Coronavirus live news: more than 160,000 new cases reported every day in past week, says WHO
The World Health Organization has warned the Middle East faces a “critical threshold” amid a relaxation of coronavirus measures, following a surge in cases in the region.
The global health body confirmed on Sunday there were more than one million cases of Covid-19 across the 22 countries that the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean region covers, stretching from Morocco to Pakistan.
Over 80% of all deaths in the region were reported in five countries: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, according to the WHO.
The WHO’s Middle East head, Ahmed al-Mandhari, said it was a “concerning milestone”, adding: “We are at a critical threshold in our region.”
The number of cases reported in June alone is higher than the total number of cases reported during the four months following the first reported case in the region on 29 January.
He attributed the rise in cases to increased testing, but also to the lifting in recent weeks of restrictions put in place to combat the virus’ spread.
He urged individuals to be “cautious and vigilant” as lockdowns and curfews were eased, and to follow protocols recommended by health authorities.
“Easing of lockdowns does not mean easing of the response or easing of social responsibilities,” he said, adding there was a risk the number of cases will rise as public spaces reopen “even in countries where the situation now seems to be stabilising”.
Textile factories that operated normally at the height of the coronavirus pandemic could be responsible for a fresh lockdown in Leicester, central England, a report has claimed.
The city on Tuesday became the first in the country to see localised two-week restrictions imposed because of a spike in cases, just days before a planned easing of restrictions.
Labour Behind the Label, which campaigns for the rights of textile workers, claimed in a report that some factories in Leicester operated at full capacity throughout the crisis.
It added it was “inconceivable” they would have been able to do so and still follow social distancing rules and proper Covid-19 protection measures.
The report alleged that textile workers were pressured into working, in one case when a staff member had tested positive for the virus.
Furlough wage payments from the government were in some instances kept by bosses rather than passed on to workers, it added.
“Allegations of abuse at many Leicester companies have been reported for years now,” said Labour Behind the Label’s Dominique Muller.
A parliamentary report last year suggested there are as many 1,000 garment factories operating in the English east Midlands city, which has one of the Britain’s most diverse populations.
Labour Behind The Label accused major retail brands, including Boohoo, which it said accounted for 75% of clothing production in the city, of doing little to monitor conditions at factories.
The global coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, the World Health Organization has said, pointing out that June saw more than half of all cases reported since the start of the pandemic.
“For the past week, the number of the new cases has exceeded 160,000 on every single day,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing.
Sixty percent of all cases so far have been reported just in the past month.
With over 511,000 deaths and more than 10.5 million known infections worldwide, the coronavirus pandemic is “not even close to being over”, the WHO warned earlier this week.
Tedros reiterated that taking a “comprehensive approach” was the best way to rein in the virus.
Countries that have implemented a wide range of measures, including contact tracing, isolation, physical distancing and mask wearing “have suppressed transmission and saved lives”, he said.
The UN health agency was therefore very concerned, he said, to see that a number of countries “have not used all the tools at their disposal and have taken a fragmented approach.
“These countries face a long, hard road ahead,” he said.
He stressed that while the pandemic posed a scientific challenge, “it’s also a test of character”.
Iraq’s official coronavirus death toll has surpassed 2,000, as the war-ravaged country’s crippled healthcare system struggles to cope.
Health authorities announced there were now 51,524 cases of the Covid-19 disease in the country and that 2,050 people had died of the virus, while 26,267 people had recovered.
Iraq, which has recorded cases in all of its 18 provinces but mainly in Baghdad – a city of 10 million people – said it has carried out 556,000 tests since March.
But due to decades of chronic shortages of doctors, medicines and hospital beds, the country has relied heavily on aid from abroad to continue testing its population.
Medical aid packages are unloaded from a Turkish Armed Forces’ plane upon its arrival in Baghdad Airport today. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
According to the World Health Organization, there are 14 hospital beds per 10,000 inhabitants in Iraq – compared to 60 in France, for example – and the oil-rich country devotes just 1.8% of its budget to health.
Hospitals across the country have been overwhelmed over recent weeks by a jump in cases and deaths, following months of the virus spreading relatively slowly.
Doctors in coronavirus wards have complained of a lack of personal protective equipment and say they have been made to keep working even if they showed symptoms of infection.
Hundreds of Covid-19 cases have been recorded in their ranks.
Despite the rise in infections, authorities are refusing to reimpose a full lockdown in an effort to revive the economy.
A leading scientist behind the University of Oxford’s potential Covid-19 vaccine said the team has seen the right sort of immune response in trials, but declined to give a firm timeframe for when it could be ready.
Speaking at a parliamentary hearing, Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the university, said 8,000 volunteers had been enrolled for Phase III of its trial into the vaccine, AZD1222, which was licensed to AstraZeneca. She said:
We’re very happy that we’re seeing the right sort of immune response that will give protection, and not the wrong sort.
The project has started Phase III of the human trials to assess how the vaccine works in a large number of people over the age of 18.
The race is on to develop a working Covid-19 vaccine, with fears that the pandemic could re-intensify towards the end of the year, in the northern hemisphere’s winter season.
Kate Bingham, chair of the UK Government Vaccine Taskforce, said that, excluding the Oxford vaccine programme, she hoped there would be a breakthrough by early 2021.
Gilbert said she hoped that her Oxford vaccine would make progress earlier, but was not more specific as she said the timeline for when the vaccine might be ready depends on the results of the trial.
John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, said that Britain should prepare for not having a Covid-19 vaccine for the winter and encourage people to get their flu vaccinations to avoid “pandemonium” in hospitals.
This whole epidemic has relied too heavily on assumptions that have turned out not to be true.
So my strong advice is to be prepared for the worst.
Americans’ anxieties over the spread of the coronavirus are at the highest in more than a month, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed, as California recorded its biggest single-day spike in cases since the pandemic began.
With the US death toll at more than 127,000, by far the highest in the world, the 29-30 June poll found that 81% of American adults said they are “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the pandemic, the most since a similar poll conducted 11-12 May.
The centre of the US pandemic has moved from the northeast to the west and south, especially California, Texas, Florida and Arizona.
Bill de Blasio, the mayor of hard-hit New York City, said on Wednesday he was not going ahead with a plan to allow indoor restaurant dining from 6 July, citing the alarming situation elsewhere.
We see a lot of problems and we particularly see problems revolving around people going back to bars and restaurants indoors, and indoors is the problem more and more.
Public health officials believe the decision to reopen bars in many states was one of the main contributors to the sharp increases. Several states have since moved to re-close them.
Customers dine outside Dudley’s in New York last week. Mayor Bill de Blasio says he is delaying the planned resumption of indoor dining at restaurants in the city, fearing it would ignite a spike in coronavirus infections. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP
Cases in California rose by 8,441 on Tuesday as the United States recorded it biggest one-day increase of nearly 48,000 new infections, a Reuters tally showed.
Concerns about the pandemic appear to be rising the most among members of president Donald Trump’s Republican Party, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Republicans have generally been less enthusiastic about imposing and maintaining restrictions to stop the spread of the virus such as sheltering at home or wearing face masks, turning the public safety measures into a partisan issue.
About seven in 10 Republicans said they were personally concerned about the virus’ spread, up from six in 10 Republicans in polls conducted over the past few weeks.
Trump officials have blamed the surge in cases on increased testing, but the rise in the percentage of people testing positive and in hospitalisations are not linked to more tests being conducted.
Three states with at least 500 total deaths – Arizona, Louisiana and Texas – have seen the rate of fatalities increase for two weeks or more. Deaths in Arizona rose 63% in the week ended 28 June, one of the largest increases in the country.
In parts of Texas and Arizona, hospital intensive care beds for Covid-19 patients are also in short supply.
Medical personnel prepare to test hundreds of people lined up in vehicles in Phoenix’s western neighborhood of Maryvale. Photograph: Matt York/AP
With limited guidance from the White House, the pandemic fight has largely been left to local officials, and the pressure to re-open their economies has been enormous.
Millions have lost their jobs as the economy contracted sharply in the first quarter and is expected to crater in the second.
But when asked in the latest poll about the “most important factor” determining their vote in November, 27% of respondents said it was the candidate’s plan to help the nation recover from the coronavirus, compared with 21% who said it was the candidate’s plan to create jobs and boost the economy.
After months in self-isolation, he’s back. Vladimir Lenin, embalmed and entombed, has reopened to the Russian public, luring bold tourists back to Red Square and down a steep set of mausoleum stairs to his resting place for most of the last 96 years.
From early on Wednesday morning, a queue of dozens of people stretched around the mausoleum, past the Kremlin walls and up to the red-bricked historical museum. To see the preserved corpse of the former Soviet leader you must wear a mask, gloves, and pass a temperature check. Inside, visitors reported a pungent smell of cleaning solution, perhaps due to a recent sanitisation.
Coming after a three-month break due to the coronavirus pandemic, attendance was subdued. “I’ve never seen the queue so short,” said one young mother, who was taking her daughter and friends from out of town for the first time. It is joked of as a tourist trap. “Muscovites never come here without visitors [from out of town].”
The reopening is another sign that life is getting back to normal in Russia, if normal means displaying a leader who died in 1924 in a glass case to tourists.
Students attend class as Thai schools reopen across the country following the easing of coronavirus restrictions. Staff and pupils will have to observe government-imposed guidelines such as social distancing and the use of face masks. Photograph: Diego Azubel/EPA
The UK may find it hard to obtain stocks of remdesivir, one of two drugs shown to work in treating Covid-19, over the coming months, deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam told the science and technology select committee of the House of Commons.
The UK had stocks it bought for clinical trials, which the NHS is currently still using, he said.
The deputy CMO side-stepped the politics, contrasting remdesivir with dexamethasone, the one drug shown to save lives, which is very easy to obtain because it is cheap and widely available all over the world. He said:
No – I don’t think it [remdesivir] will be as easy or straightforward to obtain as the measures we took for dexamethasone, by virtue of its scarcity and the fact that it is a new medicine with a relatively long manufacturing time.
But remdesivir would not be suitable for all patients, because it is an intravenous drug and cannot be used in the later stages of the disease, he said.
The drug has so far only been shown to shorten the course of the disease, so patients recover sooner. But Van Tam said it was possible remdesivir could also have an effect on survival.
The US government has secured 100% of the drug being made in July and 90% due to be produced in August and September.
The US has issued emergency use authorisation for Kroger’s at-home sample collection kit for Covid-19, according to a report by Reuters.
The kits will be available to frontline workers across its companies beginning this week, Kroger said, adding that it plans to expand availability to other companies in the coming weeks, with a goal of processing up to 60,000 tests per week by the end of July.
Kroger said the nasal swab sample needs to be performed under the supervision of a licensed healthcare professional through video chat and will be shipped overnight to a designated laboratory for processing.
Most results will be confirmed in less than 72 hours, the company said.
While self-sample collection helps reduce patient traffic at hospitals and minimise chances of infection for healthcare workers, experts have flagged concerns about whether patients can accurately collect samples on their own and ship them to labs.
The FDA in April authorised for emergency use the first Covid-19 diagnostic kit by LabCorp with at-home collection of nasal swab samples which are then sent to the company’s labs for testing.
The US has been criticised by health experts for buying up nearly the entire global supply of remdesivir, the only drug licensed so far to treat Covid-19.
AP reports:
Ohid Yaqub, a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex, called the move disappointing news.
It so clearly signals an unwillingness to cooperate with other countries and the chilling effect this has on international agreements about intellectual property rights, Yaqub said in a statement.
Dr. Peter Horby, who is running a large clinical trial testing several treatments for COVID-19, told the BBC that a stronger framework was needed to ensure fair prices and access to key medicines for people and nations around the world. He said that as an American company, Gilead was likely under certain political pressures locally.
The criticism follows Guardian health editor Sarah Boseley’s story that the US has bought up virtually all the stocks of remdesivir for the next three months. She writes:
Experts and campaigners are alarmed both by the US unilateral action on remdesivir and the wider implications, for instance in the event of a vaccine becoming available. The Trump administration has already shown that it is prepared to outbid and outmanoeuvre all other countries to secure the medical supplies it needs for the US.
“They’ve got access to most of the drug supply [of remdesivir], so there’s nothing for Europe,” said Dr Andrew Hill, senior visiting research fellow at Liverpool University.
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The UK’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said 43,906 people had died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus as of 5pm on Tuesday, up by 176 from 43,730 the day before
The UK’s government figures do not include all deaths involving Covid-19 across the UK, which are thought to have passed 54,000, PA Media reports.
The DHSC also said in the 24-hour period up to 9am on Wednesday, 226,398 tests were carried out or dispatched, with 829 positive results. Overall, a total of 9,662,051 tests have been carried out and 313,483 cases have been confirmed positive.
The figure for the number of people tested has been “temporarily paused to ensure consistent reporting” across all methods of testing.
Hello, I’m Aamna taking over the liveblog while Jessica has lunch. If you want to get in touch, you can email me (aamna.mohdin@theguardian.com) or tweet me (@aamnamohdin)
Ryanair pilots have agreed to take a 20% pay cut as part of efforts to avoid up to 3,000 job cuts at Europe’s biggest budget airline.
The pilots’ union Balpa announced on Wednesday that 96% of its Ryanair members had voted to accept the temporary pay cut in order to “save jobs that were under threat” due to the collapse in demand for flights in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
Brian Strutton, Balpa’s general secretary said:
This is a terrible time for aviation and for employees in all airlines. It was our members’ mandate for us to save as many jobs as possible. In the circumstances this is the right thing to do even if it means accepting difficult temporary reductions in pay.
The pilots agreed to the pay cut deal hours after Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, made public an ultimatum that a total of 3,000 job losses could only be avoided if all staff agreed to pay cuts.
The virus has killed at least 511,909 people across 188 countries and regions, the data shows.
The tally likely only reflects a fraction of the actual number of infections, with many countries testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
The US continues to be the worst-hit country with 127,425 deaths from 2,636,538 cases.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 59,594 deaths from 1,402,041 cases, the United Kingdom with 43,815 deaths from 314,162 cases, Italy with 34,767 deaths from 240,578 cases, and France with 29,846 deaths from 202,063 cases.
China has to date declared 84,813 cases, including 4,641 deaths.
