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Summary
Here is a quick recap of the latest updates from the past few hours:
- Africa passes one million confirmed virus cases. Africa’s confirmed coronavirus cases have surpassed one million, but global health experts say the true toll is likely several times higher, reflecting the gaping lack of testing for the continent’s 1.3 billion people.
- Travellers returning to UK from Belgium, the Bahamas and Andorra to quarantine from Saturday. In a tweet, transport secretary Grant Shapps said: “Data shows we need to remove Andorra, Belgium and The Bahamas from our list of coronavirus Travel Corridors in order to keep infection rates DOWN.”
- US lifts global health coronavirus travel advisory. The US has lifted a global health advisory imposed in March that advised US citizens to avoid all international travel because of the coronavirus pandemic.
- A rise in the Covid-19 infection rate in Ireland is a “serious concern”. Ireland has seen a spike since last Thursday and has identified a number of clusters of infections in meat plants and accommodation for asylum seekers.
- Coronavirus cases in Greece pass 5,000 as new infections spark “wake-up week”. The national public health organisation announced 153 cases over the last 24 hours, raising the total to over 5,100. There have been 210 deaths so far.
- French universities will reopen in September. Institutions will reopen after nearly six months but students will be encouraged to wear face masks and social distance.
- US top infectious disease expert forced to hire security to protect family. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, told CNN the pandemic has brought out “the best of people and the worst of people, and, you know, getting death threats for me and my family and harassing my daughters to the point where I have to get security”.
- Brazil decree to provide $356 million for coronavirus vaccine. Jair Bolsonaro has issued a decree to provide 1.9bn reais ($356m) in funds to purchase and eventually produce a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University researchers.
That’s all from me, I’m now handing over to my colleague in Australia Martin Farrer.
New York City has opened new traveller checkpoints to register visitors and residents returning from nearly three dozen states who are required to quarantine for 14 days, an initiative that drew swift criticism from privacy advocates.
The checkpoints, targeting busy entry points like Penn Station, are more of an awareness campaign than a blockade, intended to preserve the city’s progress reducing its Covid-19 infection rate and forestall a second wave as the coronavirus ravages other states.
Authorities said this week a fifth of all new coronavirus cases in New York City have been from travellers entering the city from other states.
The random checks are similar to an effort already in place at airports and includes offers of free food delivery, and in some cases even hotel stays, for people who must quarantine.
Teams began stopping travellers arriving in the city by train on Thursday, requiring they complete a state Department of Health traveller form and warning they could face fines as high as $10,000 for failing to quarantine.
The checkpoints don’t involve the police, but the city’s Sheriff’s Office, which enforces civil law, said it would pull over motorists at random on city bridges.
“If were going to hold at this level of health and safety in this city and get better, we have to deal with the fact that the quarantine must be applied consistently to anyone who’s travelled,” mayor Bill de Blasio said.
Despite the spectre of fines, the checkpoints are more educational than punitive, and officials acknowledged the effort relies on voluntary compliance.
“Were not going to be in everyone’s apartment monitoring them,” de Blasio said. “Even if we’re not going to be able to reach every single person with a checkpoint, I think its going to help really get the message across.”
The campaign was criticised for sowing confusion and raising questions about how travellers’ personal information would be retained.
It’s not clear how long the registration checkpoints will remain in place.
De Blasio said the city will use the approach for “as long as we think makes sense and as extensively as we think makes sense”.
Updated
Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the US, has had to hire security to protect himself and his family after receiving death threats in response to his work to stop the spread of coronavirus.
Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, told CNN that the pandemic has brought out “the best of people and the worst of people, and, you know, getting death threats for me and my family and harassing my daughters to the point where I have to get security”.
Donald Trump’s administration has consistently downplayed the public health threat of coronavirus, but Fauci has just as consistently rejected those efforts.
Since the early days of the pandemic, Fauci has provided blunt assessments of the crisis in media appearances and in remarks at the White House, which have been less frequent in recent months.
Fauci said:
I wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that people who object to things that are pure public health principles are so set against it and don’t like what you and I say, namely in the world of science, that they actually threaten you.
The NHS will be inflicting pain, misery and risk of death on tens of thousands of patients in the UK if it again shuts down normal care when a second wave of Covid-19 hits, doctors’ and surgeons’ leaders are warning.
They are urging NHS bosses not to use the same sweeping closures of services that were introduced in March to help hospitals cope with the huge influx of patients seriously ill with Covid.
Prof Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England said:
The NHS must never again be a Covid-only service. There is a duty to the thousands of patients waiting in need and in pain to make sure they can be treated.
The leader of Britain’s doctors warned that hospitals should not leave patients “stranded” by again suspending a wide range of diagnostic and treatment services.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of council at the British Medical Association said:
We cannot have a situation in which patients are unable to access diagnostic tests, clinic appointments and treatment which they urgently need and are simply left stranded.
If someone needs care – for example for cancer, heart trouble, a breathing condition or a neurological problem – they must get it when they need it.
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has issued a decree to provide 1.9bn reais ($356m) in funds to purchase and eventually produce a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University researchers.
Brazil’s acting health minister Eduardo Pazuello said the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is the most promising in the world to fight the virus and the technology will be acquired by Brazil, which is facing the worst outbreak outside the United States.
Africa passes one million confirmed virus cases
Africa’s confirmed coronavirus cases have surpassed one million, but global health experts say the true toll is likely several times higher, reflecting the gaping lack of testing for the continent’s 1.3 billion people.
While experts say infection tolls in richer nations can be significant undercounts, large numbers of undetected cases are a greater danger for Africa, with many of the world’s weakest health systems.
The World Health Organization calls the milestone a pivotal point for Africa as infections in several countries are surging.
The virus has spread beyond major cities into distant hinterlands where few health resources exist and reaching care could take days.
African nations banded together early in the pandemic to pursue badly needed testing and medical supplies and advocate for equitable access to any successful vaccine. Swift border closures delayed the virus spread.
But Africa’s most developed country, South Africa, has strained to cope as hospital beds fill up and confirmed cases are over a half-million, ranking fifth in the world.
The country has Africa’s most extensive testing and data collection, and yet a South African Medical Research Council report last week showed many Covid-19 deaths were going uncounted.
Other deaths were attributed to other diseases as people avoid health centres and resources are diverted to the pandemic.
The WHO’s Africa chief, Matshidiso Moeti, said:
It’s all a warning for Africa’s other 53 countries of what might lie ahead.
While dire early predictions for the pandemic have not played out, we think its going to be here at a slow burn.
Just two African countries at the start of the pandemic were equipped to test for the virus.
Now virtually all have basic capacity, but supplies are often scarce. Some countries have a single testing machine.
Some conduct fewer than 500 tests per million people, while richer countries overseas conduct hundreds of thousands. Samples can take days to reach labs.
Even in South Africa, turnaround times for many test results have been a week or longer.
“We are fighting this disease in the dark,” International Rescue Committee expert Stacey Mearns said.
In addition, Africa has just 1,500 epidemiologists, a deficit of about 4,500.
African nations overall have conducted just 8.8 million tests since the pandemic began, well below the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Preventions goal of 13 million per month.
Africa CDC director John Nkengasong said estimating the true number of cases on the continent is very tricky. Some 70% of infections are asymptomatic, he said.
But some experts are making their best guesses.
Africa likely has at least 5 million infections, said Ridhwaan Suliman, a senior researcher at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
He believes the true number in South Africa alone is at least 3 million.
The country has conducted far more tests than any other in Africa, more than 3 million, but in recent days about 25% have come back positive.
Because of shortages, South Africa largely limits testing to health workers and those showing symptoms.Experts see South Africa as an indication of whats to come elsewhere.
Sema Sgaier, an assistant professor of global health at Harvard and director of the Surgo Foundation, thinks the number of infections across Africa could be more than 9 million.
The US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation puts the number at more than 8 million. And Resolve to Save Lives, led by Tom Frieden, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates it could be 14 million.
Updated
The decision to exclude all but elite runners from this year’s London Marathon means a gang of veteran participants will miss the chance to complete their 40th race.
Known as the Ever Present, the group have competed every single year since the world famous event’s inaugural year in 1981.
Starting off as a band of 42, over the years the Ever Present have been whittled down to just 10, with same planning to make their 40th marathon their last.
But now their plans are in disarray and they are still deciding if and how they will be able to take part this year.
Former primary school head teacher Micheal Peace told the PA news agency: “We are disappointed with the news but in the grand scheme of things there are worse things happening in the world.
“I think we realised that a mass participation event just wasn’t going to happen at this time of year so it wasn’t a great shock, just a bit of a disappointment.”
He said the Ever Present were considering taking part in the virtual race, and that some were also considering meeting up to run a 26.2 mile route together.
Charles Cousens, 78, from Lowestoft, Suffolk, was unconvinced by the idea of a virtual race conducted via a running app.
He told PA: “I’m nearly 80 - I don’t even have a watch that tells the time, let alone an app.”
Cousens, who had been working as a barber right up until shutdown, said:
We will just have to go with the flow but after 39 years this was all I needed, this was going to be my last one.
He said he hadn’t made up his mind whether he would try and take part in the marathon in 2021, or whether the Ever Present would try and put some kind of event together to mark his final race.
This year’s marathon on 4 October will see the world’s best marathon athletes running an enclosed loop course around St James’s Park.
No spectators will be permitted as the runners complete their 19.8 laps of the park, although it will be broadcast by BBC Sport.
US president Donald Trump has intensified his attacks on China for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, as his health secretary headed to Taiwan for a visit sure to irk Beijing.
Trump, whose public approval ratings have fallen amid continued Covid-19 infection rates and economic woes, sought to shift the focus to Beijing, claiming again, without evidence, that it may have intentionally let the virus spread globally.
The Republican president, who is trailing Democrat Joe Biden in national polls ahead of the 3 November election, said it was a “disgrace” that Beijing had limited the spread of the virus at home but allowed it to reach the rest of the world.
“What China did is a terrible thing ... whether it was incompetence or on purpose,” he said, reviving a refrain that has strained ties between the world’s two largest economies and raised questions about a US-China trade deal signed in January.
Biden on Wednesday said the deal was “failing” after Commerce Department data showed the US-China trade deficit widened 5% to $28.4bn in June.
Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday aimed at yanking back supply chains from China for key ingredients and supplies used to make medicines and medical equipment, said Peter Navarro, a key adviser and China hawk.
Trump’s health secretary, Alex Azar, is due to visit Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province, starting Sunday and reaffirm the US partnership with the Asian country, prompting China to threaten “strong countermeasures.”
Azar will be the highest-level US official to visit the island in four decades.
Washington broke off official ties with Taipei in 1979 in favor of Beijing but is now moving to sell Taiwan at least four of its large sophisticated aerial drones.
Alongside transport secretary Grant Shapps’ announcement that travellers from Belgium, the Bahamas and Andorra will have to self-isolate from Saturday, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has updated its travel advice to warn against all but essential trips to the three countries.
Brunei and Malaysia have been added to the government’s travel corridor list, following a decrease in confirmed cases of coronavirus, meaning arrivals from these countries no longer need to quarantine.
Figures released on Thursday show Belgium has suffered a consistent increase in cases in recent weeks, rising to 27.8 new cases per 100,000 people.
This towers over the UK’s latest rate of 8.4 per 100,000, and is higher than Spain’s 27.4 level around the time when the UK introduced travel restrictions there.
Belgium’s prime minister, Sophie Wilmes, was last week forced to put a halt to the nation’s Covid-19 exit plan by introducing drastic new social distancing measures in the hope of avoiding a new national lockdown.
Contacts outside every household were limited to the same five people for a month, in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.
In Andorra, new cases per week have increased five-fold since mid-July, while in the Bahamas the weekly case rate peaked at 78.6 last week, up from 3.1 in the middle of last month.
The UK’s move to add Spain onto the quarantine list on 26 July sparked a diplomatic row with the nation and caught out holidaymakers who had already flown over, including Shapps himself.
It also angered transport bosses who have called for increased testing to reduce the isolation period.
Luxembourg was added to the UK’s red list on 31 July.
Shapps said he “cannot rule out” other countries being included on the list, as officials keep overseas infection rates under close observation.
The Foreign Office says it keeps its own travel advice “under constant review”.
Updated
Spain’s health ministry has denied the country is facing a second wave of Covid-19 infections, despite a spike in cases of the virus in recent days.
According to the Spanish government’s own figures, over the past seven days there have been 19,405 new coronavirus cases registered, an average of 2,772 per day.
A week earlier the rate was an average 1,913 cases per day and the week before that the daily figure was 1,460.
“I wouldn’t speak of a second wave,” unless transmission rates were out of control, said Fernando Simon, head epidemiologist at the health ministry.
“It is not clear that the increase in detected cases isn’t simply due to the increase in testing,” he added.
The worst-hit areas are Catalonia, with more than 5,100 cases diagnosed in the past week, and neighbouring Aragon with 4,100 cases.
Austria on Thursday announced it would issue a travel warning for mainland Spain, becoming the latest country to do so.
Switzerland had already said on Wednesday it would add mainland Spain to its list of countries seen as having heightened risk of Covid-19 transmission and thus requiring travellers from there to undergo a quarantine.
Germany last week added three northern Spanish regions to its list of high-risk destinations, while France and Britain have also taken steps to limit travel from the country.
Despite the rise in the number of cases in Spain, Simon assured that there was no risk of the hospital system buckling under pressure.
Nevertheless regional authorities, such as those in Catalonia and Aragon, have ordered new partial lockdown measures.
Travellers returning to UK from Belgium, the Bahamas and Andorra to quarantine from Saturday
Passengers from Belgium, Andorra and the Bahamas will be required to self-isolate at home or another specified address for 14 days on arrival in the UK from Saturday.
In a tweet, transport secretary Grant Shapps said: “Data shows we need to remove Andorra, Belgium and The Bahamas from our list of coronavirus Travel Corridors in order to keep infection rates DOWN.
“If you arrive in the UK after 0400 Saturday from these destinations, you will need to self-isolate for 14 days.”
Data shows we need to remove Andorra, Belgium and The Bahamas from our list of #coronavirus Travel Corridors in order to keep infection rates DOWN. If you arrive in the UK after 0400 Saturday from these destinations, you will need to self-isolate for 14 days.
— Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) August 6, 2020
Speaking about the changes to the quarantine list, Scottish justice secretary Humza Yousaf said:
The governments of all for nations have agreed to these changes based on a shared understanding of the data.
This is another important step in our efforts to prevent the spread of the virus, and adhering to the quarantine is a vital aspect of this.
Imposing quarantine requirements on those arriving from another country is not a decision made lightly - but suppressing the virus and protecting public health remains our priority.
Updated
Greece has recorded more than 5,000 coronavirus cases after a spurt in new infections that sparked a “wake-up week”.
The national public health organisation announced 153 cases over the last 24 hours, raising the total to over 5,100. There have been 210 deaths so far.
The highest amount of daily cases announced was 156 on 21 April, following a mass outbreak at a migrant hotel near Athens.
Late on Thursday, the civil protection agency announced emergency restrictions on the small holiday island of Poros near Athens.
These include a night curfew for all restaurants and bars to 17 August, and a ban on fairs and open markets, after over a dozen cases were reported on the island.
A ban on gatherings of over nine people was declared on Poros, even inside homes, and masks have been made obligatory both outdoors and indoors.
Greece on Wednesday announced a “wake-up week” on Covid-19, tightening restrictions after the steady rise in mostly domestic infections.
Officials have blamed the increase on overcrowding in clubs and social events.
Only 10% of cases in Greece can be traced to foreign arrivals, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
Earlier on Thursday, the government said Greece’s land borders would close at night to travellers, except one crossing with Bulgaria. Petsas said:
We have located three sources of concern: very regular crossings from Balkan countries by ethnic Greeks and residence permit holders... social gatherings, including clubbing youths, weddings and baptisms, and public transport.
The public protection agency last week said masks must be worn in all indoor public areas, and visits to retirement homes and other institutions hosting vulnerable groups are restricted until 15 August.
A limit of 100 guests was also set for weddings, baptisms and funerals, and summer fairs were cancelled.
Mitsotakis has already ruled out a general lockdown after gradually reopening the economy in May and starting to accept foreign arrivals in June to salvage part of the tourism season that is vital to the economy.
French universities will reopen in September after nearly six months but students will be encouraged to wear face masks, the ministry of higher education has announced.
Universities in France closed on 16 March as part of the new coronavirus restrictions. Schools gradually reopened on 11 May but the country’s 74 universities have remained shuttered.
“The wearing of masks in classrooms is highly recommended,” the ministry said, asking universities and leading higher education institutions “to let in a greater number of students while respecting health regulations”.
“We are working in tandem with these establishments to put in place measures .... to protect teachers, personnel and students from the virus,” higher education minister Frederique Vidal said.
She said social distancing would be observed with a metre maintained between each student in classrooms. Facemasks will be mandatory in libraries.
Closed spaces will be aired twice a day and pedestrian traffic will be regulated in busy areas, it said.
A rise in the Covid-19 infection rate in Ireland is a “serious concern” but the country has not yet seen a significant resurgence in infections outside of identified clusters, a leading health official said.
Ireland, which for several weeks had one of the lowest infection rates in Europe, has seen a spike since last Thursday and has identified a number of clusters of infections in meat plants and accommodation for asylum seekers.
The reproduction value, or the number of people who become infected from each positive case, has increased to 1.8 from 1.3 a week ago, professor Philip Nolan, the chairman of the country’s Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, said.
A reproduction number of almost 2 is a serious concern, and although we have not yet seen a significant increase in community transmission, there is a significant risk this could develop over the coming days and weeks.
Ireland reported 69 cases on Thursday and the average infection rate has more than doubled in recent weeks to around 50 per day.
It also reported five deaths on Thursday after six days with no deaths.
Acting chief medical officer Ronan Glynn said half of all recent cases had come from three adjoining counties - Kildare, Laois and Offaly - and that a cluster of 60 cases from the counties were set to be added to Friday’s numbers.
He warned people from those counties to be particularly careful and said he could not rule out specific restrictions being imposed on those three counties.
Updated
US lifts global health coronavirus travel advisory
The US has lifted a global health advisory imposed in March that advised US citizens to avoid all international travel because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The State Department said in a statement:
With health and safety conditions improving in some countries and potentially deteriorating in others, the department is returning to our previous system of country-specific levels of travel advice.
US airline stocks rose on the announcement.
The State Department issued updated country-travel specific alerts, including “Level Four: Do Not Travel” advisories for about 30 countries, including India, Russia, Bangladesh, Belize, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Haiti, Iran, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Honduras and Libya.
The State Department also issued numerous new “Level 3: reconsider travel” advisories, including for countries in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Armenia, the Philippines, Laos and Australia.
The United States has barred most non-US citizens from many parts of the world from traveling to the United States, including from the EU and China.
China has been on the State Department’s “Do Not Travel” advisory since June.
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 Dutch prime minister called on tourists to avoid busy parts of Amsterdam. Mark Rutte said the Netherlands doesn’t need to undergo a second lockdown, despite a sharp increase in the number of coronavirus cases, but implored tourists to avoid busy areas of the capital and for youths to adhere to social distancing in order to avoid one.
- Economic recovery around the world could come faster if any Covid-19 vaccine is made available to all as a public good, the World Health Organization director-general said. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “vaccine nationalism” would not help the world recover from the pandemic, rather global solidarity in sharing vaccines and other tools would lessen the damage and hasten economic recovery. “No country will be safe until we are all safe,” he said.
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Belgium is set to become the latest country added to England’s quarantine list. It has suffered a resurgence of the virus, with the country passing 70,000 Covid-19 cases this week. The surge means arrivals will have to isolate for 14 days. The Foreign Office is expected to change its travel advice for Belgium at the weekend.
- Spanish authorities placed a northern town into confinement following a surge in cases. The northern region of Castilla y León has ordered the town of Aranda de Duero and its 32,000 residents back into confinement for a fortnight after 230 cases of coronavirus were detected in the area.
- Daily cases in Germany rose above 1,000 for first time in three months. In response to the recording of its highest rate of infections since May, the government moved to tighten the testing regime for travellers returning from risk regions. From Saturday travellers returning to Germany from risk regions will face mandatory coronavirus tests.
New daily cases in France over 1,600 again
France reported 1,604 new Covid-19 infections over 24 hours, the total staying above the 1,600 threshold for the second day running, health ministry data showed on Thursday.
In a statement, the ministry also said the number of patients in intensive care units for the disease was on the rise again, at 390 versus 384 on Wednesday.
Updated
Dutch PM calls on tourists to avoid busy parts of Amsterdam
The Netherlands’ prime minister said on Thursday the country does not need to undergo a second lockdown, despite a sharp increase in the number of coronavirus cases.
“The virus is making a dangerous advance and we’re at risk of losing the gains we’ve made together in the past month,” Mark Rutte said after an abrupt return from summer vacation.
“We don’t want a second lockdown and we don’t have to have one, but that won’t happen by itself,” he said, asking tourists to avoid busy parts of Amsterdam and the country’s youth to obey social distancing rules.
The Netherlands’ National Institute for Health reported 601 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, up from 426 a day earlier.
Updated
Nigeria will reopen for international air travel in a matter of weeks, the aviation minister said on Thursday, without giving a specific date for the resumption after months of closure amid the pandemic.
“It will be in weeks rather than in months,” the minister of aviation Hadi Sirika told a regular briefing in the capital Abuja on coronavirus.
Nigeria began to close its airports in March, a month after Africa’s most populous country confirmed its first coronavirus case. Domestic air travel restarted last month.
The country has 44,890 confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 900 deaths, figures from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control show.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday reported 4,802,491 cases of coronavirus, an increase of 53,685 from its previous count, and said the number of deaths had risen by 1,320 to 157,631.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of Covid-19 as of 4pm ET on 5 August versus its previous report a day earlier.
The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
Updated
'Vaccine nationalism will not help us,' says WHO director-general
Economic recovery around the world could come faster if any Covid-19 vaccine is made available to all as a public good, the World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday.
“Sharing vaccines or sharing other tools actually helps the world to recover together. The economic recovery can be faster and the damage from Covid-19 could be less.
“Vaccine nationalism is not good, it will not help us,” he said in an allusion to the competitive scramble of nations and pharmaceutical researchers to come up with an effective vaccine and order as many doses as possible in advance.
Tedros had said on Monday that while Covid-19 was the biggest health emergency since the early 20th century, the international scramble for a vaccine was also “unprecedented”.
“We must seize this moment to come together in national unity and global solidarity to control Covid-19,” he told Thursday’s forum.
No country will be safe until we are all safe.
.@DrMikeRyan, Dr @mvankerkhove and I were honoured to partner with the @AspenSecurity Forum for our regular press conference today, and we thank @LesterHoltNBC for hosting. It was a fruitful discussion about global health security and #COVID19, you can watch it here: https://t.co/8ZrrB2weXQ
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) August 6, 2020
The WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan, asked about a proposed Russian vaccine, told the panel that trial data was needed to ensure any vaccines are safe and effective.
Ryan also said authorities should be able to demonstrate the efficacy of a coronavirus vaccine via traditional clinical trials rather than “human challenge” studies. He was referring to the intentional exposure of vaccinated volunteers to a virus to see whether the drug works.
The US president Donald Trump said on Thursday that it was possible the United States would have a coronavirus vaccine before the November election – a more optimistic forecast than timing put forth by his own White House health experts.
Trump has accused the WHO of becoming a puppet for China – where the coronavirus outbreak first surfaced late last year – during the pandemic and given notice that the United States will quit the agency in a year’s time.
Tedros, who has denied that the WHO answers to China or any other country, told the panel that the US move to abandon the WHO was not primarily a financial issue. He said:
The problem is not about the money, it’s not the financing... it’s actually the relationship with the US. That is more important for the WHO – the void, not the financial. And we hope then US will reconsider its position.
Updated
Updated
The UK government said 46,413 people had died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK as of 5pm on Wednesday, up by 49 from the day before.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have now been 56,600 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
The government also said that in the 24-hour period up to 9am on Thursday, there had been a further 950 lab-confirmed cases. Overall, a total of 308,134 cases have been confirmed.
More on our UK coronavirus live blog:
Updated
Austria’s foreign ministry on Thursday warned against trips to Spain with the exception of the Balearic and Canary Islands, as concerns grow that holidaymakers could catch the coronavirus and spread it once they return.
The measure will take effect from Monday, and people returning to Austria will be required to present a negative test for Covid-19, the ministry said.
Norway will on Saturday reimpose a 10-day quarantine for all travellers from France, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, due to the rising number of coronavirus cases in those countries, its public health institute said on Thursday.
Norway will also reimpose quarantine for people travelling from Monaco and from certain regions in neighbouring Sweden, while lifting quarantine for other regions.
The prime Minister Erna Solberg said Norway would put on hold a planned ease of existing coronavirus restrictions and reimpose others to prevent a full lockdown of society as experienced earlier this year.
“We need to slow down now to avoid a full stop down the road,” Solberg told reporters.
Norway, which is not a member of the EU but belongs to the passport-free Schengen travel zone, had some of the strictest travel restrictions in Europe in the early phase of the pandemic before gradually lifting them from June.
Other countries in Europe are considering what measures, if any, to impose to prevent a new wave of infections. Germany announced on Thursday mandatory tests for travellers returning from high-risk regions after new coronavirus cases breached the 1,000-a-day threshold for the first time since May.
Norwegian authorities are also discussing whether to update guidelines on the wearing of face masks in crowded spaces.
For now, Norway and other Nordic countries, unlike many other European nations, are not recommending people wear face masks in public spaces, but authorities have said they are reviewing their advice in the wake of rising cases in Europe.
The country of 5.4 million has seen an uptick in the number of Covid-19 infections with 9,409 cases reported as of Thursday, up 12 cases from the day before. The total number of deaths was unchanged at 256.
Updated
Our coronavirus global report is now live , courtesy of Jon Henley and Sam Jones. They write
Germany has recorded its highest rate of infections in three months, France cannot keep up with demand for tests and Finland warned of an “extremely delicate” situation as Covid-19 case numbers continued to tick up across the continent.
Updated
Ageing survivors of the atomic bombing that US dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima have gathered in a scaled-back ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the attack.
The US dropped the bomb on 6 August 1945, destroying the city and killing 140,000 people. It dropped a second bomb three days later on Nagasaki, killing another 70,000.
They remain the only two occasions in which atomic weapons have been used in warfare. But in the decades since, many countries, notably the US and Russia, have stockpiled the devastating weapons in huge numbers, contributing to a continuing nuclear standoff.
Thursday’s peace ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was scaled down because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Associated Press reports. The crowd of fewer than 1,000 attendees was one-tenth of those attending in past years.
Amid the solemn remembrances at Hiroshima’s Peace park, Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, was confronted by six members of survivors’ groups over his government’s refusals to sign a nuclear weapons ban treaty.
Even though Tokyo renounces its own possession, production or hosting of nuclear weapons, Japan is a close ally of the US, which owns the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons.
Abe, in his speech at the ceremony, said a nuclear-free world cannot be achieved overnight and it had to start with dialogue. “Japan’s position is to serve as a bridge between different sides and patiently promote their dialogue and actions to achieve a world without nuclear weapons,” he said.
Keiko Ogura, 84, who survived the atomic bombing at age 8, said she wants non-nuclear states to pressure Japan into signing the treaty. “Many survivors are offended by the prime minister of this country because he does not sign the nuclear weapons prohibition treaty,” she told AP.
Updated
The regional government of the Basque country has said there is no longer any doubt that it is “facing a second wave of the coronavirus epidemic”, writes Sam Jones, the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent.
Speaking on Thursday after 338 new cases were diagnosed in the region, the health minister, Nekane Murga, called for people to remain vigilant and warned them not to underestimate the virus.
“There’s no reason to think the virus is now weaker or less deadly,” she said. “It has the same capacity to spread and infect people as it did in March. It’s infecting more people on a daily basis and it can kill.”
Updated
Finland has entered a “second stage” of coronavirus outbreak, a senior health official in the Scandinavian country has said, as authorities placed new restrictions on arrivals from some EU countries.
Belgium, the Netherlands and Andorra were removed from Finland’s green travel list, putting a stop to tourists arriving from those countries and imposing a 14-day quarantine on other returnees, according to the French state-funded news agency AFP. Further containment measures within Finland would be unveiled next week, officials said.
According to new estimates, the reproduction rate of the virus has now risen above 1, to between 1.1 and 1.4, the health ministry’s strategic director Liisa-Maria Voipio-Pulkki told a press conference.
“The situation is extremely delicate,” Voipio-Pulkki said, adding that “some sort of second stage has begun. Whether we can expect a smaller wave or a larger wave depends on how we respond.”
Despite the upturn in cases, Finland still has one of Europe’s lowest incidence rates, reporting two new cases per 100,000 people in the last 14 days. So far 7,532 Covid-19 infections and 331 deaths have been reported in the Nordic nation of 5.5 million people, and the number of new cases slowed to a trickle during June and early July.
In March the country’s government had imposed strict restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the virus. Most have since been lifted, with large indoor and outdoor gatherings permitted, restaurants and bars open as normal and children due to return to in-classroom teaching next week after the summer holidays.
Officials said an “autumn roadmap” would be published next week, setting out the new measures to be introduced if the virus continued to spread.
Updated
Spanish authorities place northern town into confinement
The government of the northern Spanish region of Castilla y León has ordered the town of Aranda de Duero and its 32,000 residents back into confinement for a fortnight after 230 cases of coronavirus were detected in the area, writes Sam Jones, the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent.
From Friday, people will only be allowed in and out of the town for medical appointments, for work reasons, or to look after those in need of care.
The order comes less than a week after two small towns in the same region, Íscar and Pedrajas de San Esteban, were also returned to confinement following Covid outbreaks.
Spain had recorded 33,965 new cases of the virus in the past two weeks, 1,772 of them between Tuesday and Wednesday. To date, the country has logged 305,767 cases and 28,499 deaths.
Updated
Hi this is Damien Gayle covering for Lucy for a bit while she has her break. If you have any comments, tips or suggestions for coverage in the meantime you can reach me at damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter DM to @damiengayle.
Brussels will require people to wear masks in public spaces and in private spaces accessible to the public if the rise in coronavirus cases continues, the regional government said on Thursday.
The order will kick in when the daily average of cases per 100,000 inhabitants reaches 50 over seven days, Rudi Vervoort, the minister-president of the Brussels region, said. The daily average in the region was 38.4 last week.
Belgium imposed sharp curbs on social contacts on 27 July after coronavirus infections surged in recent weeks.
The UK government said on Thursday it would impose a quarantine on arrivals from Belgium, following Estonia, Ireland, Latvia and Norway.
Germany and the Netherlands have also advised their citizens against travelling to the province of Antwerp in the north of Belgium, where the first curfew since World War II was imposed on 29 July to slow rapidly increasing infections.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has designated all of Belgium as a code orange for the new coronavirus, meaning the number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants is 20 or above for two weeks.
Belgium, where the European Union and Nato have their headquarters, imposed a lockdown on 18 March due to Covid-19, which has claimed 9,859 lives in the country, one of the world’s highest fatality figures per capita.
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Reuters reports that Brazil’s federal police on Thursday said it had carried out six search and arrest warrants as part of an operation into alleged coronavirus-related corruption in the city of São Paulo.
The federal police did not say who the operation had targeted, but said it involved alleged irregularities in the purchase of disposable aprons to supply hospitals managed by the city of São Paulo.
The value of the purchases, made without public tender, was 11.1 million reais ($2.10 million), police said, adding that the alleged crimes included tendering fraud, criminal association, corruption and embezzlement.
With large amounts of federal and state cash deployed to tackle the coronavirus crisis, fears have risen of increased corruption in Brazil, where graft is already a deep-seated issue.
The UK government says it will not be using 50m face masks it bought during a scramble to secure PPE for medics during the coronavirus outbreak because of concerns they might not be safe.
The masks were part of a £252m ($332m) contract the government signed with investment firm Ayanda Capital in April. Papers filed in a court case reveal that the masks won’t be distributed because they have ear loops rather than head loops and may not fit tightly enough.
The papers, published Thursday, are part of a lawsuit against the Conservative government by campaigning groups the Good Law Project and EveryDoctor. They want the courts to review contracts signed by the government for personal protective equipment, which they say were not properly scrutinised.
As the coronavirus outbreak accelerated across the UK in March, it became clear that the country lacked enough masks, gloves, gowns and other protective gear for health care workers and nursing home staff. That sparked a race to buy billions of pieces of equipment from suppliers around the world.
Jolyon Maugham, director of the Good Law Project, said the government had signed three contracts worth more than £100m each with respectively a pest control company, a confectioner and a family hedge fund.
Each of those contracts has revealed real cause for alarm, he said.
The UK government said in its response to the lawsuit that the offer to supply the 50 million masks came from Andrew Mills, a businessman who is both an adviser to the government’s Board of Trade and to Ayanda Capital. Mills has denied there was any conflict of interest.
The government says another 150 million masks of a different type supplied by Ayanda are still being tested. It said in a statement that there is a robust process in place to ensure orders are of high quality and meet strict safety standards, with the necessary due diligence undertaken on all government contracts.
Opposition parties are calling for an urgent investigation into the way personal protective equipment was acquired.
More on our UK coronavirus live blog:
Updated
Ten countries account for 80% of coronavirus testing taking place across Africa, a regional body said on Thursday, indicating that little testing is taking place in many countries around the vast continent.
Covid-19 confirmed cases across Africa have accelerated and are close to hitting a million this week, and experts say low levels of testing in many countries means infection rates are likely to be higher than reported.
Some governments across the continent are too poor or conflict-ridden to carry out widespread testing, while others are reluctant to share data or to expose their crumbling health systems to outside scrutiny.
South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and Mauritius have each conducted more than 200,000 tests, said John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
So far nearly 9m tests have been conducted across the continent, up 9.4% from last week’s tally.
“This number indicates we reached 90% of our goal for the partnership to accelerate Covid testing,” Nkengasong told a virtual news conference.
The regional body said it had supported 14 other countries with an additional 240,000 tests.
Updated
Belgium is set to become the latest country added to England’s quarantine list after a rise in Covid-19 cases meaning arrivals will have to isolate for 14 days, the Guardian understands.
My colleague Simon Murphy reports that Department for Transport officials are said to be finalising the move and the UK government is expected to change Foreign Office guidance, which issues travel advice separately, for Belgium at the weekend.
Belgium, which has endured one of the highest per capita coronavirus death rates in the world with more than 9,800 fatalities out of a population of about 11 million, announced a series of further restrictive measures last month to curb the spread of the virus. It has suffered a resurgence of the virus, with the country passing 70,000 Covid-19 cases this week.
Read Simon’s story here:
Vietnam’s health ministry reported 34 more coronavirus infections and two further deaths on Thursday, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 747, with 10 fatalities.
Most of the new cases are linked to the central city of Danang, where the new outbreak began late last month.
A Canadian zoo is warning that its giant pandas could go without fresh bamboo as the Covid-19 pandemic limits imports from China and domestic supplies run short, my colleague David Agren reports.
Calgary Zoo said in May that it planned to return Er Shun and Da Mao to China, after coronavirus disrupted bamboo supply lines, but on Tuesday the zoo announced that due to the pandemic, it was still unable to secure travel permits.
Giant pandas consume 40kg of fresh bamboo daily and the plant comprises 99% of their diet – raising concerns about keeping the animals fed.
“Our No 1 concern is access to fresh bamboo on a daily basis,” said Greg Royer, chief operating officer of the Calgary Zoo.
We can’t live with no guarantee … You can’t say: we may be able to feed the pandas.
Get the full story here:
Germany has recorded its highest number of coronavirus infections for three months, fuelling fears that health authorities are losing control over the spread of the pandemic.
The Robert Koch Institute, the main public health advisory body, has registered 1,045 new cases in the past 24 hours. The country now has 8,700 active cases.
The increase coincides with the return of hundreds of thousands of Germans from their summer holidays, often from high risk areas, as well as with the start of the school year in several of the 16 states.
The health minister, Jens Spahn, has held an emergency press conference in Berlin to address the concerns. He said:
We’re not living in normal times. The pandemic is still there - it will continue to be there.
Spahn said he believed many Germans had been lulled into a false sense of security, “having a deceptive feeling that it’s not all that bad” and had relaxed their behaviour accordingly.
Dealing with the virus was a daily challenge for everyone. “Every day we must find the balance between safety and trying to deal with day to day life,” he said.
Spahn stressed he was determined that schools and nurseries should not be affected in case the infection rate continued to rise. He said it was far more likely that there would be tighter restrictions on gatherings - including on their size and type, but did not foresee the closure of shops.
While the return of Germans from their holidays is increasingly contributing to the rise in new cases, far more prevalent in the statistics were domestic events, he said.
Family parties, religious celebrations and work environments, such as meat processing plants, have been responsible for small outbreaks across the country. Community facilities, such as care homes had also seen an increase in cases, he said.
Spahn has announced that obligatory tests for people returning from areas considered high risk by the RKI, currently numbered at around 130, will start at sea ports, airports and other border crossings, on Saturday. Those tested would be obliged to remain in quarantine until the test result was shown to be positive.
Health authorities could order a second test depending on where the person had travelled from. Those who resist being tested, would be fined, he said, calling the measures “a reasonable intrusion into someone’s privacy ... we have a duty as a society to look after each other ... Freedom goes hand in hand with responsibility”.
Spahn said longer-term consensus is being sought among EU countries, to require travellers to produce a negative test result before boarding planes headed for the EU.
Updated
Over on the UK blog, my colleague Haroon Siddique reports that the latest test and trace figures for England show that 72.4% of close contacts of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 were reached in the week ending 29 July, down from 76.2% in the previous week.
He writes that the figures make disappointing reading at a time when the UK government is under pressure to improve performance.
On Wednesday, the Guardian revealed that, despite Boris Johnson’s claims, some people working on the system have said they are making only a handful of calls a month and are occupying their time with barbecues and quizzes.
That came a day after reports that English councils with the highest infection rates had felt it necessary to launch their own contact-tracing operations to plug holes in the “world-beating” £10bn central government system.
There have also been concerns about the impact schools returning in September could have on spread of the virus without a robust test-and-trace system being in place.
For more updates on the situation in the UK, head over to our UK coronavirus live blog:
Updated
Vietnam is close to completing the conversion of a sports stadium into a 1,000-bed field hospital in Danang, the health ministry said on Thursday, as it battles an outbreak that has spread to at least 11 locations.
Aggressive contact-tracing, targeted testing and strict quarantining had helped Vietnam halt an earlier contagion, but it is now racing to control infections in the central city and beyond after a new outbreak ended a run of more than three months without domestic transmission.
Danang’s Tien Son Sports Palace will from Saturday be used to treat an overflow of infected patients should the city’s hospitals become overwhelmed, said the company behind the project, Sun Group.
Danang has reported more than 200 cases since the virus reappeared there on July 25. Authorities have said the situation was “under control” and the outbreak would likely peak in the next 10 days.
If infection numbers stabilise, the facility would be used to isolate people who were in direct contact with a positive case, as part of Vietnam’s centralised quarantine programme, Sun Group said.
The health ministry reported five new Covid-19 infections on Thursday, taking Vietnam’s total cases to 718, with 10 deaths.
Most recent cases have links to three hospitals in Danang, a coastal city that was until recently inundated with domestic tourists capitalising on holiday promotions and easing restrictions.
The health ministry has sent a task force of medical experts and more than 1,000 health workers to Danang, while Cuba has also dispatched a medical team to Vietnam to assist.
In the capital Hanoi, 72,000 people who recently returned from Danang would be re-tested, the city’s governing body said on Thursday, this time using a swab-based test, known for its higher rate of accuracy than the blood sample-based rapid test kits, which Vietnam has used for mass screening.
Vietnam’s prime minister has said early August was the “decisive” time to contain the outbreak.
Updated
Daily cases in Germany rise above 1,000 for first time since May
New cases of coronavirus in Germany have risen above 1,000 for the first time since May, causing the government to tighten the testing regime for travellers returning from risk regions.
On Thursday health minister Jens Spahn warned that the accelerating pace of new infections was a cause for concern and while authorities could manage the current rate of new infections, the trajectory was a worry.
From Saturday travellers returning to Germany from risk regions will face mandatory coronavirus tests.
Spahn blamed both the impact of travellers returning from abroad and people’s flagging adherence to social distancing guidelines for the increase, although he conceded that increased testing was also responsible for part of the increase. He said:
I understand if people are fed up, but they should resist the deceptive idea that the pandemic was never all that serious.
Spahn said there was a rising number of infections among people returning from the West Balkans and Turkey.
Asked if there was likely to be another blanket lockdown across the country he said he didn’t think they would have to comprehensively close shops again.
Updated
Philippines infections rise by 3,561 in a day
The Philippines has recorded another jump in coronavirus cases to overtake neighbouring Indonesia as the country with the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 infections in East Asia. Reuters reports:
A recent surge in cases of the virus in and around the capital, Manila, has pushed authorities to reimpose a lockdown affecting around a quarter of the country’s 107 million people.
The Philippines recorded 3,561 new infections on Thursday, taking its total confirmed cases to 119,460. That is higher than Indonesia’s 118,753 infection cases.
The death toll rose by 28 to 2,150, which is less than half of Indonesia’s 5,521 fatalities, but is expected to grow after the recent spike in cases.
Late on Sunday the president, Rodrigo Duterte, announced a two-week lockdown in and around Manila , which accounts for two-thirds of the country’s economic output.
The restrictions, which came into effect on Tuesday, were reinstated after a group of doctors and nurses warned that the healthcare system could collapse as a result of a surging number of virus patients.
Public transport has been shut and working from home instituted where possible, with only one person per household allowed out for essential goods.
The Philippines imposed one the world’s strictest and longest lockdowns in and around the capital, running from mid-March to the end of May, which brought the economy to its knees in the first half
Updated
France struggles with testing demand as cases rise
The steady rise in coronavirus cases in France comes as the country struggles to keep up with the demand for tests during August, which many French take off on holiday.
There are queues outside the laboratories in Paris that remain open, but obtaining an appointment can take at least a week. Results are also being delayed.
Many businesses, restaurants, cafes and services grind to a halt in the French capital in August as city dwellers depart for seaside resorts or family homes in the countryside.
Doctors say the disappearance of laboratory staff at the same moment as there are suggesting of an impending second wave, is just one factor in a larger series of failures in France’s testing strategy. The government’s scientific committee that is advising ministers has called the testing programme “disorganised and insufficient”.
François Blanchecotte, president of the Union of Medical Biologists, told AP the government’s decision to mass test 1.5 million Parisians, after issuing free laboratory vouchers, had worsened the situation. He said:
We are at a crossroads. We’ve seen a situation of chaos in Paris, in which labs were not ready to face thousands of people at the same time. It’s a nightmare to get an appointment.
After criticism over its limited capacity for testing during the first wave, the French government now says it can test up to 700,000 people a week. Last week it carried out a record 457,000 tests, but the number coming back positive is increasing, according to figures from Santé Publique France.
Blanchecotte said he was worried, but defended the decision to let lab staff take holiday time:
For months they’ve worked to keep up with the need for viral testing.
Updated
France has recorded its biggest jump in the number of new confirmed coronavirus cases since 30 May with 1,695 positive diagnoses in just 24 hours. The figures, released daily by the public health authority, Santé Publique France, confirmed the trend of a surge in Covid-19 in the country.
There were 581,779 tests carried out and the latest figures showed 1.6% of them were positive. The number of patients in hospital dropped but has been going up and down “like saw’s teeth”, as Le Monde put it, for several days.
Updated
Authorities in Russia reported 5,267 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday, pushing its national tally to 871,894, the fourth largest in the world.
The official death toll rose to 14,606 after officials said 116 people had died across the country in the last 24 hours.
The Daily Mail is reporting that the UK government will impose a quarantine on arrivals from Belgium after a rise in coronavirus cases.
The Mail said ministers were expected to approve the quarantine at a meeting shortly. The transport department declined to comment on the report.
The UK has already imposed a 14-day quarantine on travellers from Spain and Luxembourg.
Updated
North Korea is quarantining thousands of people and shipping food and other aid to a southern city locked down over coronavirus concerns, according to officials.
The country has long insisted it is virus-free, but its response to a suspected case is reinforcing doubt about that claim. The Associated Press reports:
In late July, North Korea said it had imposed its maximum emergency system to guard against the virus spreading after finding a person with Covid-19 symptoms in Kaesong city, near the border with rival South Korea.
In a report to the World Health Organization obtained by the Associated Press, North Korea said it has quarantined 64 first contacts of the suspected Keasong case and 3,571 secondary contacts in state-run facilities for 40 days, according to Dr Edwin Salvador, WHO representative to North Korea.
Salvador said in an email to AP that North Korea also informed WHO of the suspected first case, saying that person was tested for Covid-19 but the test results were inconclusive. Salvador said the WHO has requested that North Korea share more information about the person.
Salvador said all North Korea’s international borders remain closed, group gatherings are banned, masks are required in public, and all educational institutions, including preschools, are on an extended summer break. Since the end of December, Salvador said North Korea has quarantined and released 25,905 people, 382 of them foreigners.
A major coronavirus outbreak may cause a humanitarian disaster because of North Korea’s broken public health care system and lack of medical supplies.
Updated
Also in the US, Representative Rodney Davis has revealed that he tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday, making him at least the 15th US lawmaker to be infected or presumed to have the disease.
Reuters reports:
Davis, a Republican of Illinois, said in a statement that he took the test after running a fever Wednesday morning. His office was contacting constituents he had met with within the previous 48 hours, said the 50-year-old, and he was postponing public events until he had received a negative test.
He said:
If you’re out in public, use social distancing, and when you can’t social distance, please wear a mask. All of us must do our part. That’s what it will take to get through this pandemic.
At least 14 other members of the House of Representatives and Senate, seven Republicans and seven Democrats, have tested positive or were presumed to have had Covid-19 since the novel coronavirus pandemic began earlier this year.
Republican Representative Louie Gohmert, who has steadfastly refused to wear a mask during the pandemic, said a week ago he had tested positive for Covid-19, leading at least three of his colleagues to say they would self-quarantine.
More than 157,000 people have died in the US from Covid-19 and more than 4.7m cases have been reported in the country and its territories, according to Reuters tallies.
Updated
US secretary of health andhuman services Alex Azar and his delegation will have to be tested for the coronavirus before getting to Taiwan and again when they arrive, and they must wear masks, according to a government official.
It will be the highest-level visit since 1979 to discuss the coronavirus pandemic and to “celebrate the shared values” of the two democracies – prompting China to urge the US not to “send the wrong signals to Taiwan secessionists”.
At a briefing in Taiwan Chuang Jen-hsiang, deputy director general of the country’s Centres for Disease Control told reporters that members of the US delegation would be tested twice and would only be allowed into the country if all members tested negative.
Chuang said:
They must wear masks at all times [...] There are rules on where they can go.
Taiwan’s often crowded night markets would not be on the list for private visits, he said, adding that delegation members will also have to maintain social distancing and use dedicated lifts “to avoid any risks”.
At the same briefing Taiwan cabinet spokesman Evian Ting said Azar’s visit will begin on Sunday. He is scheduled to meet President Tsai Ing-wen as well as health minister Chen Shih-chung.
Here is our full story on the significant visit
My name is Lexy Topping and I’ll be at the helm of the global coronavirus live blog for the next few hours. Do get in touch if you have a story you want to share. My email is alexandra.topping@theguardian.com and I’m @lexytopping on Twitter. My DMs are open.
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan for today. Thanks for following along.
A reminder that Beirut is struggling with the aftermath of Tuesday’s explosion, as well as an economic crisis, in addition to the coronavirus pandemic.
Here is how you can help:
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
- Donald Trump on Wednesday repeated that he believes coronavirus will “go away”, despite his top public health expert warning that it could take most of 2021 or longer to get the pandemic under control and that it is “unlikely” the virus can ever be eradicated.At a White House briefing, the US president said of Covid-19: “It’s going away, it will go away, things go away, absolutely. No question in my mind, sooner rather than later.”
- Facebook has removed a post from Donald Trump’s page for spreading false information about the coronavirus, a first for the social company that has been harshly criticized for repeatedly allowing the president to break its content rules.
- Michelle Obama has said she has been suffering from “low-grade depression”, prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, racial problems in the US and what she describes as the “hypocrisy” of the Trump administration.
- WHO surge team arrives in South Africa. The World Health Organization has deployed a “surge team” of 43 health experts to South Africa to help the country deal with the pandemic, which has seen nearly 530,000 cases confirmed in the country – the fifth-highest in the world – and 9,298 deaths.
- In Australia, Victorian state premier Daniel Andrews has announced that 471 new coronavirus cases were confirmed overnight, along with eight new deaths. Both figures are lower than Wednesday’s, which marked Victoria’s most devastating day of Covid-19 cases and deaths, with a man in his 30s among 15 people who died overnight including many from aged care, and 725 new cases of the virus identified.
- Global deaths pass 700,000. The coronavirus pandemic death toll passed 700,000 late on Wednesday, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, which relies on official government data.The US accounts for the highest portion of those deaths, with 157,690. The next worst-affected in terms of number of lives lost is Brazil with 95,819.
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A fire killed eight coronavirus patients at a hospital in western India early Thursday, fire officials said. Firefighters and 15 fire engines contained the fire to the intensive care unit at Shrey Hospital and it was extinguished in half an hour. The cause of the fire at the hospital in the city of Ahmadabad was being investigated.
- Amsterdam enforces face masks in crowded places. Amsterdam and the port of Rotterdam on Wednesday made face masks compulsory in certain busy areas including the Dutch capital’s Red Light district, as coronavirus infections showed a worrying spike. The new measures come as the number of infections doubled in a week in the country, where more than 55,000 people have now been infected and some 6,150 have died.
- Italy threatens to ban Ryanair for alleged virus rule-breaking. Italy’s national civil aviation authority has threatened to suspend Ryanair’s permit to fly in the country over alleged non-compliance with coronavirus safety rules, but the low-cost carrier denied flouting them.
- France’s daily Covid-19 cases highest since end of May.France’s daily Covid-19 infections reached the highest in more than two months on Wednesday, with 1,695 new cases. The seven-day moving average stood above the 1,300 threshold for the first time since the end of April, when the country was still in lockdown.
- Covid-19 job losses sees record numbers in UK seeking temporary work. Record numbers of people in Britain are looking for temporary work as job losses across the country mount, according to recruitment firms that have been flooded with CVs.The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and the accountancy firm KPMG said the number of people signing up to find temporary work rose in July at the fastest pace since records began in 1997.
- Fears grow in Turkey as daily virus cases top 1,000.Officials have expressed concern over the rising number of coronavirus cases as the daily infection toll exceeded 1,000 for the second day in a row.
- Florida tops 500,000 virus cases as testing resumes after storm. The state has surpassed 500,000 coronavirus cases as testing ramps up following a temporary shutdown of some sites because of Tropical Storm Isaias.
- Former Colombian president Uribe tests positive for coronavirus. Colombia’s former president Álvaro Uribe has tested positive for Covid-19, just a day after he was placed under house arrest as part of a witness tampering probe.
- Germany adds Belgium’s virus-hit Antwerp to quarantine list. Antwerp province was added to the list of coronavirus risk zones, requiring travellers arriving from the region to go into quarantine for 14 days unless they can produce a negative Covid-19 test.
Michelle Obama says she is suffering from ‘low-grade depression’
Michelle Obama has said she has been suffering from “low-grade depression”, prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, racial problems in the US and what she describes as the “hypocrisy” of the Trump administration.
In the second edition of her podcast, which aired on Wednesday, the former first lady reflected on the change her family and others have had to deal with as a result of the pandemic.
“I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression,” she said. “Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting.”
Obama said her sleep has been affected and has been waking up in the middle of the night “‘cause I’m worrying about something, or there’s a heaviness”:
Officials in Scotland ordered bars, cafes and restaurants in the city of Aberdeen to close Wednesday, reimposing anti-virus restrictions after a cluster of 54 Covid-19 cases in the area was linked to a single bar, AP reports.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the new cases raised wider alarm of a significant outbreak of the coronavirus emerging in the northeastern port city.
Aberdeen officials published a list of 28 bars and restaurants, three golf clubs and a soccer club visited by about 200 people so far traced from the cluster.
Sturgeon said all hospitality venues in the city of about 229,000 residents need to be closed by the end of business Wednesday. Visitors were advised not to travel to the city, and residents should not travel more than 5 miles (8km) from their homes unless for work or essential trips.
Entering other people’s houses was also prohibited as part of the local lockdown.
Extra police officers will be on the streets in Aberdeen to ensure residents comply with the renewed restrictions, which will be reviewed in one week and may be extended, if necessary.
Nearly half of the UK’s small charities working with the world’s poorest people expect to close within the next 12 months due to lack of financial support, a survey has found.
Despite most of them seeing a spike in demand for their services during Covid-19, 15% of the charities will be forced to shut their doors within the next six months, and 45% within a year, according to data from the Small International Development Charities Network (SIDCN).
The pandemic – predicted to force one in 10 UK charities into bankruptcy by the end of 2020 – has delivered a triple whammy to smaller overseas charities, according to SIDCN. British charities working abroad have not been eligible to apply for the UK government coronavirus community support fund, and many British funders have amended their giving criteria to donate to projects based solely in the UK:
Hospital fire in India kills eight coronavirus patients
A fire killed eight coronavirus patients at a hospital in western India early Thursday, fire officials said.
AP reports firefighters and 15 fire engines contained the fire to the intensive care unit at Shrey Hospital and it was extinguished in half an hour, fire officer Yusuf Khan said. The cause of the fire at the hospital in the city of Ahmadabad was being investigated.
Thirty-five patients were shifted to other hospitals, he said.
Fires are common in buildings in India because of poor safety standards with inadequate fire extinguishers, smoke detectors and fire alarm systems.
Hundreds of different types of face masks have been withdrawn from Australia’s register of therapeutic goods and the regulator has started a mass audit of the equipment amid concerns that some may not adequately prevent infection:
The Australian government’s Covid-19 commission poses an enduring risk to Australian democracy and must be overhauled, including by the creation of a public and mandatory conflict-of-interest register, a new paper has warned.
A University of Melbourne policy brief scrutinising the functioning of the National Covid-19 Commission advisory board found the body suffered from a lack of transparency, had no legislative underpinning, and had not employed an independent appointment process to select its members:
Victoria, Australia records 471 new Covid cases and eight deaths
In Australia, Victorian state premier Daniel Andrews has announced that 471 new coronavirus cases were confirmed overnight, along with eight new deaths.
Both figures are lower than Wednesday’s, which marked Victoria’s most devastating day of Covid-19 cases and deaths, with a man in his 30s among 15 people who died overnight including many from aged care, and 725 new cases of the virus identified.
The deaths announced today include:
Two men in their 60s, three men and two women in their 80s, and one woman in her 90s. Four of those eight cases are linked to aged care.
...
There are 107 additional mystery cases, 107 additional community transmissions. They won’t be from today’s data, and those cases that are under investigation, they will lag behind a day or two, but that’s from that coronavirus detective work that’s been done from yesterday’s numbers and the numbers before.
The total active cases is 7,449 and the total active cases that have a link to aged care are 1,533. Noting that is both residents and staff.
Podcast: How did President Trump get his pandemic response so wrong?
While Donald Trump continues to claim the US is ‘doing very well’ in its fight against Covid-19, the figures suggest a different story. The US has the highest mortality rate in the world, with over 160,000 deaths. Guardian US chief reporter Ed Pilkington examines how Trump got it wrong:
Europe on Wednesday tightened virus restrictions as fears of a second wave of infections spurred by the holiday season grew with the worldwide death toll crossing 700,000, AFP reports.
Greece announced a “wake-up week,” tightening restrictions after domestic infections saw over 380 new cases in August.
Scotland reimposed restrictions in and around the city of Aberdeen, after a cluster of cases was identified there.
Toulouse in southwest France made the wearing of face masks compulsory in the busiest streets and squares from Wednesday. Paris and other cities are expected to follow suit soon, authorities said.
Germany put Belgium’s Antwerp province on its list of coronavirus risk zones, requiring travellers arriving from the region to go into quarantine for 14 days unless they can produce a negative COVID-19 test.
Meanwhile South Africa announced that 24,000 of its health workers had contracted the virus, with more than a hundred of them dying from it.
New York announced it was setting up checkpoints at key entry points to the city to ensure travellers comply with the state’s quarantine requirements.
A total of 701,559 deaths have been recorded so far around the world, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources AT 1600 GMT.
Europe remains the hardest-hit region with 211,603 fatalities, but the number of deaths is rising fast in Latin America, with 206,835 deaths recorded.
Nick Kyrgios says he is “slim to no chance” of playing overseas again this year, skipping the French Open as well as the US Open because of coronavirus concerns.
Kyrgios and defending champion Rafael Nadal this week joined women’s world No 1 Ashleigh Barty in withdrawing from the US Open citing Covid-19 concerns.
The world No 40 said he was not surprised a number of stars had chosen not to play:
In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said that the unemployment rate is expected to head back up to 13%:
This should see we estimate, it is estimated, that we would see this effective rate of unemployment which had fallen in the most recent numbers down to just over 11% head north again back to where it had come down from which is in the high 13s.
So, that is very concerning.
That is very troubling but it is not unexpected.
In the circumstances these measures will have a very significant cost, and it will impact the recovery path, but the task doesn’t change. We get on top of this issue in Victoria and we band together and we make this work.
And we work together across the country to do the things we need to do, to boost that demand, to encourage that investment, to rebuild our economy, and to go forward. I know this news is upsetting and disappointing. But, Australians, we have to keep our heads up.
Let’s keep our heads up together. Let’s look out for each other and let’s get through this and
I know we will.
Trump again claims Covid-19 will 'go away' as Fauci warns of long road ahead
Joanna Walters reports for the Guardian in New York, with Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland:
Donald Trump on Wednesday repeated that he believes coronavirus will “go away”, despite his top public health expert warning that it could take most of 2021 or longer to get the pandemic under control and that it is “unlikely” the virus can ever be eradicated.
At a White House briefing, the US president said of Covid-19: “It’s going away, it will go away, things go away, absolutely. No question in my mind, sooner rather than later.”
Trump has made numerous versions of this assertion over the more than six months that the US has been battling the outbreak, despite vast evidence otherwise and frequent contradictions from public health leaders:
In Australia, the New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian has appealed to the state’s youth to modify their social life as the state enters a critical phase of the coronavirus pandemic, AAP reports.
“We are on a knife-edge, and we are about halfway through what is a really critical period,” she told Sydney radio Triple M on Thursday.
She was speaking a day after announcing travellers returning from Victoria to NSW would be forced into hotel quarantine for 14 days at their own expense.
“When we realised how bad Victoria’s situation was we know we had four-to-six weeks of a real nail-biting situation and we are about halfway through,” she said
She thanked the 22,000 people who presented for testing for COVID-19 on Wednesday but urged young people to curb their social life, particularly in the next few weeks.
“To the young people, try and modify the number of places that you go to. If you have the virus and you go out five times a week to different places you could potentially be spreading it to five different locations, and then we have to contract trace everybody.”
She warned people had to social distance, even with friends, as Victoria had shown that the greatest spread of the disease happened among friends and family members.
“It only takes a few cases to get out of control.”
A Canadian zoo is warning that its giant pandas could go without fresh bamboo as the Covid-19 pandemic limits imports from China and domestic supplies run short.
Calgary Zoo said in May that it planned to return Er Shun and Da Mao to China, after coronavirus disrupted bamboo supply lines, but on Tuesday the zoo announced that due to the pandemic, it was still unable to secure travel permits.
Giant pandas consume 40kg of fresh bamboo daily and the plant comprises 99% of their diet – raising concerns about keeping the animals fed:
Amsterdam enforces face masks in crowded places
Amsterdam and the port of Rotterdam on Wednesday made face masks compulsory in certain busy areas including the Dutch capital’s Red Light district, as coronavirus infections showed a worrying spike.
The new measures come as the number of infections doubled in a week in the country, where more than 55,000 people have now been infected and some 6,150 have died.
“We’re starting this experiment because we’re worried about the increasing number of coronavirus infections,” the Amsterdam city council said.
“Face masks are compulsory in crowded and busy areas and where other measures didn’t work or have adverse economic effects,” it said in a statement.
Despite council workers handing out free face masks, a mobile van with loudspeakers and police warning people, not everybody heeded the new measures, especially in the Red Light district.
Many walked around maskless and law officers said they were only warning people and not handing out fines.
“Unfortunately it fits in a bit with the profile of the city,” said one Red Light District resident who asked not to be named and who was wearing a multi-coloured mask.
“Everything is possible and nothing is ever enforced here,” he said.
“We are from Germany and I was like... ‘what the hell’ when I saw people were not wearing masks where its compulsory,” added Soph Schaller, 20, a nursery school teacher from Cologne in Germany.
“There we are quite used to it and have been wearing masks for a while now,” she told AFP.
In the port city of Rotterdam, police stopped a group of demonstrators who wanted to march against the enforced wearing of face masks, Dutch media said.
Covid-19 job losses sees record numbers in UK seeking temporary work
Record numbers of people in Britain are looking for temporary work as job losses across the country mount, according to recruitment firms that have been flooded with CVs.
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and the accountancy firm KPMG said the number of people signing up to find temporary work rose in July at the fastest pace since records began in 1997.
Italy threatens to ban Ryanair for alleged virus rule-breaking
Italy’s national civil aviation authority ENAC has threatened to suspend Ryanair’s permit to fly in the country over alleged non-compliance with coronavirus safety rules, but the low-cost carrier denied flouting them.The authority accused the Irish airline of “repeated violations of the Covid-19 health regulations currently in force and imposed by the Italian government to protect the health of passengers”.
“Not only is the obligation to distance passengers not respected, but the conditions for making an exception to that rule are also being ignored”, it said in a statement.
If Ryanair continued to break the rules ENAC would “suspend all air transport activities at national airports, requiring the carrier to re-route all passengers already in possession of tickets,” it said.
“The claims made in ENAC’s press release today are factually incorrect,” Ryanair responded.“Ryanair complies fully with the measures set out by the Italian government and our customers can rest assured that we are doing everything to reduce interaction on both our aircraft and at airports to protect the health of our passengers.”
Italy was the first European Union country to be seriously affected by the pandemic, which has officially killed over 35,000, but its contagion rate is currently far below levels seen in other parts of the bloc.
Spain sees highest post-lockdown cases
Spain reported 1,772 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday, marking the biggest jump since a national lockdown was lifted in June and beating the previous day’s record rise.
The rate of increase in new cases, which does not include data from two regions, sharply rose from the previous day, while one more death was registered, bringing the total to 28,499.
Cumulative cases, which include results from antibody tests on people who may have recovered, increased to 305,767 from 302,814, the health ministry said in a statement.
Florida tops 500,000 virus cases as testing resumes after storm
Florida has surpassed 500,000 coronavirus cases as testing ramps up following a temporary shutdown of some sites because of Tropical Storm Isaias. A long line of cars waited outside Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens on Wednesday morning for a coronavirus testing site to reopen after being closed because of the storm.
Florida reported 225 new deaths on Wednesday, bringing its seven-day average of daily reported deaths to a high of 185, behind Texas with 197.Florida’s rate is approaching a quarter of that seen in New York at its peak in mid-April.
The number of people treated in hospitals statewide for the coronavirus continued a two-week decline, with 7,622 patients late Wednesday morning, a decrease of 175 from the previous day and down from highs of 9,500 two weeks ago.
The Florida Department of Health reported 5,409 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday.
Overall, Florida’s reported 502,739 cases ranks second to California, with more than 527,000 cases, and above Texas with more than 466,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.The Hard Rock site briefly shut down on Wednesday because of lightning in the area. Testing resumed once the weather cleared.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis this week announced that quicker testing, with results in about 15 minutes, would be offered at the stadium and at Marlins Park.
“Obviously if you are somebody that is symptomatic and you don’t get your result back for seven days that is not helpful. For asymptomatic test takers, if it takes seven days then the test is basically useless at that time,” DeSantis said.
Global deaths pass 700,000
The coronavirus pandemic death toll passed 700,000 late on Wednesday, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, which relies on official government data.
The US accounts for the highest portion of those deaths, with 157,690. The next worst-affected in terms of number of lives lost is Brazil with 95,819.
Mexico’s toll is 48,869; the UK’s is 46,295 and India’s is 39,795.
WHO surge team arrives in South Africa
The World Health Organization has deployed a “surge team” of 43 health experts to South Africa to help the country deal with the pandemic, which has seen nearly 530,000 cases confirmed in the country – the fifth-highest in the world – and 9,298 deaths.
In a statement, the WHO explained:
WHO will be deploying 43 experts from various fields to support the COVID-19 outbreak response management. The first 17 health expects will arrive today and include key expertise in epidemiology, surveillance, case management, infection, prevention and control, procurement, as well as community mobilization and health education. Among them is Dr David Heymann, a seasoned infectious disease epidemiologist and public health expert, who was at one-time Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment at WHO. He headed the response to the SARS epidemic in 2003, working with his team to mediate international efforts to halt the pandemic.
Facebook removes Trump post for spreading false information on Covid
Facebook has removed a post from Donald Trump’s page for spreading false information about the coronavirus, a first for the social company that has been harshly criticized for repeatedly allowing the president to break its content rules.
The post included video of Trump falsely asserting that children were “almost immune from Covid-19” during an appearance on Fox News. There is evidence to suggest that children who contract Covid-19 generally experience milder symptoms than adults do. However, they are not immune, and some children have become severely ill or died from the disease.
“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from Covid-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful Covid misinformation,” a Facebook spokesperson said:
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 for the next few hours.
You can get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com. Questions, feedback, tips all welcome.
The World Health Organization has deployed a “surge team” of 43 health experts to South Africa to help the country deal with the pandemic, which has seen nearly 530,000 cases confirmed in the country – the fifth-highest in the world – and 9,298 deaths.
Meanwhile the global coronavirus death toll has passed 700,000. The US, with the highest toll worldwide, accounts for 157,690 of these deaths.
Here are the other key developments from the last few hours:
- Italy threatens to ban Ryanair for alleged virus rule-breaking. Italy’s national civil aviation authority has threatened to suspend Ryanair’s permit to fly in the country over alleged non-compliance with coronavirus safety rules, but the low-cost carrier denied flouting them.
- France’s daily Covid-19 cases highest since end of May. France’s daily Covid-19 infections reached the highest in more than two months on Wednesday, with 1,695 new cases. The seven-day moving average stood above the 1,300 threshold for the first time since the end of April, when the country was still in lockdown.
- Fears grow in Turkey as daily virus cases top 1,000. Officials have expressed concern over the rising number of coronavirus cases as the daily infection toll exceeded 1,000 for the second day in a row.
- Florida tops 500K virus cases as testing resumes after storm. The state has surpassed 500,000 coronavirus cases as testing ramps up following a temporary shutdown of some sites because of Tropical Storm Isaias.
- Former Colombian president Uribe tests positive for coronavirus. Colombia’s former president Álvaro Uribe has tested positive for Covid-19, just a day after he was placed under house arrest as part of a witness tampering probe.
- Germany adds Belgium’s virus-hit Antwerp to quarantine list. Antwerp province was added to the list of coronavirus risk zones, requiring travellers arriving from the region to go into quarantine for 14 days unless they can produce a negative Covid-19 test.
