Coronavirus live news: Barcelona beaches to reopen for sunbathers

The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus across Africa has passed 86,000, the regional office of the World Health Organization has said.

Unlike in Europe, a widespread outbreak seems yet to happen in Africa, a continent of 1.3 billion people. There had been fears that its comparatively limited healthcare infrastructure would be overrun by patients with Covid-19.

Sweden’s public health authority on Tuesday reported 45 more deaths from coronavirus, bringing the total death toll in the country, which controversially chose not to impose a lockdown, to 3,743.

According to the latest update, 422 more people tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing the country’s total number of confirmed cases to 30,799.

Death toll figures in Sweden generally fall over the weekend, due to a lack of reporting, then increase again during the week as health authorities catch up. Today’s figure was the lowest reported on a Tuesday for six weeks, suggesting the outbreak in the country is now in abeyance despite a relative lack of measures to curb the spread of the virus.

Basing its approach on a so-called “principle of responsibility”, Sweden has kept schools open (indeed compulsory) for children under the age of 16, along with cafes, bars, restaurants and businesses, and urged people to respect social distancing guidelines.

Statistics released on Monday showed that Sweden had its deadliest month in almost three decades in April, with a total of 10,458 deaths recorded in the country of 10.3 million people.

“We have to go back to December 1993 to find more dead during a single month,” Tomas Johansson, population statistician at Statistics Sweden, said in a statement.

In total, 97,008 deaths were recorded in Sweden during the whole of 1993, which in turn was the deadliest year since 1918, when the Spanish flu pandemic ravaged the country. Johansson told AFP there was no official breakdown explaining the high death toll in December 1993 but said there was a flu epidemic at the time.

A resolution on the need to investigate the global response to the coronavirus pandemic won endorsement at the World Health Organization’s annual ministerial meeting on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

None of the WHO’s 194 member states – which include the US – raised objections to the resolution brought by the European Union on behalf of more than 100 countries including Australia, China and Japan.

“Is the (World) Health Assembly prepared to adopt the draft resolution as proposed? As I see no requests for the floor, I take it that there is no objection and the resolution is therefore adopted,” said Keva Bain, the Bahamas ambassador who serves as the assembly’s president.

In the midst of a city-wide lockdown to try to contain the spread of coronavirus, police moved into clear protesters in southern Santiago, Chile, on Monday, as local officials warned of food shortages in poor neighbourhoods.

According to Reuters, protesters threw rocks, shouted and burned piles of wood along a street in a destitute neighbourhood on Santiago’s southern fringe. Images on social media and local television showed police spraying tear gas and water cannons to disperse the growing crowd.

The municipality said in a statement that families were going hungry in the poorest sectors of El Bosque, a district where many work informally, or not at all. The city district has been under quarantine since mid-April, city officials said in a statement.

States of emergency are being used to attack indigenous peoples around the world, the UN rapporteur for indigenous peoples has said.

In a statement published on Monday, José Francisco Cali Tzay said he was receiving reports every day about how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting indigenous communities, “and it deeply worries me to see it is not always about health issues,” he said.

There have been a number of reports about the danger that the pandemic could pose to indigenous groups, but Tzay said greater danger lay in governments using the crisis as an excuse to marginalise and dispossess them. In his statement, Tzay went on:

States of emergency are exacerbating the marginalisation of indigenous communities, and in the most extreme situations, militarisation of their territories is taking place.

Indigenous peoples are being denied their freedom of expression and association, while business interests are invading and destroying their lands, territories and resources.

In some countries, consultations with indigenous peoples and also environmental impact assessments are being abruptly suspended in order to force through megaprojects relating to agribusiness, mining, dams and infrastructure.

Indigenous peoples who lose their lands and livelihoods are pushed further into poverty, higher rates of malnutrition, lack of access to clean water and sanitation, as well as exclusion from medical services, which in turn renders them particularly vulnerable to the disease.

Ireland began phase one of its emergence from its coronavirus lockdown yesterday, expanding the number of shops that could open and easing restrictions on social contact.

Eleven more people have tested positive for coronavirus in Zambia.

The southern-central African country has so far reported 772 cases of coronavirus and seven deaths from Covid-19.

The Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam, will reopen next week, after weeks of closure aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus, authorities said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

The Islamic endowment overseeing the site under Jordanian custodianship had taken the unprecedented step of closing it to worshippers in March as other major holy sites were shuttered across the Middle East.

The endowment said that in light of the relative decline of the spread of the virus it would reopen the site to worshippers after the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which will begin this weekend and last for three days. A mechanism and procedures regarding lifting the suspension will be announced later, it added.

Wildcat strikes, walkouts and protests over working conditions have erupted across the US throughout the coronavirus pandemic as “essential” workers have demanded better pay and safer working conditions, Michael Sainato reports for Guardian US.

Working conditions, low pay and lack of safety protections have triggered protests throughout the pandemic as workers across various industries, including food service, meat processing, retail, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare have come together to protest about issues, many of which were apparent before the coronavirus.

Deborah Berkowitz, director of worker safety and health for the National Employment Law Project, said:

There are no federal mandates or requirements to implement the social distancing guidance or anything else. It’s only guidance and employers can choose to implement them or not. And that is why, in an unprecedented way, they are walking out to bring public attention to the fact that their companies are not protecting their safety and health.