you. If my page is not back up face book will be down in Jesus name.
— Stella Immanuel MD (@stella_immanuel) July 28, 2020
Britain and other countries now require people to wear face masks on public transport, in shops and other enclosed spaces on the grounds that they reduce the amount of virus-carrying droplets infected people expel when they cough, sneeze or talk.
But while face masks are intended to protect others rather than the wearer, some scientists argue that good coverings can do both. In a paper due to be published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, suggest that face masks might reduce the amount of virus people inhale and so lead to less serious infections.
Rather than conduct experiments to test the idea, the scientists build a case for their hypothesis by drawing on evidence from previous research. A number of studies, they claim, show a link between wearing face masks and an increase in asymptomatic infections. One explanation could be that face coverings reduce the amount of virus people inhale, and so their immune systems can more quickly fend off the infection.
The study provides no evidence that face masks help the wearer, but if the coverings are filtering out virus particles as Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the university, and her colleagues on the report suspect, it could have major implications for the future of the epidemic.
While asymptomatic cases are still problematic because they drive the transmission of Covid-19, the scientists argue that widespread asymptomatic infections, rather than severe illness, are better for individuals, because this should boost immunity in the community. They write:
Exposing society to Sars-CoV-2 without the unacceptable consequences of severe illness with public masking could lead to greater community-level immunity and slow down spread as we await a vaccine.
Whether people develop long-lasting immunity against Covid-19 is still unknown, however. Some studies suggest that antibodies against coronavirus wane within months, though another branch of the immune system may help to protect people for longer, and retain a memory of the infection so antibodies can be churned out much faster if a person is infected again.
The regional government of Madrid has said that the wearing of masks will be compulsory in public at all times, even when social distancing can be maintained.
The move, which brings the region in and around the capital in line with the rest of Spain - barring the Canary islands - comes as the country struggles with a resurgence of the coronavirus.
Although the wearing of masks has been compulsory across Spain since 21 May, regional governments in other areas have ordered them to be used at all times in a bid to halt infection.
Speaking on Tuesday, Madrid’s regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, also announced that gatherings inside and outside restaurants would be limited to 10 people or fewer from Thursday. People were also advised to limit gatherings at home to 10 people.
She said that bars and nightclubs - which have been the sources of many new infections - would need to close their doors at 1.30am, and that patrons would have to give their national identification number before entering to facilitate tracing.
Díaz Ayuso also called on young people to behave responsibly.
We’re worried by the behaviour of a lot of young people. They’re putting their neighbours lives at risk, but they’re also risking their academic and employment future. The young people of Madrid need to become our allies.
Díaz Ayuso said the aim was to avoid a return to the strict lockdown that ran from April to June, adding:
The strategy now is not to go backwards.
She said she planned to introduce a Covid-19 record book for people who had had the virus or who had been tested.
The regional government has also called on the central government to make sure that people arriving at Madrid’s Barajas airport are given PCR tests on arrival.
Madrid’s regional health minister, Enrique Ruíz Escudero, said the area’s hospitals were ready for new coronavirus cases, but warned:
We can’t let our guard down, nor can we take a single step backwards.
He added 138 people in Madrid had tested positive on Tuesday. To date, the region has recorded 74,700 of Spain’s 278,782 cases.
Vietnam has locked down its third-largest city for two weeks after 15 cases of Covid-19 were found in a hospital, the government said on Tuesday.
The Associated Press reports that the new cases in the central city of Da Nang are the first confirmed to be locally transmitted in the country in over three months.
Public transport into and out of Da Nang was cancelled. Over the weekend, thousands of mostly Vietnamese tourists cut short their summer holidays in the popular beach destination. The lockdown has dealt a hard blow to the city tourism industry, which was just being revived after earlier coronavirus cases mostly subsided at the end of April.
Hotel guests quickly ended their stays and canceled upcoming trips upon the news of the first case, one hotelier said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
“Our hotel is now empty,” the hotelier said. “But we had to help our guests leave the city when they still had the opportunity yesterday.”
Da Nang beaches, which host some 50,000 people a day, are now closed. Only security personnel were seen on the beaches Tuesday as they patrolled to ensure no one was gathering.
Authorities estimated several thousand people would be stranded by the transportation shutdown and asked hotels to shelter them.
“We did not want to rush to the airport to leave the city because of the risk of being in a crowded place. So we are now stuck here,” said Lien Nguyen, who is traveling with her family of four for their summer vacation. “But it is not a bad place to get stranded for two weeks,” she added.
On Sunday, the government ordered unessential business to close and required people to practice social distancing in the city of 1.1 million people. All 15 cases in the new outbreak are patients and health workers at Da Nang hospital.
With the new infections, Vietnam has reported 431 cases of Covid-19 without any deaths. It had recorded no local transmissions of the virus since April, with all new cases coming from overseas.
Vietnam on Tuesday dispatched an aircraft to Equatorial Guinea to repatriate 129 workers who have Covid-19, the health ministry said.
The number of confirmed coronavirus related deaths has reached 1,270 on Tuesday in Afghanistan amid raising fears about a surge of transmissions over upcoming Eid celebration as the United Nations said 1,282 civilians were killed in the first half of 2020.
In its latest update, the health ministry said the number of people who had tested positive for the virus had reached 36,268, an increase of 105 on the day before. There have been 25,358 recoveries, including 160 over the past 24 hours.
Most of the new cases (39) and the only death on Tuesday were reported in the western province of Herat, where officials have already warned of a second wave of the pandemic.
The province borders Iran– which has been badly hit by the pandemic – and the first case of the virus was reported in Herat after thousands of Afghan migrants returned from the neighbouring country in February and March, fanning out across the country without being tested or quarantined.
The war-torn country, which has admitted it has a lack of testing capacity, has tested 87,794 suspected patients since the outbreak began. the health ministry has said that the number of patients with coronavirus have decreased in recent weeks.
But concerns about the second wave of the pandemic is high in Afghanistan as the Eid celebration is scheduled for this Friday. The health ministry has said that the days of previous Eid in May were the worst as around one thousand daily cases were reported in a period of one week.
Meanwhile, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan said in its latest report that it has documented 3,458 civilian casualties in Afghanistan (1,282 killed and 2,176 injured) in the first half of 2020. Among the dead, 138 women and 340 children are included. The report said that children in Afghanistan are especially vulnerable to recruitment and use by parties of the conflict, including for combat functions.
The report which was released Monday said that Afghanistan remains one of the deadliest countries despite civilian casualty figures being 13 percent less than the same period of last year.
“It must be noted that there has been no reduction in civilian casualties caused by the Taliban and Afghan national security forces,” the report said, and attributed the lower number of civilian casualties in the first half of 2019 to a reduction in operations by international forces and Isis.
“At a time when the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban have a historic opportunity to come together at the negotiating table for peace talks, the tragic reality is that the fighting continues inflicting terrible harm to civilians every day,” said Deborah Lyons, the secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan.
I urge the parties to pause, to reflect on the chilling incidents and the harm that they are causing to the Afghan people as documented in this report, and to take decisive action to stop the carnage and get to the negotiating table.
Updated
Summary
Here’s a round up of the latest developments
Germany and Belgium warn against travel to parts of Spain
Germany and Belgium have joined the UK in warning against travelling to Spain. But unlike the UK, both countries only warned their citizens against travelling to a limited number of regions. Germany said non-essential travel to Aragon, Catalonia and Navarra is currently discouraged. Belgium warned that increased vigilance is required for those returning from Aragon and Catalonia.
Germany expresses ‘great concern’ about a spike in cases
Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, said: “The latest developments in the number of Covid-19 cases are of great concern to me and all of us at the RKI.” He added: “We don’t know yet if this is the beginning of a second wave but of course it could be.”
WHO: ‘pandemic will be one big wave not seasonal’
WHO spokeswoman, Dr Margaret Harris, said we are still in the first “big wave” of the Covid-19 pandemic, which will be “one big wave”. She warned arned against complacency about transmission in the northern hemisphere summer, saying that this virus did not behave like influenza that tended to follow seasonal trends. She said: “People are still thinking about seasons. What we all need to get our heads around is this is a new virus and...this one is behaving differently.”
Daily deaths in Iran hit record level
Deaths from coronavirus in Iran have hit a daily record of 235 over the past 24 hours, according to official health ministry figures released. The Islamic Republic is the country hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic in the Middle East with 16,147 deaths.
New cases in south-east Asia continue to rise
The Philippine health ministry confirmed 1,678 new coronavirus infections, reporting more than 1,000 new daily cases for a 14th successive day. Hong Kong has reported 106 new coronavirus case, including 98 that were locally transmitted. It is the seventh day in row that Hong Kong has reported a triple digit rise in cases. Indonesia reported 1,748 new coronavirus infections, bringing its tally to 102,051 confirmed cases overall. Taiwan is investigating its first possible local coronavirus infection in more than a month. Vietnam has suspended all flights to and from the city of Danang for 15 days due to the new outbreak in the city
Covid-19 outbreak in Xinjiang prompts fears of spread inside China’s camps
Rising numbers of cases in the Xinjiang region has sparked fears the outbreak could reach the secretive internment camps where China is believed to have detained more than a million Muslim minority people. Chinese health authorities reported 68 new cases of Covid-19, including 57 in the far western region of Xinjiang, bringing the area’s reported total to 235. The region is home to China’s program of mass incarceration of Uighur and other Turkic Muslims, which has drawn international condemnation and accusations that the detention, abuse, surveillance and restrictions on religious and cultural beliefs amount to cultural genocide.
Bolsonaro: ‘I didn’t have any problems’
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro took off his mask in public as he greeted supporters in Brasilia, days after saying he had recovered from the coronavirus, which he said had not had a serious impact on his health The right-wing leader tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this month and went into quarantine at his residence, but said on Saturday that his latest test had come back negative. “I didn’t have any problems,” Bolsonaro said on Monday.
Spain’s PM said the UK quarantine decision not justified
Britain’s decision to impose a two-week quarantine on people travelling from Spain is unfair, Pedro Sánchez said. He added that the Spanish government is in touch with British authorities in a bid to get the country to reconsider its position.
Updated
Greece will make mask-wearing compulsory at more indoor public spaces to contain the spread of the virus after a small flare up of Covid-19 infections in the second half of this month, its deputy civil protection minister said on Tuesday.
Health authorities made mask-wearing compulsory for consumers at supermarkets 10 days ago. Masks have been also compulsory at public transport. The extended measure goes into effect from Wednesday.
Greece has managed to contain the spread of Covid-19 infections to 4,227 confirmed cases and 202 deaths after imposing an early lockdown based on official data up to Monday.
Covid-19 pandemic will be 'one big wave not seasonal' - WHO warns
We are still in the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, which will be “one big wave” that “is going to go up and down a bit”, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
The WHO warned against complacency about new coronavirus transmission in the northern hemisphere summer, saying that this virus did not behave like influenza that tended to follow seasonal trends.
“People are still thinking about seasons. What we all need to get our heads around is this is a new virus and...this one is behaving differently,” Dr Margaret Harris told a virtual briefing in Geneva, urging vigilance in applying measures to slow transmission that is spreading via mass gatherings.
She also warned against thinking in terms of virus waves, saying:
It’s going to be one big wave. It’s going to go up and down a bit. The best thing is to flatten it and turn it into just something lapping at your feet.
Updated
Australia said on Tuesday it was sending a medical team to help Papua New Guinea fight an outbreak of coronavirus after the neighbouring country experienced a rise in infections, Reuters reports.
The Pacific nation, which had escaped the infection levels of its neighbours since the crisis escalated in March, has recorded an increase in new cases in the past week, according to data analysis firm Worldometer.
There were 62 confirmed virus cases as of late Tuesday, up from just eight infections 11 days ago.
After Papua New Guinea asked for assistance, Australia arranged to send a team of medical and crisis response staff to the capital Port Moresby, the acting foreign affairs minister Simon Birmingham said.
The Australian team would help with laboratories, case management, infection control, triage and emergency management and public health, he added.
The statement said:
The government is planning for a further deployment in consultation with the government of Papua New Guinea and subject to domestic considerations and results of the on ground assessment.
A day earlier, PNG halted entry for travellers, except those arriving by air, in an effort to tighten curbs against coronavirus infections.
Daily deaths in Iran hit record level
Deaths from coronavirus in Iran have hit a daily record of 235 over the past 24 hours, according to official health ministry figures released.
The Islamic Republic is the country hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic in the Middle East.
#Iran's Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on Tuesday that some 235 more Iranians have died from #coronavirus disease (#COVID19) over the past 24 hours bringing the total deaths to 16,147 https://t.co/IPduBwsoYl pic.twitter.com/dcBTjhPwtO
— IRNA News Agency (@IrnaEnglish) July 28, 2020
Regions in Spain hit by a travel advisories in both Germany and Belgium, have complained they are unfair.
Aragon regional chief Mayte Perez said the pandemic was under control in most parts of her region and added tourism operators have made huge efforts to guarantee health safety.
Catalonia’s government has said it regrets the advice.
In a statement, Bernat Sole, Catalonia’s foreign affairs chief, said:
We do not get into evaluating the decisions by other countries but we obviously don’t share it. The Catalan government is responsible ... and we are working to protect the life and health of people that live here or are visiting us.
Updated
The mayor of the Albanian capital Tirana, has announced he has tested positive for coronavirus.
Erion Veliaj told his Twitter followers that he and his family were in “good health” despite the diagnosis, and that he would be working from home from today. He added: “No one is immune from the virus, so please do not forget to wash your hands as often as possible and wear masks to protect yourself and your family.”
2/2... JU LUTEM mos harroni te lani duart sa me shpesh dhe mbani maske per te mbrojtur sa me shume veten dhe familjaret tuaj!
— Erion Veliaj 🚴♂️🌳⚽️🇦🇱 (@erionveliaj) July 28, 2020
Lus me te miren per familjet tuaja! Shendet e dashuri te gjitheve dhe mirenjohje e thelle mjekeve heronj! Do shihemi serish! 🙏🏻❤️
Albanian’s president, Ilir Meta, wished Veliaj a speedy recovery.
Wishing a speedy recovery to the Mayor of Tirana, @erionveliaj and a good health to his family, I strongly appeal to the vital importance of respecting the health protocols, to prevent the further spreading of the #COVID19 pandemic. pic.twitter.com/c2RiWHSA94
— Ilir Meta (@ilirmetazyrtar) July 28, 2020
Albania has reported 4,880 cases of the virus and 144 deaths.
AFP has more on Germany’s concerns about a spike in recent cases and its foreign ministry’s warning against travel to parts of Spain.
Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, said:
We must prevent that the virus once again spreads rapidly and uncontrollably,”
The latest developments in the number of COVID-19 cases are of great concern to me and all of us at the RKI.
Germany has fared better than many of its neighbours in suppressing the virus, but Wieler urged citizens not to squander the progress following a spike numbers in recent weeks.
“It’s in our hands how the pandemic evolves in Germany,” Wieler said, calling on Germans to stick with prevention measures such as washing hands and keeping a safe distance.
Face masks should be worn not only indoors, but also outdoors, if the recommended 1.5-metre (5-foot) distancing cannot be maintained, he said, in a subtle update of the prior advice.
The stark warning comes as countries around the world grapple with a surge in infections, fuelling fears of a dreaded second wave.
Holidaymakers returning from abroad have stoked particular concern.
Germany’s foreign ministry updated its travel advisory on Tuesday, recommending against travel to three regions in northern Spain grappling with renewed outbreaks.
“Non essential, tourist travel to the autonomous communities of Aragon, Catalonia and Navarra are currently discouraged due to renewed high levels of infections and local lockdowns,” a statement said.
The RKI chief said Germans bringing the virus back from their summer holidays was one reason for the surge in cases, but he also pointed to outbreaks happening at workplaces and open-air parties.
Germany has so far recorded a total of 206,242 coronavirus cases and 9,122 deaths.
Berlin has taken great pride in keeping the fatality numbers low, crediting its world-class health system and widespread early testing for the success.
But Wieler said other countries such as Israel had shown how quickly the situation can change.
Over the last seven days, Germany has registered an average of 557 new cases a day, up from around 350 in early June. Wiler said:
We don’t know yet if this is the beginning of a second wave but of course it could be.
But I am optimistic that if we follow the hygiene rules we can prevent it, it’s up to us.
Here’s video of Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez accusing Britain of making a mistake by imposing a quarantine on people travelling from Spain.
The UK has also extended coronavirus guidance advising against all non-essential travel to the European country. The UK government’s sudden decision to impose a two-week quarantine on arrivals shocked travellers between the two countries.
The Philippine health ministry on Tuesday confirmed 1,678 new coronavirus infections, reporting more than 1,000 new daily cases for a 14th successive day, Reuters report.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total deaths had increased by four to 1,947, with confirmed cases rising to 83,673.
Hong Kong has reported 106 new coronavirus case, including 98 that were locally transmitted, Reuters reports.
Tuesday’s figure represents a drop in the 145 cases announced on Monday, but it is the seventh day in row that Hong Kong has reported a triple digit rise in cases.
The city is braced for the implementation of strict new measures that will ban restaurant dining and restrict gatherings to two people. The new regulations, which also mandate masks in outdoor spaces, take effect from Wednesday for one week.
Since late January, more than 2,880 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 22 of whom have died.
Germany ‘very worried’ by rise in cases
Negligence is behind a steady rise in new coronavirus infections in Germany, the head of the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases has said, adding that it was unclear if the country was experiencing a second wave.
“The new developments in Germany make me very worried,” Lothar Wieler said during his first news conference in weeks. “The rise has to do with the fact that we have become negligent.”
The number of daily new cases almost doubled on Tuesday to 633, and the RKI linked the increase to increased social contact at parties and in the workplace. It urged people not to flout social distancing rules.
Pressebriefing #COVID19 am 28.7.2020 zur aktuellen Lage in Deutschland https://t.co/AJfKKQCBei
— Robert Koch-Institut (@rki_de) July 28, 2020
Updated
Germany warns against non-essential travel to parts of Spain
Germany’s foreign ministry has warned against unnecessary tourist trips to three regions in Spain.
It said Aragon, Catalonia and Navarra are currently not recommended due to the high number of infections .
It cited figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control for the restrictions.
Indonesia has reported 1,748 new coronavirus infections, bringing its tally to 102,051 confirmed cases overall, Health Ministry data showed.
The number of deaths in the Southeast Asian nation related to Covid-19 rose by 63 to 4,901.
Taiwan is investigating its first possible local coronavirus infection in more than a month, after a Thai man who tested positive last week, Reuters reports.
Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Centre said it was probing where and how the man contracted the virus. The migrant worker arrived on the island in January and tested positive on July 25, shortly after returning to Thailand.
More than 180 people who had contact with him in Taiwan have undergone health screenings, the centre said.
“We will make all necessary checks, clarifying how he got infected and whether there is a possibility for further contagion,” the centre’s deputy chief, Chuang Jen-hsiang, told reporters in Taipei.
Taiwan also reported five new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, all imported and marking the biggest daily rise in infections since mid-April. The new cases were people who had returned to Taiwan from the Philippines and Hong Kong.
Taiwan has largely closed its borders since mid-March and the government has been cautious about reopening them in case of a second wave of infections. It now has only 20 active cases.
Russia reported 5,395 new cases of the coronavirus on Tuesday, bringing its nationwide tally to 823,515, Reuters reports. This is the fourth largest in the world behind the US, Brazil and India.
Russia’s coronavirus taskforce said 150 people had died over the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll in the country of around 145 million people to 13,504.
Hotels and restaurants in Kyrgyzstan have been converted into makeshift hospitals after widespread complaints about the lack of hospital beds to treat coronavirus patients, AP reports.
Kyrgyzstan has reported over 33,000 cases and more than 1,300 deaths. On Tuesday, health officials reported 548 new infections.
The teetering health care system, with only 2,036 hospital beds for virus patients in late June, started to collapse.
Patients complained it was impossible to find available beds in hospitals.
That’s when thousands of ordinary people rushed to help. Hotels and restaurants were converted into facilities for patients. Activists found protective gear, drugs, medical supplies, and food and water for medical workers.
Hospitals reported fewer patients, and volunteers said they weren’t getting as many calls at night from people gasping for breath. Experts interviewed by the AP all credited activists for filling the gaps in the response to the outbreak.
“On one hand, we had this collapse of the health care system, but on the other hand, the nation rallied around it, and the support for ordinary people was immense,” said Dr. Sultan Stambekov, a surgical oncologist who has spent over a month working in a coronavirus ward.
The head of the Chinese centre for disease control and prevention says he has been injected with an experimental coronavirus vaccine in an attempt to persuade the public to follow suit when one is approved, AP reports.
“I am injected with one of the vaccines,” Gao Fu told a webinar hosted by Alibaba Health, an arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant, and Cell Press, an American publisher of scientific journals. “I hope it will work.”
A state-owned Chinese company injected employees with experimental shots in March, even before the government-approved testing in people a move that raised ethical concerns among some experts.
Gao did not say when or how he took the vaccine candidate, leaving it unclear whether he was injected as part of a government-approved human trial.
The claim underscores the enormous stakes as China competes with US and British companies to be the first with a vaccine to help end the pandemic a feat that would be both a scientific and political triumph.Eight of the nearly two dozen potential vaccines in various stages of human testing worldwide are from China, the most of any country.
Gao said he took the injection to instill public confidence in vaccines
The French government will reconsider plans to build a fourth terminal at the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport because of the impact of the coronavirus crisis, according to the transport minister, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari.
“The project to receive 40 million more passengers by 2030 is probably no longer justified as it was planned,” Djebbari said on Europe 1 radio, Reuters reports.
He said French airports would still need investment for upgrades and would have to make sure that new types of planes, such as hydrogen-powered planes, can land.
Almost a quarter of the population of Sudan are going hungry as conflict, rising food prices and the coronavirus take their toll.
UN agencies working in the country warned of severe consequences. “If no measures are taken, people may slide into chronic food insecurity and poverty – and perpetual high vulnerability to future hazards,” said Woo Jung Kim, communications officer at the World Food Programme in Sudan.
“Currently, there is widespread food insecurity due to conflict, and economic decline and inflation [are] driving down the purchasing power of the population.”
The UN has also warned that it is unable to reach some of the most vulnerable because of Covid-19 restrictions and instability. A source at the UN, who preferred to remain anonymous, said staff are finding it difficult to get visas or permission from the government to travel inside the country.
According to the World Health Organization, as of 27 July, Sudan had recorded 11,424 cases and 720 deaths from Covid-19.
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for today. My colleague Matthew Weaver will be bringing you the latest for the next few hours.
Before I go, in non-coronavirus and extremely delightful news:
As the coronavirus crisis takes its toll on the UK labour market, the hunt for jobs has intensified. Last week, a Manchester restaurant said it had received nearly 1,000 applications for a receptionist post within 24 hours, reflecting the pressure that the jobs market is under. Paid employment in Britain has fallen almost 650,000 employees since March, which has left some businesses inundated with applications:
Covid-19 outbreak in Xinjiang prompts fears of spread inside China's camps
Rising numbers of Covid-19 cases in the Xinjiang region has sparked fears the outbreak could reach the secretive internment camps where China is believed to have detained more than a million Muslim minority people.
On Monday, Chinese health authorities reported 68 new cases of Covid-19, including 57 in the far western region of Xinjiang, bringing the area’s reported total to 235. After a reported five-month streak of no infections in Xinjiang, the outbreak that began almost two weeks ago has appeared to take hold in the capital city of Urumqi, and spread to Kashgar about 300km away.
The region is home to China’s program of mass incarceration of Uighur and other Turkic Muslims, which has drawn international condemnation and accusations that the detention, abuse, surveillance and restrictions on religious and cultural beliefs amount to cultural genocide. The accusations are strenuously denied by Beijing despite growing evidence and international pressure. It claims its policies are to counter terrorism, but the camps are kept secret from the public and international inspectors:
China Southern Airlines, China’s biggest carrier by passengers, on Tuesday rolled out a “Fly Happily” deal, which allows buyers to use passes for as many flights as they wish for destinations across the country from 26 August to 6 January for 3,699 yuan ($529), Reuters reports.
At least eight of China’s dozens of airlines have introduced similar deals since June. Industry watchers say the packages have been a shot in the arm.
But Luya You, transportation analyst at BOCOM International, said these promotional packages can only stimulate demand when coronavirus risks are already sufficiently reduced. “While these packages may work in domestic markets, we do not expect similar rollouts for outbound routes anytime soon,” she said.
Agencies fear hidden cholera deaths in Yemen as Covid-19 overwhelms clinics
Aid agencies are warning that thousands of people in Yemen could be dying undetected from cholera as people are too frightened to seek treatment in health facilities overwhelmed by coronavirus.
Coronavirus cases in the war-torn country are due to peak in the coming weeks, but Oxfam has warned that health centres are seeing an unexpected drop in cholera cases, ahead of August’s rains when cholera will also increase.
Already experiencing what has been described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with approximately 80% of the population requiring urgent assistance, Yemen is also facing a worsening food crisis.
The country also suffered the worst cholera outbreak in modern times, with 110,000 cases between January and April this year.
A 50% drop in people seeking treatment for cholera in the past three months has led to concern that tens of thousands of people are avoiding health centres for fear of contracting Covid-19:
Bulgarian tennis player Grigor Dimitrov has detailed his battle with Covid-19 and said it was “no fun” dealing with the physical and mental effects of the virus, AAP reports.
Like Novak Djokovic, the world No 1’s wife, two other players and their coaches, Dimitrov contracted the virus while playing in last month’s Adria Tour exhibition series in Serbia.
The former world No 3 and Australian Open semi-finalist says the ordeal really shook him up and that he is still feeling the ongoing effects:
Global report: Covid-19 still accelerating, warns WHO, as restrictions return in Europe
The World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has warned that the pandemic continues to accelerate, with the number of cases worldwide doubling in the past six weeks, nearly six months after it declared a “public health emergency of international concern”.
Fears are growing that more European countries will reintroduce restrictions, as Germany, France and Belgium introduced curfews, social distancing and quarantine measures.
Worldwide, there are 16.4m cases, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. Thursday will mark six months since 30 January, when the WHO raised the alarm over the pandemic to the highest level:
Podcast: Covid-19 How risky is singing?
With evolving evidence on airborne transmission of Covid-19 and early super-spreading events linked to choir practices, musicians have been left wondering how risky it is to sing and play instruments in person. Investigating a listener question, Nicola Davis speaks to Prof Jonathan Reid about the science of aerosols and why he’s getting musicians to sing into funnels — in the middle of an operating theatre:
In Australia, a baby infected with coronavirus in a Melbourne neonatal intensive care ward is in a stable condition as other patients test negative, AAP reports.
A Royal Children’s hospital patient, staff member and two parents connected to the neonatal intensive care unit tested positive to Covid-19, it was confirmed on Monday.
As a result of contact tracing there are currently 17 RCH staff, seven patients and three parents identified as close contacts of the identified cases, all of whom are now in 14-day self-quarantine.
A spokeswoman from the hospital confirmed the baby’s stable condition with AAP on Tuesday.
Health Minister Jenny Mikakos told reporters on Tuesday all but one result in the unit had come back negative.
“Yesterday we reported a baby there, two parents and a health care worker had tested positive,” Ms Mikakos said.
“The latest advice that I have is that all the results have been received bar one result that is still pending of the babies at the NICU and they have all come through as negative.”
As recovery and cleanup efforts got underway Monday in South Texas in the wake of a downgraded Hanna, worried residents confronted the prospect of undertaking the effort amid a surge in coronavirus cases that has left many fearful about their health, AP reports.
Now a tropical depression, Hanna was 65 miles (105 km) north of Fresnillo in the Mexican state of Zacatecas as its winds weakened to about 25 mph (40 kph), the National Hurricane Center said.
Its remnants still threatened to bring rainfall and flash flooding to waterlogged parts of South Texas and Northern Mexico.
Governor Greg Abbott said the state was sending additional testing supplies and hospital personnel to South Texas communities impacted by Hanna to ensure the storm doesn’t exacerbate the spread of the virus.
“The spread of Covid can be far more deadly than the damage caused by the storm,” Abbott said on KRGV-TV. He planned to tour damaged areas Tuesday.
The governor asked residents to adhere to social distancing guidelines and to wear masks if they had to leave their homes and go to a shelter. Officials said shelters were set up to be as safe as possible, with temperature checks by on-site medical personnel. Some were being sheltered in hotel rooms.
Border communities hit by Hanna were already strained by Covid-19 cases with some patients being airlifted to larger cities.
Hong Kong reports 145 new cases
Hong Kong has reported 145 new coronavirus cases. On Monday, Hong Kong’s chief secretary, Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, announced new measures for the city as it battles a growing outbreak.
#HongKong reported 145 new confirmed #COVID19 cases on July 27, bringing the total number of infections in the city to 2,779: NHC pic.twitter.com/pV1NN7DG0U
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) July 28, 2020
Today’s cases mark six consecutive days with figures in the triple figures. More than half of Hong Kong’s total case count in the pandemic has been in July, the vast majority of it community transmission.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 633 to 206,242, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Tuesday.
The reported death toll rose by 4 to 9,122, the tally showed.
Hi, Helen Sullivan here. A reminder that As always, you can get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com.
China reports 68 new coronavirus cases, including 2 in Beijing
China reported 68 new coronavirus cases for 27 July up for the fourth consecutive day, including two in Beijing, the country’s health authority said on Tuesday, marking the highest daily rise since April.
The day before, China reported 61 cases.
China is battling the most aggressive return of Covid-19 in months, driven by infections in the far western region of Xinjiang and a separate flare-up in the northeast, Reuters reports.
Of the new local infections for 27 July, 57 were in Xinjiang, according to a statement by the National Health Commission. That brings the total number of cases in the region’s current outbreak to 235 since the first infection was reported on 16 July.
Xinjiang has yet to explain how patient zero, a 24-year-old woman who worked in a mall in its capital Urumqi, contracted the virus.
The northeastern province of Liaoning reported six new cases as of 27 July. The current outbreak in Liaoning, which began on 22 July, centred mostly on the port city of Dalian, east of Beijing. The first case in Dalian worked at a seafood processing company, and had not travelled out of the city in recent weeks.
To contain the spread of the virus, Xinjiang and Dalian have tested millions of people for Covid-19, but the coronavirus is already on the move.
Beijing reported two new infections, one linked to Dalian and the other imported. They were the first new cases in the Chinese capital for more than three weeks.
On Monday, the northeastern province of Jilin reported two new cases, it’s first infections since May. Both were staff at the Dalian seafood processing company, and had travelled back to Jilin from nearby Dalian about 10 days ago.
As of Monday, mainland China had 83,959 confirmed coronavirus cases, the health authority said. The Covid-19 death toll remained at 4,634.
Updated
Podcast: Will we ever achieve immunity from Covid-19?
Recent studies suggest that even where immunity is developed to Covid-19, it may be fleeting. Science editor Ian Sample looks at what this means for vaccines, treatments and living long term with the coronavirus:
More now from a news conference in Wellington where officials are updating New Zealand’s coronavirus status.
Charlotte graham-McLay reports for the Guardian:
The country has broken a three-day streak of no new cases of Covid-19 recorded, with one new case reported on Tuesday.
The latest case was a woman in her 20s who arrived in New Zealand from Afghanistan on 14 July.
As is the case with all of New Zealand’s 21 active cases of the virus, all of those infected were travelers returning to the country, and all remain in managed isolation at government-run quarantine hotels.
There is no known community transmission – it’s been 88 days since the last known case of the virus was transmitted locally from an unknown source – although as we mentioned earlier, a traveler who arrived in South Korea from New Zealand with the virus is raising questions about that.
No one is in hospital in New Zealand with Covid-19. There have been 1,207 confirmed cases in total, and 22 deaths.
Only New Zealanders, their families, and certain essential workers are permitted to enter the country. They spend two weeks in quarantine, where they are tested twice for the virus.
Charlotte graham-McLay reports for the Guardian:
New Zealand’s health minister has spoken to reporters about the mysterious case of a traveler who arrived in South Korea from New Zealand and was then diagnosed with Covid-19.
This case has captured attention because New Zealand officials believe the country is free of community transmission -- all known cases of the virus are contained in government-managed quarantine in designated isolation hotels.
But this traveler, a South Korean citizen, arrived in New Zealand on 18 March from the United States, before the quarantine provisions were imposed. He stayed with friends in Auckland instead.
The man flew from Auckland to Christchurch and left the country to return home to South Korea on 20 July, where he was diagnosed with the coronavirus on arrival.
Hipkins said officials were exploring a number of explanations for how the man came to catch the virus – including the fact that he spent 14.5 hours in a transit lounge in Singapore during his trip.
But Hipkins and the country’s top health official, Ashley Bloomfield, were pre-empting the “worst case scenario” of the man having caught the virus through unrecorded community transmission in New Zealand – and were contact tracing and testing the man’s New Zealand contacts.
Because the man is a South Korean citizen, New Zealand officials have not been able to speak to him yet for privacy reasons. But Hipkins said the government had requested he be tested again for Covid-19 as soon as possible.
He added that the man had been diagnosed initially using a less reliable, rapid test.
“The risk to public health is considered to be low,” Hipkins said. But infection in New Zealand “can’t be ruled out.”
Australian state of New South Wales records 14 new cases
The state of New South Wales has recorded 14 new cases, meanwhile, including six new cases linked to the funeral cluster and four linked to the cluster at the Thai Rock restaurant at Wetherill Park.
The new cases also include a case associated with the Thai Rock restaurant at Potts Point in inner Sydney, and the previously reported case in a staff member of the Apollo restaurant in Potts Point.
One of the cases was a returned overseas traveller in hotel quarantine, and one was a Victorian in self-isolation.
There are now 75 cases associated with Thai Rock Wetherill Park, 56 cases associated with the Crossroads Hotel cluster, eight cases associated with Batemans Bay Soldiers Club, and 15 associated with the funerals.
There are three cases associated with Thai Rock Potts Point.
NSW health repeated its warnings around people who attended the Apollo restaurant in Potts Point and two Mount Pritchard hotels. Details here.
Updated
Victoria suspends non-urgent elective surgery
In the Australia state of Victoria, which is battling a coronavirus outbreak that has seen triple-digit case increases for weeks, the premier, Daniel Andrews, has just announced that all elective surgeries, except Category 1 and 2 surgeries, are being suspended:
It is with some regret, but a sense of absolute urgency that I need to announce that elective surgery other than for Category 1and the most urgent Category 2patients will be suspended forthwith. We will do our level best to honour those booked surgeries, so scheduled surgeries, but that will not run for very long. If you’re outside the most urgent of Category 2 or in Category 3 - although very little Category 3 surgery is being undertaken at the moment - then we will attempt to have your surgery done, but very soon, all of that surgery will stop. So only the most urgent patients will be treated.
Updated
Australian state of Victoria records 384 new cases, six deaths
Victoria has recorded 384 new cases of coronavirus today, about 150 cases fewer than were recorded in the record high numbers yesterday.
Six more people have died.
The premier, Daniel Andrews, is holding a press conference now.
Vietnam suspends all flights to and from Danang
Reuters is reporting that Vietnam has decided to suspend all flights to and from the city of Danang for 15 days due to the new outbreak in the city.
On Monday, Vietnam started evacuating 80,000 people, most of whom are local tourists, from the central city of Danang and reimposing disease-prevention measures after 15 local coronavirus cases were detected, the first to be recorded in the country for more than three months:
The British government promised Monday to build thousands of miles of new bike lanes to get people moving and healthy after months of coronavirus lockdown, AFP reports.
Johnson introduced a bike sharing programme in London during his spell as the British capital’s mayor from 2008 to 2016.
But the so-called “Boris bikes” stood largely untouched during a months-long lockdown that still sees swathes of central London stand empty during working hours.
The government’s efforts to tease people out of lockdown and into their old spending habits that can give shops and restaurants a boost are complicated by Britain’s inability to safely reopen its schools.
Polls shows people are also worried about using public transport. Many trains and buses are running half-empty during morning and evening commutes.
Johnson’s plan envisions more Briton’s biking and walking to work in the long term.
Britain’s official virus death toll of 45,759 is the highest in Europe.
Democrats pan Republican plan to slash jobless benefits to $200 as 'totally inadequate'
Unemployment assistance, eviction protections and other relief for millions of Americans struggling in an economy cratered by the coronavirus crisis were at stake as White House officials on Monday began fraught negotiations with top Democrats on a new aid package.
Aid runs out on Friday for a $600 weekly jobless benefit that Democrats call a lifeline for out-of-work Americans. Republican want to slash it to $200 a week, saying that the federal bump is too generous on top of state benefits and is discouraging employees from returning to work.
The US Senate’s Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on Monday rolled out a proposal worth around $1tn, amid infighting in his own party and Democrats imploring him to come to the negotiating table.
The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, called McConnell’s proposed relief package “totally inadequate”, at only about a third the size of what House Democrats have put forward.
“It won’t include food assistance for hungry kids whose parents can’t feed them, how hard-hearted, how cruel,” said Schumer:
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday took off his mask in public as he greeted supporters in Brasilia, days after saying he had recovered from the coronavirus, which he said had not had a serious impact on his health, Reuters reports.
The right-wing leader tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this month and went into quarantine at his residence, but said on Saturday that his latest test had come back negative.
“I didn’t have any problems,” Bolsonaro said on Monday. “For people who have prior health problems and are of a certain age, anything can be dangerous.”
Brazil has the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world outside of the United States and Bolsonaro has been criticized for minimizing the severity of the disease and doing little to curb its spread as deaths mount.
Standing outside the Alvorada Palace, the Brazilian president’s official residence, Bolsonaro removed his mask after supporters asked that he take it off so they could snap pictures and selfies with him.
Initially, Bolsonaro said he would not take his mask off because he would end up “on the frontpage of tomorrow’s newspapers” if he did, but ended up doing so for brief periods of time in response to supporters.
The Brazilian Press Association filed a criminal complaint against Bolsonaro earlier this month because he took off his mask in the presence of reporters just as he announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus. The group alleges Bolsonaro endangered the health of those present at the news conference.
On Monday, Brazil reported a total of 2,442,375 confirmed coronavirus cases and 87,618 deaths. New cases totaled 23,384, while there were 614 new deaths.
Mexico’s health ministry on Monday reported 4,973 new coronavirus cases and 342 additional deaths, bringing the country’s total cases to 395,489 and death toll to 44,022.
The figures were published earlier in the day by Johns Hopkins University. Mexico has the fourth-highest coronavirus death tally worldwide.
The government has said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
Updated
Anti-racism protesters plan to demonstrate in downtown Sydney on Tuesday despite court rulings that the gathering is illegal due to the pandemic threat, AP reports.
Organiser Paddy Gibson said the gathering would be safer than going to a crowded shopping mall or many Sydney workplaces.
“We all must be Covid-safe but we need to stand together to ... say that Black lives matter in Australia,” Gibson told Nine Network television.
Gibson had organised the demonstration with the family of David Dungay, a 26-year-old Indigenous man who died in 2015 while being restrained in a Sydney prison after repeatedly saying: “I can’t breathe.”
The demonstrators have gathered more than 100,000 signatures on a petition calling for his prison guards to be charged.
A New South Wales state Supreme Court judge on Sunday accepted a police submission that the possibility of community transmission of Covid-19 made the demonstration too risky to proceed.
An appeals court on Monday dismissed the protesters’ challenge which contended the judge did not have the authority to prohibit the rally.
The court rulings increase the legal powers available to police to use against protesters. Outdoor gatherings are limited to 20 people in New South Wales due to the pandemic threat.
Here is more on the planned protest:
Youth climate activists are to advise the UN secretary general on the climate emergency as part of a new effort to bring young people into decision-making and planning on the crisis.
Seven young people, aged between 18 and 28, will take on roles to “provide perspectives, ideas and solutions” to the secretary general, António Guterres, aimed at helping to scale up global climate action in the recovery from the coronavirus crisis and ahead of a crunch summit next year on the climate.
Guterres said: “We need urgent action now, to recover better from Covid-19, to confront injustice and inequality, and address climate disruption. We have seen young people on the front lines of climate action, showing us what bold leadership looks like.”
The new advisory group includes: a young woman from Sudan, Nisreen Elsaim, who is already a junior negotiator at intergovernmental climate forums; an economist, Vladislav Kaim from Moldova; Paloma Costa, a lawyer and human rights defender from Brazil; and from India, Archana Soreng, who works on the traditional knowledge and cultural practices of indigenous people:
WHO says Covid-19 is 'easily the most severe' crisis it has faced
Thursday this week will mark six months since the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 pandemic “public health emergency of international concern”.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters on Monday night, “This is the sixth time a global health emergency has been declared under the International Health Regulations, but it is easily the most severe,” saying that cases have roughly doubled in the last six weeks, as the pandemic “continues to accelerate.”
“When I declared a public health emergency of international concern on the 30th of January – the highest level of alarm under international law – there were less than 100 cases outside of China, and no deaths,” he added.
Summary
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest global developments for the next few hours.
As always, you can get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com.
With Thursday this week marking six months since the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 pandemic “public health emergency of international concern”, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters on Monday night, “This is the sixth time a global health emergency has been declared under the International Health Regulations, but it is easily the most severe.”
He added that cases have roughly doubled in the last six weeks, as the pandemic “continues to accelerate.”
Here are the other key recent developments:
- Global virus deaths passed 650,000 as new surges prompt fresh curbs. More than 100,000 deaths have been recorded since 9 July, and the global toll has doubled in just over two months.
- Donald Trump wore a mask and talked up the possibility of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year in the battleground state North Carolina. During a visit to a Fujifilm plant in Morrisville, the president wore a mask publicly for a second time and expressed confidence in the country’s economic recovery.
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Spain’s PM said the UK quarantine decision not justified. Britain’s decision to impose a two-week quarantine on people travelling from Spain is unfair, Pedro Sánchez said. He added that the Spanish government is in touch with British authorities in a bid to get the country to reconsider its position.
- Google employees will work from home until at least summer 2021. The company will keep its employees home until at least next July, the Wall Street Journal reported, marking the largest tech firm to commit to such a timeline in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
- Lebanon reimposed severe Covid-19 restrictions for the next two weeks. It has shut places of worship, cinemas, bars, nightclubs, sports events and popular markets, after a sharp rise in infections.
- The International Monetary Fund approved $4.3bn in aid to South Africa to help it fight the coronavirus pandemic. The country’s finance minister, Tito Mboweni, in June predicted the economy would shrink 7.2% in 2020, its deepest slump in 90 years.
- Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli issued scathing criticism of the Italian government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. He said he was humiliated by a recent lockdown, surprise comments as the 61-year-old superstar was a symbol of national unity at the height of the lockdown.
