Coronavirus live news: EU health agency calls for new lockdowns as Greece ‘formally’ enters second wave

The UK government said 46,526 people had died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK, as of 5pm on Sunday. That represented a rise of 21 in the previous 24 hours.

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 Monday, there had been a further 816 lab-confirmed cases. Overall, a total of 311,641 cases have been confirmed.

The US death toll from Covid-19 fell 16% to about 7,200 people last week, the first decline in deaths after four weeks of increases, according to a Reuters tally of state and county reports.

The country posted more than 376,000 new Covid-19 cases for the week ending 9 August, or an average of roughly 53,000 per day. New cases have now fallen for three straight weeks, though the United States still accounts for a quarter of the global total of almost 20 million cases.

Last week’s decline in new cases came largely from recent hot spots. For instance, new cases in Arizona fell by more than 48% in the last week, and on 9 August the state reported fewer than 1,000 cases for the first time since 29 June.

The rate of community spread in Florida, California and Tennessee remained high, but they all reported fewer cases than in the previous week, according to the Reuters tally.

Hawaii had kept the virus at bay for most of the summer, but new cases more than doubled last week to over 1,200. On 6 August, Hawaii governor David Ige said he would reinstate inter-island travel restrictions that require people to quarantine for 14 days.

In South Dakota, new cases increased for the third straight week. More than 100,000 motorcycle enthusiasts are expected to travel from all over the country to attend an annual rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, which began on 7 August.

Nationally, the share of all tests that came back positive for Covid-19 held steady at 8%, according to data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak. Mississippi and Texas had the highest positive rates in the country at 21%.

Only 15 states reported a positive rate under 5%, which is the threshold that the World Health Organization considers concerning because it suggests there are more cases in the community that have not yet been uncovered.

As Australia wakes up, here are some of the latest headlines in our global coronavirus coverage:

• Nearly 20 million cases of coronavirus have been officially confirmed around the world, with the World Health Organisation saying that the number is likely to be reached this week. According to a tally of official statistics kept by Johns Hopkins University, 19,947,467 cases had been recorded by about 9pm GMT on Monday, with 732,650 deaths so far from the pandemic.
• The United States reported 5,023,649 cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 48,690 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 558 to 161,842.
• The European Union’s health agency has called on states seeing an increase in cases of coronavirus to reinstate control measures, as it warned of a “true resurgence” or “risk of further escalation of Covid-19” in several countries.
• Concern is growing that a resurgence of coronavirus in Europe will lead to a “second wave” of uncoordinated border restrictions. In a letter, the European commission warns that “while we must ensure that the EU is ready for possible resurgences of Covid-19 cases … we should at the same time avoid a second wave of uncoordinated actions at the internal borders of the EU.”
• Greece is “formally” in the midst of a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the country’s top infectious disease experts said, adding: “We can say that Greece has formally entered a second wave of the epidemic. This is the point that we could win or lose the battle.”
• Wearing a face mask became compulsory on dozens of busy Paris shopping streets and in other popular parts of the city from 8am on Monday as coronavirus numbers continued to tick up in in and around the French capital.
• Authorities in Iran shut down a newspaper after it published remarks by an expert who cast doubt on official coronavirus figures, claiming they only account for 5% of the real toll. Meanwhile, 189 more people died from Covid-19 and 2,132 more people had tested positive for the virus in the past 24 hours, the country’s health ministry said.
• There is a huge gap between funds needed to fight the coronavirus and funds committed worldwide, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said. Tedros said that ACT accelerator, an initiative established to develop and distribute tools to counter the spread of the pandemic, had received just one tenth of the funding it needed.

Pakistanis flocked to gyms, salons and restaurants that opened on Monday for the first time in five months after being shut to stop the spread of coronavirus, Reuters reports.

Pakistan has recorded more than 280,000 cases of Covid-19 and nearly 6,100 deaths, but has seen a slowing of numbers since June, when it recorded nearly 7,000 infections and 118 deaths in a single day.

On Sunday, the country recorded 539 new infections and 15 deaths. New daily cases have been under a thousand throughout August.

“Thank God, the government has allowed dine-in; we were managing through take-away, but now business will improve,” said Sher Khan, owner of a tea stall in a bustling area of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.

The government allowed a partial resumption of commercial activities in May. Despite reopening the remaining businesses, it urged people take precautions including wearing masks.

In Lahore’s Bazar Mozang, shops were packed and few wore masks. At a clothing and cosmetics shop, Nadeem Sheikh said he was reluctant to turn away customers who did not adhere to the rules for fear of the financial loss.

At a packed salon in the southwestern city of Quetta, Muhammad Usman was happy to shed locks of hair that had grown unruly over the months.

Pointing to his long hair and laughing, Usman said people had started to think he was an ascetic hermit and had approached him with charity, asking him to pray for them.

Gyms opened in the city of Peshawar, with customers relieved they no longer had to train at home.

“I gained 20 kg (44 pounds) because of the closure of gyms,” said Najeeb Ullah Achakzai, 27. “That destroyed all my personality… My marriage was postponed due to my becoming overweight.”

The number of new Covid-19 cases among children in the United States rose 40% in the last two weeks of July, according to a report released just weeks before tens of millions of American students are scheduled to begin the new school year.

Health experts are keeping an eye on coronavirus infections among kids and teenagers as officials struggle with the thorny question of whether to reopen schools for in-person classes, adopt a virtual learning model or a hybrid of the two.

Donald Trump, who is seeking a second term in the White House in a 3 November election, has pushed states to allow students to physically return to classrooms, but health officials have expressed caution about doing so in areas where cases have been rising sharply.

The new report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association found that more than 338,000 children have tested positive for Covid-19 since the onset of the US epidemic, with 97,078 new cases reported in the 16-30 July period.

Most of the new infections in this group occurred in states in the US South and West, according to the report, which was based on data from 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.

It did not give a reason for the recent surge. Testing for coronavirus overall has risen in the United States and concerns about children as possible spreaders of the virus have been sparked by new studies showing they can catch it.

The American Academy of Pediatrics noted the data showed that severe illness due to Covid-19 appears to be rare among children. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has said that children who get the virus are less likely to have severe symptoms.

The CDC recently updated its guidance to recommend that schools reopen to some degree unless their communities were experiencing an uncontrolled or high rate of transmission of the virus.

Some cities including Chicago and Los Angeles plan to start the school year with online classes, while New York City, once the epicenter of the US epidemic, plans to have at least some in-person learning in all its school districts in the fall.

Children account for a tiny fraction of the more than 162,000 people who have died from Covid-19 in the United States.

More than 5 million people in the country have been infected with the virus, representing about one-quarter of the total worldwide cases.

UK theatre boss Kwame Kwei-Armah has said a woman removed her mask to cough in the face of his 15-year-old son on public transport.

The director and playwright, who is black, said the white woman said to her son: “This is what you people do.”

He added that his son has since tested negative for coronavirus.

Kwei-Armah, who has been the artistic director of the Young Vic theatre since 2018, tweeted:

His directing credits include New York’s Public Theatre, Signature Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

His production of One Night In Miami at the Donmar Warehouse was nominated for an Olivier Award for best new play.

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday reported 5,023,649 cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 48,690 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 558 to 161,842.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of Covid-19 as of 4pm ET on 9 August versus its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

Spain’s government defended its response to the coronavirus pandemic on Monday after official data showed the country had overtaken the UK to register the highest total number of cases in western Europe.

“Appropriate measures are being taken to control the pandemic in coordination” with the regions, the government said in a statement, after experts questioned its policies.

The data shows that we are being very active in tracking and detecting the virus.

Health ministry data showed 1,486 new cases were diagnosed in the past day, bringing the cumulative total to 322,980, compared with 311,641 in Britain.

The virus claimed 65 lives in Spain over the past seven days. More than 28,000 people have died in Spain, while more than 46,000 have died in Britain.

The Spanish government also said it had tested nearly 7.5 million people since the start of the pandemic, with over 400,000 tested in the past week alone.

In the first half of April, Spain was second only to the United States in total cases before reining in its soaring infection rate through a strict nationwide lockdown.

However, the virus has rebounded sharply since the state of emergency was lifted six weeks ago, with average daily infections surging from 132 in June to nearly 1,500 in the first 10 days of August.

In a letter published in the journal the Lancet last week, a group of Spanish health experts called for an independent evaluation of the government’s handling of the crisis and highlighted a litany of flaws.

One signatory, Ildefonso Hernandez Aguado, a public health professor at Alicante’s Miguel Hernandez University, said a lack of qualified tracing staff was allowing the disease to spread unseen.

“Some regions have not understood that this was the key in the months after the lockdown and in the long term,” he said, stressing that authorities should begin hiring and training new personnel as soon as possible.

He also pointed the finger at Spain’s highly social culture:

This is a country that doesn’t understand holding a celebration, or taking a holiday if you’re not going to share them.

The latest headlines in our world coronavirus coverage include:

• Nearly 20 million cases of coronavirus have been officially confirmed around the world, with the World Health Organisation saying that the number is likely to be reached this week. According to a tally of official statistics kept by Johns Hopkins University, 19,936,547 cases had been recorded by about 6pm GMT on Monday, with 732,467 deaths so far from the pandemic.
• The European Union’s health agency has called on states seeing an increase in cases of coronavirus to reinstate control measures, as it warned of a “true resurgence” in several countries. In an update on Monday, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned of a “risk of further escalation of Covid-19.”
• Concern is growing that a resurgence of coronavirus in Europe will lead to a “second wave” of uncoordinated border restrictions. In a letter, the European commission warns that “while we must ensure that the EU is ready for possible resurgences of Covid-19 cases … we should at the same time avoid a second wave of uncoordinated actions at the internal borders of the EU.”
• Greece is “formally” in the midst of a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the country’s top infectious disease experts said. “We can say that Greece has formally entered a second wave of the epidemic. This is the point that we could win or lose the battle,” said Gkikas Magiorkinis, assistant professor of hygiene and epidemiology at Athens university.
• Wearing a face mask became compulsory on dozens of busy Paris shopping streets and in other popular parts of the city from 8am on Monday as coronavirus numbers continued to tick up in in and around the French capital.The order applies to everyone aged 11 or over covers crowded zones where physical distancing is difficult, police said.
• Authorities in Iran shut down a newspaper after it published remarks by an expert who cast doubt on official coronavirus figures, claiming they only account for 5% of the real toll. Meanwhile, 189 more people died from Covid-19 and 2,132 more people had tested positive for the virus in the past 24 hours, the country’s health ministry said.
• There is a huge gap between funds needed to fight the coronavirus and funds committed worldwide, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said. Tedros said that ACT accelerator, an initiative established to develop and distribute tools to counter the spread of the pandemic, had received just one tenth of the funding it needed.

That’s it from me, Damien Gayle, for today.

For those of you who were concerned about the best way to manage the risk of coronavirus while having sex, a UK-based sexual health charity has published a list of guidelines, which include wearing face coverings, avoiding kissing and picking positions where participants are not face to face during intercourse.

Research by the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), with sexual health clinic 56 Dean Street, found 84% of people had abstained from sex outside of their immediate household after lockdown restrictions were imposed in March.

However, after several months of the lockdown and its partial easing, THT said it was no longer realistic to ask people to completely refrain from sex.

In the guidance, the charity advised the best sexual partner during the pandemic is yourself or someone you live with. Masturbation, using sex toys or participating in phone or online sex are recommended as the safest options, as these can be done at a distance from others.

If having sex with someone outside of your household, THT advised having one regular partner or limiting the number of sexual partners as well as taking other precautions.

Sexual partners are advised to wash their hands for 20 seconds before and after sex to help reduce the risk. Due to the ways Covid-19 is spread, the charity further recommends not kissing and wearing a face covering during intercourse.

The charity also advises picking positions where participants are not face to face.

Finally, having borne those precautions (and others on the THT website) in mind, THT’s medical director Dr Michael Brady adds:

Once you’ve made the decision to have sex, try to relax and enjoy it

Health authorities in France have reported 785 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, compared to 2,288 on Friday, but gave no indication of the number of infections over the weekend, Reuters reports.

In its latest update, the health ministry said that it had registered 10,800 new cases over the past week, but did not provide an updated number for the total cumulative number of coronavirus infections, which on Friday stood at 197,921.

The ministry said that over the past week, 10,800 new cases had been registered but it was not immediately clear what period this referred to and whether infections over the weekend were included in this total.

Denmark’s health minister says the virus is “on its way back,” and has announced local measures to contain it, according to the Associated Press.

“We are intervening with local measures that are fitted to local needs,” Magnus Heunicke told a news conference on Monday. “We are doing that to avoid a total lockdown of the country.”

Increases in the number of cases were reported in Aarhus — Denmark’s second-largest city — and in six other places geographically spread across the country of nearly 6 million.

Since Sunday, Denmark has recorded 76 new cases, bringing its total so far since the outbreak began to 14,815 cases and 620 deaths. More than half of the new cases are in Aarhus.

The decision comes after Aarhus made it mandatory as of Monday to use face masks on public transportation.

Restaurants and bars in some of Greece’s top tourist destinations will be subject to a night curfew, after coronavirus infections in the country reached a new high.

The announcement comes after one of Greece’s top infectious disease experts told the Guardian that the country was “formally” in the grip of a second wave of coronavirus, and the government said visitors arriving from Sweden, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic will need proof they have tested negative for coronavirus to gain entry

Areas in which eateries and bars will be closed from midnight to 07:00 am include the popular islands of Mykonos, Santorini, Corfu, Crete, Rhodes, Zakynthos and Kos, Aristotelia Peloni, a government spokeswoman, said in a televised address, according to the French news agency AFP.

Some of these destinations are known for late-night clubbing.

The cities of Thessaloniki, Larissa, Volos and Katerini were also affected, as was the Halkidiki peninsula which is popular with Balkan visitors.

The restrictions will be in place from Tuesday to 23 August, she said.

Greece’s public health watchdog on Sunday announced 203 new infections, the highest since the start of the pandemic. A total of 213 people have died from the virus. Another 126 infections were announced on Monday,

Officials have blamed the increase in cases on overcrowding in clubs and social events. Only 10% of cases in Greece can be traced to foreign arrivals.

The European Union’s health agency has called on member states that are seeing an increase in cases of coronavirus to reinstate control measures, as it warned of a “true resurgence” in several countries.

In a “rapid risk assessment” published on Monday, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned of a “risk of further escalation of Covid-19” across the continent. The agency said:

While many countries are now testing mild and asymptomatic cases, which has resulted in increased case reports, there is a true resurgence in cases in several countries as a result of physical distancing measures being relaxed.

The Stockholm-based agency said that the Covid-19 pandemic continued to “pose a major public health threat”, in spite of a recent decline in cases. Since the relaxation of movement restrictions and other measures, the spread of the virus had resumed, it said.

“Further increases in the incidence of Covid-19, and associated hospitalisations and deaths, can be mitigated if sufficient control measures are reinstalled or reinforced in a timely manner,” the agency said.

Countries that are now observing an increase in cases, after having lifted their control measures following a temporary improvement in the epidemiological situation, should consider re-instating selected measures through a phased, step-wise and sustainable approach.

For those countries seeing an increase “the risk of further escalation of COVID-19 is high.” If those countries fail to implement or reinforce restrictions, the risk was “very high,” it warned.

The agency conceded that as the pandemic wears on “it is natural for people to become fatigued and reduce compliance with public health measures.”

Risk communication efforts should be tailored to changes in the local situation and continuous messaging is needed to remind the population that the SARS-CoV-2 virus will remain in circulation within the community and that they should take everyday measures to reduce potential exposure, such as practising cough and respiratory etiquette, physical distancing and hand hygiene, wearing face masks, reducing the number of contacts and staying home when ill.

The rate of new coronavirus infections in Ireland over the past 14 days is now higher than that of the UK, figures released by the European Centre for Disease Control show.

After a spike in cases over the past week, Ireland’s infection rate is 16.9 cases per 100,000 people, compared to 16.5 in the UK, which remains the European country worst-affected so far by the pandemic.

According to RTE, Ireland’s national public broadcasting corporation, the Irish government used figures from the ECDC to decide which countries went on its green list for travel.