Coronavirus live news: virus present in two big Italian cities over two months before first case detected
Crowds have gathered at shopping malls and supermarkets across Colombia to take advantage of a government-mandated VAT-free day for shoppers, despite warnings from health experts that the South American country is far from past its peak of coronavirus cases.
On Friday morning, scenes at malls resembled those on Black Friday, the shopping bonanza in the US in late November. Photos circulated on social media showing huge crowds of people packed into stores, albeit while wearing face masks.
Danovis Lozano
(@danovislozano)Es increíble vivir en un país donde en medio de pandemia la gente si sale al #DiaSinIVA antes que salir a exigir el cumplimiento de sus derechos fundamentales y denunciar los graves hechos de corrupción en el país!! pic.twitter.com/t4VTkkUNi0
Colombia is continuing to relax its lockdown measures, despite cases of Covid-19 climbing over 3000 every day. 60,000 cases have been confirmed with 1950 deaths. Last weekend ICU occupancy passed 50% in Bogotá – the capital – leading city officials to tighten restrictions.
Yet Colombia’s president Iván Duque appears to be more concerned with reopening the economy. Friday’s VAT holiday will be followed by two more in the coming weeks, aimed at getting the economy going once more.
An analyst at El Espectador, one of Colombia’s largest newspapers, wrote on Friday that the measure was likely inspired by the US, “where tax holidays are universally recognized as demagogic policies,” that do little to relieve hard-hit consumers and instead benefit large-scale retailers.
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(@cerosetenta)Todavía no hay suficientes camas de UCIs, no se ha terminado de girar plata a hospitales, no hay suficientes respiradores pero hay #DiaSinIVA Esto ocurre en Cali. @miguelAPalta pic.twitter.com/JN02ZULBDf
With queues snaking around stores and malls overnight, many took to social media to voice their umbrage with the reckless policy. “There’s still not enough ICU beds… there’s not enough respirators, but this is a VAT-free day,” one person tweeted, with a video of queues in Cali, a major city in the country’s western Cauca Valley.
Colombia’s inspector general, Fernando Carrillo Florez, lambasted the tax holiday. “It can become one of the largest sources of infection,” he tweeted. “In one day of irresponsibility, we can lose what we gained in 100 days of lockdown.”
Iran’s tally of confirmed coronavirus cases topped 200,000 on Friday, as state media continued to warn about a lack of proper social distancing despite a new surge of infections.
Daily deaths have exceeded 100 most of this week, for the first time in two months. The Health Ministry announced 120 deaths in the previous 24 hours, taking the total to 9,392, and 2,615 new cases for a total of 200,262.
State television showed several families picnicking without masks or social distancing.
The parliamentary research centre issued a report in April suggesting that the actual number of coronavirus deaths might be almost twice the official figure.
State television quoted Hossein Erfani, head of the Health Ministry’s contagious disease care department, as saying provinces will be allowed to decide locally to impose or suspend restrictions in the fight against the virus.
“Depending on whether it is high-, medium- or low-risk, each province and county will decide on imposing necessary restrictions or suspending them,” Erfani said.
Six of Iran’s 31 provinces are currently high-risk coronavirus areas, state said.
The number of coronavirus cases in Saudi Arabia exceeded 150,000 on Friday following a rise in new infections over the past 10 days.
The Saudi ministry of health reported 4,301 new cases on Friday, taking the total to 150,292, with 1,184 deaths. The country hit more than 100,000 cases on 7 June.
The number of new infections has continued to rise in recent weeks, as authorities began phasing out restrictions on movement and travel on 28 May. The restrictions were imposed in March to help curb the spread of the virus. Authorities announced last month that the nationwide curfew would be lifted completely on 21 June, with the exception of the holy city of Mecca and Jeddah.
Saudi Arabia is considering drastically limiting numbers at the annual haj pilgrimage to prevent a further outbreak of coronavirus cases, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this month.
Some 2.5 million pilgrims visit the holiest sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina for the weeklong hajj, a once-in-a-lifetime duty for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it. Saudi Arabia asked Muslims in March to put hajj plans on hold and suspended the umrah pilgrimage until further notice.
Saudi Arabia’s numbers are the highest in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which have recorded 366,677 cases and 2,072 deaths.
The Foreign Office has been urged by a cross party group of British MPs to intervene to secure the safety of three prominent Gulf human rights activists thought to be at risk from the coronavirus outbreak strengthening in the region and present in some prisons.
The signatories include Peter Bottomley, the father of the house and Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP.
Brendan O’Hara MP, Argyll & Bute, Chair of the all party group on Democracy and Human Rights in the Gulf said “With Brexit fast approaching, it is paramount that human rights are at the centre of UK foreign policy. The government has too often turned a blind eye to the plight of imprisoned human rights defenders in the Gulf and with COVID-19 now posing an unprecedented imminent threat to their lives, it is time to take a stand and call for their immediate release”
The family of one of the three activists Loujain al Hathloul, a women’s rights campaigner is Saudi Arabia say they have not heard from her for a month. She has been held in the Saudi Arabia’s maximum security al-Ha’ir prison complex near Riyadh for more than two years.
The UN working group on arbitrary detention called for her immediate release this week. After a dip in cases in Saudi at the beginning of June, the number of new daily cases this week reached record levels of 4,919. Total deaths are 1,139.
Concern is also being expressed for Ahmed Mansoor handed a 10 year sentence by the United Arab Emirates for “insulting the rank and reputation of the UAE and their symbols” and “disseminating false information to damage the United Arab Emirates’ reputation abroad”.
Despite successive hunger strikes, he has been held in solitary confinement and is said to have neither a bed nor access to water. His state of health has deteriorated sharply, his supporters said.
New coronavirus cases in the UAE has been declining until the last few days, but Human Rights Watch has reported outbreaks in UAE jails. Total deaths across the UAE has reached 298.
The third activist for which concern has been expressed is Abduljalil Al Singace, a Bahrain activist sentenced to life for criticising the government. Bahraini activist Maryam Al Khawaja, whose father Abdulhadi Al Khawaja is also at Jau Prison along with Al Singace, reported that there are confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the prison.
Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain is thought to have presided over one of the most effective attempts to combat coronavirus with only 55 deaths, but there has been a spike this week in new cases with a record 786 new infections on June 15.
Partly on the advice of British public health advisers, the King has pardoned 901 prisoners while more than 500 more will be allowed to serve out their sentences outside prisons.
The Spanish health ministry has just updated the country’s Covid-19 death toll to 28,313 after leaving the figure frozen at 27,136 for almost two weeks while it checked and analysed the data.
The government had been widely criticised for “pausing” the death figures on 7 June, but had defended the move on the grounds that it needed to “review the information on deaths” and establish the date of death, rather than when the death was reported.
Statistics on infections and deaths are collected by each of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions and then given to the central government in Madrid.
Towards the end of May, the health ministry changed its methods for collecting data on cases and deaths, leading to a sharp drop in daily cases and some days when no deaths were reported – despite regional governments reporting fatalities over the same period.
The government argued that the changes had been needed to help it pin down and isolate new outbreaks rather than focusing on the overall picture.
On Friday, the health minister, Salvador Illa, said there have been 34 small outbreaks involving 982 individual cases in Spain over the past four to six weeks. He added that all of the outbreaks were now under control.
Most of the outbreaks were detected among people who had flouted the lockdown to gather for parties, among people working in slaughterhouses, or among seasonal workers or those returning from working abroad.
The government says it is still working to process and provide figures on the number of people who have died from the coronavirus in Spanish care homes. Deaths in homes for elderly or disabled people are expected to account for a significant proportion of all deaths.
Of the 15,043 people who have died from the virus or with associated symptoms in the Madrid region alone, 5,981 were in residential homes.
Mortality figures from the Carlos III research institute in Madrid show that there were 43,360 “excess deaths” – more fatalities than would normally have been expected – in Spain between 13 March and 22 May.
While 77,362 deaths had been anticipated over the period, there were 120,722 – a 56% increase.
The latest figures from the health ministry suggest that confirmed cases of Covid-19 account for at least 64% of those excess deaths.
Sources said that many of the remaining deaths could be down to the virus, but noted that the figures could also be skewed by the fact that many people had been too scared to go to hospital during the height of the pandemic, and may have died at home from strokes or heart attacks as a result.
Read the original article at The Guardian