Coronavirus live news: Italy to reopen bars and restaurants; Spain to quarantine overseas travellers
An interactive map highlighting alleged cases where the rights of ethnic and racial minorities have been infringed during the coronavirus pandemic has been launched by the European network against racism, an NGO focused on tackling discrimination, Daniel Boffey, the Guardian’s Brussels bureau chief, reports.
The map shows country-by-country where minority groups have suffered in terms of poor healthcare provision, lack of housing and employment or racist violence and speech.
Karen Taylor, chair of the pan-European organisation, said:
Disease affects us all and we should all have the care and support we need, leaving no one behind. In their responses to the pandemic, governments should acknowledge the greater risks and needs of racialised groups and put measures in place to ensure they do not bear the brunt of the pandemic’s impact.
European countries will be advised to open borders to countries with similar coronavirus risk profiles, under a plan to aid the tourism sector being discussed in Brussels, writes Jennifer Rankin, the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent.
The European commission is expected on Wednesday to recommend a three-phase approach to reopening borders that brings together member states with “similar overall risk profiles”, according to a leaked version of the draft seen by the website Euractiv.
But it remains unclear whether the commission will throw its weight behind “tourism corridors”, whereby member states make bilateral deals to open to each other’s tourists.
The EU includes some of the countries worst hit by the pandemic – notably Spain and Italy – but others such as Greece and the Czech Republic that limited its impact.
Senior EU officials acknowledge they cannot stop governments from striking such bilateral deals, but continue to argue against selective treatment. “Member states cannot open borders for citizens from one EU country, but not from others. This is essential,” the EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, told MEPs last week.
Denmark’s chief epidemiologist has said the country is “very unlikely” to be hit with a second wave of Covid-19, after the government laid out plans for increased testing and contact tracing, Reuters reports.
Denmark, which has had 533 coronavirus-related deaths so far, was the first in Europe to relax its lockdown almost a month ago. The infection rate and the number of deaths have continued to drop.
“No country has seen an actual second wave yet. Some countries have seen the spread go up and down,” state epidemiologist Kare Molbak said at a news briefing.
“But with the knowledge we have today, I find it very unlikely that we’ll see a second wave,” he said.
Fears that a second wave of infections could thwart the reopening of the global economy were triggered on Monday after Germany, which has relatively successful in slowing the outbreak, reported that infections had accelerated again after the first tentative steps to ease its lockdown.
Denmark this week began a second phase of relaxing its lockdown which will include the reopening of restaurants and shopping malls. Despite the reopening, the reproductive rate, which shows the average number of infections one person with the virus causes, fell to 0.7 in the first week of May from 0.9
Twitter has announced it is imposing new measures on its social network to “limit the spread of potentially harmful and misleading content” about the coronavirus outbreak.
The social messaging service will introduce new labels and warning messages on tweets that contain “disputed or misleading information related to Covid-19”, it said in a blogpost published late on Monday.
The post says:
During active conversations about disputed issues, it can be helpful to see additional context from trusted sources. Earlier this year, we introduced a new label for tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media. Similar labels will now appear on tweets containing potentially harmful, misleading information related to Covid-19. This will also apply to tweets sent before today.
These labels will link to a Twitter-curated page or external trusted source containing additional information on the claims made within the tweet.
Depending on the propensity for harm and type of misleading information, warnings may also be applied to a Tweet. These warnings will inform people that the information in the Tweet conflicts with public health experts’ guidance before they view it.
More than 66,000 people have been found to have been infected with Sars-CoV-2 across Africa as of Tuesday morning, the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent reports.
So far there have been 2,300 “associated deaths” and more than 22,000 people have recovered, it adds.
WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO)
Over 66,000 confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent – with more than 22,000 recoveries & 2,300 associated deaths. View country figures & more with the WHO African Region COVID-19 Dashboard: t.co/V0fkK8dYTgpic.twitter.com/ZjDUr4eGdD
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that some treatments appear to be limiting the severity or length of the Covid-19 respiratory disease and that it was is focusing on learning more about four or five of the most promising ones.
“We do have some treatments that seem to be, in very early studies, limiting the severity or the length of the illness, but we do not have anything that can kill or stop the virus,” spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a virtual briefing, referring to the body’s “solidarity trial” of drugs against the disease.
“We do have potentially positive data coming out but we need to see more data to be 100% confident that we can say this treatment over that one,” she added.
Iran has announced 48 more deaths from Covid-19, three more than on Monday, bringing the total death toll in the country to 6,733.
Kianoush Jahanpour, the health ministry spokesman, said that 1,481 new infections had been detected in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 110,767, of whom 88,357 have recovered.
The latest figures come after it was announced that all mosques in Iran will reopen temporarily on Tuesday, the latest step in the government’s plans to ease coronavirus restrictions.
The decision to reopen the mosques was made in consultation with the ministry of health, IRIB quoted Mohammad Qomi, the director of the Islamic Development Organization, as saying, according to a report on Reuters.
Qomi said later on Monday that mosques would only be open for three days commemorating specific nights for the holy month of Ramadan and it was unclear whether they would stay open, according to the Fars news agency.
The move comes even though some parts of the country have seen a rise in infections.
Sam Jones, the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent, has more on the quarantine measures being implemented for all new arrivals to Spain from later this week:
According to the health ministry, the quarantine measure will apply to “everyone arriving from foreign countries”, suggesting it will also cover Spaniards who are returning from overseas.
“These people will have to stay in their homes or accommodation, and must limit their trips out to buying food, pharmaceutical products, or visiting a health centre, or on emergency grounds,” the ministry said in a statement.
It said anyone leaving quarantine for any of the above reasons would need to wear a face mask.
Anyone undergoing the two-week isolation who thinks they could have the virus is advised to call the regional health authorities.
Fernando Simón, the head of Spain’’s centre for health emergencies, said the quarantine measures were designed to halt the importation of new cases from abroad.
Here are the latest headlines in our global coronavirus coverage.
Bars, restaurants, hairdressing and beauty salons will reopen across Italy from 18 May. Regional authorities have been given the power to lift restrictions on the businesses, which had originally been due to reopen from 1 June.
Russia has reported 10,899 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the nationwide total past that of Britain and Spain to 232,243, the second highest total worldwide according to Johns Hopkins university data. Russia puts the continued daily rise in cases down to widespread testing. It has carried out more than 5.8m tests.
The UK’s coronavirus death toll passed 40,000. The Office for National Statistics said that 35,044 deaths involving Covid-19 were registered in England and Wales up to 9 May. Together with the latest figures for Scotland and Northern Ireland and more up to date fatalities announced daily by the government, the total official UK death toll now stands at 40,011.
A fire in a Russian hospital killed coronavirus patients attached to ventilators. A source in Russia’s emergencies ministry source said five patients had died and 150 were evacuated after the blaze broke out early on Tuesday morning on the sixth floor of St George hospital in St Petersburg.
The Spanish government ordered the quarantine of all overseas travellers coming to the country from 15 May. Incoming travellers will have to remain indoors and will only be allowed to exit for grocery shopping, to visit health centres and in case of a “situation of need”.
South Korea investigators are combing digital data to trace a nightclub coronavirus cluster. Authorities have been looking through mobile phone data, credit card statements and CCTV footage to identify people who visited nightclubs at the centre of one of the capital’s biggest coronavirus clusters.
Ryanair aims to restart 40% of services in July. Under new rules laid out by the airline, passengers will have to ask permission to use the toilet, undergo temperature tests at the airport, wear face masks or other coverings and wash their hands and use hand sanitiser in terminals.
Fossil fuel companies and coal-powered utilities in the US are set for a potential bonanza under federal government plans for a bond bailout, part of the rescue package for the coronavirus crisis, writes Fiona Harvey, the Guardian’s environment correspondent.
At least 90 fossil fuel companies, many of them established giants such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and Koch Industries, stand to gain from the Federal Reserve’s coronavirus bond buyback programme, alongside more than 150 utilities including coal-heavy firms such as American Electric Power and Duke Energy, according to a new analysis.
The bond buyback scheme is expected to be worth at least $750bn (£605bn) altogether and to benefit thousands of companies by the end of September, and the size of the payout that could go to fossil fuels and utilities is as yet unknown. The scheme is to be discussed in the US Senate on Tuesday.
Jason Disterhoft, a senior campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, which conducted the study, said public money should be used to bail out companies only with strict conditions attached.
Our concern is that these recovery funds should be prioritising people and communities and they are going instead to big companies to pay down their debts.
The number of newly diagnosed cases of coronavirus in Spain in one day fell on Tuesday to its lowest in more than two months, the health ministry reported, according to Reuters.
Health authorities identified 594 new cases on Tuesday, bringing the total to 228,030. The number of fatalities related to the disease rose 176 on Tuesday to 26,920.
The prime minister of Kosovo has emerged from a brief spell of self-imposed quarantine after coronavirus tests on an official in his government came back negative.
Albin Kurti, 44, had gone into self-isolation on Monday as a precaution after a close contact of an official in the Ministry of European Integrations had tested positive for Sars-CoV-2.
After tests cleared the official of infection, the premier returned to the office on Tuesday, the government spokesman Perparim Kryeziu confirmed to AFP.
Kosovo has so far been spared an explosive coronavirus outbreak among its population of 1.8 million.
According to government figures, almost 900 infections have been detected and 28 people have died from the respiratory disease.
Brazilian culture has suffered an unusually devastating year, robbed of some of its leading lights in just a few painful weeks, write Tom Phillips and Caio Barretto Briso in Rio de Janeiro.
The deceased, some of whom fell victim to the coronavirus pandemic, include the musical giants Aldir Blanc and Moraes Moreira; the carnival legend Dona Neném; the actor Flávio Migliaccio; and a trio of top writers – Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, Sérgio Sant’Anna and Rubem Fonseca.
In most countries, such passings would be marked with official mourning or words of tribute and regret.
But while there has been public remembrance, Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has responded with silence – a reflection, critics say, of his loathing of the arts and academia.
Parisians have been banned from drinking alcohol on the banks of the Saint-Martin canal and the Seine river after police were forced to disperse crowds just hours after France’s eight-week coronavirus lockdown was eased, writes Kim Willsher, the Guardian’s Paris correspondent.
Many city dwellers stuck in flats without balconies, terraces or gardens for almost two months turned out on Monday evening to celebrate. Photos quickly circulated of unmasked revellers gathering by the water in the French capital.
On the orders of the interior ministry, Paris’s police prefect issued a ban, saying it “deplored” having to do so in an indignant press release reminding everyone that the success of the déconfinementrested on “the principle of each citizen’s individual responsibility”. The press release said:
Barely a few hours after the lifting of the lockdown, dozens of people gathered … without respecting social distances and the health recommendations that have even so been hammered home for the past few weeks.
The prefect of police deplores the fact that, on the first day of deconfinement, he has had to take measures to prohibit the consumption of alcohol on the public highway.
Hi, this is Damien Gayle taking over on the live blog now, and bringing you the latest in the Guardian’s coverage of the world coronavirus situation, plus whatever else I can gather up.
