Coronavirus live news: WHO reports record daily global case increase; New York shops and bars reopen

Many countries that have been successful in tackling the novel coronavirus are seeing an increase in cases due to religious events and other vulnerable settings like expatriate gatherings, the World Health Organisation’s Maria Van Kerkhove has told the same briefing.

“Any opportunity that the virus has to take hold, it will. It is really important that countries are in a position to rapidly detect these cases,” she told an online briefing.

Suggestions by Italian scientists that sewage water from two cities contained coronavirus traces in December, long before the country’s first confirmed cases, are interesting and it is important to remain open to any scientific findings, a WHO briefing has been told.

There is always a chance that the virus was circulating in northern Italy before anyone realised that it did, said Dr Michael Ryan, executive director at the World Health Organization’s health emergencies programme.

What was not clear, he added, was to what extent the presence or the potential presence of the virus in the environment before its known importation contributed to the disease’s amplification at a community level.

South Korea is still “on track” with its disease control measures, a press briefing has been told by Dr Michael Ryan, executive director at the World Health Organization’s health emergencies programme.

Ryan had been asked about the situation in South Korea, where health officials believe the country is going through a second wave of infections.

South Korea demonstrated the importance of continuing to maintain robust health infrastructure and having a public that was engaged and “believe in science”, he added.

While the pandemic is now accelerating in Africa, aid organisations are warning that it poses a particularly severe threat in South Sudan, where nearly half of the population was hungry before the pandemic and where years of civil war and corruption have shattered infrastructure.

“It can be out of control at any time,” said David Gai Zakayo, a doctor with the aid group Action Against Hunger told the Associated Press news agency.

“The groups we are treating are malnourished. My big worry is if the virus begins spreading to those groups we are treating, it will be a disaster.”

At South Sudan’s only laboratory that tests for the virus, the supervisor Simon Deng Nyichar said the team of 16 works up to 16-hour days slogging through a backlog of more than 5,000 tests.

About 9,000 samples have been tested since early April, when the country became one of the last in Africa to confirm a coronavirus case.

With materials in short supply, testing is largely limited to people with symptoms of Covid-19. It can take weeks to receive results, creating mistrust in communities and resentment toward contact tracers, the health Ministry said last week.

Craig Spencer, a doctor who in 2014 became the first person in New York to be diagnosed with Ebola and who has been regularly commenting on Covid-19, tweets his hope that the rest of the US will learn from the city’s “missteps”.

Amanda Holpuch, reporting for the Guardian, has more on the reopening in New York, where she notes that the crisis has underlined inequalities, with black and brown communities experiencing higher death rates than the white population.

Economic effects have also hit these communities the hardest, leaving many to decide whether to risk access to health insurance and income, or their personal health, on Monday.

Infections are down in New York City, but between 200 and 400 people have still been testing positive for the virus each day over the past two weeks, according to city data.

At landmark department stores, safety measures will be in place such as giving workers temperature checks and putting plastic dividers at cash registers. Saks Fifth Avenue plans to reopen on Wednesday with 100 new hand-sanitizer stations and escalator handrails outfitted with ultraviolet-light disinfection, among other changes

After more than 100 days of lockdown, New York City residents have been celebrating their progress in curbing the coronavirus pandemic by getting their first haircuts in months, shopping at long-closed stores, and dining at outdoor cafes.

Once the centre of the global outbreak, New York City was the last region in the state to move into Phase 2 of reopening with restaurants and bars offering outdoor service and many shops reopening.

Barber shops and hair salons welcomed customers for the first time since mid-March on Monday, Reuters reports.

Playgrounds were also due to reopen in the most populous US city. The pandemic has killed nearly 120,000 Americans.

At the same time, a dozen states in the south and south-west reported record increases in new coronavirus cases, and often record increases in hospitalisations as well, a metric not affected by more testing.

The number of new cases rose by a record last week in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, together home to about a third of the US population. Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming also experienced record spikes in cases.

As Sweden debates the rights and wrongs of its much scrutinised “light touch” approach to the pandemic, locals are somewhat bewildered by the international attention, reports the FT’s Nordic correspondent, Richard Milne.

Speaking to locals on the streets of Sweden’s second largest city, Gothenburg, he reports that there is a widespread feeling that Sweden’s decision to keep schools open for children up to the age of 16 was still wise, but also that the country has failed to protect its most vulnerable in care homes.

But a “stubbornly high” death toll – 102 new deaths were announced on Wednesday – is an important factor in why all strands of the Swedish approach is up for discussion. A debate about whether the strategy has been right or wrong is just starting inside the country.

Walt Disney Co will reopen its Disneyland Paris theme park in phases from 15 July, days after it plans to open its parks in the US, the company said on Monday.

It expects to reopen Disneyland Park, Walt Disney Studios Park, Disney’s Newport Bay Club hotel and Disney Village, according to Natacha Rafalski, the president of Disneyland Paris.

A paper on Vietnam’s success in suppressing Covid-19 using strict quarantining and widespread testing has been penned by experts including Vietnamese officials and staff from Oxford University’s clinical research unit in Ho Chi Minh City.

They list lessons which are applicable to other states, including:

• Investment in public health infrastructure.
• Early action, including border closures.
• Thorough contact tracing.
• Quarantines based on possible exposure, rather than symptoms only.
• Clear communication with a consistent narrative.
• A strong whole-of-society approach engaging multi sectorial stakeholders.

French movie fans ventured back into cinemas today for the first time since the Covid-19 lockdown, helped by a new safety feature: Minions placed at intervals in the seats to ensure social distancing is observed.

Stuffed toy versions of the yellow, pill-shaped characters were deployed at the MK2 cinema in the south of Paris for a showing of the 2015 movie “Minions”, a spinoff from the Despicable Me franchise that made them famous.

The Minions, dressed in their trademark goggles and dungarees, were placed strategically around the auditorium to enforce a rule that viewers leave at least one place free between them and their neighbours.

The reopening of cinemas across France on Monday was part of a phased relaxation of the lockdown measures that were imposed in March to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Nathanael Karmitz, chairman of the MK2 cinema chain, said the numbers showing up for matinee screenings on Monday showed how much the French public had missed going to the movies.

They love cinema. It’s much less risky spending two hours in a cinema than travelling on public transport or taking a train.

Netflix is to resume filming in the UK with fantasy epic The Witcher set to restart shooting on 17 August.

Netflix, which plans to spend in excess of £400m this year making more than 50 TV shows and films in the UK, shut down all filming in March as the coronavirus pandemic struck.