Covid-19 spreads to every African country - as it happened

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14 May 202019.07 EDT

David Smith

Trump deepens ‘Obamagate’ conspiracy theory with Biden unmasking move

Donald Trump has ratcheted up his “Obamagate” conspiracy theory to implicate Joe Biden and other former White House officials in what critics say is a desperate attempt to distract from the coronavirus pandemic.

Here are the main developments from the last few hours:

• At least 4.3 million people are known to have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, while at least 295,671 people have died. The figures collected by Johns Hopkins University are likely to be a great underestimate of the true scale of the pandemic.
  
• Trump describes Fauci’s warning over reopening the economy too soon as “unacceptable”. US President Donald Trump on Wednesday described as not acceptable a warning given by top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci this week about the dangers of reopening the economy too quickly. “To me it’s not an acceptable answer especially when it comes to schools,” Trump told reporters at the White House, noting he was surprised by the response Fauci gave to lawmakers in testimony to the US Senate on Tuesday.
• Virus may never be eradicated – WHO. The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 could become endemic like HIV, the World Health Organization has said, warning against any attempt to predict how long it would keep circulating and calling for a “massive effort” to counter it.
• Every African country is now affected by the outbreak, after Lesotho announced its first case. The virus was detected in one of 81 people tested after arriving last week from Saudi Arabia and neighbouring South Africa, Lesotho’s health ministry said.
• Former UK spy chief dismisses Wuhan lab conspiracy theory. In the UK, the former director general of the domestic intelligence service has poured cold water on White House speculation that Covid-19 may have emerged via a leak from a coronavirus research laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
• Public Health England approves antibody test – report. Public Health England (PHE) has reportedly approved an antibody test kit, the first to receive such an endorsement. The kit is made by the Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG, the Daily Telegraph has reported. The newspaper added that it understands the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care is in negotiations with Roche to buy millions of the kits.
• Afghanistan reached 5,000 confirmed cases, as the country’s health ministry warned that easing lockdowns would bring a “catastrophe”. Out of 619 suspected patients tested in the last 24 hours, 259 came back positive, pushing the total number of infections to 5,226. The death toll reached 132, after five more patients died overnight. The number of recoveries is 648.
• Sweden announced it would hire up to 10,000 more care workersto address shortcomings in elderly care exposed by the pandemic. About half of the Sweden’s 3,460 coronavirus-related deaths have been among nursing home residents, and another quarter among those receiving care at home.
• Mexico said it would reopen parts of economythe economy after 51 days of lockdown, despite the country reporting its highest number of daily deaths so far. Mexico has confirmed 1,992 new cases and 353 deaths, bringing the total death toll to 3,926 and the total number of cases to 38,324.
• Hotels and restaurants across Europe have been asked to enforce physical distancing between guests to allow Europeans to take their annual summer holiday. The EU executive called for a “gradual and careful easing of lockdown restrictions across the continent”.
• The car manufacturer Ford announced plans to restart production, including at two factories in the UK. Work will resume on 18 May at the company’s engine plants in Dagenham in Essex and Bridgend in south Wales. The move, along with the reopening of the Valencia engine plant in Spain, will open all of Ford’s European manufacturing facilities.

Hi, Helen Sullivan with you now. I’ll be blogging for the next few hours – get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

According to White House press pool reporters, the Donald Trump also called Dr Anthony Fauci’s message yesterday cautioning against opening the economy too soon “unacceptable”.

“I was surprised by his answer,” Trump said. “To me it’s not an acceptable answer especially when it comes to schools.”

Yesterday, the top public health official contradicted Trump, who urged schools and businesses to reopen and said the White House has set a target of having 100m vaccine doses by the autumn.

Fauci disputed that timeline, indicating that neither a vaccine nor treatment could be developed and distributed in time to facilitate the reopening of schools in the fall. The president said:

I think they should open the schools, absolutely. I think they should. It’s had very little impact on young people. And I think that if you’re an instructor, if you’re a teacher, a professor over a certain age like let’s say 65 or maybe even if you want to be conservative, 60, perhaps you want to stay out for a little while longer.

But I think you should absolutely open the schools. Our country has got to get back and it’s got to get back as soon as possible, and I don’t consider our country coming back if the schools are closed.

US authorities are accusing Chinese hackers of trying to steal Covid-19 vaccine research, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned:

China’s efforts to target these sectors pose a significant threat to our nation’s response to Covid-19.

Neither offered evidence or examples to support the allegation. Washington has increasingly blamed Beijing for the outbreak caused by the virus that first emerged in China late last year. Asked on Monday about earlier reports that the US believed Chinese hackers were targeting US vaccine research, the president Donald Trump replied:

What else is new with China? What else is new? Tell me. I’m not happy with China.

Beijing has repeatedly denied the US accusations.

Of all the thousands of golfers and tennis players who were reacquainted with the reassuring swoosh and snap of club and racket on ball on Wednesday, few surely heard a sweeter sound than the 18-handicapper Ed Sandison.

When the 34-year-old stepped on to the 176-yard first hole at the Styal Golf Club in Cheshire at 9.04am, he was merely happy to be back after eight weeks of lockdown, happier still when he made good contact with his ball, and stunned to the point of disbelief when he realised he had made his first ever hole-in-one. He told the Guardian:

At first I couldn’t find my ball anywhere so I was getting a little annoyed – until I checked the cup. I spent the next 17 holes laughing with my father-in-law Tony. But everyone I saw seemed to be in such a good mood – and no wonder with golf being back.

Peru’s rate of cases is peaking and will begin a slow decline, its president Martín Vizcarra has said, as the country moves into a “final stage” of lockdown more than two months after its first case was detected.

Peru, which has the second greatest number of cases in Latin America, will continue to enforce social distancing, particularly in markets, banks and public transportation, Vizcarra said.

In this last stage of the state of emergency, we have to ratify all the good that we have done, which is enough, and to correct the defects.

Cases in Peru rose to 76,306 on Wednesday, up by 4,247 from a day earlier. The death toll was 2,169, up by 112, according to data from the Ministry of Health. Only Brazil has a higher infection rate in Latin America, at 177,589 confirmed cases.

The French drugmaker Sanofi SA is working with European regulators to speed up access to a potential vaccine in Europe after its chief executive suggested Americans would likely get the vaccine first.

The company said it is in talks with the European Union and the French and German governments to speed up regional vaccine development.

Sanofi, whose Pasteur division has an established track record of producing influenza vaccines, teamed up with British rival GlaxoSmithKline last month to come up with a candidate it hopes will be ready next year. They have received financial support from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) of the US Health Department.

As a result, doses produced in the United States are expected to go to US patients first; a prospect that has raised concern in Europe. Sanofi’s chief executive Paul Hudson has told Bloomberg:

The US government has the right to the largest preorder because it’s invested in taking the risk.

We are very encouraged to see the mobilisation of the [European commission] over the past weeks, exploring similar measures that could expedite both vaccines development and access to the European population.

The company said that remainder of its vaccine manufacturing capacity will cover Europe and the rest of the world.

Public Health England (PHE) has reportedly approved an antibody test kit, the first to receive such an endorsement.

The kit is made by the Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG, the Daily Telegraph has reported. The accuracy of the test was given approval by experts at PHE’s Porton Down facility last Thursday, the newspaper said. The newspaper added that it understands the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care is in negotiations with Roche to buy millions of the kits.

Brazilian media outlets have published the results of negative coronavirus tests taken by the country’s president Jair Bolsonaro following a Supreme Court ruling.

The result backs up the president’s previous claim of a clean bill of health, but doubts lingered over the results after it was revealed that the three tests also were carried out nearly two months ago – since when Bolsonaro has repeatedly flouted social distancing advice and mixed with crowds of supporters and ordinary Brazilians.

The tests were performed on 12, 17 and 18 March, the O Globo newspaper reported. In the following weeks, Bolsonaro greeted demonstrators and ordinary Brazilians without a mask, posed for selfies, visited a supermarket and a bakery and even shook hands with an elderly woman after wiping his nose on his wrist. Last weekend he rode a jet-ski and stopped by a floating barbecue.

Bolsonaro initially refused to release his tests results after 23 people who were on his trip to the United States in March tested positive. He has dismissed the rising Covid-19 death toll in Brazil with a casual “so what?” Brazil’s Health Ministry reported a record 881 deaths in 24 hours on Tuesday night and the country has 177,589 confirmed cases.

In March, Bolsonaro said his athletic background meant that, if he did catch Covid-19, he would barely feel it. Yet his government turned down a Freedom of Information request from the UOL news site, arguing the information was “secret”.

The tests were made public on Wednesday by the Supreme Court judge Ricardo Lewandowski following a request from the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper. It won rulings in lower courts but was overruled by a High Court judge. Lewandoski overturned that decision.

Italy’s top flight football clubs have voted in a favour of resuming the season on 13 June during a general assembly, although the final decision rests with the government.

Serie A has been suspended since 9 March and, although the government has authorised teams to hold collective training sessions from next Monday, it has not yet decided if and when the championship can resume. Serie A said:

As far as the resumption of sports activities is concerned, the date of 13 June for the resumption of the championship has been indicated ... in accordance with medical protocols for the protection of players and all those involved.

The young migrants and asylum seekers swim across the Rio Grande and clamber into the dense brush of Texas, across the US-Mexico border.

Many are teens who left Central America on their own. Others were sent along by parents from refugee camps in Mexico. They are as young as 10.

Under US law they would normally be allowed to live with relatives while their cases wind through immigration courts.

Instead the Trump administration is quickly expelling them under an emergency declaration citing the coronavirus pandemic, with 600 minors expelled in April alone.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 1,426 more deaths and 21,467 more confirmed infections, taking the totals to 82,246 and 1,364,061, respectively.

Talks to ease restrictions in South African by the end of May and downgrade its alert level from four to three are set to begin, the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa has said.

Ramaphosa added that parts of the country with the highest rates of infection would remain at alert level four and that changes to that level of restrictions would be announced in the coming days.

13 May 202015.38 EDT

Former UK spy chief dismisses Wuhan lab conspiracy theory

Dan Sabbagh

In the UK, the former director general of the domestic intelligence service has poured cold water on White House speculation that Covid-19 may have emerged via a leak from a research laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Andrew Parker who was the director general of MI5 until two and half weeks ago, told a webinar:

I’m just not aware of any evidence that it is anything other than what people think it is: It came via markets. There are all sorts of hypotheses around, but I just think it is not useful to speculate, worry about all that.

The former British spy chief said it was the business of intelligence agencies to find out if there was ever a point when a state or non-state actor was trying to deliberately spread a dangerous disease. In that case, he said, there “should be an expectation that the agencies will somehow uncover that”.

But, in remarks that could have been addressed directly to the US president Donald Trump or the secretary of state Mike Pompeo, Parker concluded:

Conspiracy theories right now are not helpful.

Both Trump and Pompeo have publicly pushed the lab leak theory without offering supporting evidence.

British intelligence agencies have been saying for the past couple of weeks they don’t subscribe to the lab leak theory, although the idea is nevertheless being pushed in news media in the UK, US and Australia. Parker was speaking at a webinar organised by the Royal Society of Medicine.

Chile’s government has announced plans for the strictest lockdown measures seen in the country yet, with compulsory quarantine for the entire zone of greater Santiago – an area with a population of 6.5m people.

“The battle of Santiago is crucial in the war against coronavirus,” said Health Minister Jaime Mañalich, announcing the measures.

The move comes as a record 2,660 cases were confirmed in 24 hours; a 60% increase on the previous day’s figure that brought the total number of cases to 34,381. That is the third highest in South America. In total, 346 people in Chile have died.

The surge in numbers has piled fresh pressure on health officials who have enacted a “suppress and lift” strategy, limiting lockdowns to affected areas.

Health workers have been calling for a total lockdown in Santiago since March but the Health Ministry has argued the strategy was keeping cases under control, while preventing the economic fallout of a total closure of the city.

While new cases outside of Santiago have been falling, the localised lockdown measures have proved unsuccessful in curbing the spread in the capital, where 85% of new cases are concentrated.

Political opponents trace the surge back to the government’s steps to return to normal under a month ago.

“Premature messages from the government confused people who are now paying the price” tweeted Carolina Goic, the president of the Christian Democratic Party.

Sebastian Piñera has pleaded the public to respect the new quarantine measures, which will come into effect Friday night from 22pm. “We need your collaboration,” he tweeted.

13 May 202015.14 EDT

Jamie Grierson

At least 95,000 people have entered the UK from overseas since the country’s lockdown was imposed, one of the government’s chief scientific advisers has revealed, while repeatedly failing to provide an estimate of how many of these people had Covid-19.

Appearing before MPs on the science and technology committee, Prof John Aston, the chief scientific adviser at the Home Office, admitted that had tougher restrictions been introduced at the border, the peak of the virus may have been delayed – but he did not say by how long, or if this would have saved lives.

A nationwide study of more than 60,000 people in Spain suggests about 5% of the population – approximately 2 million people – have had the virus.

According to the provisional results of tests designed by the health ministry and the Carlos III public health institute, 5% of those tested had produced antibodies.

While the prevalence of the antibodies was similar in men and women, it was lower in children and babies.

There were also significant regional variations: while Murcia, Melilla, Asturias and the Canary islands showed an infection rate of less than 2%, the proportion rose to more than 10% in the regions of Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha.

As the health minister Salvador Illa made plain on Wednesday evening, the study shows herd immunity has not been achieved.