Coronavirus live news: 660,000 people forced to flee homes during crisis despite UN global ceasefire call

Fifty-two more people have tested positive for the coronavirus in Kenya, out of a total of 2,567 samples analysed over the past 24 hours, the ministry of health reports.

The country has so far reported 1,161 confirmed cases of coronavirus, of which 50 patients have died and 380 have recovered.

Saudi Arabia has reported 2,642 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, taking the total number of cases in the Middle East kingdom to 67,719.

However, in the same update it reported that even more people had recovered from their infections, with 2,963 more given the all clear taking its total number of recoveries to 39,003.

So far 364 Saudis have died from Covid-19.

White flags first began to appear on the streets of Guatemala City in early April, writes Jeff Abbott in Guatemala City.

Since then, flags have become common across the country, with an entire lexicon of need reflected in their colours: white means hunger; red is for medicine; black, yellow, or blue means that a woman, child or elderly person is in danger of violence.

Guatemala has reported 45 deaths and 2,265 infections from the virus. But the economic fallout of the pandemic has affected millions.

Measures imposed by the government of President Alejandro Giammattei to slow the spread of the virus – including suspension of public transportation and daily curfews – have hit those living in poverty the hardest.

“It is another sign of a society that lacks social services and that does not have a labor market that permits people to have savings to confront the crisis,” Jonathan Menkos, the executive director of the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (ICEFI), told the Guardian.

“[The white flags] are the most clear evidence that the social and economic model leaves most people behind” he said. “They cannot go one month without resources to eat.”

A senior official in the South African government has told MPs that it is time to reopen the country’s economy, in spite of dire predictions of the potential scale of the outbreak.

Lionel October, director-general of the department of trade, told the South African parliament’s trade committee that the government was finalising consultations on how to reopen industries and get the country back to work, China’s official news agency Xinhua reported.

Xinhua quoted October as saying that a large part of the economy is expected to reopen next month, as the country moves to level three of the lockdown, which was first imposed on 27 March and was eased slightly at the beginning of May.

His comments came despite dire warnings by statisticians hired by the government that in a worst case scenario 50,000 South Africans could die from Covid-19 if the beginning of winter helps encourage the spread of the disease.

An editor has been jailed for two years in Myanmar after his news agency reported a coronavirus death that turned out to be incorrect, Agence France-Presse reports.

Zaw Ye Htet, the chief editor of the Dae Pyaw news agency, was arrested on 13 April, the day he published an article that wrongly reported there had been a death due to the Covid-19 in eastern Karen state.

He stood trial on 20 May. On Friday, his lawyer, Myint Thuzar Maw, told AFP: “He was sentenced under section 505(b) to two years in jail.”

Section 505(b) is a vaguely worded law, and often used against journalists and activists for making any statement that cause fear or alarm.

“We’ll appeal this unfair decision,” Zaw Ye Htet’s wife, Phyu Phyu Win, told AFP by phone.

Myanmar has only 199 confirmed cases of coronavirus and six deaths, although the low numbers tested mean experts say the true figures are far higher.

Children and young people could be half as likely to catch coronavirus than adults, a review of studies from around the world has suggested, PA Media reports.

Researchers found the under-20s had 56% lower risk of catching the virus. But the review of global test and tracing and population screening studies led University College London said evidence remained “weak” on how likely children were to transmit the virus to others.

Researchers also concluded they did not have sufficient data to examine whether children under 12 differed to teenagers in terms of susceptibility to the virus.

The research’s lead author, Prof Russell Viner of the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, said it was the “first comprehensive study” to review what was and was not known about “susceptibility and transmission” among children.

He said:

Our findings show children and young people appear 56% less likely to contract Covid-19 from infected others.

Susceptibility is a key part of the chain of infection, and this supports the view that children are likely to play a smaller role in transmitting the virus and proliferating the pandemic, although considerable uncertainty remains.

This new data provides essential evidence to governments around the world to inform their decision-making on whether to reopen schools and reduce or end lockdown measures.

Tanzania has defeated the coronavirus through the power of prayer, its president has said.

John Magafuli made the claim after his country after his country’s number of confirmed cases stayed the same for three weeks. Just over 500 cases have been reported in a country of nearly 60 million people.

Meanwhile, Magafuli has led a crackdown on anyone who dares raise concerns about the virus’s spread in Tanzania, or the government’s response to it, the Associated Press reports. Critics have been arrested, and opposition politicians and rights activists say their phones are being tapped.

However, on just one day this month, 50 Tanzanian truck drivers tested positive for the coronavirus after crossing into neighbouring Kenya.

As many as 50,000 people in South Africa could die from Covid-19 by the end of the year, with up to 3 million infected, according to a worst-case scenario suggested by scientists and statisticians working for the health ministry.

Despite a national lockdown slowing the spread of the virus, South Africa has already has the highest number of infections on the continent, with more than 18,000 identified cases and 339 deaths.

Taking into account the southern hemisphere winter, the modelling by scientists suggests there could be between 35,000 and 50,000 Covid-19 deaths by November.

“We haven’t really crushed the curve,” said one of the experts, Harry Moultrie, during a presentation shown on television, according to a Reuters report. “We also have some significant concerns that because of the focus on Covid-19, this may compromise other areas like HIV and TB.”

The models, which consider best and worst scenarios, suggest as many as 3 million coronavirus cases by November and demand for hospital beds peaking at 45,000, about 10 times the country’s intensive care bed availability.

Fighting has forced 660,000 people to flee their homes since the UN secretary general called for a global ceasefire to focus on handling the coronavirus pandemic, an NGO says.

On Thursday, Antonio Guterres reiterated his call for an end to fighting, which he first issued on 23 March. But the Norwegian Refugee Council said that the UN’s security council had failed to provide leadership for ceasefires, peace talks or protection of civilians during the pandemic.

Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the NRC, said:

While people are being displaced and killed, powerful members of the UN security council squabble like children in a sandbox.

World leaders must rise to the occasion and jointly push parties to cease their fire and unite in protecting all communities from Covid-19. Now is not the time for kindergarten politics.

According to NRC, the worst affected country was the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 480,000 people have been forced to escape fighting between armed groups and the country’s army.

NRC also pointed to Yemen, where despite the Saudi-led coalition announcing it would implement a unilateral ceasefire, airstrikes have continued. Those attacks and other armed operations have resulted in the displacement of 24,000 people.

Fifty more people have died from Covid-19 in Pakistan, the government reports, its third highest official daily death toll since the pandemic began. This brings the total number of coronavirus deaths in the country to 1,067.

According to the latest update, out of 16,387 tests carried out in the past 24 hours, 2,603 people tested positive, taking the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 47,429. So far, 15,201 people have recovered.

Sindh is the country’s worst affected province, with 19,924 cases, followed by Punjab, with 18,455.

Fifty-one people in Iran died from Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, as 2,311 more tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the health ministry.

In his daily update, Kianoush Jahanpour, the health ministry’s spokesman, said the total number of confirmed cases across the Islamic republic, scene of one of the earliest outbreaks outside China, had now reached 131,652, of whom 102,276 patients had subsequently been given the all-clear.

The death toll now stands at 7,300 and 2,659 remain in a critical condition in hospital, Jahanpour said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Iranian health authorities have so far carried out 763,913 tests for the virus.

Africa is approaching 100,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.

In its daily update on Twitter, the WHO African region office reported that there were over 99,400 cases across the continent, about 4,500 more than on Thursday.

The discrepancy over the number of recoveries – where the WHO reported 1,000 fewer recoveries on Thursday than on Wednesday – seems to have been cleared up. It is now saying that about 39,000 people infected with the virus have now been given the all clear.

Just over 3,000 people in Africa have died.

Tax revenues in Germany fell by a quarter last month, compared with a year earlier, as Europe’s largest economy faced its most severe recession since the second world war.

According to the finance ministry’s monthly report, published on Friday, the central government and the 16 federal states pulled in about 39bn euros in April, 25.3% less than the same month in 2019, Reuters reported.

The revenue decline was most severe for income, corporate and air traffic taxes, the report showed. The pandemic’s impact on tax revenues were first visible in March but has now accelerated.

Germany authorities imposed a strict lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus, closing most businesses and limiting people’s movement outside their homes.

The finance minister, Olaf Scholz, said earlier this month that the plunge in tax revenues will not stop the government from presenting a stimulus package next month to help companies recover from the coronavirus crisis.

Meanwhile, the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus increased by 460 to 177,212, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Friday.

The reported death toll rose by 27 to 8174, the tally showed.

Hi, this is Damien Gayle taking over the blog now, bringing you the latest in coronavirus-related news from around the world.

If you have any comments, or tips or suggestions for coverage please drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.

Summary

Here’s an outline of some of the key global coronavirus updates so far this morning.

• Pictures have emerged of Donald Trump wearing a face mask during a visit in Michigan. The US president had previously been called a “petulant child” by a state attorney general for allegedly refusing to wear the covering during a tour of the Ford plant.
• India has reported 6,000 new cases in its biggest one-day rise since the outbreak started. The country has also reported over 118,000 confirmed cases – around a 5% increase from yesterday.
• Coronavirus cases in war-torn Yemen are believed to be “widespread”, while its health system has “in effect collapsed”. A UN spokesman said on Friday that the reported total of 184 cases in the country is also “almost certainly much higher”.
• Hong Kong activists have called for citizens to rise up against Bejing’s plans to impose national security legislation in the financial hub. Many believe the plans have reignited the anti-government movement that had lost its focus and dwindled amid the coronavirus pandemic.
• Indonesia has reported 973 new infections – its highest number of daily coronavirus cases – bringing the country’s total cases to 20,162. The figures come as millions of people in the world’s fourth most populous country mark the festival of Eid al-Fitr without the usual celebrations.
• The leader of New Zealand’s main opposition party has been ousted after opinion polls showed Jacinda Ardern’s soaring popularity. Around 84% of New Zealanders approve of the prime minister’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, which has helped to boost her ratings ahead of a general election in September.