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Brazil poised to overtake Italy as country with third-highest death toll – as it happened

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Sweden death rate now higher than France; Pakistan records largest single day rise in new infections; global deaths pass 380,000. This blog is now closed

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Wed 3 Jun 2020 19.35 EDTFirst published on Tue 2 Jun 2020 19.14 EDT
A health worker collects a blood sample at a drive-through test site in Niteroi, Brazil.
A health worker collects a blood sample at a drive-through test site in Niteroi, Brazil. Photograph: Silvia Izquierdo/AP
A health worker collects a blood sample at a drive-through test site in Niteroi, Brazil. Photograph: Silvia Izquierdo/AP

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At least three people were reported dead as coronavirus-hit Mumbai appeared to escape the worst of Cyclone Nisarga Wednesday, the first severe storm to threaten India’s financial capital in more than 70 years, AFP reports.

The city and its surrounds are usually sheltered from cyclones - the last deadly storm to hit the city was in 1948. Authorities had evacuated at least 100,000 people, including coronavirus patients, from flood-prone areas in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat ahead of Nisarga’s arrival.

A trunk is seen off the road near uprooted trees that have fallen on a main road in Alibag town of Raigad district, following cyclone Nisarga landfall in India’s western coast. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

In Mumbai, police announced fresh coronavirus restrictions on the city of 18 million people - which was just beginning to emerge from a months-long lockdown - banning gatherings of four people or more until Thursday afternoon.

Mumbai is India’s worst-hit city, home to a fifth of the country’s more than 200,000 coronavirus cases. The storm evacuees included nearly 150 coronavirus patients from a recently built field hospital in Mumbai, underscoring the difficulties facing the city ahead of the monsoon season as it struggles to contain the pandemic.

“Refrain from venturing out to coast-beaches, promenade, parks and other similar places along the coastline,” the police tweeted early Wednesday.

Jessica Glenza
Jessica Glenza

Key coronavirus questions as tens of thousands gather at protests across US

Unrest has swept across the United States since George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was killed in custody of Minneapolis police. Since then, protests have swelled in dozens of towns and cities across the country.

Tens of thousands of people have been standing shoulder to shoulder as they protest against the killing of George Floyd, after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes despite his cries that he could not breathe.

But the public health emergency that engulfed the nation – Sars-Cov-2, the virus which causes Covid-19 - has not disappeared.

Where are cases of coronavirus increasing?

More cases are being detected in a number of southern states, including Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. But cases are not increasing only in southern states. Alaska, Montana and California have also seen cases increase. In total, 17 states are seeing increases.

These increases reflect infections that may have taken place weeks ago. The novel coronavirus has a long incubation period, and people may not get tested until they feel ill.

Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now.

I’ll be bringing you the latest updates in the coronavirus pandemic for the next while. As always, we’d love to hear from you – get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: helen.sullivan[at]theguardian.com.

The British prime minister Boris Johnson will host a global vaccine summit on Thursday, urging nations to pledge funding for vaccinations against infectious diseases to help the poorest countries tackle the pandemic.

Representatives of more than 50 countries, including 35 heads of state or government, will come together virtually in London to raise funds for the GAVI vaccine alliance, a public-private global health partnership.

The summit aims to raise at least $7.4bn (£6bn) for GAVI to immunise a further 300 million children in the world’s poorest countries by 2025 against diseases such as polio, diphtheria and measles. Johnson said:

Just as the UK is the single biggest donor to the international effort to find a coronavirus vaccine, we will remain the world’s leading donor to GAVI, contributing £1.65bn over the next five years.

I urge you to join us to fortify this lifesaving alliance and inaugurate a new era of global health cooperation, which I believe is now the most essential shared endeavour of our lifetimes.

German government to introduce major stimulus package

A €130bn (£116bn) post-lockdown stimulus package has been agreed by the coalition partners running the country, the chancellor Angela Merkel has said.

Merkel said her conservatives and their Social Democrat coalition partners agreed measures designed to speed up Germany’s economic recovery after resolving differences on incentives to buy new cars and relief for highly indebted municipalities.

The agreement paved the way for a fiscal programme that is substantially bigger than similar packages by Germany’s Eurozone partners.

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A China-EU summit planned for September in Leipzig has been postponed because of the pandemic, the German government has said.

The decision was made after the chancellor Angela Merkel held separate phone calls with the Chinese president Xi Jinping and the European Council president Charles Michel, the German government’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

They agreed that the meeting cannot take place at the envisaged time given the pandemic but should be rescheduled. The details should be agreed soon.

A similar summit that was due to take place at the end of March in China was also postponed.

Merkel had hoped to used Germany’s six-month presidency of the EU from 1 July to strengthen the bloc’s ties with China. But the fight against the virus and its social and economic impact as well as environmental issues will now be the focal point of her efforts, she has said.

The EU had wanted to use the summits to push China to deliver on its promise in April last year to give European companies equal treatment and put an end to a practice of forcing foreign firms to share know-how when operating in China.

Summary

Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:

  • The number of official cases of coronavirus passed 6.4m, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University. They say at least 6,435,453 people are known to have been infected, while at least 382,093 are confirmed to have died since the outbreak began.
  • Spain’s congress voted to approve a sixth and final two-week extension of the country’s state of emergency. It has been in effect since 14 March and Wednesday’s vote means that the exceptional measures that have underpinned one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns will now remain in force until 21 June.
  • The UK’s business secretary Alok Sharma went into self-isolation after beginning to feel unwell in the House of Commons chamber. He was delivering the second reading of the corporate governance and insolvency bill.
  • The official Brazilian death toll passed 30,000 after a record record 1,262 Covid-19 deaths were recorded in a 24-hour period, taking the country’s total death toll to 31,199. But the president, Jair Bolsonaro, continued to downplay the pandemic, even as Brazil’s health ministry says the number of cases has risen to 555,383.
  • The World Health Organization said it has received reports of 100,000 new cases every day for the past five days, as the outbreak gathers pace in various regions around the world.
  • The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also said it has resumed trials of hydroxychloroquine, an arthritis drug that had been used to treat Covid-19 patients, after reviewing studies that apparently showed it was dangerous.
  • Pakistan recorded its largest single day increase in infections, as a fourth politician died after testing positive for the virus. Mian Jamshed Kakakhel, who was a member of a provincial assembly in the north-west, died on Wednesday. Yesterday two other lawmakers died after testing positive.
  • The number of Covid-19 deaths per capita in Sweden surpassed that of France. With 450 deaths per 1 million people, Sweden now has the seventh-worst death rate in the world, according to tallies kept on the Worldometers website.
  • Entry checks at land borders to Austria introduced because of the pandemic will be scrapped from Thursday, except for those at the border with Italy, Austria’s foreign minister announced. The controls on the Italian border will be evaluated again next week, Alexander Schallenberg told a press conference.
  • The UK government was criticised for failing to release test and trace data. The former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told the programme’s chief, Dido Harding: “I hope you understand that our frustration is that it is very hard to scrutinise what the government is doing if we’re not given the data that allows us to do that.”
  • Germany will continue to warn against non-essential travel to the UK while it maintains its 14-day quarantine rules, despite removing curbs for travel to the rest of Europe. The foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said his government will scrap general travel warnings for 30 countries, including the UK, from 15 June.

Sharma, a cabinet minister, appeared at the dispatch box earlier, Rowena Mason and Rajeev Syal write. The parliamentary authorities are understood to have given the area a deep clean and MPs were at the time sitting at least 2 metres apart. “This was done as a precaution,” a House of Commons source said.

However, Sharma’s suspected illness is likely to cause concern about the government’s decision to bring back parliament in its physical form, after weeks of allowing MPs to attend remotely via video link.

Many MPs have protested against the new arrangements, which have seen them queuing around the parliamentary estate while complying with the 2-metre physical distancing rules in order to vote.

Observers noticed that Sharma appeared unwell and to be sweating profusely while he spoke about the corporate insolvency and governance bill in the Commons.

UK business secretary self-isolates

The UK’s business secretary Alok Sharma has been tested and is returning home to self-isolate after beginning to feel unwell in the House of Commons chamber, his spokeswoman has said.

Secretary of state Alok Sharma began feeling unwell when in the chamber delivering the second reading of the corporate governance and insolvency bill.

In line with guidance he has been tested for coronavirus and is returning home to self-isolate.

Restrictions may have to be reimposed in Iran if the country is hit by a second wave of infections, its president has warned, as local authorities say transmissions are creeping back towards the previous peak.

Lockdown measures have been gradually lifted since April but have been reimposed in some areas after localised outbreaks.

The health ministry, cited by state media, has reported 3,134 new infections in the past twenty four hours, the most since 30 March, bringing the total to 160,696. And 70 more deaths brought the toll to 8,012. The president Hassan Rouhani said:

If in any part of the country these warnings aren’t taken seriously and God forbid the outbreak of illness peaks again, the authorities will have to reimpose restrictions.

This issue will create problems for the ordinary life of citizens and will also bring serious economic damage to the society.

Angela Giuffrida

The crisis is an opportunity for “a new beginning”, Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte has said, as he outlines plans for the country’s economic recovery.

“The acute phase of the health emergency is behind us but now we have to deal with the economic emergency,” Conte said, adding that Italy had earmarked €80bn (£71.4bn) worth of measures to help companies and workers affected by the lockdown.

Conte admitted that there have been “delays” in people receiving social benefits, due to the “state apparatus” not being prepared. “But we will improve,” he promised.

The aims of Italy’s “recovery plan” over the next few months include investing in infrastructure, relaunching public and private investments, ensuring broadband availability across the country and encouraging electronic payments to tackle the shadow economy. Conte said the justice and taxation systems also needed to be reformed.

Restrictions on inter-regional travel were lifted on Wednesday and borders opened up to European travellers as Italy tries to revive tourism, a sector crucial to its national economy.

The further easing of restrictions coincides with the sustained fall in deaths and infections since 4 May, when construction and manufacturing activity across the country resumed.

Italy registered 71 news deaths on Wednesday, up from 55 on Tuesday, and 321 new infections, compared to 318 on Tuesday. However, Conte warned citizens to maintain physical distancing and wear face masks.

The numbers are encouraging and we deserve to smile after months of sacrifice … but the virus has not disappeared.

Spanish lawmakers extend emergency for two more weeks

Spain’s congress has voted to approve a sixth and final two-week extension of the country’s state of emergency, which has been in effect since 14 March, writes Sam Jones, the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent.

Wednesday’s vote means that the exceptional measures that have underpinned one of Europe’s strictest Covid-19 lockdowns will now remain in force until 21 June.

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said that the last extension was needed to preserve the gains made against the virus over the past three months, but added that the country’s gradual loosening of lockdown restrictions was going well.

“We will keep on asking for prudence, prudence and prudence,” said Sánchez. “We will remain alert until the risk disappears. And, after that, we will keep working to learn for the new pandemics that we have a duty to prevent.”

The extension was approved despite fierce opposition from the conservative People’s party and the far-right Vox, both of which accuse the government of unnecessarily curtailing people’s freedoms.

To date, Spain has reported 27,128 deaths from the virus and 240,326 confirmed infections.

The USA has recorded 1,045 more deaths and 24,955 new cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said, taking the totals to 106,202 deaths and 1,827,425 cases.

France’s death toll, the world’s fifth-worst, has increased by 81, or 0.3%, to reach 29,021, the health ministry has said.

That represents a decelerated increase compared to Tuesday, when fatalities were up by 0.4%. The number of people hospitalised has continued its long-running decline.

Summary

Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include:

  • The number of official cases of coronavirus passed 6.4m, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University. They say at least 6,435,453 people are known to have been infected, while at least 382,093 are confirmed to have died since the outbreak began.
  • The official Brazilian death toll passed 30,000 after a record record 1,262 Covid-19 deaths were recorded in a 24-hour period, taking the country’s total death toll to 31,199. But the president, Jair Bolsonaro, continued to downplay the pandemic, even as Brazil’s health ministry says the number of cases has risen to 555,383.
  • The World Health Organization said it has received reports of 100,000 new cases every day for the past five days, as the outbreak gathers pace in various regions around the world.
  • The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also said it has resumed trials of hydroxychloroquine, an arthritis drug that had been used to treat Covid-19 patients, after reviewing studies that apparently showed it was dangerous.
  • Pakistan recorded its largest single day increase in infections, as a fourth politician died after testing positive for the virus. Mian Jamshed Kakakhel, who was a member of a provincial assembly in the north-west, died on Wednesday. Yesterday two other lawmakers died after testing positive.
  • The number of Covid-19 deaths per capita in Sweden surpassed that of France. With 450 deaths per 1 million people, Sweden now has the seventh-worst death rate in the world, according to tallies kept on the Worldometers website.
  • Entry checks at land borders to Austria introduced because of the pandemic will be scrapped from Thursday, except for those at the border with Italy, Austria’s foreign minister announced. The controls on the Italian border will be evaluated again next week, Alexander Schallenberg told a press conference.
  • The UK government was criticised for failing to release test and trace data. The former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told the programme’s chief, Dido Harding: “I hope you understand that our frustration is that it is very hard to scrutinise what the government is doing if we’re not given the data that allows us to do that.”
  • Germany will continue to warn against non-essential travel to the UK while it maintains its 14-day quarantine rules, despite removing curbs for travel to the rest of Europe. The foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said his government will scrap general travel warnings for 30 countries, including the UK, from 15 June.

That’s it from me, Damien Gayle, for another day. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Health officials in Portugal have insisted that increases in confirmed coronavirus cases in the Lisbon region are due to more tests being carried out in areas identified as hotspots, rather than signs of a second wave of outbreak.

The health ministry on Wednesday announced 366 new cases nationally, the biggest daily increase in almost four weeks. Officials said 335 of those new cases were in the Lisbon metropolitan area, while the outbreak is waning in the rest of the country.

The Lisbon total was almost double the number detected in the region the previous day.

The secretary of state for health, Antonio Sales, said the governments strategy is to encircle the hotspots, which are in low-income neighbourhoods around the capital, and run more tests there.

Construction workers and temporary staff working in the service sector are being especially targeted for testing.

The increase comes after Portugal eased restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of coronavirus, leading to crowded beaches last week.

People enjoy the sun at Carcavelos beach in Cascais in the outskirts of Lisbon last Tuesday. Photograph: Patrícia de Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images

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