Coronavirus live news: global death toll passes 650k as Belgian PM warns of total lockdown
The International Monetary Fund has approved $4.3bn in aid to South Africa to help it fight the coronavirus pandemic.
South Africa is the continent’s most-industrialised economy and has the largest number of detected Covid-19 cases, with more than 445,000 and 6,769 deaths as of Monday, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The South African finance minister, Tito Mboweni, in June predicted the economy would shrink 7.2% in 2020, its deepest slump in 90 years, and compared the ballooning public debt to a “hippopotamus … eating our children’s inheritance”.
The money from the IMF is the latest disbursement under the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI), which allows nations to circumvent the lengthy negotiations usually needed to secure a full economic assistance program – time most countries do not have as they struggle to cope with the coronavirus crisis.
In a statement, IMF deputy managing director, Geoffrey Okamoto, said “a deep economic recession is unfolding,” exacerbated by South Africa’s slow rates of growth, high unemployment and widening inequality.
The RFI money will specifically address “the fiscal pressures posed by the pandemic, limit regional spillovers and catalyse additional financing from other international financial institutions,” the IMF said.
Long-haul operators will suffer worst from coronavirus rules that have hit the sector hard, writes the Guardian’s financial editor Nils Pratley.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has raged about “a badly managed overreaction” and, up to a point, one can sympathise: Spain is a big place and regional variations in travel policy ought to be possible.
O’Leary, though, should probably also count his blessings. Ryanair is better-capitalised than most of its peers; it has cut costs more quickly; and a few rivals, such as Flybe and Germanwings, have disappeared. Ryanair, when conditions eventually improve, ought to be well placed to recover.
It is harder, though, to glimpse much light for long-haul operators, such as the British Airways owner, IAG.
Transatlantic travel was always going to be slower to recover than the European version. Now the clock has been reset.
Google will keep its employees home until at least next July, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, marking the largest tech firm to commit to such a timeline in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The chief executive officer of parent company Alphabet Inc, Sundar Pichai, made the decision himself last week after debate among an internal group of top executives that he chairs, according to the report, which cited unnamed insiders.
Google did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Google had earlier said it would begin reopening more offices globally as early as June this year, but most Google employees would probably work from home until the end of this year.
School closures in Malawi due to the coronavirus pandemic have led to an alarming increase in child marriages and early pregnancies, child rights activists and government officials have warned.
The Malawian government announced the closure of all schools on 20 March, even before a single coronavirus case had been reported in the landlocked country.
However, over the past four months, infections have surged with a total of 3,664 cases registered so far, including 99 deaths.
Benedicto Kondowe, director of the Civil Society Coalition on Education, told AFP the coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed the course of young women’s lives.
He pointed out that before the pandemic struck, Malawi already had one of the highest rates of child marriages in the world, but now “Covid-19 has led to a surge in underage unions”.
Kondowe’s organisation has reported 5,000 cases of teenage pregnancies in the southern Phalombe district, while over 500 girls have entered into early marriages since the onset of the pandemic.
“What the figures show is that girls lack the needed protection as they get plunged into the margin of life,” Kondowe said, adding that increases in gender-based violence, exploitation and other forms of abuse against adolescent girls had also been noted.
In an interview with local radio station Capital Radio, the district education officer for the southern town of Nsanje, Gleston Alindiamawo, said over 300 girls in the district were carrying unwanted pregnancies since schools closed.
In the eastern district of Mangochi, meanwhile, at least 7,274 teenage girls have become pregnant from January to June this year.
The figure is 1,039 more compared with those who became pregnant during the same period last year, the district’s youth health services coordinator Peter Malipa said.
That figure included 166 girls aged between 10 to 14 years old.
Habiba Osman, a United Nations Women specialist for the elimination of violence against women and girls, told AFP the long period of idleness as a result of coronavirus restrictions was resulting in pregnancies and child marriages across Malawi.
Osman called on community leaders to monitor and assist young people from engaging in “risky behaviours”.
Lebanon has reimposed severe Covid-19 restrictions for the next two weeks, shutting places of worship, cinemas, bars, nightclubs, sports events and popular markets, after a sharp rise in infections.
Shops, private companies, banks and educational institutions will be permitted to open, but only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with a near total lockdown in place Thursday through Monday until 10 August.
This week’s lockdown coincides with the Eid al-Adha holiday when Muslims normally hold large gatherings.
Officials said they were alarmed by a spike in cases in recent days, with at least 132 new infections and eight deaths confirmed in the last 24 hours.
Lebanon has recorded just 51 deaths from the coronavirus since February.
The minister of health, Hamad Hassan, was quoted in state media as saying:
We have to go back a step and work with determination as though the pandemic has now begun.
We have to work more seriously to avoid a medical humanitarian catastrophe.
Beirut’s airport, land border crossings with Syria and sea ports will be kept open, as well as medical institutions, industrial and agricultural firms and critical government functions.
Those arriving from high risk countries will be held in quarantine for 48 hours until they receive the results of a coronavirus test.
Those arriving from other areas will be expected to quarantine at home.
Latin America will emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic with higher poverty rates as efforts to control the virus lead to spikes in unemployment and debt, the Inter-American Development Bank president, Luis Alberto Moreno, said.
Latin America, where economic growth has already been slowing in recent years, is expected to see an economic contraction of 8-10% in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus and associated quarantine measures, Moreno said.
The pandemic “will impoverish not only Latin Americans, (but also) the world in general, but clearly Latin America is going to be hit much harder because we are an emerging (market) region.”
The IADB, which is Latin America’s largest regional lender, will this year approve nearly $20bn dollars in loans.
Around $15bn of those will go to governments to strengthen healthcare systems, he added.
Though the sharpest contraction in the region has been in Venezuela, Moreno said the IADB cannot provide any funding for the government of Nicolás Maduro because his administration is in default on some $700m in loans.
Venezuela has been in recession for six years and annualised inflation exceeds 3,500%, according to the opposition-run National Assembly, which calculates economic indicators due to delays in the release of official figures. Moreno said:
There is absolutely nothing we can do for Venezuela.
There’s no country in the history of humanity that has seen a contraction as deep as that of Venezuela without having had a war or a natural disaster or both.
Ireland’s schools will reopen at the end of August as the nation navigates its way out of coronavirus lockdown, the prime minister, Micheal Martin, has said.
Ireland’s blueprint for reopening schools for the first time since mid-March includes €370m euros (£338m) in spending to ensure safety.
The package will allow schools to hire 1,000 more post-primary teachers to reduce class sizes and enable social distancing, the government said.
“There is no zero-risk scenario, but we can dramatically limit the risk of the spread of the virus through our schools,” Martin said.
The new money will also cover the costs of protective equipment and cleaning supplies, and make special provisions for those deemed vulnerable to Covid-19.
Psychologists and other forms of emotional support will also be mobilised. Martin said:
Major emergencies always lead to a much higher level of anxiety and other similar issues.
We fully understand that we can’t just declare that the schools are open and carry on as if nothing had happened.
Irish schools were shut on 12 March, two weeks before the nation entered a full lockdown.
Ireland has officially suffered 1,764 deaths from the virus, with a single-day peak of 77 in April.
In recent weeks there have been many days with no new deaths.
However, earlier this month the government delayed its plan to end lockdown early because of a surge of the number of cases and a rise in the infection rate.
One of France’s most iconic cinemas is to shut its doors for the month of August because so few people want to risk seeing movies on the big screen.
Managers at the enormous Grand Rex in the centre of Paris – which remained open throughout World War II – said Hollywood studios were also to blame for holding back the release of so many summer blockbusters.
The exterior of the Grand Rex film theatre in Paris. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images
The Federation of French Cinemas said on Monday the double whammy was crippling the industry as they demanded state aid to help them through the crisis.
The Grand Rex’s manager Alexandre Hellmann told AFP:
Between the drop in admissions (because of the coronavirus) and the lack of fresh American films that traditionally are a big summer draw, we have decided to close our doors from 3 August.
We will lose less money by closing than by staying open with this depressing box office.
With 2,700 seats, the seven-screen Grand Rex’s largest theatre is one of the biggest in Europe with a 300 square-metre screen.
Many French cinemas have been all but empty since they were allowed to reopen after an eight-week lockdown last month.
The cinema federation appealed to banks and landlords to give their members leeway, saying it was “absolutely necessary that the government also take urgent action to refinance” the sector.
The global Covid-19 death toll has reached 650,029, with over 16 million cases now confirmed worldwide.
The disease has surged back at hotspots in Asia, Europe and the Americas, prompting renewed restrictions, targeted lockdowns and compulsory mask-wearing orders.
Australia has been rocked by its deadliest surge since the start of the pandemic, Hong Kong is experiencing record daily numbers and Spain’s caseload has tripled in the last fortnight.
The US is still ahead in cases and deaths, with 147,143 fatalities from the virus.
The number of cases is still rising rapidly around the country as it approaches 150,000 deaths.
The WHO said today that experts would meet this week to discuss downgrading Covid-19’s emergency status, six months after it was declared.
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray, I’ll be taking over the coronavirus blog for the next few hours.
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