Coronavirus live news: Sweden to lift advice against non-essential travel as death toll passes 5,000

France hopes to reach an agreement with the 26 other members of the European Union on a proposed €750bn recovery fund in July, a presidential adviser has said ahead of videoconference between EU leaders on Friday.

“It’s in no one’s interest to see the situation get bogged down,” the adviser said, reports Reuters, adding that “giant steps” had been made in recent weeks, including the backing of all EU countries for a joint debt mechanism.

The UK death toll from confirmed cases of the new coronavirus has risen to 42,153, an increase of 184, the latest daily figures from the UK government show.

The daily increase of 184 is down on the previous daily rise of 233. A further 1,115 have tested positive for Covid-19, taking the UK total to 299,251 as of Wednesday morning.

Sweden will lift its advice against non-essential travel to 10 European countries from 30 June, the country’s foreign ministry has said.

The countries are Greece, Croatia, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, France, Iceland, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg.

For other European countries – including the UK as well as neighbouring Denmark, Norway and Finland – the advice against non-essential travel will still apply.

A recommendation against travel to countries outside the EU and the Schengen open-border zone – which groups most EU member states and some non-members – will be extended to 31 August, Reuters reports.

Spain will formally honour its coronavirus victims on 16 July with a ceremony that will be attended by top EU and World Health Organization figures, the country’s prime minister has said.

The disease has left 27,136 people dead in Spain from 244,000 cases, making it the sixth worst-hit country in the world.

The Spanish government said King Felipe VI would preside over the event, which will take place in the square outside the Royal Palace in Madrid, the news agency AFP reports.

Among those attending will be the EU council chief Charles Michel, the European commission president Ursula von der Leyen, European parliament leader David Sassoli, top EU diplomat Josep Borrell and World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, told its parliament today:

There will be a state ceremony on 16 July to honour our 27,000 fellow countrymen who lost their lives that will also pay homage to those public servants who have been fighting on the front line against the pandemic.

The UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s car has been involved in a minor collision in Westminster, central London.

Johnson was travelling in his silver Jaguar when a protester tried to run in front of it, forcing the car to slam on its brakes before it was hit by a Range Rover travelling behind.

Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident, the prime minister’s spokesman has said. The protester was detained.

I’m sure many of us are utterly desperate to get back to the gym (he says, while sipping a can of pop and munching a chocolate bar). Well, Mexico is here to show us the way.

Behold, the coronavirus-friendly fitness cubicle, encased in what looks like some kind of perspex glass. I think I’ll stick with my chocolate bar for now.

Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

Deaths and infections.

* More than 8.21 million people have been reported to be infected by coronavirus globally and 443,428* have died.

Europe.

* Germany’s smartphone app to help trace coronavirus infections has been downloaded 6.5 million times in the first 24 hours since its launch. * Russia reported 7,843 new cases of the coronavirus, its lowest daily caseload registered since April 30, pushing the nationwide total to 553,301. * Access to credit in the Polish economy could be limited by the coronavirus crisis, but the risks of a crunch have been lessened by actions already taken, the central bank said.

Americas

* New coronavirus infections hit record highs in six U.S. states, marking a rising tide of cases for a second consecutive week as most states moved forward with reopening their economies.
* The Trump administration said it would extend existing restrictions on non-essential travel at land ports of entry with Canada and Mexico.
* Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said he had been diagnosed with coronavirus, is receiving treatment and will work remotely and through his aides.
* Mexico went into the coronavirus outbreak insisting it would beat the pandemic without mass testing, but with deaths surging as it prepares to exit lockdown, the strategy looks increasingly untenable.

Asia-Pacific.

* Scores of flights to and from Beijing were cancelled, schools shut and some neighbourhoods blocked off as officials ramped up efforts to contain a coronavirus outbreak that has fanned fears of wider contagion.
* Japanese researchers confirmed the presence of the coronavirus in wastewater plants, a finding that could serve as a signal for future outbreaks.
* Delhi’s local health minister checked into hospital and was being tested for the coronavirus as India reported more than 10,500 new infections.

Middle East and Africa

* Israel signed an agreement with Moderna Inc for the future purchase of its potential vaccine should the company succeed in its development.
* Nigeria’s commercial hub Lagos has suspended plans to reopen places of worship after a review of the new outbreak, the state governor said.

In Kazakhstan, president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has sought to allay fears stating Covid-19 is under control as the government prepared to announce fresh measures to stabilise the situation.

Authorities raised the alarm earlier about a fresh surge in cases in the capital, Nur-Sultan.

Saule Kisikova, the head of Nur-Sultan’s healthcare department, said the situation had worsened in the capital over the last few weeks and that more hospitals were being converted into Covid-19 facilities.

But doctors and other medical personnel are already stretched in the city of 1.2 million, she said, with more than 150 fresh cases reported daily for the last three days.

“If city dwellers continue behaving carelessly, there will not be enough doctors and hospital beds for everyone,” she said.

“We must not repeat the Italian scenario with patients lying in corridors and a lack of doctors and ventilators, because of (our) negligence,” she said, referring to the situation in northern Italy at the height of its Covid-19 pandemic.

Kazakhstan ended a two-month nationwide lockdown in May after its economy took a heavy hit and half of the population applied for financial aid from the state.

Over the past week, however, the authorities have once again tightened restrictions such as the working hours of shops and public transport in most of the provinces, citing accelerating spread rates of the virus.

The central Asian country, which has a population of about 19 million, has so far confirmed more than 21,000 cases of the new coronavirus – including about 3,700 in the capital – with 88 deaths.

On the worrying rise in infections in China, at least one potential source of the spike has been ruled out: Norwegian salmon.

A Norwegian minister has said its salmon was officially not the source of the recently discovered outbreak of coronavirus in Beijing after a cluster of new cases was reportedly traced back to chopping boards used for imported fish at the huge Xinfadi market in China’s capital.

Many Chinese restaurants and retailers have since stopped selling imports of the fish as millions of people in Beijing were placed under renewed restrictions.

“The issue is being resolved. We’re working out the details today,” Norway’s fisheries minister Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen has said, quoted by TDN Finans.

Ingebrigtsen said Chinese and Norwegian officials had met on Tuesday and concluded that Norwegian salmon was unlikely to be the source of the virus detected last week at the Beijing market.

At least 137 people have been infected since last week in China’s capital, a resurgence of infections that has led to the lockdown of several neighbourhoods and the cancellation of more than a thousand flights.

The death toll in Sweden has passed 5,000, far higher than neighbouring Nordic countries. The official death toll has reached 5,041, up from 4,939 on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

Sweden has taken a softer approach to fighting the coronavirus, leaving most schools, shops and restaurants open and relying on voluntary measures focused on social distancing and good hygiene.

The number of deaths in Sweden has been far higher relative to the size of the population than in Denmark, Norway and Finland, where authorities have taken a stricter approach. But they have been lower than in Britain, Italy and Spain, where there have also been lockdowns.

Taiwan is planning to relax controls on some foreign business visitors to the island from countries deemed low-risk, including New Zealand, Australia and Thailand.

Despite its close proximity and trade links with China, Taiwan has contained its own outbreak to just 445 cases, including seven deaths. Thanks to strict arrival controls and efficient trace and testing programmes it has recorded no local infections for 66 days.

The AFP news agency reports that from 22 June the self-quarantine period will be reduced from 14 days to five days for short-term business visitors from 14 “low-risk” places including Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Thailand.

“Mid-to-low risk” countries including South Korea, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore will have their quarantine periods cut to seven days, according to the government.

Visitors will need to provide proof of being tested negative for Covid-19 up to three days before departure and have no other travel history in the last two weeks, AFP reports.

They also have to test negative at the end of their shortened quarantine period before they can conduct business activities.

Business visitors who want to stay in Taiwan for more than three months still must undergo a full 14-day quarantine.

Around 11,000 mink at a farm in Denmark will have to be culled after they were found to be infected with the coronavirus, the country’s authorities have said.

The outbreak is the first in Denmark, the world’s biggest producer of mink skins, but comes shortly after the virus was found at 13 mink farms in the Netherlands, where about 570,000 mink have been ordered culled.

A spokeswoman told Reuters that around 11,000 mink would be culled in Denmark. A person associated with the farm had previously tested positive with Covid-19.

If you’re planning to meet Vladimir Putin in the next few weeks, be warned: you will have to pass through a special disinfectant tunnel to get to the Russian president.

Putin’s official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has confirmed a report by Russian state television that three airport-style tunnels have been built for the president: one at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, where he has reputedly being doing much of his work during the pandemic, and two at the Kremlin.

Demonstration footage of the tunnel, published by the state-controlled RIA news agency on Tuesday night, showed masked people passing through it being sprayed with disinfectant from the ceiling and from the side.

Russia has recorded more than 500,000 coronavirus infections, the third highest number of cases in the world after Brazil and the US, something it attributes to a massive testing programme. Its death toll has reached 7,478 deaths so far but critics are dubious about the accuracy of its mortality figures, Reuters reports.

Staying on Dexamethasone, the decades-old steroid found to be a life-saving treatment for Covid-19, officials in Russia say the drug is being used to treat its coronavirus patients but that it was “not a panacea”.

The state-controlled RIA news agency quotes Sergei Avdeev, head of the pulmonology department at Sechenov University, Russia’s largest medical research school, as saying:

The drug is already widely used in Russia. But dexamethasone, alas, is not a panacea: in some cases, it can help, but [only] in some.

The drug does have an anti-inflammatory effect in a certain part of patients with Covid-19 who have severe inflammation. In the latest version of the guidelines for the prevention and diagnosis of coronavirus infection, you can see that glucocorticosteroids, including dexamethasone, are prescribed there. In many clinics it is already being used in Russia.

The RIA report in Russian is here.