Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
When the overcrowded, long-distance bus from Johannesburg arrived at the Malawian border post of Mwanza last week, one passenger was dead. Fearing he had picked up Covid-19 in South Africa and infected all his fellow travellers, the guards sent everyone to a hastily built quarantine centre for 14 days.
The man had died of other causes but Malawi, which is well used to devastating diseases like HIV and Aids, cholera and malaria, is taking no chances. Along with São Tomé, Comoros, South Sudan, Burundi, and Sierra Leone in Africa, it is one of the last countries in the world not to have confirmed a single Covid-19 case yet.
Up to 9.5 million women and girls could miss out on vital family planning services this year because of Covid-19, potentially resulting in thousands of deaths.
Marie Stopes International warned on Friday that travel restrictions and lockdowns could have a devastating affect on women as they struggle to collect contraceptives and access other reproductive healthcare services, such as safe abortions, across the 37 countries in which it works.
Victoria and Queensland register deaths as Western Australia flags border closure and federal government acts on childcare and industrial relations concerns. Follow live updates
The PM stresses that the “health advice we have is that there is no health reasons why children can’t go to school”.
Asked if taxes will increase to pay for its massive stimulus funding, Morrison does not address this directly.
Obviously there will be a heightened debt burden as a result of decisions we have had to take. They have been necessary decisions. Otherwise the calamity for Australian households economic will be disastrous. We have taken that decisions of government to step up and to make this commitment to provide people with an economic lifeline over the many months ahead. But you are right, we will have to then work hard on the other side to restore the economy. Now, that’s why we are being so careful not to have things that tie the economy and the budget down off into the future. We do need to snap back to the normal arrangements on the other side of this.
Morrison says schools have been planning for a “balance – a combination of distance learning” and, for those who can’t “provide a learning environment at home, for the children to be able to return to school”.
School will return after the holidays. They just won’t be holidays that most school students have known for a long time. And when they go back, it’s the learning that matters, and we hope to have an arrangement that can return as much to normal as possible.
But we have to accept that there will be, for some protracted period of time, this combination of distance learning, and for those who can’t do that at home, no child should be turned away.
We are about to wrap up our coverage on this blog for the day, but you can follow all developments on our new global live blog here. In the interim, you can catch up on all the day’s latest news here, on our latest At a Glance:
An indigenous woman in a village deep in the Amazon rainforest has contracted the novel coronavirus, the first case reported among Brazil’s more than 300 tribes, the Health Ministry’s indigenous health service Sesai has said.
The 20-year-old from the Kokama tribe tested positive for the virus in the district of Santo Antonio do Iá, near the border with Colombia, 880km (550 miles) up the Amazon river from the state capital Manaus, Sesai said in a statement on Wednesday.
The UN climate talks due to be held in Glasgow later this year have been postponed as governments around the world struggle to halt the spread of coronavirus.
The most important climate negotiations since the Paris agreement in 2015 were scheduled to take place this November to put countries back on track to avoid climate breakdown. They will now be pushed back to 2021.
The European Commission has proposed a short-time work scheme to avoid mass lay-offs across the bloc during the coronavirus pandemic.
The scheme, which is modelled on Germany’s Kurzabeit programme, was announced by Commission head Ursula von der Leyen in a video message.
Companies are paying salaries to their employees, even if, right now, they are not making money. Europe is now coming to their support, with a new initiative.
“It is intended to help Italy, Spain and all other countries that have been hard hit. And it will do so thanks to the solidarity of other member states,” she said.
Italy has extended lockdown restrictions until 13 April as signs emerge indicating the coronavirus contagion might be reaching a “plateau”.
“Italians have shown great maturity,” Roberto Speranza, the health minister, told parliament on Wednesday. “Experts say we are on the right track, and that the drastic measures taken are starting to give results.”
However, Speranza warned “we must not drop our guard” as the recovery will be “prudent and gradual”.
“It would be unforgiveable to mistake this first result for a definitive defeat of Covid, it’s a long battle.”
The number of new confirmed infections rose by 2,107 on Tuesday, taking the total number of current cases to 77,635, according to figures from Italy’s civil protection authority.
The rise in infections was higher than the daily increase registered on Monday (1,648), but lower than Sunday’s increase of 3,815.
On Tuesday, there was a 2.8% increase in new (i.e current) infections, compared with an average daily rise of 15% during one of the most critical weeks.
The death toll rose by 837 on Tuesday to 12,428, higher than the 812 deaths registered on Monday. The number of people who have recovered from the virus rose by 1,109 to 15,729 on Tuesday, following a record leap of 1,590 on Monday.
The daily death toll and infection rate have also started to slow in Lombardy, the region worst-affected by the virus.
“The curve tells us that we’re at a plateau,” said Silvio Brusaferro, the president of the Higher Health Institute (ISS).
The streets of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, were packed on Friday; a hectic bustling in the markets and shops, pious whispers ringing from prayer gatherings at the mosques, the skies full of kites that children were flying.
But on Saturday the city of around six million people went into lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus in one of the poorest and most war-torn countries in the world.
More than 130,000 Afghans have fled the coronavirus outbreak convulsing Iran to return home to Afghanistan amid fears they are bringing new infections with them to the conflict-ridden and impoverished country.
The huge spike in Afghans crossing the porous border from Iran, in one of the biggest cross-border movements of the pandemic, has led to mounting fears in the humanitarian community over the potential impact of new infections carried from Iran, one of the countries worst affected by the virus.
Britain’s care homes are in danger of being overwhelmed by the coronavirus, with staff warning they are at “breaking point” and the country’s biggest charitable provider revealing confirmed or suspected cases in more than half of its facilities.
MHA, which runs more than 220 facilities, said 750 of its staff – more than one in ten – are unable to work, and that confirmed deaths from the disease are rising.
A ban on weddings, and other public events did not deter one couple from 'tying the knot' in Slough over the weekend. While it wasn't a legally recognised ceremony, David Howell and Brenda Rolfe made vows to each other in front of their pastor who appeared on a YouTube live stream. After the ceremony guests were invited to the wedding reception on the Zoom app, and asked to wear wedding attire (from the waist up at least) and bring cake to eat
Times of upheaval are always times of radical change. Some believe the pandemic is a once-in-a-generation chance to remake society and build a better future. Others fear it may only make existing injustices worse. By Peter C Baker
Everything feels new, unbelievable, overwhelming. At the same time, it feels as if we’ve walked into an old recurring dream. In a way, we have. We’ve seen it before, on TV and in blockbusters. We knew roughly what it would be like, and somehow this makes the encounter not less strange, but more so.
Every day brings news of developments that, as recently as February, would have felt impossible – the work of years, not mere days. We refresh the news not because of a civic sense that following the news is important, but because so much may have happened since the last refresh. These developments are coming so fast that it’s hard to remember just how radical they are.
Do you ever run out of questions, you people? Trump asks a room full of reporters.
Trump is talking about the impeachment. “They probably illegally impeached me... you don’t hear much about that nowadays because everyone’s talking about the virus,” which he is happy about, the US president says.
“The democrats their whole live their whole being their whole existence was to try and get me out of office any way they can even if it was a phony deal.”
"I think I'm getting A pluses now for how I handled myself during a phony impeachment," Trump says.
Video footage shows Indian health workers spraying disinfectant on a group of migrant workers, amid fears that a large scale movement of people from cities to the countryside risks spreading the coronavirus widely. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, has ordered the country's 1.3 billion people to remain indoors until 15 April, saying that was the only hope to stop the pandemic.
But the order has left millions of impoverished Indians jobless and hungry, prompting a mass exodus from cities to the countryside
It wasn’t possible for Mohammed Idrish to watch Narendra Modi’s address to the nation last Tuesday exhorting 1.3 billion Indians to stay at home. His TV was looted along with everything else in his home in Delhi during the recent anti-Muslim riots in the Indian capital.
When Idrish, a carpenter, heard about Modi urging Indians to stay at home to stop coronavirus spreading, he shook his head again and again. “I don’t understand … I don’t understand. Doesn’t he know we have no home?”
In the Guzargah reception centre for returnees and repatriates in Herat, Afghanistan, 17-year-old Yunos rests on a thin mattress in a small, empty room.
The previous night fatigued him. He spent it sleeping rough in the desert along with thousands of other Afghans, awaiting the opening of the Iran-Afghanistan border. The frigid desert air froze him to the bone and hunger disturbed his sleep.
“Sauvignon blanc or viognier”? As the words left my mouth, my son and I locked eyes, our expressions flashing from shame-faced to half laughing at the irony. My live-in maid Ranjita had just laid out dinner and, since the fish and lyonnaise potatoes looked appetising, I thought it deserved a bottle of wine.
For people like us, under lockdown, the existential questions that punctuate our daily lives are: is it to be Curb Your Enthusiasm or Line of Duty, Netflix or Hotstar?
Australian prime minister Scott Morrison announced further restrictions on Sunday, including limiting public gatherings to two people. Follow all the latest Covid-19 updates
Passengers onboard the Ocean Atlantic have begged Scott Morrison to help bring them home via a YouTube video.
The passengers, who include about 150 Australians, embarked on what was supposed to be an Antarctic cruise in February/early March.
Queensland will also be issuing on the spot fines for people who ignore the social distancing rules. As AAP reports:
In Queensland thus far, no more than 10 people - other than residents - will be allowed inside a home at any one time, with homeowners and occupants now obliged to ensure they and visitors practice social distancing as much as possible.
Queensland Police now have powers to issue infringement notices for breaches of quarantine directions of up to $13,345 for individuals and $66,672 for businesses.