Coronavirus live news: Sweden virus chief says ‘we could have done better’; Austria scraps land border checks
Pakistan recorded its largest single day increase in coronavirus infections on Wednesday, as a fourth politician died after testing positive for the virus.
Mian Jamshed Kakakhel, who was a member of a provincial assembly in the northwest, died on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports. His death comes a day after two lawmakers died at different hospitals after testing positive for the coronavirus.
So far, four Pakistani lawmakers have died because of the coronavirus in the country, according to the American news agency.
People in a market in Rawalpindi. Photograph: Anjum Naveed/AP
Pakistan on Wednesday reported 67 deaths in the past 24 hours from the outbreak.
Critics have blamed the prime minister, Imran Khan, for an increase in deaths and infections. They accuse him of easing restrictions last month at a time when there was a need to enforce a stricter lockdown to contain the spread of the virus.
Pakistan has recorded a total of 80,463 confirmed cases and 1,688 deaths since February.
The number of deaths per capita from the coronavirus outbreak in Sweden has now surpassed that of France, as the country also recorded a bumper rise in infections due to the release of previously withheld statistics from a Stockholm test lab.
According to the latest update from the public health agency, 74 more people have died from Covid-19 in Sweden, pushing the total death toll to 4,542. With 450 Covid-19 deaths per 1m people, it means Sweden now has a higher coronavirus death rate than France, which has recorded 443 deaths from the virus per 1m population, according to tallies kept on the Worldometers website.
Sweden’s unwelcome rise up the coronavirus rankings on Wednesday came after its chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who is credited with masterminding his country’s light touch outbreak strategy, admitted there was “quite obviously a potential for improvement in what we have done.”
Asked in an interview on Swedish radio whether too many people in Sweden had died, he replied: “Yes, absolutely,” adding that the country would “have to consider in the future whether there was a way of preventing” such a high toll.
“If we were to encounter the same disease again knowing exactly what we know about it today, I think we would settle on doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” Tegnell said. It would be “good to know exactly what to shut down to curb the spread of infection better”, he added.
Also on Wednesday, 2,214 more confirmed cases of coronavirus were announced – the highest daily increase in cases yet in the country. According to Stockholm regional officials, the big daily rise in cases came because a laboratory that had hitherto only reported positive tests to patients publicly released data on 1,385 positive tests for the first time.
Sweden has reported 40,803 cases since the coronavirus outbreak began.
Damien Gayle back on the blog now, with thanks to Alexandra Topping for covering my break. If you have any comments, tips or suggestions drop me a line at damien.gayle@theguardian.com.
In the UK the Home Secretary Priti Patel has outlined how the proposed 14-day quarantine for people coming into the country will work.
She told the Commons that Border Force will check that travellers fill out a form with their contact details and location for isolation on arrival.
She said that anyone found breaking the isolation rules could face a fine of up to £1,000 or prosecution. Patel said:
We will not allow a reckless minority to put our domestic recovery at risk.
The UK government has faced criticised for not implementing a quarantine earlier, but Patel said scientific advisers had advised that quarantine would not have been effective earlier in the pandemic when infection rates in the UK were higher.
Imported cases of the virus now pose a more significant threat, she said, so it was important to “protect our hard-won progress as we move in the right direction”.
The measures will come into force on Monday, with “limited exemptions” intended to ensure supplies of essential items such as food and protective equipment are not disrupted.
The regulations apply to England. Patel said devolved administrations would set out their own rules for enforcing the quarantine.
Controversial French scientist Professor Didier Raoult, who has promoted hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment against Covid-19, has been reported to public prosecutors in Marseille after a fellow specialist claimed patients were given the drug illegally.
The investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné reported on Wednesday that a “colleague” working as an infection specialist had sent a letter to the authorities at the beginning of April claiming Raoult had given trial patients the drug without their “free and clear” consent as required by law.
The French National Drug Agency was said to have carried out its own investigation and concluded that Raoult’s trial patients were not correctly informed. The agency said:
The procedures for informing patients and for tracing the reasons for the prescription do not comply with legal requirements.
The agency added that it had referred the matter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Marseille prosecutor Dominique Laurens told 20 Minutes investigators were looking into the letter with “the greatest care”. She said:
It’s easy to denounce certain things, but much more difficult to verify them.
Under French legislation known as the 2012 Jardé Law, covering therapeutic drug trials, patients must give their express consent to taking part.
Raoult divides public and scientific opinion in France between those who see him as a rebellious local hero and modern messiah and others less convinced by his methods and self-promotion.
He denied the accusations and told French media he had always “respected the full force of the law”.
The links between obesity and the risk of becoming dangerously ill with coronavirus have become increasingly clear, my colleague Sarah Boseley has looked at the subject in detail:
sarahboseley (@sarahboseley)
Obesity and coronavirus: how can a higher BMI increase your risk? t.co/aXiInIfSEf
France’s digital minister has said its coronavirus contact-tracing app has been downloaded 600,000 times since Tuesday afternoon, when it became available.
StopCovid France is designed to prevent a second wave of infections by using smartphone logs to warn users if they have been near someone who later tested positive for the virus, but its launch hasn’t been completely smooth.
A last-minute launch delay meant some citizens downloaded a Catalan health information app with a similar name – Stop Covid19 CAT – causing it to briefly top France’s download charts.
England has not yet launched its app. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, originally said that the app would be “rolling out in mid May” across England, but it could now be as late as mid-May or July.
Both the UK and France have created apps of their own based on a “centralised” design, while other countries such as Latvia, Italy and Switzerland have released apps based on a “decentralised” technology developed by Apple and Google.
Digital Minister Cedric O indicated that he was pleased with the initial uptake. He told the TV channel France 2.
As of this morning, 600,000 people managed to download the app, so it’s a very very good start.
We are very happy with his start, but obviously several million French people need to have it.
This is Lexy Topping, just taking over from Damien for an hour while he has a break.
Officials in Afghanistan have said that the country is heading toward the peak of its coronavirus outbreak as Wednesday saw the biggest one-day rise in the number of deaths yet and the number of confirmed cases passed 17,000, Akhtar Mohammad Makoii reports from Herat.
Amrullah Saleh, the vice president, said people continue to break lockdown roles and that, according to the information he has received from health ministry, Afghanistan is on the verge of a “catastrophe”.
“The virus will spread fast in coming two months, if we control it in August, we can go back to normal on the eve of new year” Saleh said. He also asked the Taliban to announce a humanitarian ceasefire so the health workers can fight the virus across the country.
The office of Save the Children in Afghanistan said Tuesday that the coronavirus crisis has left more than seven million children in the country prone to poverty and barred them from their basic rights.
“Covid-19 crisis exposes more than seven million Afghan children to the threat of hunger. Also, the children who have been deprived of school in the last three months have not had access to their basic right that is education” said Maryam Ataee, the NGO’s Afghanistan spokesperson.
A man walks past a mural painted on the wall of the Ministry of Public Health in Kabul. Photograph: Rahmat Gul/AP
On Wednesday, the Afghan health ministry recorded the biggest one-day rise in number of deaths, as 24 patients died overnight. The ministry also said it had detected 758 new cases, raising the total number of infections to 17,267. Of those 294 have died and 1,522 have recovered.
Most of new infections and deaths were recorded in the capital, Kabul, and the western province of Herat, which are hotspots of the virus in Afghanistan. Kabul recorded 332 new cases with eight deaths, while Herat reported 216 new positive cases and four deaths.
After around three weeks pause in reporting coronavirus statistics, due to a problem in the testing process, the southern province of Kandahar recorded 54 new cases on Wednesday.
In the north, the interior ministry has confirmed that the police commander of Kunduz province has died due to the virus, along with a district governor.
More than 600 nurses worldwide are known to have died from Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the Sars-CoV-2 virus, the International Council of Nurses said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
The death toll among nurses more than doubled in the past month from 260 on 6 May, according to its figures, which are based on data from more than 30 countries.
“In the last two months, we have seen the number of deaths of nurses as a result of coronavirus around the world rise from 100 to now in excess of 600 and we think worldwide the number of healthcare workers who could be infected by the virus is around 450,000,” Howard Catton, chief executive officer of the Geneva-based ICN, told Reuters Television.
“These are numbers that keep going up,” he said.
A nurse wearing a face mask holds a banner outside of Downing Street, London. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
On average, 7% of all cases of coronavirus infection are among healthcare workers, which means that nurses and other staff are at great personal risk “and so are the patients they care for”, it said. Extrapolating from more than 6 million reported cases gave its estimate of some 450,000 infections among healthcare workers.
Infection rates among healthcare workers vary greatly between countries, with fewer than 1% in Singapore and more than 30% in Ireland, it said. Spain and Germany have recorded low numbers of fatalities among healthcare workers despite large outbreaks, it added.
“Why do the rates of deaths among nurses appear higher in some Latin American countries?” it asked, referring to the region that the World Health Organization (WHO) says has emerged as the new epicentre for the pandemic.
“Why are some countries reporting disproportionate deaths among black, Asian and minority ethnic HCWs (healthcare workers)? This is an issue raised directly by the Philippine Nurses Association to ICN, concerning Filipino HCWs in the UK,” it said.
Entry checks at land borders to Austria, introduced because of the coronavirus pandemic, will be scrapped from Thursday, except for those at the border with Italy, Austria’s foreign minister has announced.
“As of tomorrow there will be no more checks in order to enter Austria,” Alexander Schallenberg told a press conference, according to AFP. The controls on the Italian border will be evaluated again next week, the French news agency quoted him as saying, adding that Vienna was considering the possibility of allowing entry from Italian regions where infection figures are low.
Austria said last month it would open its borders – closed in mid-March – with all countries, except for Italy and Slovenia, in the middle of June.
Announcing the decision to bring forward the opening, Schallenberg cited positive epidemiological developments in neighbouring Germany, Hungary, Lichtenstein, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
On Wednesday, Austria reported that 26 people had tested positive for coronavirus, and one person had died of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. To date the Alpine EU member of nearly nine million people has escaped the worst of the pandemic, registering more than 16,759 cases, of which 15,629 have recovered and 669 have died.
It’s been proposed, probed and pushed to the margins of the European Union for more than two decades. Now, writes Ashifa Kassam in Madrid, as Europe reels from tens of thousands of coronavirus deaths and millions of lost jobs in the worst recession for generations, ministers from Spain, Italy and Portugal say the time has come to revive a radical idea: a pan-EU minimum income.
“This is the moment for debates about social protection,” Pablo Iglesias, Spain’s deputy prime minister for social rights and leader of Podemos, told the Guardian. “Anyone who finds themselves in a vulnerable situation should have access to protection mechanisms that allow them to fill their fridge and care for their family.”
The measure, Iglesias argues, could protect more than 113 million people who face poverty and social exclusion in the EU and offer a safety net as the coronavirus pandemic threatens to pull millions more into poverty.
He has joined forces with the labour ministers for Italy and Portugal, Nunzia Catalfo and Ana Mendes Godinho, to call for a common EU approach to minimum income. The measure would pave the way for the bloc’s 450 million residents to receive a top-up if their income falls below a certain level.
What the trio are putting forward is the idea; the hope is that EU governments will come together to hash out how it would be funded, the minimum income amount, and eligibility.
Switzerland’s economy shrank 2.6% during the first three months of the year compared to the previous quarter, as the coronavirus crisis took a heavy toll, official statistics showed Wednesday.
The pandemic and the measures taken to halt the spread of the virus severely restrict economic activity, at the same time as the international economic slump also slowed exports, Switzerland’s economic affairs ministry said.
It added, however, that exports had swung back into positive territory, saved by the country’s large pharmaceutical sector.
Switzerland, which has registered nearly 1,700 deaths from Covid-19 and nearly 30,800 coronavirus infections, stopped short of full confinement requirements but introduced dramatic restrictions from mid-March to try to rein in the virus.
With case numbers declining, Switzerland, like many other European countries, has since 27 April been gradually lifting restrictions. Schools, restaurants, and shops have resumed business, and a third phase in the easing process is due to kick in on 6 June, when events with up to 300 people will be permitted, and all leisure and entertainment businesses and tourist attractions will be permitted to reopen.
Here are the main points of our global coronavirus coverage so far today:
“We could have done better,” Sweden’s chief epidemiologist has said. Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s light-touch approach to the coronavirus has acknowledged that the country has had too many deaths from Covid-19 and should have done more to curb the spread of the virus.
Known deaths from coronavirus passed 380,000, according to Johns Hopkins University figures that show the toll currently standing at 380,662. Confirmed infections are nearing 6.4 million, with 6,399,876 so far.
Germany will continue to warn against non-essential travel to Britain while the UK maintains its 14-day quarantine rules, despite removing curbs for travel to the rest of Europe. The foreign minister, Heiko Maas, announced plans to scrap travel warnings for 30 countries including Britain from 15 June.
A record 1,262 Covid-19 deaths have been recorded in Brazil – taking the country’s total death toll to 31,199. The figures were announced on Tuesday evening by Brazil’s health ministry, which also said the number of coronavirus cases had risen to 555,383, second only to the United States.
Lufthansa has announced it will undergo “far-reaching” restructuring as it posted a first-quarter net loss of €2.1bn (£1.9bn/$2.3bn), hammered by the coronavirus pandemic. “Global air traffic has come to a virtual standstill in recent months,” chief executive Carsten Spohr said in a statement.
Air pollution in China has climbed back to pre-pandemic levels, and scientists say Europe may follow suit. Data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea) shows concentrations of fine particles (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are now at the same levels as one year earlier.
Vietnam’s most gravely-ill Covid-19 patient, a British pilot who works for its national airline, has started to recoverand may no longer require a lung transplant, state media said. Vietnam, which has reported no deaths from the coronavirus, has mounted an all-out effort to save the 43-year-old man.
Australia is now in a recession as the economy reels from the coronavirus pandemic, the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, confirmed. It came after the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported the economy shrank by 0.3% in the March quarter, on the back of the bushfires, drought and the pandemic
New Zealand has recorded 12th day with no new cases. The government is considering abandoning as early as next week all remaining restrictions on the country except stringent border controls. Just one person is still recovering, health officials said on Wednesday. The patient is not in hospital.
Iran’s daily number of new coronavirus transmissions continued creeping back towards its previous peak on Wednesday, with 3,134 confirmed cases detected in the past 24 hours, according to the health ministry.
The Islamic republic recorded 3,186 transmissions on 30 March, at the height of its outbreak. Numbers then dipped to 802 on 2 May, after the country imposed closures of schools, religious sites and parts of the economy, but have crept up since then as measures to contain the spread have been eased. Wednesday’s figure is the second highest number of daily transmissions reported in a day.
In his daily update, Kianoush Jahanpour, the health ministry spokesman, said that 70 more Iranians had died as a result of the outbreak in the past 24 hours, and 2,557 patients were in hospital in a critical condition, the Islamic Republic News Agency reports.
Iran has so far reported 160,696 confirmed cases of coronavirus, of which 125,206 have recovered and 8,012 have died.
