Coronavirus live news: more new cases in China as parts of Europe ease restrictions
The latest coronavirus figures from Iran appear to show a trend towards increased transmission is continuing in the country, with 1,683 new cases recorded in the past 24 hours, the highest daily figure since 11 April, writes Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor.
At the same time the number of deaths reported by the Iranian health ministry was 45, the lowest number since the early days of the outbreak two months ago. A total of 6,685 Iranians have died.
Deaths tend to lag behind infections which should suggest the death toll will rise again in the coming days although it is possible that improved testing means those lightly infected are showing up in the official figures. The recent incline in the number of infections has lasted about a fortnight.
It came as the Iranian government continued to lift restrictions with the move justified by pointing to the number of provinces that are now coming out of the crisis. Religious places, restaurants and hairdressers are all due to open gradually after Ramadan subject to health protocols. Many mosques opened at on Friday
But two provinces Tehran and Khuzestan a province bordering Iraq are suffering badly. The province is being put in effective quarantine for a week with the authorities blaming locals for failing to follow guidelines.
The total numbers infected in Iran since the outbreak began is 109,286, and the Iran government is unofficially projecting fewer than 10,000 will die.
Iranian opposition groups dispute the official figures and say the number of deaths is already close to 40,000.
The Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was confidently tweeting at the weekend that the outbreak had shown the failure of the west. He tweeted “Western civilisation’s failure in their global trial of combating coronavirus is obvious and quite visible. The West and westernised people do not want this failure to be seen. However it is necessary to study and speak about the various dimensions ands reasons for failure.”
Such remarks – turning treatment of the disease into a test of rival ideologies – are hardly likely to encourage the Iranian medical authorities to challenge the official figures.
The Cannes film festival appears to have halted any plans for a physical edition for 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, but is aiming to sponsor screenings at other festivals and cinemas of the films that would have been selected for the festival, Andrew Pulver, the Guardian’s film editor, reports.
In an interview with Screen, Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux said he “could never have imagined” something like the cancellation of the festival, which was originally due to start tomorrow and was “overcome with a great sense of melancholy and nostalgia.”
He added:
Under the circumstances, a physical edition of Cannes 2020 is hard to envisage, so we’ll have to do something different … Everyone understands that [it is] impossible this year.
The festival announced in April that it had been forced to call off its event in its traditional mid-May slot, after restrictions by French government effectively banned mass gatherings until mid-July at the earliest. However, tentative suggestions that a postponed version could be mounted later in the year appear to have been abandoned. Cannes has also appeared to resist calls to go down the digital route and construct a “virtual” festival online.
Frémaux said that, at the beginning of June, Cannes would announce a list of films that would have screened in the 2020 festival. Then, Frémaux said, “the aim is to start organising events in cinemas” – what he termed “Cannes hors les murs”, or “Cannes outside the walls”.
Authorities in South Korea are struggling to contain a new coronavirus outbreak linked to the capital’s nightclub district as a backlash against the country’s gay community increases, prompting fears LGBT people will fail to get tested out of fear of being outed, Nemo Kim in Seoul reports.
South Korea had been praised for its innovative efforts to contain the pandemic, going from the second most infected region outside China to having just a handful of cases before the latest outbreak a week ago.
But the increasing number of cases related to nightclubs in Seoul is raising concerns about a possible second wave as well as over the high level of deeply entrenched homophobic attitudes in the conservative society.
Of 35 new cases, 29 were found to be linked to Itaewon, the capital’s gay district, according to officials from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), bringing the total number of cases related to the clubs to 86.
After Kookmin Ilbo, a local media outlet with links to an evangelical church, reported that businesses visited by an infected man over the long weekend were gay clubs, many other South Korean media followed suit, revealing not only the identity of clientele but also some of their ages and the names of their workplaces.
The media frenzy reached a new level when another infected man was found to have been to an LGBT sauna in Gangnam, prompting a slew of homophobic content in newspapers and online.
Lurid reporting, along with South Korea’s use of the trace and test method, has led to members of the gay community reporting feeling scared to get tested and even suicidal. Officials said 3,112 people who were in the nightclubs were currently not contactable.
Lee Youngwu , a gay man in his 30s, told the Guardian:
I admit it was a huge mistake to visit the gay district when the corona situation was not fully over. But visiting the area is the only time when I can be myself and hang out with others similar to me. During the week, I have to pretend to like women.
My credit card company told me that they passed on my payment information in the district to the authorities. I feel so trapped and hunted down. If I get tested, my company will most likely find out I’m gay. I’ll lose my job and face a public humiliation. I feel as if my whole life is about to collapse. I have never felt suicidal before and never thought I would, but I am feeling suicidal now.
Europe’s largest minority, the Roma people, are being particularly hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic in many countries, because they face a combination of health risks, economic deprivation and increased stigmatisation, reports Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, in Budapest.
Around 80% of Europe’s 10 million Roma live in densely populated neighbourhoods and overcrowded houses, and many do not have access to running water. This means the basic distancing and sanitary measures required to combat the spread of the virus are more difficult. In some countries this has already led to scapegoating of Roma communities as potential illness hotspots.
“This disaster will not only affect the Roma but also mainstream societies, economies, and politics, and heighten inter-ethnic conflict to a level not seen in the last three decades,” according to a recent report by the Open Society Foundations on the impact of coronavirus on Roma in six countries with sizeable communities: Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.
Roma neighbourhoods in Bulgaria and Slovakia have been cordoned off amid fears of the virus spreading. Police checkpoints were introduced outside two large neighbourhoods in Sofia, and people were only allowed to leave the area if they could show a work contract or prove another urgent reason for doing so.
Saudi-backed authorities in Yemen have declared Aden an “infested” city after the number of coronavirus cases there rose, Reuters reports.
The Aden-based national coronavirus committee late on Sunday announced 17 new Covid-19 cases, 10 of them in the southern port city, to raise the total count in areas under the Saudi-backed government’s control to 51 with eight deaths.
The Iran-aligned Houthi movement, which controls Sanaa, the national capital, and most large urban centres, has reported two cases, with one death. The Aden-based government has accused Houthi authorities of covering up an outbreak in Sanaa, an accusation they deny.
The committee said Aden had been declared an “infested city” due to the spread of the coronavirus and other diseases already rife in the country after recent flooding. It said movement from Aden to other regions was barred, except for transport of goods.
“The administrative and political situation in Aden is also hampering efforts to combat the coronavirus and this should be remedied so relevant entities can carry out their duties,” the committee said on its Twitter account.
A five-year war has shattered Yemen’s health system, pushed millions to the brink of famine and divided the country.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says there is community transmission of the virus in Yemen, with the disease spreading undetected among a population with some of the lowest levels of immunity to disease compared with other states.
Testing capabilities are inadequate but the WHO has also urged local authorities to transparently report confirmed cases.
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India is to reopen parts of its railway network this week, despite an ongoing rise in the coronavirus infection rate in the country.
The government’s railway ministry said it would gradually restart passenger services on Tuesday with 15 trains connecting Delhi to Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and other big cities.
“Thereafter, Indian Railways shall start more special services on new routes,” the government said in a statement.
India’s 1.3bn people are currently under lockdown until May 17 and a growing number of politicians and business groups are clamouring for an end to the measures.
An estimated 20m Indians use the railways each day under normal circumstances, and any resumption of services will be essential to restarting the Indian economy.
Figures released by the government on Sunday, however, showed coronavirus infections had jumped by 4,214 to 67,152, the biggest recorded daily rise.
India’s rising numbers of infections are in part the result of increased testing, which has grown from 2,000 tests per day in late March, to 85,000 to 90,000 a day now, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was due to hold a meeting with state chief ministers later on Monday to determine a path out of the lockdown even as infections spread.
Passengers taking the trains that will start up on Tuesday will have to wear masks and undergo screening at the stations, a government official said.
In Afghanistan, the capital, Kabul, recorded its worst day for coronavirus infections after 161 new cases were reported and the health ministry warned transmission will continue to surge across the war-torn country.
The total number of infections in Kabul, which has so far been Afghanistan’s worst affected area, reached 1,257 confirmed cases. Around half of 325 tests in Kabul went back positive today.
Wahid Majroh, deputy health minister said out of 709 tests across the country in the past 24 hours, 285 were positive and two patients had died of Covid-19, taking the total number of infections to 4,687 and death toll to 122. There have so far been 574 recoveries.
Majroh warned that the country is going toward the peak of the virus and that the number of transmissions “will continue to surge”. He also said the testing capacity of the country will increase.
Despite government authorised lockdown in the capital and several other provinces, cities are still crowded and some provinces eased lockdowns on Sunday.
Majroh said there is “a need for people to act responsibly and take the lockdown seriously”. He called on people to stay at home and asked the people to “adapt their life with the coronavirus and observe health guidelines”.
The Afghan government has announced that it has started a plan to distribute bread amongst the country’s poor after around two million Afghans lost their jobs due to the pandemic. The announcement came after at least six people were killed in a protest against unfair distribution of the aid in central Ghor province on Friday.
Officials in Kandahar announced over the weekend that governor of Kandahar tested positive as 30 new confirmed cases reported today, pushing the total number of infection to 537 with 12 deaths.
Kandahar governor is the second high profile official in Afghanistan to get infected to Covid-19 after Ferozuddin Feroz, the health minister infected to virus last Thursday. Heath ministry spokesman said Feroz is in good condition.
The western province of Herat recorded 7 new cases overnight. Herat borders Iran and first case of Covid-19 confirmed in the province as thousands of Afghan migrants poured back from Iran in February and March, fanning out across the country without being tested or quarantined. Herat is the country’s second worst affected city with 901 confirmed cases.
Toward the east, six out of the eight of Sunday’s positive cases in Nangarhar were from province’s prison, said Shah Mahmoud Meyakhil, provincial governor, adding there are 12 other suspected cases are in the prison, 16 new cases confirmed today in Nangarhar.
Meanwhile, the war has intensified as at least six security forces were killed and five others were wounded in a Taliban attack in Laghman province on Sunday night, defense ministry said Monday.
At least 25 civilians were killed and 75 wounded in Taliban attacks over last week, according to country’s National Security Council spokesman.
Read the original article at The Guardian