South America at centre of pandemic, says WHO – as it happened

23 May 202020.18 EDT

Melissa Davey

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Muslims worldwide will celebrate one of their biggest holidays under the long shadow of the coronavirus, with millions confined to their homes and others gripped by economic concerns during what is usually a festive time of shopping and celebration.

The three-day Eid al-Fitr marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan for the world’s 1.8bn Muslims. People usually celebrate by travelling, visiting family and gathering for lavish meals, all of which will be largely prohibited as authorities try to prevent new virus outbreaks. The holiday will begin on Saturday or Sunday, depending on the sighting of the new moon, and the dawn-to-dusk fasting of Ramadan will come to an end.

Some countries, including Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, will impose round-the-clock curfews for the holiday. In Saudi Arabia, home to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, people will be allowed to leave their homes only to buy food and medicine.

Most restrictions have been lifted in Jerusalem, but the Al-Aqsa mosque compound – the third holiest site in Islam – will remain closed until. Shopkeepers in the Old City, empty of tourists and pilgrims since March, are reeling from the six weeks of lockdown.

In Egypt, authorities have extended the curfew, which will now begin at 5pm instead of 9pm, and halted public transportation until 29 May. Shopping centres, malls, beaches and parks will be closed.

In Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country, the president, Joko Widodo, said restrictions would remain in place through the holiday. The country, with a population of 270m, has reported more than 18,000 cases, including about 1,200 deaths. Since the start of the Ramadan, the government has imposed an outright ban on “mudik”, a holiday tradition in which millions of Indonesians living in big cities flock to their home towns to celebrate with relatives. Health experts had warned it could set off a wave of new cases.

Brazil overtook Russia on Friday in terms of the number of coronavirus cases, Reuters reports, having registered 330,890 people who have contracted the virus – second only to the United States. Brazil registered 1,001 daily coronavirus deaths on Friday, taking the total deaths to 21,048, according to the health ministry. However, the true numbers – both of cases and deaths – is probably higher as Latin America’s top economy has been slow to ramp up testing.

Meanwhile Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, called on the government to push through further deregulation of environmental policy while people are distracted by the coronavirus pandemic, in a video the supreme court ordered to be released. The video of a ministers’ meeting surfaced in an investigation of whether the president, Jair Bolsonaro, interfered in appointing leaders of the federal police for personal gain.

During the meeting, other ministers spoke, including Salles, with environmental groups saying his remarks prove that the Bolsonaro government is systematically seeking to dismantle environmental protections. “We need to make an effort while we are in this calm moment in terms of press coverage, because they are only talking about Covid, and push through and change all the rules and simplify norms,” Salles said in the video.

Deforestation hit an 11-year high last year and has increased 55% in the first four months of the year, compared with a year ago, with environmentalists blaming Bolsonaro’s policies.

Travellers arriving in Britain will face 14 days’ quarantine from next month to prevent a second coronavirus outbreak, the government announced on Friday, warning that anyone breaking the rules faced a fine or prosecution.

The new rules will apply to all international arrivals except Ireland from 8 June and come after weeks of calls for tougher restrictions to curb the spread of Covid-19. Healthcare professionals travelling to work in the crisis, seasonal agricultural workers and those working in freight and road haulage, among others, will be exempt.

“We want to reduce the risk of imported cases being introduced into the UK,” the home secretary, Priti Patel, told the government’s daily media briefing.

Patel said the measure would be reviewed every three weeks, adding: “We are not shutting down completely. We are not closing our borders. What we are seeking to do is control the spread of the virus because we do not want a second wave of this virus.”

The quarantine move is controversial, especially with the aviation sector, where flights have been grounded and passenger numbers slumped. France also expressed disappointment that despite initial reassurances it would not be exempt from the plan.

Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom have issued a joint statement expressing deep concern at proposals from China for introducing legislation related to national security in Hong Kong that will impinge on civil liberties.

“Making such a law on Hong Kong’s behalf without the direct participation of its people, legislature or judiciary would clearly undermine the ‘one country, two systems’ principle under which Hong Kong is guaranteed a high degree of autonomy,” the statement says.

New Zealand bookshops are experiencing an “extraordinary” boom in New Zealand as Kiwis commit to buying local to resuscitate the economy after seven weeks of lockdown. Eleanor Ainge-Roy writes that many readers have sworn off shopping offshore after the Covid-19 crisis, which claimed 21 lives in New Zealand.

“People are really thinking about where they want to spend their money and the businesses they love. They got a taste of what it was like if you weren’t there,” says Jenna Todd of Time Out bookstore in Mt Eden, Auckland.

Libraries have also benefited from the book boom, with borrowers queuing round the block.

There have been no new cases of the virus in New Zealand since 19 May1.

Meanwhile, the finance minister, Grant Robertson, has said the government is considering distributing free cash directly to individuals as a way of policy stimulus to help boost the economy.

“I am pretty keen on making sure that fiscal policy remains the role of the government,” he said.

22 May 202018.31 EDT

Melissa Davey

Good morning, Melissa Davey here in Melbourne, taking over from Kevin Rawlinson in London to continue bringing you updates from around the world.

While many countries are still struggling to contain the virus, here in Australia people are heading into the weekend with more freedom to visit cafes, travel throughout their state or territory and visit friends and family. Restrictions are loosening at different rates around the country, with just over 500 active cases. There have been 101 deaths.

State leaders continue to spar over the refusal of some premiers to reopen state borders as debates continue over when interstate travel should resume. It prompted the federal home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, who describes himself as a “proud Queenslander”, to weigh in on Friday, telling people in that state to test whether the border closures were allowed by the constitution.

“People are right to test that if they think it’s not [allowed by the constitution] because it’s affecting people’s lives,” he said. “I’m not taking advice from people south of the border at all, but I believe it’s in Queensland’s best interests, given that we are a mining state, we’re a tourism state, and we want to get people back to work.”

Dutton’s comments came as the federal government blamed employers incorrectly filling in a form for massively overestimating the size of the jobkeeper payment scheme. The error between the number of employees businesses estimated would be covered by the scheme and the actual amount receiving the payment means the scheme will cover 3.5 million workers, down from 6.5 million.

It makes this exchange particularly interesting:

It will also cost about $70bn, not $130bn. The government is so far resisting calls from Labor to extend the payment to casuals and those workers who were not eligible for the payment.

Indigenous organisations in Brazil have protested against the inclusion in a bill on emergency assistance to tribes in the pandemic of a paragraph authorising Christian missionaries to remain in indigenous communities.

It provides rapid Covid-19 tests, medicine and food to indigenous communities while allowing them to control access to their territories to avoid the spread of virus.

But in an inclusion called “sneaky” by critics, the bill said evangelising missionaries that are already in indigenous communities could stay subject to medical exams. The largest umbrella organisation representing Amazon indigenous tribes, COIAB, said:

We absolutely reject this attempt to allow access of missionaries to indigenous territories here there are isolated tribes.

COIAB said the presence of evangelizing missionaries has historically brought “tragedy and death” to indigenous people in the Amazon, and was a particular threat to isolated tribes that have only entered recent contact with Brazilian society.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has treated 1,300 coronavirus patients with the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which a study has tied to an increased risk of death.

The Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who received the information from the VA in response to questions he submitted on the issue, said he was “deeply troubled” by the data.

The US president Donald Trump has urged use of hydroxychloroquine against the virus and recently said he has been taking it himself, despite evidence that the treatment could be harmful.

A study published on Friday in the medical journal Lancet tied the drug to an increased risk of death in hospitalised patients with Covid-19.

Here’s a summary of the latest news:

• The global known death toll has passed 335,000 people. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, at least 5,178,911 people have become infected, while at least 336,404 have died around the world. The figures, which are based on official releases and media reports, are likely to significantly underestimate the true scale of the pandemic.
• South America has become a new centre of the pandemic, the World Health Organization has said. Brazil is hardest-hit, while cases are rising in some African countries that so far have a relatively low death toll. “In a sense South America has become a new epicentre for the disease,” Dr Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergencies expert, says; adding that Brazil is “clearly the most affected”.
• In the UK, police have spoken to the prime minister’s key adviser Dominic Cummings about breaching the government’s lockdown rules. Cummings was seen in Durham, 264 miles from his London home, despite having had symptoms of coronavirus. Officers approached him days after he was seen rushing out of Downing Street when the prime minister tested positive for the virus at the end of March, a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Mirror has found.
• Peru has extended its state of emergency until the end of June. The country introduced only a very partial lifting of its lockdown as infections continue to climb despite more than two months of confinement. Peru is the second-worst affected Latin American country, with more than 111,000 cases and a death toll of 3,148, according to official figures.
• Iceland is set to lower its national emergency rating on Monday. Authorities say there are just two people left in isolation waiting to recover from their infections. Iceland has recorded 1,803 confirmed cases, with 10 people having died and 1,791 having recovered.

You can see a summary of earlier events here.

The spread of coronavirus has been catastrophic in Brazil, with the country now ranking third for infections behind only the US and Russia. The infection rate has been growing rapidly in Latin America, and as global infections passed 5m, Brazil reported a record 19,951 cases on 20 May, according to the ministry of health, taking total infections to 291,579.

From a sceptical president to a healthcare system on the verge of collapse, the Guardian’s Tom Phillips explains the factors that have put Brazil at risk of becoming the next hotspot for the virus:

4:15

In the UK, a source close to the No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings has indicated he does not intend to resign after it emerged police spoke to him about breaching the government’s lockdown rules.

The anonymous source’s quote was given to the Press Association after Downing Street refused to offer any official comment.

Earlier this month, a senior government resigned after it emerged he had flouted lockdown rules. At the time, the health secretary Matt Hancock declared himself “speechless” and said he would back any action the police chose to take against Prof Neil Ferguson.

The placentas of 16 pregnant women found to have Covid-19 during routine testing at a Chicago hospital all showed evidence of injury, indicating that women infected with coronavirus may need close monitoring during pregnancy, researchers have said.

Of the group, 15 delivered healthy babies, while one miscarried. None of the live babies tested positive for Covid-19.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology, found that 12 of the women, or 80%, had a type of injury that can impair blood flow from the mother to the foetus called vascular malperfusion. Six of them, or 40%, had blood clots in the placenta. A historical comparison group showed vascular malperfusion in 55% of patients and placental blood clots in 9% of cases.

The research involved women who gave birth at Northwestern Medicine Prentice Women’s Hospital between 18 March and 5 May. Dr Jeffrey Goldstein, a Northwestern pathologist and study author, told Reuters:

These findings support that there might be something clot-forming about coronavirus, and it’s happening in the placenta.

22 May 202016.38 EDT

Dan Collyns

Peru has extended its state of emergency until the end of June with only a very partial lifting of its lockdown as infections continue to climb despite more than two months of confinement.

Peru is the second-worst affected Latin American country, with more than 111,000 cases and a death toll of 3,148, according to official figures.

The daily number of new infections peaked at 4,550 earlier this week, despite one of the region’s strictest lockdowns.

Peru’s president Martín Vizcarra implored Peruvians to comply with quarantine measures in a country where the majority work in the informal, unregulated economy.

It’s not just an extension ... there is a strategy to combat the virus. This disease will not beaten in a short time. It’s not a 100m sprint, it’s a marathon.

Peru has struggled to cope with fierce outbreaks in its northern and Amazon regions, particularly in the city of Iquitos. And it is hindered by a weak and historically underfunded health sector.

The country’s health ministry will double the number of hospital beds to 20,000, and intensive care beds from 1,000 to 2,000, Vizcarra pledged. Field hospitals were under construction in the capital Lima and in Covid-19 hotspots across the country.

Over the course of the last 60 days we have made great efforts but we have to make another qualitative jump in the health sector.

The slightly relaxed quarantine rules will allow online shopping for clothes and domestic products. Some sporting activities, such as professional football, will restart but matches will be played in empty stadiums.

France regrets a British decision to impose a quarantine on people arriving from mainland Europe and stands ready to impose reciprocal measures, the Agence France-Presse news agency has quoted the country’s interior ministry as saying.

The UK’s home secretary Priti Patel announced earlier on Friday that travellers arriving in the UK from 8 June will have to tell the authorities where they will be staying and face spot checks to ensure they quarantine themselves for 14 days.

People arriving from Ireland will be exempt, but not those coming from mainland Europe.