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

The UK has reported 351 more deaths from Covid-19, taking the total number of deaths in Europe’s worst-affected country to 36,393.

According to the health department, out of 80,297 people tested on 21 May, 3,287 were diagnosed with the coronavirus. So far the UK has recorded 254,195 confirmed cases.

Read more about the coronavirus situation in the UK on our dedicated live blog.

A little over a month ago, health experts were saying Japan risked becoming one of the world’s coronavirus “disaster zones”, writes Justin McCurry, the Guardian’s Tokyo correspondent.

Its government was already facing criticism over its decision to quarantine passengers and crew onboard the Diamond Princess cruise liner, and had been accused of underplaying the Covid-19 threat while it clung to the increasingly faint hope of hosting the Olympics this summer.

Japan was testing too few people, critics said, opting instead to focus on clusters of cases rather than overburden its healthcare system with patients displaying no or only mild symptoms who, by law, had to be admitted to hospital. One of the world’s richest countries was bungling its response, critics said.

But today, Japan can make a strong case for being another coronavirus success story, albeit one that has failed to resonate globally in the same way as those in South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Fifty-two more people have tested positive for the coronavirus in Kenya, out of a total of 2,567 samples analysed over the past 24 hours, the country’s health ministry has said.

Kenya has so far reported 1,161 confirmed cases of coronavirus, of which 50 patients have died and 380 have recovered.

Saudi Arabia has reported 2,642 new cases of coronavirus, taking the total number of confirmed cases in the kingdom to 67,719.

However, in the same update the country reported that even more people had recovered from their infections, with 2,963 more given the all clear taking its total number of recoveries to 39,003.

So far 364 Saudis have died from Covid-19.

White flags first began to appear on the streets of Guatemala City in early April, writes Jeff Abbott from the Guatemalan capital.

Since then, flags have become common across the country, with an entire lexicon of need reflected in their colours: white means hunger; red means medicine is needed; black, yellow, or blue means that a woman, child or elderly person is in danger of violence.

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Guatemala has reported 45 coronavirus deaths and 2,265 infections. But the economic fallout of the pandemic has affected millions.

Measures imposed by the government of President Alejandro Giammattei to slow the spread of the virus – including suspension of public transportation and daily curfews – have hit those living in poverty the hardest.

“It is another sign of a society that lacks social services and that does not have a labour market that permits people to have savings to confront the crisis,” said Jonathan Menkos, the executive director of the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies.

“[The white flags] are the most clear evidence that the social and economic model leaves most people behind. They cannot go one month without resources to eat.”

A senior official in the South African government has told MPs that it is time to reopen the country’s economy, in spite of dire predictions of the potential scale of the coronavirus outbreak.

Lionel October, the director-general of the department of trade, told a parliamentary committee that the government was finalising consultations on how to reopen industries and get the country back to work, China’s official news agency Xinhua reported.

Xinhua quoted October as saying that a large part of the economy was expected to reopen next month, as South Africa moves to level three of the lockdown, which was first imposed on 27 March and was eased slightly at the beginning of May.

His comments came despite dire warnings by statisticians hired by the government that in a worst case scenario 50,000 South Africans could die from Covid-19.

22 May 202008.26 EDT

Lorenzo Tondo

Unions in Italy have accused a US multinational of breaking the law after it sacked 190 workers in Naples during the coronavirus crisis, writes Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo.

On Friday, unions and workers protested against the decision of Jabil, a company which spans numerous industries, including healthcare, life sciences, clean technology and has 100 plants in 28 countries, and 170,000 employees worldwide.

Media in Italy reported that the company has announced that, from Monday, 190 workers at a plant in Marcianise would be laid off because of “falling production volumes and under-utilised resources”.

“Leaving all those workers in the middle of the street during a pandemic is an intolerable and illegal decision,” Rocco Palombella of the Uil union told the Italian newspaper la Repubblica. “It is an irresponsible attitude from the American company.”

Michele Madonna of the Fiom union said: “Companies do not stop even in the face of the pandemic drama. We are desperate.”

Italian unions allege that Jabil breached a government-imposed decree to deal that prohibits the layoffs until mid-August. The aim of the decree is to prevent the household finances of Italian families worsening during the coronavirus emergency.

However, in a note reported by Corriere della Sera and Repubblica, Jabil said the decree had been respected because the layoffs in Marcianise were already planned in June 2019, more than eight months before 23 February cut-off point for layoff procedures to be suspended under the new law.

The company also said it had done everything possible to help its workers and that it had “also made available significant economic resources both for employees, as incentives to leave, and for the companies that will hire Jabil’s employees, in support of their business plans”.

An editor has been jailed for two years in Myanmar after his news agency reported a coronavirus death that turned out to be incorrect, Agence France-Presse reports.

Zaw Ye Htet, the chief editor of the Dae Pyaw news agency, was arrested on 13 April, the day he published an article that wrongly reported there had been a death due to the Covid-19 in eastern Karen state.

He stood trial on 20 May. On Friday, his lawyer, Myint Thuzar Maw, told AFP: “He was sentenced under section 505(b) to two years in jail.”

Section 505(b) is a vaguely worded law, and often used against journalists and activists for making any statement that cause fear or alarm.

“We’ll appeal this unfair decision,” Zaw Ye Htet’s wife, Phyu Phyu Win, told AFP by phone.

Myanmar has only 199 confirmed cases of coronavirus and six deaths, although the low numbers tested mean experts say the true figures are far higher.

Children and young people could be half as likely to catch coronavirus than adults, a review of studies from around the world has suggested, PA Media reports.

Researchers found the under-20s appeared to be 56% less likely of catching the virus. But the review of global test and tracing and population screening studies led University College London said evidence remained “weak” on how likely children were to transmit the virus to others.

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Researchers also concluded they did not have sufficient data to examine whether children under 12 differed to teenagers in terms of susceptibility to the virus.

The research’s lead author, Prof Russell Viner of the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, said it was the “first comprehensive study” to review what was and was not known about “susceptibility and transmission” among children.

He said:

Our findings show children and young people appear 56% less likely to contract Covid-19 from infected others.

Susceptibility is a key part of the chain of infection, and this supports the view that children are likely to play a smaller role in transmitting the virus and proliferating the pandemic, although considerable uncertainty remains.

This new data provides essential evidence to governments around the world to inform their decision-making on whether to reopen schools and reduce or end lockdown measures.

Tanzania has defeated the coronavirus through the power of prayer, its president has said.

John Magafuli made the claim after his country after his country’s number of confirmed cases stayed the same for three weeks. Just over 500 cases have been reported in a country of nearly 60 million people.

Meanwhile, Magafuli has led a crackdown on anyone who dares raise concerns about the virus’s spread in Tanzania, or the government’s response to it, the Associated Press reports. Critics have been arrested, and opposition politicians and rights activists say their phones are being tapped.

However, on just one day this month, 50 Tanzanian truck drivers tested positive for the coronavirus after crossing into neighbouring Kenya.