Coronavirus live news: Sweden sees third consecutive day of over 1,000 new cases; virus ‘under control’ in France
Ireland is accelerating the relaxation of lockdown restrictions by expanding the travel limit and reopening shops, playgrounds, libraries and other facilities from Monday.
The taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, struck an upbeat tone in Ireland’s fight against Covid-19 by quoting Samwise Gamgee, a hobbit in Lord of the Rings. “But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”
The announcement on Friday came amid a sharp fall in new cases – fewer than a hundred each day for the past 12 days – and evidence the reproduction number remains well below 1. Some business leaders, politicians and commentators had voiced concern that the lockdown exit strategy was too slow and conservative.
Varadkar said the roadmap will be speeded up and shortened from five to four phases. “Summer is not lost and this can be a summer of hope if we keep the virus at bay.”
From Monday, the start of the second phase, all retail stores can reopen, but with staggered opening times. The 5km travel limit will expand to let people travel within their county or up to 20km from home, whichever is greater.
MerrionStreet.ie #StayAtHome
(@merrionstreet)An Taoiseach @LeoVaradkar,
“Many have yearned to break free from cocooning, from Monday it will be permissible for people in this category to welcome a small number of visitors to their home.”t.co/REyhbzcrpx#InThisTogether #StayLocal
Groups of up to 6 people will be able to interact indoors or outdoors as long as they keep at least 2m apart. Groups of up to 15 can meet for outdoor sporting activities. Those aged over 70 or medically vulnerable can receive a small number of visitors at home.
Public libraries, playgrounds, outdoor camps for children, marts and greyhound racing can also resume. Up to 25 people will be allowed to attend funerals. Hairdressers, beauticians and barbers must wait until 20 July to reopen.
In earlier, more sombre pandemic-related speeches Varadkar quoted Seamus Heaney. On Friday he quoted Cicero before channeling JRR Tolkien.
Patients who have died or been admitted to intensive care with Covid-19 have been found to be deficient in a vitamin found in spinach, eggs and hard and blue cheeses, raising hopes that dietary change might be one part of the answer to combating the disease, writes Daniel Boffey in Brussels.
Researchers studying patients who were admitted to the Canisius Wilhelmina hospital in the Dutch city of Nijmegen have extolled the benefits of vitamin K after discovering a link between deficiency and the worst coronavirus outcomes.
Covid-19 causes blood clotting and leads to the degradation of elastic fibres in the lungs. Vitamin K, which is ingested through food and absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract, is key to the production of proteins that regulate clotting and can protect against lung disease.
The Dutch researchers are now seeking funding for a clinical trial, but Dr Rob Janssen, a scientist working on the project, said that in light of the initial findings he would encourage a healthy intake of vitamin K, except to those on blood-clotting medications such as warfarin.
He said: “We are in a terrible, horrible situation in the world. We do have an intervention which does not have any side effects, even less than a placebo. There is one major exception: people on anti-clotting medication. It is completely safe in other people.”
The EU has pledged to lift border controls inside its territory by the end of the month while extending a ban on travellers coming from outside the bloc until 1 July.
The extension of the ban on non-essential travel by foreign nationals into the EU’s border free-travel zone was approved by the EU’s 27 home affairs ministers on Friday by video conference.
The travel ban, which had been due to expire on 15 June, applies to all non-EU countries, with exemptions for citizens from EU-associated countries – Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. British travellers also remain exempt from the ban but face two-week quarantine requirements from some European governments.
The EU’s home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, told journalists that “almost all member states” had expressed “a strong preference for a further but short prolongation” of the travel ban. Countries had agreed a “gradual and strictly coordinated lifting” of the restriction from July, she said.
The commander of US forces in Japan has accused China of using the coronavirus crisis as a cover for a surge in naval activity to push territorial claims in the South China Sea.
In a telephone interview with the Reuters news agency, Lieutenant General Kevin Schneider said there had been a surged of activity by China, with navy ships, coast guard vessels and a naval militia of fishing boats in harassing vessels in waters claimed by Beijing.
“Through the course of the Covid crisis we saw a surge of maritime activity,” he told Reuters in a phone interview. He said Beijing had also increased its activity in the East China Sea, where it has a territorial dispute with Japan.
Beijing’s increased level of activity would likely continue, predicted Schneider: “I don’t see troughs, I see plateaus,” he said.
China says its maritime activities in the area are peaceful. The press office at the Chinese embassy in Tokyo was not immediately available to comment outside of normal business hours, Reuters said.
Japan hosts the biggest concentration of US forces in Asia, including an aircraft carrier strike group, an amphibious expeditionary force and fighter squadrons. In addition to defending Japan, they are deployed to deter China from expanding its influence in the region, including in the South China Sea.
Peru is beginning the second phase of its economic reopening on Friday, even as its ongoing coronavirus outbreak showed little signs of slowing, with 4,284 new confirmed cases reported on Thursday.
The president, Martin Vizcarra, announced the second phase of lockdown easing on Thursday, after his council of ministers approved a presidential decree calling for the restart of economic activity.
Peru is the second-worst affected country in Latin America, the region which the World Health Organisation has said is now at the centre of the global coronavirus pandemic. In spite of an early and strictly enforced lockdown it has so far reported a total of 183,198 coronavirus infections and 5,031 deaths from Covid-19 – 137 of which were reported on Thursday.
The economic shutdown has caused widespread hardship in Peru, where much of the population survives from working in the informal economy. Vizcarra’s plan is for 80% of the country’s economy to resume operation from Friday. During lockdown, the economy has been operating at 50% capacity, which Vizcarra said was “not enough to sustain 100%” of the country’s needs.
“We want to raise it to 100% and then even see growth on top of that,” Chinese news agency Xinhua quoted Vizcarra as saying.
Among the sectors scheduled to return to work from Friday were small and medium-size mining enterprises, feed-making for animals, alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, footwear production, printing, and medical tools manufacturing and repair, services including legal and accounting firms, architecture and engineering companies, as well as some retail.
Mosques, churches and other places of worship reopened in Jakarta for the first time in nearly three months on Friday, as the Indonesian capital loosened a partial lockdown, AFP reports.
Jakarta’s governor announced the easing of restrictions on Thursday, with offices, restaurants, shopping malls and tourist attractions also scheduled to reopen in the coming weeks.
While mosques have remained open in some other parts of Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim majority country, for many residents of Jakarta, a megacity that is home to about 30 million people, it was their first time attending Friday prayers since mid-March.
Mohamad Fathi, 35, said he was “full of happiness” at the news. “It cheered me up and satisfied my longing for mass prayers,” he told AFP. “I’m very happy we’re now allowed to return to pray.”
However, the weekly service was shorter than usual as part of efforts to lower the risk of COVID-19 infections, he said. Mosque-goers were also ordered to bring their own prayer mats and abide by social-distancing rules with temperature checks at the door.
On Friday, Indonesia reported 703 new cases of coronavirus and 49 coronavirus-related deaths. There have now been a total of 29,521 infections in the country of 274 million people, and 1,770 deaths.
US clothing retailer Gap has reported a quarterly loss of almost $1bn, after it had to close the vast majority of its stores worldwide during the coronavirus shutdown, writes Joanna Partridge, for the Guardian’s business desk.
The company, based in San Francisco, made a loss of $932m (£738m) for the three months to 2 May, compared with $227m profit during the same period in 2019.
The retailer, know for its denim, chinos and T-shirts, included in its quarterly loss a $484m write-down on its stores and operating lease assets, and a $235m charge on excess stock.
Like many of its competitors, Gap has been left with mountains of seasonal clothing that it has not been able to sell while 90% of its global stores were temporarily forced to close during lockdown.
Retailers of non-essential goods, such as clothing, have been significantly affected by store closures across many territories, which were designed to slow the spread of Covid-19.
The pandemic triggered several high-profile retail insolvencies in the US, including fashion chain JCrew, and department store chains JC Penney and Neiman Marcus.
The group, which also owns the Old Navy and Banana Republic brands, said that customers were focused on buying casual clothes while staying at home, hitting sales at Banana Republic, which offers more workwear.
Restaurants are opening, parks are full and people are getting back to work: parts of Europe, Asia and much of the Middle East are enjoying the benefits of flattened coronavirus curves. Meanwhile, parts of the US, India and Latin America are still recording thousands of new cases every day.
The first wave of the coronavirus is not over. The future shape of the pandemic will be decided both by human action, in the form of social distancing, testing and other traditional methods of disease control, and also several unanswered questions about the nature of the virus itself.
Experts say there are several possibilities, Michael Safi, the Guardian’s international correspondent, reports.
The number of new cases of coronavirus in Iran slid slightly from its new peak yesterday, with 2,886 more people in the country testing positive for the virus in the past 24 hours, according to the health ministry.
On Thursday, Iran reported a new record in transmissions detected in a single day, suggesting that the country could be experiencing a second wave of the epidemic. The previous daily record in Iran, which was one of the first countries in the Middle East to be gripped by the disease, was 3,186 on 30 March.
In spite of a steadily rising infection rate, authorities have been progressively lifting controls on shops, mosques, schools, offices and travel. The border with Turkey was also being opened for haulage traffic on Thursday.
In his latest update, Kianoush Jahanpour, the health ministry spokesman, said 63 more Iranians had died from Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. There are currently 2,573 people in critical condition.
So far, Jahanpour said, 129,741 people out of a total of 167,156 infected with the virus have recovered.
Read the original article at The Guardian