Good morning. The US has more confirmed cases of coronavirus than any other nation on Earth. Yet Donald Trump has fallen back on his favourite solution to any problem, announcing an executive order that would temporarily suspend all immigration from other countries. Democrats slammed the move, with one congressman calling it no more than “xenophobic scapegoating”.
Meanwhile, epidemiologists have warned that the greater threat is from within, saying recent anti-lockdown rallies across the country could lead to a surge in new infections. In Georgia, governor Brian Kemp announced businesses including gyms, cinemas and restaurants would reopen in the state over the coming days, despite the objections of public heath experts.
The oil price dipped into the red. The cost of US crude turned negative for the first time ever on Monday, dropping to -$38 per barrel. Trump insisted it was a “short-term problem”.
Maryland got 500,000 coronavirus tests from South Korea. The state’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, went around the federal government to acquire them, saying insufficient testing was “the most serious obstacle to safely reopening our states”.
The virus is threatening a generation of black Americans
Older Americans account for more than 90% of the country’s Covid-19 deaths, but older black Americans are even more likely to be victims of the virus than their white counterparts. As Kenya Evelyn reports, the pandemic has already claimed the lives of many prominent black pastors, performers, and activists who lived through and participated in the civil rights struggle. They were, says one expert, “the last flag bearers of an era long ago”.
Some other Americans are feeling especially vulnerable, including …
… NYC transit workers. They have been described as the unsung heroes of the coronavirus crisis, but New York’s transit workers say they are angry at the lack of protection offered by the MTA amid the pandemic, in which at least 68 of them have died.
… Amazon warehouse employees. Hundreds of Amazon warehouse workers plan to call in sick this week, in protest at the company’s inadequate coronavirus response, which they say is leaving them at risk.
The WHO warns the worst is yet to come
While countries such as Germany take tentative steps towards normality, the director general of the World Health Organization thinks “the worst is yet ahead of us”. The WHO’s head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Monday that “easing restrictions is not the end of the epidemic in any country”, while WHO experts also warned that only a tiny proportion of the global population has so far been infected and developed the antibodies that provide immunity to the disease.
New Yorkers sue the WHO. Three residents of wealthy Westchester County are suing the WHO, accusing it of gross negligence in its response to Covid-19. On the latest edition of the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast, Stephen Buranyi explains the backlash against the UN health body.
The pandemic fallout may cause global hunger. That’s the assessment of the UN’s world food programme, which has warned in a report that more than a quarter of a billion people will face acute food insecurity by the end of 2020.
Elsewhere in the world:
Peru deployed riot police to block a highway and fire teargas into crowds of unemployed workers trying to flee the capital for their rural hometowns. Across Latin America, the poor face an impossible choice between staying at home and staying afloat.
Singapore, which appeared at first to have its outbreak under control, now has the highest number of cases in south-east Asia, with a surge of 3,000 new infections in just three days.
Zimbabwe is struggling to deal not only with the coronavirus, but with a fresh outbreak of malaria, which has killed at least 131 people in the country.
In other news …
Kim Jong-un had a heart operation. The North Korean leader is said to be recovering at his private villa following the surgery earlier this month, which had reportedly left him in “grave danger”.
Israel’s political stalemate is over at last. After three inconclusive elections, Benjamin Netanyahu and his opposition rival Benny Gantz agreed to form a national unity government, which will see Netanyahu continue as prime minister for 18 months before handing power to Gantz for the rest of a three-year term.
California police shot dead a mentally ill man at Walmart. Civil rights activists say 33-year-old Steven Taylor was in the midst of a mental health crisis when he started wielding a baseball bat at the Bay Area store on Saturday.
Great reads
My month of extreme immersion in Disney+
Disney launched its new streaming service in the UK on the same day that the country went into lockdown. A fortunate coincidence, thought Sophie Elmhirst. A month later, for better or worse, she and her family are fully immersed in the fantasy.
Will Florida be lost forever to the climate crisis?
South Florida faces a convergence of climate challenges: increasingly frequent hurricanes, vanishing wildlife habitats – and the very real threat of sinking underwater by the end of the century. Richard Luscombe asks whether efforts to reverse the tide are merely delaying the inevitable.
What will we become without touch?
Touch is how we transmit love, empathy and care, writes Eve Ensler, for whom physical connection has long been an escape from unbearable loneliness. So how should we deal with a pandemic in which our bodies might be a lethal weapon?
Opinion: The crisis has left sport frozen in time
The sporting competitions stopped in their tracks by the pandemic already seem like fossils from another geological era. Rather than hold out hope they can be completed, says Jonathan Liew, fans should embrace their random, inscrutable ending.
Perhaps we seek closure a little too unquestioningly, demand loose ends to be too neatly tied, crave certainty in a world where none can possibly exist.
Last Thing: shut up and dance!
The limitations of lockdown haven’t stopped dancers doing their thing on YouTube. From the rooftops of New York to the kitchens of Moscow, Lyndsey Winship selects five of the best quarantine routines.
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