Coronavirus live news: number of confirmed cases worldwide passes 15 million
In the UK, the public health official credited for her response in the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings said the experience helped her in the early period of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Tracy Daszkiewicz said she and colleagues thought the 2018 nerve agent attack was “probably the biggest of our career”, but added: “Little did we know what 2020 had in store.”
She was recently appointed deputy (PHE) director for population health and wellbeing at Public Health England, having previously held the role of Wiltshire Council’s director of public health. Speaking to the Lords Public Services Committee on Wednesday she has said:
A huge amount was learned from the situation in 2018. The nerve agent poisonings was obviously an unprecedented incident and one that called on local, regional, and national response and all layers of the system were utilised to full effect.
This case became of huge national importance and interest very, very quickly.
France has recorded 998 more cases in the past 24 hours, according to the latest health ministry data. The number of confirmed cases now stands at 178,336, the ministry said.
The number of people in hospitals with the virus was down to 6,366 from 6,482 a day earlier, and the number in intensive care was down to 445 from 455 a day earlier, the figures showed. The number of deaths in France stood at 30,172, against 30,165 a day earlier.
The US has suffered 1,047 more deaths and confirmed another 63,028 cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has said. The latest official figures take the respective totals to 141,677 and 3,882,167.
Egypt has extended the operating hours of cafes and restaurants from 10pm to midnight (EET) while allowing them to operate at 50% capacity starting 26 July, the cabinet has said. The operating hours of shops, including shopping centres, were also extended until 10pm, the government added.
Egypt had reduced operating hours in its initial reopening phase to limit public gatherings and curb the spread of the virus.
Indian-administered Kashmir has imposed a strict lockdown for a week as authorities warned of rising coronavirus cases, one day after cancelling a major annual Hindu pilgrimage.
India, which has recorded almost 1.2 million infections and is the world’s third-most infected nation, had significantly eased a months-long shutdown to revive its shattered economy.
But numerous states across the nation of 1.3 billion people have reimposed restrictions in recent weeks as case numbers exploded, sparking fears of overwhelmed healthcare systems.
Authorities said the Muslim-majority Himalayan valley, apart from one district, would go into lockdown until 29 July, when the restrictions would be reviewed.
“Complete lockdown in all red districts… from today evening,” the local administration’s information department tweeted.
Agriculture, construction, and the transportation of fuel and other goods is permitted under the order.
It came a day after the Amarnath Yatra – an annual Hindu pilgrimage to a cave shrine in Kashmir that draws some 300,000 participants – was cancelled for the first time in more than a century.
The pilgrimage, held for nearly two months, is usually guarded by some 40,000 government forces as well as health professionals.
But authorities said they were not able to divert such huge resources to the event with the health crisis still raging. Officials said:
The health concerns are so serious that the strain on the health system, along with the diversion in resources to the yatra, will be immense.
This would also unnecessarily put the yatris (pilgrims) at risk of catching Covid-19.
Kashmir has so far reported nearly 16,000 virus cases including 273 deaths in the region of 14 million people, local health officials said on Wednesday.
Daily deaths due to Covid-19 on Tuesday surpassed 1,000 for the first time in the US since the start of June, as Donald Trump admitted the crisis would “get worse” before it got better.
The seven-day average for the number of deaths in the country has been slowly rising this month, according to multiple data analyses, and went past the 1,000 mark on Tuesday, taking US fatalities to more than 142,000.
At the White House’s renewed coronavirus daily press briefing late on Tuesday, the president said that the virus “will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better”, an admission in line with what public health experts have been saying for months. Trump still praised the US response to the pandemic, saying it has been “better than most”.
Public health experts such as Dr Anthony Fauci have warned for weeks that the US will see the consequences of ending shutdown orders too soon. As states along the south saw surges in new infections, experts said those states will ultimately see an uptick in deaths.
That fear is becoming a reality as deaths in those states reached almost record highs on Tuesday. Texas saw 131 deaths while Florida and Arizona both saw 134 deaths – the second-highest numbers yet seen for the states. Public health officials said that ICU beds in those states are nearly at capacity with a surge in hospitalizations amid the spikes.
Female leaders are doing a better job handling the coronavirus crisis, European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde said, praising them for their honest communication and for showing they cared.
“I am going to be extremely biased. I’m not going to be a central banker at this very moment but I would say that for myself, I’ve learned that women tend to do a better job,” she said.
Christine Lagarde during a press conference at the ECB headquarters in Germany on 16 July. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
Lagarde, who is the ECB’s first female president, singled out German chancellor Angela Merkel for praise.
She cited Merkel’s science-based approach as an example of how “very honest, transparent” explanations on coronavirus data and infection rates helped members of the public appreciate why masks, social distancing and confinement measures were necessary.
“It became very quickly sort of a common lingua franca, common knowledge that people would understand those scientific elements,” Lagarde said.
The female leaders of Taiwan, Belgium and New Zealand had also “carried the water of bad news as well as the water of clear explanation and strong recommendations”, she added.
Germany has weathered the coronavirus crisis better than many of its European neighbours, while Taiwan and New Zealand are considered success stories in the fight against the pandemic.
By contrast, observers have noted that male, populist leaders like US president Donald Trump, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and British prime minister Boris Johnson have struggled to contain the outbreaks in their countries.
Former French finance minister Lagarde, 64, said leadership was about “being both responsible and accountable”.
It’s about caring as well… I think the caring dimension is something that (female leaders) managed to express well. And that was considered by viewers and voters probably as authentic.
There are now over 15 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
The global tally of cases now stands at 15,000,424, with 617,832 deaths.
The US has the highest number of cases, with 3,915,780, followed by Brazil with 2,159,654 and India with 1,193,078.
Although it has considerably less confirmed cases – 297,951 – the United Kingdom still has the third highest death toll, with 45,586 fatalities.
The actual number of cases is likely to be much higher, due to lack of testing.
The World Health Organization is doing a live Q&A on the Covid-19 pandemic.
Asked about face masks, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO Covid-19 technical lead, said the agency recommends they are worn by healthcare workers, those who are displaying coronavirus symptoms, and in situations where it is not possible to physically distance, particularly indoor settings.
Dr Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO health emergencies programme, warned that schools are a microcosm of society when it comes to the spread of Covid-19.
If we have spread of the virus in our community, and that spread is intense and widespread, then that disease will spread through the school as well.
We know that children can spread the disease. Thankfully the vast majority of children don’t suffer a very severe illness, but that doesn’t mean they can’t participate in the process of transmission.
He added that in some parts of the world school is a safer place to be, in terms of nutrition and safety, so “we have to do everything possible to bring our children back to school” and that means tackling the virus.
The Italian government will approve a new spending package on Wednesday, economy minister Roberto Gualtieri said, the third major cash injection since the start of the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
The stimulus will be worth at least €20bn ($23.15bn), sources told Reuters, driving the 2020 budget deficit well above 11% of national output, compared with a 10.4% goal set in April.
The cabinet will approve the deficit increase at a meeting slated to start at 9pm (1900 GMT).
Speaking in parliament, Gualtieri declined to give details but said part of the extra spending would be used to allow people to pay taxes in installments rather than in a single payment that is currently due in September.
