South America at centre of pandemic, says WHO – as it happened
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Madrid and Barcelona to ease lockdown as Spain’s death toll stays under 100 again; 660,000 people forced to flee homes during crisis despite UN global ceasefire call
France will hold the postponed second round of municipal elections next month if the coronavirus crisis remains under control, the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, has said, writes Kim Willsher, the Guardian’s Paris correspondent.
A commission will look at the rules for postal and proxy voting so a maximum number of the electorate can take part in the vote on 28 June, Philippe added.
The first round of France’s municipal election was held on 15 March, two days before the country went into strict lockdown. The second round was to be held the following Sunday, but was cancelled.
A second round vote will only be held just under 5,000 communes – with a total of 16 million voters – out of more than 30,643 places where the mayor was not elected outright in the first round. Many of the 5,000 second votes are in major towns and cities including Paris.
Philippe said if there was a second wave of Covid-19 cases, the election would be put back until the beginning of next year.
The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, announced that voters would be required to wear face masks. “The election must not be a factor in spreading the virus,” he said. He added that candidates would be expected to campaign differently, giving priority to online and television canvassing as opposed to public meetings, currently banned.
Sweden reported 54 more deaths from Covid-19 on Friday, taking the total death toll in the country to 3,925.
According to the latest figures from Sweden’s public health agency, 637 more people have tested positive for the coronavirus. In total, Sweden has 32,809 confirmed cases, with 4,971 recoveries.
As regular readers of the blog will now, we have been following the situation in Sweden with some interest, after its government chose not to implement the kinds of compulsory lockdown measures imposed elsewhere in the world.
Today, the Guardian’s comment section has published an op-ed by Tae Hoon Kim, a South Korean geopolitical and economic analyst based in Stockholm, on why he believes that, despite it having a much higher death rate than its neighbours, Sweden is unlikely to make a U-turn on its strategy. He writes:
Sweden has received considerable media scrutiny in recent days. According to figures published on Tuesday, it now has the highest coronavirus-per-capita death rate in the world, with an average of 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants a day on a rolling seven-day average between 13 and 20 May. As of 22 May, Sweden has had 32,172 confirmed cases and 3,871 deaths. These figures are lower than those of Italy or the UK. But they are higher than those of Portugal and Greece, two countries with a similar size of population to Sweden. The figures are also much higher than Sweden’s Nordic neighbours, with Denmark at 11,182 cases and 561 deaths, Norway at 8,309 and 235, and Finland at 6,537 and 306 ...
But despite the high number of deaths, about 70% of Swedes support their government’s approach. In fact, there has not been much public debate or organised opposition to the strategy. The deaths have indeed shocked many Swedes, especially the disproportionately high number of deaths among those over 70 in care homes and those from working-class, immigrant backgrounds. The debates, however, seem to be taking a more socioeconomic angle. In other words, the reasons for these deaths are being blamed on structural, economic, and social deficiencies – but not on the strategy itself.
Africa reaches 100,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus
More than 100,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus have now been reported across Africa, according to figures collated by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).
According to the interactive coronavirus dashboard hosted on the African Union health agency’s website, there have so far been 3,101 deaths across the continent from Covid-19, while 39,416 people have recovered.
Unlike other regions, particularly Europe to the north, the coronavirus has been slow to spread across Africa. After the first confirmed case was reported in mid-February in Egypt, many countries responded with strict lockdowns.
The figures show the burden of the pandemic is mainly being felt in north Africa, followed by the western then southern nations. East and central Africa have far fewer cases.
As Canada’s most populous province moves forward with its reopening plans, concerns are growing that coronavirus cases in Ontario are not yet under control, writes Leyland Cecco in Toronto.
For a brief period in May, new cases showed a steady decrease, leading to optimism that an easing of the province’s lockdown was on the horizon – and justified.
In response, Ontario has given the green light to having given the green light to retailers, golf courses and pet groomers to resume operations. Lawmakers in the governing Progressive Conservative party have also pushed for restaurant and bar patios to reopen, with modifications.
But in recent days, the province’s infection numbers have trended upwards, averaging more than 400 new cases per day this week – a figure the province’s chief medial officer called “disappointing”.
The province had also aimed for 20,000 tests per day. But this past week, an average of less than 10,000 were conducted daily – including only 5,813 on Monday.
“I will be like an 800-pound gorilla on their backs every single day if I have to until I see these numbers go up,” said the Ontario premier, Doug Ford.
Mississauga, Ontario. Photograph: Carlos Osorio/Reuters
At the same time, there is growing concern among health experts that the province is unable to account for the source of nearly two-thirds of infections, leading to concern that the reopening of the province is premature.
Ontario’s ministry of health said determining the source of infection was “ongoing work”, citing incomplete information from local health authorities.
“As we try to get our economy back on its feet, we are very, very likely to experience surges in disease,” Dr David Fisman, an infectious diseases expert, told CBC News. “Covid’s proven itself to be a very slippery foe and you can’t fight an enemy that you can’t see.”
There are 24,187 comfirmed coronavirus cases in the province and almost 2,000 deaths.
The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, may meet Donald Trump face to face at the G7 summit in the US next month, after Downing Street said it was still exploring the arrangements for the event.
The meeting of global leaders is scheduled for 10 June, with Trump saying he would like it to be held at Camp David, the rural estate of US presidents. He tweeted that hosting it face to face would be a signal to the world of “normalisation” amid the coronavirus pandemic and that other countries involved in the summit were starting to make their own “comeback”.
Johnson’s spokesperson said: “We are in close contact with the White House about the summit and we will look at the details of what they are proposing.”
A physical summit was cancelled in March with the intention of it being transferred to video conferencing. The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said he would consider the summit proposals but discussions were ongoing. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he was open to attending.
It might have lost 90% of its hotel bookings but Amsterdam shouldn’t rush to welcome back international tourists, according to its mayor. Femke Halsema has sparked anger in the hotel industry by warning the city should be “extremely cautious” about restarting tourism, saying there is not enough space for its 800,000 inhabitants, plus the normal 9 million overnight visitors, and for physical distancing to be respected.
“I hear you talking about international tourism, and I know that there are 55,000 hotel beds waiting for guests, too,” she told a digital council meeting on Tuesday. “But in the coming time we need to be extremely cautious about stimulating regional, national and international traffic. If we do this excessively, we run the risk that Amsterdam becomes the fireplace for a second wave.”
Few residents of the world’s great metropolises would have thought much about plagues before this year. Outside China and east Asia – made vigilant by swine flu and Sars – the trauma of the 1918 flu pandemic or typhoid epidemics has largely faded from popular memory. But our cities remember.
An outbreak of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793 prompted administrators to take over the task of cleaning streets, clearing gutters and collecting rubbish. It worked, and governments across the US adopted the responsibility over the next decades. A misconception that the odour emanating from wastewater was responsible for diseases such as cholera prompted one of the world’s first modern underground sewer systems in London, and the development of wider, straighter and paved roads – which helped prevent water from stagnating.
The legacy Covid-19 may leave on the world’s great cities is being hotly debated, although most specialists admit it is too early to know for sure.
“It will depend in the end on how we analyse this virus: how is it spreading? How is it making people sick?” says Roger Keil, a professor of environmental studies at Toronto’s York University. “We don’t know the full answers, but once they become clearer, urban planners and other professionals will start to think as their predecessors did 100 years ago, as they laid sewer pipes and cleaned out parts of the city that were considered insalubrious.”
The Madrid region and the Barcelona metropolitan area will be able to move into the next phase of lockdown de-escalation from Monday, the Spanish government has announced.
The two regions have been the areas hardest hit by Covid-19, which has so far killed 27,940 people in the country and infected 233,037.
The loosening of the restrictions in both areas – and in parts of Castilla y León – means that all of Spain is now in at least the second phase of the lockdown exit plan.
From Monday, people in the three areas will be able to meet in groups of up to 10 individuals, and restaurant and cafe terraces will reopen at 50% capacity. Places of worship will also be able to operate at 30% capacity.
The health minister, Salvador Illa, said 47% of the country will move to the third and penultimate stage of the de-escalation on Monday. People in the Balearic Islands, the Canaries, and some parts of the mainland will then be able to visit shopping centres and eat inside restaurants – both of which will operate at 40% capacity.
The government’s latest two-week extension of the state of emergency originally declared on 14 March was hard-won, and protests against the lockdown have spread from Madrid to other regions. The far-right Vox party has called on people to take to their cars to demonstrate across Spain on Saturday.
María Jesús Montero, the finance minister who serves as the government’s spokeswoman, said that people had a right to protest, as long as their demonstrations did not risk spreading the coronavirus:
The only things that the state of emergency limits its people’s freedom of movement and reunion. Very often, some of the shouts you hear during these demonstrations are contradictory because people are out protesting. Some people shout, ‘Freedom!’, when they’re actually exercising the right to criticise things and protest. But you can’t mix up freedom with the freedom to infect people.
Here are the headlines in our coronavirus coverage so far today:
Fighting has forced 660,000 people to flee their homes since the UN secretary general called for a global ceasefire to focus on handling the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Tax revenues in Germany fell by a quarter last month, compared with a year earlier, as Europe’s largest economy faced its most severe recession since the second world war. The central government and the 16 federal states pulled in about €39bn in April, 25.3% less than the same month in 2019.
A senior official in South Africa told MPs that it is time to reopen the country’s economy. Lionel October, director-general of the department of trade, said the government was finalising consultations on how to reopen industries.
Pictures have emerged of Donald Trump wearing a face mask during a visit in Michigan. The US president had previously been called a “petulant child” by a state attorney general for allegedly refusing to wear the covering during a tour of a Ford plant.
India has reported 6,000 new cases in its biggest one-day rise since the outbreak started. The country has also reported over 118,000 confirmed cases – around a 5% increase from yesterday.
Coronavirus cases in war-torn Yemen are believed to be “widespread”, while its health system has “in effect collapsed”. A UN spokesman said on Friday that the reported total of 184 cases in the country is also “almost certainly much higher”.
Indonesia has reported 973 new infections – its highest daily figure – bringing the country’s total cases to 20,162. The figures come as millions of people in the world’s fourth most populous country mark the festival of Eid al-Fitr without the usual celebrations.
The leader of New Zealand’s main opposition party has been ousted after opinion polls showed Jacinda Ardern’s soaring popularity. Around 84% of New Zealanders approve of the prime minister’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, which has helped to boost her ratings ahead of a general election in September.
Good news for ravers, many of whom have been wondering if they’ll ever get to throw shapes and hug strangers ever again. One of Europe’s biggest music events, Exit festival in Serbia, has been given a new date in August, Agence France-Presse reports.
Originally scheduled for mid-July in the northern city of Novi Sad, the fate of the festival had been uncertain since the coronavirus pandemic spread. But after Serbia emerged from its lockdown without a major outbreak, the prime minister, Ana Brnabić, recommended the event could take place after all.
Crowds dance to Manu Chao at Exit festival in 2015. Photograph: Didier Messens/Redferns via Getty Images
“We expect the (health) situation to be completely calm by August,” she said Thursday.
Organisers of the festival, which drew 200,000 people last year, welcomed the “excellent news” and said there could be changes to the format of the event, whose exact dates are still not confirmed.
“If necessary, we are ready to substantially reduce the number of visitors and limit ourselves to the local and regional public,” they said in a statement.
Exit, now in its 20th year, was born out of the student movement that opposed the former leader Slobodan Milošević, who was overthrown in 2000 by mass protests.
This year, headliners were expected to include David Guetta, Tyga and Fatboy Slim.
