Category Archives: Coronavirus outbreak

Coronavirus live news: cases spreading out of control in Hong Kong; UK infection rate flat, says ONS head

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Record 100 new daily cases confirmed in Hong Kong; UK’s head of Office for National Statistics calls for scaling up of testing; South Africa’s cases become fifth-highest worldwide

Thirty-nine people were detained after police were attacked with “a hail of bottles” at an open-air party in central Frankfurt attended by thousands of youngsters, police in the German city said today..

Five officers were injured in the riot that began at around 3:00 am (0100 GMT) when police intervened to stop a brawl involving around 30 people in Frankfurt’s historic Opera square.

People who travel outside of Ireland have been warned they will invalidate their travel insurance even if the place they visit is on a so-called ‘green list’ of safe countries to by published this week, the Irish Times reports.

It added that travel insurance exclusions denying cover to people who travel contrary to official guides are the norm across the sector. At present, the advice from the Irish Government is that non-essential journeys overseas should be avoided.

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EU leaders go into extra time as tempers fray at coronavirus summit

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Proposals on the size and terms of a recovery fund have led to splits between member states

Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron said they are willing to walk away from a summit of EU leaders, as they arrived at the third day of a long and acrimonious debate on the terms of a €750bn (£682bn) pandemic recovery fund.

With the EU split between northern and southern member states as well as eastern and western, France’s president and the German chancellor both indicated their patience was waning despite the need to respond to the economic recession facing the bloc.

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EU leaders in bitter clash over Covid-19 recovery package

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Orbán accuses Netherlands’ Rutte of ‘communist’ tactics on tense third day of talks

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, accused his Dutch counterpart of using the same methods as his country’s former communist leaders on Sunday, as EU leaders publicly clashed during tense and acrimonious negotiations over the terms of a proposed €1.8tn budget and recovery package for the bloc.

A third difficult day of a summit of the EU’s 27 heads of state and government – the first in person for five months – saw movement towards agreement as talks stretched deep into the night, but laid bare the deep splits between north and south, and east and west.

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What happens when flu meets Covid-19?

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How seasonal viruses interact with the coronavirus is unknown – it may lessen or sharpen the pandemic – so flu vaccinations are vital

Optimists had hoped Covid-19 might not withstand the blistering heat of a British summer. However those hopes have faded: the virus staged a recent resurgence in Iran amid actual blistering temperatures, and has had no trouble persisting in sultry Singapore.

But what happens to Covid-19, and us, when the rain and chill – and flu and sniffles – of autumn set in? Especially, how will the annual winter flu epidemic play out amid a Covid-19 pandemic?

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A year to go, but does Tokyo still want to host the Olympics after Covid?

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Public enthusiasm for next year’s Games is waning, as city believes Covid-19 infections will ‘flare up’ if it pushes ahead

This Wednesday the reset Olympic countdown clock will show there are 365 days to go until the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games. But with a year left to finalise arrangements, the prospects for a traditional Olympic spectacle in the city are looking grim.

Even if Japan, which has seen a comparatively low number of infections and deaths, could contain the outbreak, the virus is expected to rampage through the US, Brazil, India and other parts of the world.

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Coronavirus Victoria: three more deaths and 363 new cases reported as masks made mandatory in Melbourne

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Daniel Andrews’s announcement on face coverings comes as state tries to control a second wave of Covid-19

• Follow the latest global news live
• NSW reports 18 new cases, the highest number in three months
• What you need to know about Melbourne’s stage 3 lockdown rules
• Melbourne map: where Covid-19 cases are rising or falling
• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s coronavirus email

Victoria has recorded 363 new Covid-19 cases and three more people have died as premier Daniel Andrews announced face masks will be made mandatory across Melbourne as the state attempts to control a second-wave outbreak of the virus.

At a press conference on Sunday, Andrews appeared wearing a face mask and said residents in metropolitan Melbourne and the Mitchell shire would be required to wear “masks or face coverings”, including bandannas or scarves in public from midnight on Wednesday.

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Barack Obama leads tributes to civil rights leader John Lewis – live

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Donald Trump has broken his silence on the passing of John Lewis with a tweet posted moments ago.

“Saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing,” he wrote. “Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family.

Saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing. Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family.

Joe Biden will run campaign ads during Donald Trump’s eagerly awaited interview with Fox News Sunday tomorrow – to go a bit Friends for a second, that being The One In Which Trump Says Biden Wants To Defund The Police And Chris Wallace Says Hang On A Minute, Not So, And Trump Gets A Little Testy.

Related: Trump clashes with Fox News interviewer over false claim about Biden

Related: 'The virus doesn't care about excuses': US faces terrifying autumn as Covid-19 surges

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Daily updates on English Covid-19 deaths paused amid accuracy concerns

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Government confirms PHE set no cut-off between time of testing and date of death

Daily updates on the coronavirus death toll in England have been paused amid growing concern that the numbers could have been exaggerated.

A message on the government’s website on Saturday said: “Currently the daily deaths measure counts all people who have tested positive for coronavirus and since died, with no cut-off between time of testing and date of death.

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UN chief slams ‘myths, delusions and falsehoods’ around inequality

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António Guterres uses Mandela lecture to call for radical shake-up of IMF and World Bank in wake of coronavirus pandemic

The UN secretary general will today deliver one of his most stinging speeches to date, attacking the “myths, delusions and falsehoods” around international progress on equality.

In an unusually strongly worded speech, António Guterres urged major reform to the UN security council, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to address systemic inequalities exposed by the coronavirus pandemic.

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Aishwarya Rai Bachchan: Bollywood star taken to hospital with Covid-19

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Former Miss World and daughter admitted to same Mumbai unit as her husband and father-in-law Amitabh Bachchan as India’s pandemic worsens

Coronavirus latest updates

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the Bollywood star and former Miss World, has been moved to a hospital in Mumbai along with her eight-year-old daughter nearly a week after they were revealed to have the coronavirus, media reports said.

Her husband, actor Abhishek Bachchan, and her superstar father-in-law, Amitabh Bachchan, are already in the same hospital with Covid-19, the highest-profile personalities to have been infected in India, which has now recorded more than one million cases in the pandemic.

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Coronavirus Australia: Victoria records three more Covid-19 deaths and 217 new cases as PM postpones parliament

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Australia’s acting chief medical officer warns people in Sydney are not taking precautions ‘as seriously’ as in Melbourne

Victoria has recorded 217 new cases of Covid-19 and three more deaths, as the prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced parliament would be postponed due to the health risks of MPs travelling to Canberra from Melbourne and south-western Sydney.

Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, described the 217 cases as “a relief” following a record 428 new cases announced on Friday, and a then-record 317 new cases on Thursday.

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New California coronavirus rules will prevent most schools from reopening in autumn – live

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The White House will not allow the CDC to testify at next week’s hearing fo the Committee on Education and Labor about how to safely reopen schools.

Virginia representative Bobby Scott joined other lawmakers Friday in speaking out against the Trump administration’s efforts to block theCDC from appearing before the committee.

A judge on Friday ruled the Trump administration cannot block a California program that caps carbon emissions from the transportation sector.

The cap and trade program aims to improve air quality and allows California companies to trade emissions credits with companies in Quebec. The administration sued to block it, saying it intrudes on the federal government’s foreign policy authority – particularly its withdrawal from environmental treaty the Paris agreement.

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California announces strict rules that will keep most schools closed

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Governor Gavin Newsom said public schools will not be allowed to hold in-person classes if their county is on a monitoring list

California’s governor has announced strict rules for school reopening that would prevent the vast majority of students from returning to classrooms in the fall as coronavirus cases hit their highest levels yet in the state.

Governor Gavin Newsom announced the new guidance on Friday, which mandates that public schools in California counties that are on a monitoring list for rising coronavirus infections cannot hold in-person classes, and will have to meet rigorous criteria for reopening.

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What’s really going on in the Australian economy? – Australian politics live podcast

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Katharine Murphy sits down with Guardian reporter Paul Karp and Nine senior economics correspondent Shane Wright to discuss the Australian economy and the government’s various stimulus packages. As conditions remain grim, with 992,300 Australians out of work, and the unemployment rate rising to 7.4% in June, how will the government navigate Australia’s recovery?

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Desperate Bolivians seek out toxic bleach falsely touted as Covid-19 cure

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  • Hard-hit city of Cochabamba endorses chlorine dioxide
  • Health ministry warns against use as 10 people poisoned

Long lines form every morning in one of the Bolivian cities hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic as desperate people wait to buy small bottles of chlorine dioxide, a toxic bleaching agent that has been falsely touted as a cure for Covid-19 and myriad other diseases.

The rush in the city of Cochabamba to buy a disinfectant known to cause harm to those who ingest it comes even after the Bolivian health ministry warned of its dangers and said at least five people had been poisoned after taking chlorine dioxide in La Paz, the capital.

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How prepared is Boris Johnson for a winter resurgence of coronavirus?

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The prime minister says he is hoping for the best but planning for the worst. We look at key areas of concern

Boris Johnson’s approach to a winter wave of Covid-19 is to hope for the best but plan for the worst, he said on Friday. The worst-case scenario was spelled out earlier in the week by the Academy of Medical Sciences: as many as 120,000 hospital patients dead. Avoiding that will depend on the state of preparations in many areas.

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Capt Tom Moore knighted by Queen for coronavirus fundraising – video

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Capt Tom Moore, whose sponsored walks in his garden raised £33m for NHS charities, has been knighted in the Queen’s first official engagement in person since lockdown. The 100-year-old war veteran attended a unique open-air ceremony at Windsor Castle on Friday to receive the honour

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Global report: coronavirus infections in India pass 1m as outbreaks flare globally

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Country becomes third in world to reach figure; alarming peak in French region of Brittany

India has become the third country to record more than 1m coronavirus infections, following the US and Brazil, as it reported 34,956 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking the national total to 1,003,832.

New peaks continue to appear around the world, including an alarming rise in the Brittany region of France.

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Elbow bumps and bows: masked EU leaders start physically distanced summit – video

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The leaders of EU27 countries wore face masks as they greeted each other with elbow bumps, nods, bows and some variations at a summit to thrash out a deal on a multibillion coronavirus recovery fund for the bloc's economies.

There were birthday gifts for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who turned 66, and the Portuguese prime minister, António Costa, who turned 59

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