Virus reproduction rate jumps in Germany - as it happened

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20 Jun 202018.52 EDT

Summary

Jedidajah Otte

Here are a few of the latest developments at a glance:

• Brazil has registered 1,022 new deaths, bringing the country’s total number of known Covid-19 fatalities from 48,954 to 49,976, while infections increased from 1,032,913 on Friday to 1,067,579 on Saturday, a rise of 34,666.
• The reproduction rate of coronavirus in Germany has jumped to 1.79, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for public health said on Saturday, far above what is needed to contain the outbreak over the longer term. The rate, published in RKI’s daily situation report, compares with a value of 1.06 on Friday.
• An Italian collective brought 67 migrants to safety on Saturday, as the first charity rescue ship reached Italian shores since authorities had decided to close all ports because of the coronavirus pandemic in April.
• The Palestinian Authority said on Saturday it was temporarily closing the cities of Hebron and Nablus in the occupied West Bank to contain the spread of coronavirus after a sharp rise in infections.
• Spain’s foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez has said that British tourists can visit the country from Sunday without facing quarantine.
• Chile’s government increased its estimated number of fatal cases to more than 7,000 on Saturday, from a previously-confirmed 4,265.
• As the number of coronavirus cases in Israel keeps growing since a number of lockdown measures have been eased, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering resuming to allow the Shin Bet secret service to track confirmed and suspected cases.
• Iran is considering making it mandatory within days to wear masks in public places and covered spaces, president Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday, as the tally of confirmed coronavirus cases continued to rise above 200,000.
• Greece has announced another extension of the coronavirus lockdown on its migrant camps, hours after 2,000 people protested in central Athens to mark World Refugee Day and denounce the government’s treatment of migrants.
• Portuguese prosecutors said on Saturday they had launched an investigation into a birthday party attended by scores of people in the town of Lagos on 7 June, which could have led to many new coronavirus infections.

Brazil has registered 1,022 new deaths, bringing the country’s total number of known Covid-19 fatalities from 48,954 to 49,976, the health ministry said on Saturday.

The tally of confirmed infections increased from 1,032,913 on Friday to 1,067,579 on Saturday, a rise of 34,666.

Experts say the true numbers are likely far higher due to a lack of widespread testing.

Since first arriving in the continent-sized country, the virus has spread relentlessly, eroding support for right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro and raising fears of economic collapse after years of anemic growth, Reuters reports.

Bolsonaro, sometimes called the “Tropical Trump,” has been widely criticised for his handling of the crisis.

The country still has no permanent health minister after losing two since April, following clashes with the president.

Bolsonaro has shunned social distancing, calling it a job-killing measure more dangerous than the virus itself.

He has also promoted two anti-malarial drugs as remedies, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, despite little evidence they work.

The Palestinian Authority said on Saturday it was temporarily closing the cities of Hebron and Nablus in the occupied West Bank to contain the spread of coronavirus after a sharp rise in infections.

“The government decided to close the governorate of Hebron to prevent anyone from entering or exiting, with the exception of the transport of merchandise,” Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said.

He told a news conference that Hebron would be closed for five days and Nablus for 48 hours, according to AFP.

The measures come after an increase in Covid-19 infections in both cities.

Hebron saw 48 new cases on Saturday, bringing the total to 258, while authorities have reported 23 cases in Nablus.

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The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s mines ministry has proposed lifting lockdowns at mining operations after workers went on strike to protest compulsory on-site confinements during the coronavirus outbreak, Agence France-Presse reports.

Human rights organisations said earlier this month that mining workers in the vast African country were being forced to stay in overcrowded, unsanitary accommodations.

During a council meeting on Friday government ministers acknowledged the “abysmal housing conditions” of employees in the mineral-rich Katanga region.

Since a lockdown was put in place on 10 March by companies producing cobalt and copper, many employees have been forced to work beyond their eight-hour shifts with no additional pay, according to a group of local and international NGOs.

An Italian collective brought dozens of migrants to safety on Saturday, as the first charity rescue ship reached Italian shores since authorities had decided to close all ports because of the coronavirus pandemic in April.

The arrival of the Mare Ionio ship in Pozzallo, Sicily, on World Refugee Day, was hailed by human rights organisations who noted the unusual speed with which Italy assigned the Mediterranea charity group a port.

“For once, the international law obliging the offer of a safe port, in a short time, has been respected,” the group’s head Alessandra Sciurba said in a statement.

The Mare Ionio rescued 67 people on Friday after their boat ran into difficulty some 40 nautical miles (70km) off Lampedusa. The group said the migrants had been without water for two days.

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“For the first time for years, a ‘place of safety’ has been assigned in less than 24 hours. It should be automatic,” Italian journalist and migrant specialist Nello Scavo tweeted.

Mediterranea called for a port of safety to be extended also to the crew and migrants aboard the German Sea Watch 3 vessel, which took onboard around 100 people off the coast of Libya earlier this week.

The Italian group said it was patrolling the central Mediterranean because European governments were failing to fulfil their responsibility “to safeguard human lives”.

The International Organization for Migration’s spokesman Flavio Di Giacomo told AFP that at least 227 people had died while attempting the perilous crossing since the start of the year.

Chile on Saturday increased its estimate of cases and deaths caused by the coronavirus, and reported that the official death toll had almost doubled.

Amid an effort re-organise its much-criticised reporting of virus-related deaths, the government increased its estimated number of fatal cases to more than 7,000 from a previously-confirmed 4,265, the Financial Post reports.

“In relation to those who died due to Covid-19 without laboratory confirmation, that is, deaths in which Covid-19 is a possible or probable cause, the number rises by 3,069,” said Rafael Araos, the country’s chief epidemiologist.

President Sebastian Pinera this month replaced the country’s health minister as controversy grew over the country’s coronavirus figures.

Official data show there have been 236,748 infections in Chile so far.

Israel now has 20,633 coronavirus cases, a rise of 294 since Friday evening, Haaretz reports.

One person has died, bringing the total death toll to 305.

40 people are now in a severe condition, and 27 are on ventilators.

In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, 810 people tested positive; two people have died.

In the Gaza Strip, 72 people were diagnosed and one person has died.

As the number of coronavirus cases in Israel keeps growing since a number of lockdown measures have been eased, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering resuming to allow the Shin Bet secret service to track confirmed and suspected cases, sources familiar with the issue told Haaretz.

Iran is considering making it mandatory within days to wear masks in public places and covered spaces, president Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday, as the tally of confirmed coronavirus cases continued to rise above 200,000.

The health ministry announced 115 deaths in the 24 hours to Saturday, taking the total to 9,507.

There were 2,322 reported new cases bringing the total to 202,584 in what is the Middle East’s worst-affected country, Reuters reports.

“Mainly for crowded and covered areas [...] we may make [masks] compulsory in a week, more or less,” Rouhani said.

“But first, plenty of inexpensive masks should be made available for the people,” he said during a broadcast on state television.

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The number of deaths in France from Covid-19 has risen by 19 from Friday to stand at 29,633, the health ministry said on Saturday.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 641 to 160,093.

France’s coronavirus death toll is the fifth-highest in the world.

Greece has announced another extension of the coronavirus lockdown on its migrant camps, hours after 2,000 people protested in central Athens to mark World Refugee Day and denounce the government’s treatment of migrants, according to Agence France-Presse.

The migration ministry said confinement for residents of reception and identification centres across the country would be extended to 5 July. It was due to have ended on Monday.

Greece was quick to introduce strict confinement measures on migrant camps on 21 March and imposed a more general lockdown on 23 March. Rights groups have expressed concern that migrants’ rights have been eroded by the restrictions.

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The reproduction of rate of coronavirus in Germany has jumped to 1.79, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for public health said on Saturday, far above what is needed to contain the outbreak over the longer term.

The rate, published in RKI’s daily situation report, compares with a value of 1.06 on Friday.

A reproduction rate, or ‘R’, of 1.79 means that 100 people who contracted the virus infect, on average, 179 other people.

A reproduction of less than 1 is needed to gradually contain the disease.

Chancellor Angela Merkel had previously said that lockdown measures might be reintroduced if the transmission rate would accelerate again.

Portuguese prosecutors said on Saturday they had launched an investigation into a birthday party attended by scores of people which could have led to many new coronavirus infections.

Prosecutors in the southern Faro region said they were probing a late-night party on 7 June “gathering scores of people” in the beach town of Lagos, which took place despite a ban on gatherings of more than 20, Agence France-Presse reports.

There have been a little over 1,500 Covid-19 deaths in Portugal and 38,841 cases out of a population of some 10 million.

The party “could be the origin of an outbreak of Covid-19 infections”, they said.

Local media cited health officials as saying that the party could have caused about 100 new coronavirus cases.

“Those who think they can resume a normal life are gravely mistaken,” health minister Marta Temido said on Friday.

Most of the cases have surfaced in the capital Lisbon and surrounding areas.

On Thursday, Portugal had the highest daily rate of infections in the European Union after Sweden by population size.

“We are finding it hard to break the transmission chains,” Temido said.

There has been an outcry in Portugal over quarantine measures or coronavirus tests imposed on nationals travelling to other countries in the EU’s visa-free Schengen zone.

Like in many other countries, Black Lives Matter protests in small towns as well as big cities in the UK continued taking place this week, with people often defying appeals from the government to refrain from gathering in large numbers.

My colleagues Kyri Evangelou, Alex Healey and Katie Lamborn report.

6:10

Spain’s foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez has said that British tourists can visit the country from Sunday without facing quarantine.

Spain will reopen its borders to visitors from other EU countries and the Schengen area on Sunday, with the exception of Portugal, which has asked Madrid to delay the opening of the land border until 1 July, when Spain will begin welcoming travellers from the rest of the world.

Just on Friday, Gonzalez had said that Spain may impose quarantine on British travellers, as a response to the same measure taken last week by Britain’s government.

But Gonzalez said that she expected Britain would lift its restrictions, making it unnecessary for the Spanish side to apply reciprocity.

About 12 per cent of Spain’s economy is based on the tourism sector.

According to the report of National Institute of Statistics, nearly 18 million British tourists visited Spain in 2019, more than a fifth of the overall total of nearly 84 million visitors.

The US state of Florida has reported 4,049 new infections on Saturday, the biggest daily increase since the beginning of the outbreak.

The state’s total number of confirmed infections is now 93,797.

Infections rose by 4.5% over the past 24 hours, compared with an average increase of 3.4% in the previous seven days, Bloomberg reports.

Deaths among Florida residents reached 3,144, an increase of 1.3%, the state health department reported.

Cumulative hospitalisations of Florida residents rose by 165, or 1.3%, to 12,939.

On Thursday and Friday, Florida also recorded daily infection records of 3,207 and 3,822 new cases, respectively, as we reported earlier.

It has been seven weeks since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, an ally of US president Donald Trump, took a coronavirus “victory lap” and pressed ahead with a swift reopening programme in the state while berating the media for a “doom and gloom” approach to the pandemic.