Coronavirus live news: lockdowns reduced infection rate by 81%, research shows
After 15,000 people in Berlin and 25,000 in Munich joined antiracism protests over the weekend, the German government has called on demonstrators to stick to coronavirus distancing rules.
In some cases, protesters were closely packed together despite German requirements for people to stay 1.5 meters (5 feet) apart.
On Monday, Steffen Seibert, spokesman for the chancellor, Angela Merkel, said “it is good if people take to the streets in Germany as well with a clear statement against racism.”
But he added: “The pictures that in some cases emerged over the weekend were not good. Both things must be possible: to demonstrate peacefully, which is a fundamental right, and keep to the (social distancing) rules.”
He said many demonstrators “created a big risk for themselves and others.”
Germany has been widely praised for its adroit handling of the pandemic.
Belgium has reported 122 new infections in the last 24 hours and 11 fatalities, compared to 156 confirmed cases and 15 deaths the day before, writes Daniel Boffey, the Guardian’s Brussels bureau chief.
The continued downward trend has allowed the government to allow restaurants and bars to reopen after nearly three months in lockdown.
The prime minister of the Dutch-speaking Flanders region, Jan Jambon marked the moment by inviting photographers to a chicken restaurant close to Brussels’ EU quarter where he enjoyed lunch.
Iranians have been urged to wear face masks in public areas by the country’s health ministry, following warnings that it could face a new wave of coronavirus infections.
Last week, health officials said there could be a second, stronger wave of the virus if people flouted physical distancing rules.
On Monday, health ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur reported that the death toll from Covid-19 in Iran had reached 8,351 after 70 people died in the previous 24 hours.
The total number of positive cases in the country now stands at 173,832 after 2,043 new infections were reported. Jahanpur said:
“Everyone should wear masks when attending public places like shops or any other places where fully observing social distancing is not possible.”
Restrictions to curb the spread of coronavirus were imposed by Iran in mid-April, but the government began easing them after the daily number of deaths and infections fell over concern about the economic impact of the crisis.
However, restrictions have since been reimposed in some provinces after localised outbreaks.
A month-long coronavirus lockdown is to be lifted in Moscow after mayor Sergei Sobyanin declared the pandemic was on the wane.
His comments came shortly after Russia announced the partial reopening of its borders allowing people who needed to work, study, get medical treatment or look after relatives to travel abroad for the first time since late March.
“The pandemic has slowly but steadily been on the wane for several weeks,” Sobyanin wrote on his personal blog on Monday. “Moscow can practically get back to its usual rhythm of life.”
The country has reported 476,658 cases of coronavirus – the third highest tally in the world – but new cases in Moscow have more than halved to around 2,000 a day.
Nationally, 5,971 deaths of those who tested positive for the virus have been reported, stirring debate about the way in which authorities count fatalities.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has appeared on state television attending the politburo of the ruling Workers’ party.
Neither Kim nor the officials at the meeting wore face masks, while the coronavirus pandemic was not mentioned in the media report.
Reuters
(@Reuters)North Korean leader Kim Jong Un makes an appearance on television pic.twitter.com/Nww7659FaK
KCNA said that instead the meeting “discussed in depth some crucial issues arising in further developing the self-sufficient economy of the country and improving the standard of people’s living”.
The footage comes weeks after it reported that Kim had attended the completion of a fertiliser plant north of Pyongyang, following speculation that the dictator was gravely ill.
Brazil’s government has released two contradictory sets of figures for the latest tally of coronavirus infections and deaths.
Initially, data sent to journalists by the health ministry on Sunday said Brazil had a total death toll of 37,312 and a total of 685,427 confirmed cases, the news organisation Reuters reported.
The figures showed that in the previous 24 hours the country had registered 1,382 new deaths and 12,581 new cases.
But later on Sunday evening the government updated the figures on its online data portal without publishing a cumulative total, putting the day’s death toll at 525 and new cases at 18,912.
The health ministry did not respond to questions about the different numbers, Reuters said.
The latest controversy over the government’s published statistics comes as it removed months of national data on the epidemic from public view over the weekend, which critics claimed was an attempt at hiding Brazil’s soaring death toll.
It followed a move last week to push back the release of the daily tally from around 5pm to around 10pm, after the country’s main television news program has aired.
Lockdowns had a dramatic impact on the spread of coronavirus in Europe with strict controls on people’s movements preventing an estimated 3.1m deaths by the beginning of May, with 470,000 deaths averted in the UK alone, researchers say.
Outbreak modellers at Imperial College London said that lockdown slashed the average number of people that contagious individuals infected by 81% and lowered the reproduction number, R, of the epidemic below 1 in all countries they observed.
When R is less than 1 the epidemic is in decline because on average, each infected person transmits the infection to less than one other. As countries ease out of their lockdown, scientists are watching R closely: if it rises and remains above 1, the epidemic will grow exponentially.
The Imperial team pooled data on Covid-19 deaths from 11 European countries including the UK, Italy, France, Spain and Germany, and worked backwards to calculate the extent of transmission several weeks earlier, to account for the time lag between infections and deaths. Lockdown at the end of March reduced the reproductive number of the UK epidemic from 3.8 to 0.63, they calculate.
The model shows that by 4 May between 12 million and 15 million people had become infected, but some nations were hit far harder than others. According to the model Belgium had the largest number of cases per capita with 8% of the population infected, compared with only 0.46% of Norwegians and 0.85% of Germans. Some 5.1% of the UK population was infected, according to a report published in Nature.
“Our model estimates that we are very far away from herd immunity,” said Axel Grandy, a professor of statistics at Imperial and co-author on the study. Herd immunity is achieved when enough people are immune to a virus that outbreaks die out naturally. In the case of Covid-19, scientists believe upwards of 70% of the population would need to be resistant for herd immunity to kick in.
“It tells us we need to be very careful and not to release too much in one go because then you have no control,” Prof Gandy said. “We need to tread very carefully and do things slowly, so we can backtrack should they not work.”
Punters betting on volatile financial markets during the Covid-19 crisis have won more than half of the revenues earned by the online trading platform Plus500, sending the company’s shares down by nearly 8%, writes Simon Goodley for the Guardian’s business desk.
The firm – which operates like a bookmaker and allows traders to place wagers on stock, currency and commodity market movements – said its second-quarter revenues had surged to $249m (£197m), only for that figure to be slashed to about $102.5m because of payouts to customers who had placed winning bets.
Online trading firms tend to experience increases in demand during periods of financial market volatility, such as those fuelled by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Unlike many of its rivals, Plus500 does not generally hedge the bets it takes. This means it loses money when its customers win, and vice versa, which has contributed to a history of fluctuating fortunes for the business.
David Zruia, interim chief executive of Plus500, said:
We have consistently stated that customer trading performance is subject to significant market movements and is therefore likely to fluctuate. This is magnified during periods of heightened market volatility, such as those we are currently experiencing and given the growing scale of the business.
Nonetheless, we continue to expect this performance to revert to a medium-term historical level of near zero and our outlook for the year remains unchanged.
Police officers in Bangladesh have turned to yoga to improve their health and help with their breathing as they continue to police the country through its coronavirus outbreak, AFP reports.
Shama Makhing, a yoga instructor who led some 100 officers in stretching and breathing exercises in Dhaka early on Monday, said the ancient practice from India would support the officers physically and mentally.
“They cannot skip duty,” Makhing told AFP. “Therefore it is important for the policemen to be fit. Yoga … can help with their breathing.”
On Monday, Bangladesh reported 2,735 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, out of 12,944 samples tested in the last 24 hours in labs across the country. So far, 68,504 cases have been recorded since the beginning of the outbreak, of which 14,560 have recovered.
Forty-two more deaths were reported in the past 24 hours, taking the country’s total death toll to 930.
Small fishing boats, fish markets and female workers are among the categories worst affected by the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis on the world’s fisheries, research has found, writes Fiona Harvey, the Guardian’s environment correspondent.
Supply chains around the world have been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and artisanal fishing – small boats – has borne the brunt, according to the annual report on fisheries by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). While industrial fishing had fallen only by about 6.5% in April owing to the crisis, a large proportion of small vessels around the world have been in effect confined to port, and their markets are uncertain.
In parts of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, more than 90% of small-scale fishing fleets have had to stop fishing, owing to a lack of markets and falling prices.
The closure of restaurants, hotels and catering has cut off markets for small boats, and led to falling prices, and the resulting disruption has led to an increase in waste, according to an appendix to the annual report, published on Monday for World Oceans Day. Some of these effects are hard to quantify as yet. The main report was prepared before the coronavirus crisis hit, so the appendix contains only preliminary information rather than extensive research, but it indicates a growing difficulty for many small fishing fleets around the world.
Restrictions on international travel imposed by Russia are to be eased, the prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, said on Monday, as he announced a rollback of coronavirus measures.
The city of Moscow will also roll back curbs imposed over the virus from Tuesday, including cancelling a digital pass system for residents and a self-isolation regime, the Tass news agency reported separately, according to Reuters.
Muscovites will be able to go out for walks whenever they want from Tuesday, Tass said, and restaurants and cafes in the Russian capital will be allowed to open their summer verandas from 16 June.
Russia continues to report thousands of new infections daily, with its nationwide tally now at 476,658, the third-highest in the world, but the number of cases in Moscow, the original epicentre of the virus, has fallen sharply.
On Monday, the anti-coronavirus crisis centre reported 8,985 new coronavirus cases across the country; 3,293 new patients (36.6%) have no symptoms of Covid-19.
Russia closed its borders on 30 March, after grounding all international flights and asking citizens to stay at home to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
Read the original article at The Guardian