Coronavirus live news: Italy begins reopening bars and cafes as Spain also eases restrictions
Hungary and Slovenia have agreed on a road map towards a gradual reopening of their border by 1 June, the Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto wrote on his Facebook page today. Hungary has started lifting coronavirus restrictions in Budapest, though residents returning to shops or travelling on public transport will have to wear face masks.
“Restarting our economies is not possible without restarting international cooperation,” Szijjarto wrote, adding that annual trade between the two European Union member states was worth more than €2.5bn. “Therefore, without jeopardising the protection of health, which is a priority, an easing of restrictive measures imposed at the borders is needed.”
A phased reopening is the government’s strategy to head off deeper and more lasting harm to the economy, which is expected to shrink by about 4% this year, according to a Reuters survey.
As of Monday, Hungary had reported 3,535 cases of coronavirus, 462 deaths and 1,400 recoveries. Slovenia had reported 1,466 cases and 104 deaths.
Szijjarto said a lockdown in the two countries had helped prevent the large-scale spread of the coronavirus, allowing for a gradual restarting of economic activity. “Taking all this into account, we have started working on a gradual phase-out of measures restricting border crossings, setting 1 June as a target date,” Szijjarto wrote.
The coronavirus pandemic should serve as a “wake-up call” to the world which must be more united in responding to the crisis, the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has said.
Guterres said Covid-19 was the “greatest challenge of our age” and had demonstrated the world’s fragility, as nations went their own way in tackling the pandemic, Reuters reports. He added that the crisis was an opportunity to rebuild a better world, bu questioned whether countries were up to it.
Despite great scientific and technological advances in recent decades, a virus had “brought us to our knees”, the United Nations chief said at the start of this week’s virtual meeting of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Health Assembly.
He said the pandemic had exposed the frailties not just in health systems but in international institutions, tackling the climate crisis, cyber-security and nuclear disarmament.
“Covid-19 must be a wake-up call. It is time for an end to the hubris,” Guterres said, slamming countries for their disjointed approach. “We have seen some solidarity, but very little unity in our response to Covid-19. Different countries have followed different, sometimes contradictory strategies and we are all paying a heavy price.
“Many countries have ignored the recommendations of the World Health Organization. As a result, the virus has spread across the world.”
He said Covid-19 was now spreading in the southern hemisphere, where its impact might be “even more devastating”.
Guterres reiterated his call for a WHO-led international response, expanded mental health services and policies to address the social and economic problems caused by the crisis. “Unless we control the spread of the virus, the economy will never recover,” he said.
The former Portuguese prime minister and former head of the UN refugee agency said the recovery from the crisis must lead to more equal and sustainable economies. It is “an opportunity to rebuild differently and better”, he said, referring to the climate crisis and flawed social protection systems.
“Instead of going back to systems that were unsustainable, we need to make a leap into a future of clean energy, inclusivity and equality, and stronger safety nets, including universal health coverage.”
But he asked: “We can do it, but will we? Either we get through this pandemic together, or we fail.”
More than 100 countries are now backing calls for a global investigation into the origins and spread of Covid-19.
Ahead of a virtual meeting of the World Health Organization Assembly, which will be devoted to Covid-19, several dozen countries have called for an inquiry “to identify the zoonotic source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population”. The draft text does not mention China, whose government has previously declared its opposition to any international inquiry.
The text also calls for all countries to have “unhindered timely access to quality, safe, efficacious and affordable diagnostics, therapeutics, medicines and vaccines, and essential health technologies” targeted at Covid-19. It additionally calls for action to tackle disinformation and misinformation that undermine the public health response.
“The European Union and its member states have spearheaded a draft resolution that will be presented at the WHO assembly tomorrow [Tuesday],” a European commission spokesperson said, adding that 110 countries were now co-sponsoring the text.
The text was drawn up with the support of several dozen countries, including Australia, Brazil, Japan, India, Russia, Turkey and the UK.
Earlier this month the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said there was a need “to look independently at what happened, standing aside from the battlefield between China and the United States, who blame each other for the events in a bidding war that has only exacerbated their rivalry”.
Russia’s prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, has said that the country’s coronavirus epidemic has “positive dynamics,” as dozens of regions begin lifting quarantine restrictions and allowing businesses to reopen.
“The coronavirus situation in our country remains complicated, but we can still say that we have managed to put a stop to growth in new cases,” Mishustin claimed during an online conference on Monday, adding: “Cautiously speaking, we have positive dynamics.”
The deputy prime minister Tatyana Golikova said that the growth rate for the sickness was down 23.4% across Russia and 47.5% in Moscow. On Monday, the country posted 8,926 new cases, the lowest in weeks.
But concerns about the actual death toll of the disease have grown amid worrying reports from Dagestan and several other regions of hundreds of deaths from pneumonia, many of whom may have been infected with coronavirus but not tallied due to Russia’s conservative autopsy standards. The country has tallied just 2,722 deaths from the disease.
The health minister of Dagestan, a southern Russian region of nearly three million people, said on Sunday that while officially 29 people in the republic had died of Covid-19, another 657 people had died of “community-acquired pneumonia,” a sickness often contracted by those infected with coronavirus.
He also confirmed that more than 40 medics in Dagestan had died since the coronavirus crisis began, a concern that had raised concerns across Russia, but claimed that many had died of causes other than coronavirus.
Other regions also appeared to indicate that death rates from pneumonia were many times higher than from coronavirus. The St. Petersburg governor also announced late last week that 694 people had died from pneumonia since 1 March, while just 63 people had officially died of coronavirus and been added to Russia’s tally of deaths from the disease.
Russia’s mortality rate from the disease is considerably lower than other countries with more than 100,000 infections. The Kremlin has said that is attributable to the country’s medical system, while critics have noted that deaths are tallied differently than in most countries in Europe and North America. New data from Moscow last week indicated nearly 1,600 people with coronavirus had died since the outbreak began, but that just 639 were included on official death tolls from the disease after autopsies found other causes of death.
Many academics believe that excess death rates are the best way to evaluate the total death toll from the disease. In Russia, the April data will only be made available in late May, and the May data is likely to come out in late June.
A big day in Greece, where over 200 of its prime archaeological sites have been re-opened almost two months to the day after being closed as part of containment measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The reopening of sites in Athens’ historic centre – capped this morning by the country’s head of state visiting the Acropolis – has sparked a frenzy of activity to properly prepare the antiquities for the post-lockdown age. All personnel have to wear face masks and, on dictate of social distancing, stickers have been placed outside entry points to prevent crowd buildups outside ticket booths.
Individual sites, according to size, will have caps on the number of visitors they can accept. In sites beneath the fifth century BC Acropolis, including Hadrian’s Library, workers could be seen earlier today in protective suits with weed cutters as they cleaned up the areas in anticipation of the tourist season beginning. The Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said he hopes to reopen the country to foreign tourists by 1 July after managing to keep confirmed cases of Covid-19 and casualties low after early enforcement of measures in a rare success story for Europe.
Read the original article at The Guardian