Coronavirus live news: Apple launches contact tracing in latest update; Wuhan bans eating of wild animals

Hello everyone, this is Jessica Murray, taking over the blog briefly while Damien takes a short break.

Researchers in the Netherlands have signed up 1,500 people who have recovered from Covid-19 to donate blood for research into a potential treatment based on their plasma, Reuters reports.

Recovered patients are generally left with blood containing antibodies or proteins made by the body’s immune system to fight off the virus. The blood component that carries the antibodies can be collected and given to newly infected patients.

However, blood supplies are limited because relatively few people have had the new virus and gone on to donate blood.

“The whole goal is to pull the resources, put the brightest minds together, to make sure that at the earliest possibility this therapy becomes available,” said Merlijn van Hasselt of blood donation firm Sanquin.

“If the clinical trials go well… this might be one of the earliest treatment possibilities for patients,” Van Hasselt said.

On Thursday, the Dutch national institute for public health and the environment reported 27 more deaths from Covid-19, bringing the total death toll in the country to 5,775. So far the country has reported 44,470 confirmed cases, with another 253 announced in RIVM’s daily update.

AstraZeneca has said it has the capacity to manufacture 1bn doses of the University of Oxford’s potential Covid-19 vaccine and will begin supply in September if clinical trials are successful.

The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker said it had signed the first agreements to supply at least 400m doses of the potential vaccine, yet to be proven effective, which it is developing with the university. AstraZeneca said it recognised the vaccine might not work but if results from the early stage tests were positive, they would lead to late-stage trials in several countries.

Only a handful of the vaccines in development have advanced to human trials, an indicator of safety and efficacy, and the stage at which most fail. There are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for Covid-19, which are being tested by pharmaceutical firms across the world. Governments, drugmakers and researchers are working on about 100 programmes, with experts predicting that a safe and effective means of preventing the disease could take 12 to 18 months to develop.

On Monday, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said that if Oxford University’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate proved successful, then up to 30m doses for the UK could be available by September. AstraZeneca said it has now finalised its licence agreement with Oxford University for the “recombinant adenovirus vaccine”, which will be known as AZD1222.

East Africa is facing a “triple menace” of mutually exacerbating disasters, as ongoing heavy rain hampers attempts to deal with swarms of locusts in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, the Red Cross says.

Flooding has killed nearly 300 people, and displaced about 5o0,000 more who are now crammed into temporary shelters where it is difficult or impossible to stay apart to avoid catching the virus, according to the NGO. Meanwhile, the worst locust crisis in decades is ravaging crops.

Simon Missiri, the Africa regional director for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said:

The ongoing flooding crisis is exacerbating other threats caused by COVID-19 and the invasion of locusts. Travel and movement restrictions meant to slow down the spread of COVID-19 are hampering efforts to combat swarms of locusts that are ravaging crops. Flooding is also a ‘threat amplifier’ with regards to the spread of COVID-19 as it makes it hard to implement preventive measures.

We are facing an unusually complex humanitarian situation. We are worried that the number of people who are hungry and sick will increase in the coming weeks as flooding and COVID-19 continue to severely affect the coping capacity of many families in the region.

Harsh weather conditions are having a multiplier effect on an already difficult situation and this could potentially lead to worrying levels of food insecurity in the region.

More than 95,000 people have now tested positive for coronavirus in Africa – about 5,000 more than yesterday – according to a summary of statistics collated by the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.

However, for some reason, the WHO is reporting fewer recoveries today than yesterday. In its latest update, embedded below, the UN health agency says there have been “more than 34,000 recoveries”, while in yesterday’s it said there had been more than 35,000.

The reason for the discrepancy is not clear.

Comparing the two tweets shows there have been 110 deaths from Covid-19 recorded across Africa since yesterday.

Sixty-six more people died from Covid-19 in Iran in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said, as a deputy health minister revealed that about 10,000 Iranian health workers have been infected with the coronavirus.

In his latest update, the health ministry’s spokesman, Kianoush Jahanpour said Iran’s total death toll from its coronavirus outbreak had now reached 7,249, while 100,564 people had recovered. In total, the country has recorded 129,341 confirmed cases, with 2,392 more people testing positive since yesterday, he was quoted as saying by the Islamic Republic News Agency.

In 12 provinces, the death toll had been zero, Jahanpour added.

Meanwhile, the semi-official ILNA news agency quoted a deputy health minister as saying on Thursday that some 10,000 Iranian medics had been infected, according to Reuters.

Health services are stretched thin in Iran, the Middle East country hardest hit by the respiratory pandemic, with 7,249 deaths and a total of 129,341 infections. The health ministry said in April that more than 100 health workers had died of Covid-19.

Apple has launched a contact-tracing feature in the latest update of its iPhone operating system, ZDNet reports.

The Covid exposure notification feature has been included in iOS 13.5 as part of Apple’s partnership with Google, the other major mobile phone operating system developer, to build contact-tracing infrastructure into their software.

According to ZDNet, the software will offer health authorities a way to build apps that can alert people users have come into contact with should they test positive for the coronavirus, while preserving their anonymity.

An option to toggle the feature on and off can be found in the settings of the new OS, but it will not work until users install an approved app developed by a public health authority.

Global cases pass 5 million

After the biggest single-day increase in cases worldwide so far in the pandemic, the number of confirmed infections has passed 5 million, with the Johns Hopkins University data currently listing 5,016,171. The true number is likely to be significantly higher, due to differing testing rates, delays and underreporting. This is true for deaths, too. At least 328,471 people have lost their lives in the pandemic so far.

World sees largest daily rise in cases.

The World Health Organization gave a stark warning on Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic is far from over, after 106,000 new cases were recorded worldwide over the past 24 hours – the most in a single day so far. Speaking in Geneva, the WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the virus was spreading in poorer countries, just as wealthier nations were emerging from lockdown.

Wuhan city bans eating wild animals

In China, the city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak has officially banned eating wild animals. A notice on the Wuhan municipal government’s website on Wednesday said that it is now prohibited to eat, hunt or breed wild animals, including terrestrial animals deemed as protected, as well as those that exist in the wild or are bred.

IOC warns Tokyo Olympics will have to be scrapped if delayed beyond 2021

The head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, has warned that the Tokyo Games in Japan would have to be scrapped if the coronavirus pandemic made it impossible for them to take place next year. But Bach added that the IOC was committed to holding the Games, even though the outbreak could force organisers to take precautions, including quarantining athletes.

Russia’s Covid-19 death toll passes 3,000

The official coronavirus death toll in Russia passed 3,000 on Thursday, as a US transport plane made its way to deliver ventilators to help treat Russian patients with severe Covid-19. Officials said 127 people had died of the respiratory disease in the past 24 hours, bringing the total death toll to 3,099. The country’s nationwide tally of confirmed cases of coronavirus, the world’s second highest, reached 317,554, after 8,849 more people tested positive for the virus.

EasyJet to resume some flights in France and UK

EasyJet is to resume a small number of flights in the UK and France on 15 June, with increased safety measures on board including mandatory wearing of face masks, as it returns to the skies after grounding its entire fleet on 30 March.

Afghanistan runs out of hospital beds for Covid-19 patients

Afghanistan’s health ministry has said it has run out of hospital beds for Covid-19 patients in most parts of the war-torn country. Officials warned of a human catastrophe on the eve of Eid with the potential for streets “full of dead bodies” amid a continued surge of transmission across the nation, as Kabul recorded its worst day of the crisis for the second day running.

Europe warned about second wave of coronavirus infections

Europe should brace itself for a second wave of coronavirus infections, according to the director of the EU agency responsible for advising governments on disease control. “The question is when and how big. That is the question in my view,” said Dr Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Trump considers an in-person G7 meeting despite coronavirus pandemic.

Donald Trump has said he may seek to revive a face-to-face meeting of Group of Seven leaders near Washington, after earlier cancelling the gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic. “I am considering rescheduling the G-7, on the same or similar date, in Washington, DC, at the legendary Camp David,” the US president tweeted on Wednesday. “The other members are also beginning their COMEBACK. It would be a great sign to all – normalization!”

The UN’s refugee agency and the World Health Organization on Thursday announced a new initiative to protect the health of the tens of millions of forcibly displaced people around the world.

In a release, the UN bodies said that there were about 70 million forcibly displaced people across the world. About 26 million of them are refugees, 80% of whom are living in low- to middle-income countries with weak healthcare systems.

Announcing the new agreement, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said:

UNHCR’s long-term partnership with WHO is critical to curb the coronavirus pandemic and other emergencies – day in, day out, it is improving and saving lives of millions of people forced to flee their homes

Our strengthened partnership will directly benefit refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, and those who are stateless. It leads to better emergency response and will make the best use of the resources of both our two organisations for public health solutions across all our operations globally.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHo, said:

The principle of solidarity and the goal of serving vulnerable people underpin the work of both our organisations.

We stand side by side in our commitment to protect the health of all people who have been forced to leave their homes and to ensure that they can obtain health services when and where they need them. The ongoing pandemic only highlights the vital importance of working together so we can achieve more.

Most of the new coronavirus infections reported by Malaysia on Thursday were detected at an immigration detention centre where authorities are holding undocumented migrants rounded up in areas under lockdown this month, according to Reuters.

Of the 50 people who tested positive, 35 were being detained at the Bukit Jalil immigration detention centre, located in the outskirts of the capital Kuala Lumpur.

The UN has called on Malaysia to end the crackdown, which it said has spread fear among migrant communities in Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy, which has so far reported 7,059 cases, with 114 deaths.

The director general of Malaysia’s health ministry, Noor Hisham Abdullah, said the 35 positive cases include 17 people from Myanmar, 15 from India and one each from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Egypt.

“The source of infection is still under investigation … we need to investigate in detail before making any comments,” he said.

Felipe Gonzalez Morales, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants said on Wednesday that Malaysia’s approach was not helping to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

“The current crackdown and hate campaign are severely undermining the effort to fight the pandemic in the country.”