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
In the UK, the opposition Labour party is demanding a “very swift explanation” from Downing Street as it emerges that police spoke to Boris Johnson’s senior aide Dominic Cummings about breaching the government’s lockdown rules.
If accurate, the prime minister’s chief adviser appears to have breached the lockdown rules. The government’s guidance was very clear: Stay at home and no non-essential travel.
The British people do not expect there to be one rule for them and another rule for Dominic Cummings. No 10 needs to provide a very swift explanation for his actions.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 1,089 more deaths and 20,522 new cases of infection, taking the totals in the nation to 94,150 and 1,571,617, respectively.
Police spoke to Downing Street adviser after trip during lockdown
Matthew Weaver
In the UK, police have spoken to the prime minister’s key adviser Dominic Cummings about breaching the government’s lockdown rules after he 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.
At the time, the government had instructed people not to travel and to stay at their family homes. Cummings, however, was seen in Durham. A member of the public is understood to have seen him and made a complaint to the police.
Downing Street has previously refused to disclose where Cummings was staying during the lockdown.
Chile’s president, Sebastian Piñera, has kicked off a programme to provide support for families struggling during the pandemic.
About 2.5m packages of food and hygiene products will be distributed over the weekend to families in Santiago before the scheme expands to other parts of the country. Piñera said:
It is a support and relief for millions and millions of Chilean families who need urgent help.
However, poorer communities claim they are not receiving the support they need to survive during the pandemic, with many unable to work as parts of the country approach a second month of strict lockdown measures. Among those most affected are the 30% of the Chilean workforce who make up the country’s informal economy.
Unrest broke out earlier this week in several parts of the country over hunger, most notably in the Santiago district El Bosque, when dozens of people took to the street to express their desperation.
Police swiftly arrived, leading to violent clashes between police and protesters.
“After four weeks of quarantine, despair and hunger begin to appear,” said the mayor of El Bosque, Sadi Melo Moya, who condemned the police’s heavy-handed reaction.
The hunger protests have led to the emergence of dozens of makeshift soup kitchens in the city’s working-class neighbourhoods, where communities have united under the mantra “only the people help the people”.
Videos circulating on social media show police interrupting community support efforts, confiscating donated goods and shutting down soup kitchens.
The police denied accusations of excessive repression, claiming one of the gatherings filmed required intervention as it had “initiated disorder” and did not respect the quarantine.
Chile’s former president and the current UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said: “It is key to generate important mechanisms for social protection.”
A Berlin church is hosting Muslims who are unable to fit into their mosque for Friday prayers because of physical distancing guidelines, Reuters reports.
The Dar Assalam mosque in the Neukölln district normally welcomes hundreds of Muslims to its Friday services. But it can only accommodate 50 people at a time under Germany’s restrictions.
During Ramadan, the nearby Martha Lutheran church stepped in to help, hosting Muslim prayers in Arabic and German.
“It is a great sign and it brings joy in Ramadan and joy amid this crisis,” said Mohamed Taha Sabry, the mosque’s imam, who led his congregation in prayer watched over by a stained-glass window depicting the Virgin Mary. “This pandemic has made us a community. Crises bring people get together.”
Places of worship reopened in Germany on 4 May after being shut for weeks, but worshippers must maintain a minimum distance from one another of 1.5 metres.
The church, a red-brick neo-Renaissance building in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district could hardly offer a sharper contrast to the cultural centre in Neukölln where the Muslim congregation is accustomed to gathering. One worshipper, Samer Hamdoun, said:
It was a strange feeling because of the musical instruments, the pictures. But, when you look, when you forget the small details. This is the House of God in the end.
The Islamic Council, an umbrella group of 400 mosques, said in April that many face bankruptcy because the closures stretched into the holy fasting month of Ramadan, usually a vital period for donations.
The church’s pastor, Monika Matthias, said she had felt moved by the Muslim call to prayer.
I took part in the prayer. I gave a speech in German. And during prayer, I could only say yes, yes, yes, because we have the same concerns and we want to learn from you. And it is beautiful to feel that way about each other.
South America has become a new centre of the pandemic, with Brazil hardest-hit, while cases are rising in some African countries that so far have a relatively low death toll, the World Health Organization has said.
“In a sense South America has become a new epicentre for the disease,” Dr Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergencies expert, told a news conference, adding Brazil is “clearly the most affected”.
Ryan noted Brazilian authorities have approved broad use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. He reiterated that current clinical evidence does not support the unproven drug’s widespread use against the new disease, given its risks.
Some nine African countries had 50% rises in cases in the past week, while others have seen a decline or have stable rates, Ryan said. The low mortality rate may be due to half of the continent’s population being 18 years old or younger, he said, adding he still is worried the disease will spread on a continent with “significant gaps” in intensive care services, medical oxygen and ventilation.
About 80 million infants may have missed out on vaccines for diseases including diphtheria, measles and polio as a result of the disruption to healthcare services caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization says.
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 pandemic, an NGO says. The Norwegian Refugee Council says the UN security council has failed to provide leadership for ceasefires during the pandemic.
Two-week quarantines will be imposed on new arrivals to the UK from 8 June, with a £1,000 fine awaiting anyone who breaches the measure. The home secretary, Priti Patel, announces that mandatory self-isolation would not apply to people coming from Ireland
The UK’s coronavirus epidemic is “either flat or declining ... and in most areas it is declining,” said thegovernment’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance. He said the country’s coronavirus R0 number - the number of people to whom each infected person passes the virus - is between 0.7 and 1.
The 54 countries in Africa have collectively identified more than 100,000 cases of infection, according to figures collated by the Africa Centres for Disease Control. There have so far been 3,101 deaths across the continent.
Germany’s tax revenues for April fell by a quarter compared to the same month last year. According to the finance ministry’s monthly report, the central government and the 16 federal states pulled in about €39bn (£34.87bn).
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 says. The two regions have been the areas hardest hit by Covid-19.
One of Europe’s biggest music events, Exit festival in Serbia, has been rescheduled for August. Originally meant to take place in July in Novi Sad, the fate of the festival was uncertain. But, as Serbia emerges from its lockdown, its prime minister, Ana Brnabić, said the event can take place after all.
The British Grand Prix faces a race against time to resolve the problem created by the government’s imposition of quarantine on all people arriving in the UK, writes Giles Richards for the Guardian’s sports desk.
The chances of the race at Silverstone being held look increasingly slim but Formula One is understood to be remaining in a dialogue with the government in an attempt to find a solution.
F1 has yet to comment and is studying the full quarantine document before entering further talks with the government. As things stand, with F1 denied any exemption from the quarantine procedures, not only is the British GP under threat but the sport faces an increasingly complex challenge as it attempts to create and implement a new calendar for the 2020 season.
Human rights activists in Zimbabwe have accused the country’s police and other officials of more than 200 violations linked to the country’s coronavirus lockdown.
The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, a coalition of 20 rights groups, said it had petitioned the country’s police chief and home affairs minister over escalating rights abuses, according to AFP.
“About 245 violations … have been recorded since the start of the lockdown,” Jestina Mukoko, who chairs the coalition, told reporters in Harare.
The forum is “appalled and outraged by the continued human rights violations that are openly taking place in Zimbabwe and perpetrated by the members of the … police”, Mukoko said.
Nelson Chamisa, the Zimbabwean opposition leader, visits an activist at a local hospital in Harare last Friday, after she went missing and reappeared. Photograph: AP
The monitors in particular called on police to launch a criminal investigation into the “abduction and torture” of a lawmaker from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and two other senior party officials.
They said the women, who were arrested after flash demonstrations over food shortages, were taken by unidentified men and driven several miles out of town, beaten up, sexually assaulted and dumped by a roadside.
Zimbabwe has so far recorded 51 cases of coronavirus, including four deaths. Last weekend the president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, said a lockdown imposed on March 30 to control the spread of the virus would stay in place for the moment, but be reviewed every two weeks.
Iceland is set to lower its national emergency rating on Monday, as authorities said there were just two people left in isolation waiting to recover from their coronavirus infections.
The north Atlantic island state, which acted quickly to contain its outbreak, has so far recorded 1,803 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Ten people have died and 1,791 have recovered.
Iceland’s chief epidemiologist, Þórólfur Guðnason, has reportedly submitted proposals to now significantly ease Covid-19 restrictions, including reopening bars and permitting gatherings of up to 200 people.
