Worldwide case see biggest ever daily increase of 237,743 – as it happened

That’s where we might leave this blog for now. You can keep up to date with global news on the Guardian website or come join me on the new Guardian live blog here.

Labor MP Amanda Rishworth is also speaking with ABC. She agrees the parliament must follow medical advice, but says the cancellation of this sitting fortnight makes it difficult for the opposition to scrutinise government.

Question time is a really important forum which the opposition can ask the government questions, and every MP has a chance to raise their voice in parliament. So this is critically important that we have parliament sitting. It is a really important vehicle.

Yes, there is the Covid committee, but parliament itself is the opportunity for every MP from around the country to bring the concerns of their constituents. So it does make it more challenging [if it is not sitting].

Australian Liberal MP Tim Wilson has defended the prime minister’s decision to request the next fortnight of parliament to be cancelled.

I can’t think of a single federal MP who doesn’t want parliament to sit, including the prime minister, including the ministry, including backbenchers, including the opposition, including senators. But unfortunately the circumstances that we’re presented with put us in a situation where it’s the responsible thing to do at this time...

The advice is informed by an evolving situation. Actions that might have been acceptable a week ago aren’t necessarily acceptable today. What the prime minister’s done is taken medical advice based on the circumstances in which we face. Parliament brings together people from all over the country and puts them in one place. If there is deemed a sufficient risk that Victorians and the evolving situation in New South Wales might lead to spreads elsewhere, the cost and consequences could be extraordinary.

Donald Trump has commended Australia’s $270bn defence budget boost and discussed China’s “unfair retaliatory trade measures” and threats to Indo-Pacific security, in a phone call with Australian prime minister Scott Morrison.

The US president also thanked Morrison for seeking World Health Organisation reform and an investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Morrison described the president’s call as “very complementary”.

The defence budget boost meant Australia was no longer a passenger in its defence relationship with allies “and that is greatly appreciated by our American friends”, the prime minister said.

The phone call came as Trump, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and other key members of the president’s administration ramp up rhetoric and measures against China.

Pompeo has repeatedly pointed to China’s “coercion” in hitting Australia with steep barley tariffs and beef export bans after Morrison led global calls for the Covid-19 probe.

Hello, Matilda Boseley here with you now.

Just on that previous news, the Australian prime minister has requested the cancellation of the upcoming parliamentary sitting, due to fears of politicians from more heavily infected state mingling and potentially spreading the disease to other states and territories.

The acting chief medical officer of Australia said in a statement:

The entry of a high-risk group of individuals could jeopardise the health situation in the [Australian Capital Territory] and place residents at unnecessary risk of infection. In addition, the health risk to members and senators and their staff from other jurisdictions is a material concern.

It is my medical advice that, despite proposed mitigation measures, these risks would be significantly higher in the context of a parliamentary sitting period due to the number of persons travelling from Victoria and the inevitable mixing with ACT residents, members, senators, staff and visitors within Parliament House.

If the speaker grants this request, it means the next parliament sitting fortnight will begin on 24 August rather than 4 August as planned.

Residents of Australia’s second most populous city, Melbourne, are waiting with bated breath to see if case numbers reduce in the next few days as the city approaches two weeks of lockdown.

Yesterday the state of Victoria, where Melbourne is located, recorded a record 428 cases in one day. This number is approaching the highest ever national daily total back from the country’s first wave.

Health officials are hoping to see a drop in cases from today, the 10th day of serious new city-wide lockdowns, otherwise harsher social distancing measures may be on the table.

A positive Covid-19 case has been found in a Melbourne prison for the first time, raising fears for the safety of inmates. The infected man was new to the Metropolitan Remand Centre and was conducting a precautionary two weeks of isolation before entering the main prison population.

In NSW health officials are still grappling to control a cluster at Sydney’s Crossroads Hotel, which has now been linked to 42 cases.

NSW’s case numbers are still generally in the teen or single digits, but officials fear that this growing cluster could place the state in a similar situation as Victoria. As a result, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian tightened restrictions on restaurants and bars, limiting group numbers to ten a requiring all patrons to be seated while inside.

Patrons who visited a western Sydney Thai restaurant have also been ordered to get tested and self-isolate after a third Covid-19 case linked to the venue. NSW Health on Friday afternoon said a customer who dined at Thai Rock in Wetherill Park on 10 July had tested positive for Covid-19.

NSW will hold their daily press conference at 11 am local time.

Up north, Queensland police intercepted more than 43,000 vehicles and turned away 1,143 at the border with New South Wales, and authorities have constructed a 700-metre border wall at the border suburb of Coolangatta.

Queensland has now banned people from entering the state if they had visited “hotspots” in Sydney. Long delays for motorists looking to cross the state border there are expected to last for months.

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has written to the speaker of the House of Representatives to urge the postponement of the upcoming sitting of parliament.

Morrison says the government “cannot ignore the risk to parliamentarians, their staff, the staff within the parliament, and the broader community of the ACT that holding a parliamentary sitting would create”.

Egypt reported 703 new cases, its health ministry said, the lowest figure since late May. In total, 86,474 cases have been reported and 4,188 deaths, including 68 on Friday, the ministry said.

Egypt reopened resorts to foreign tourists on 1 July after tourism came to a halt in March under measures to curb the outbreak. But Egypt has not made it yet to a “safe list” of countries for resumption of non-essential travel to the European Union, which is reviewed every two weeks.

Tourism accounts for 5% of Egypt’s economic output, according to the government. Analysts put the figure as much as 15% if jobs indirectly related to the sector are included.

Brazil has registered 34,177 new confirmed cases and 1,163 new deaths, its health ministry has said. Total cases in Brazil, the world’s second-worst affected country after the United States, have now risen to 2,046,328 while deaths totalled 76,688.

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 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.

The Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz has rejected the proposal for a mass economic stimulus to help lift EU economies from recession, he has said. Earlier, we reported that the Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš had said the EU was no closer to a stimulus deal. Kurz said:

Our most important central demand is that there should be no long-term debt union... but that what is decided here remains a one-time action.

The chancellor said he had talks with his German counterpart Angela Merkel and the French president Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of a summit of all 27 national EU leaders in Brussels.

There will be new proposals over night. There is a dynamic in our direction.

Here’s a summary of the latest news:

• The World Health Organization reported the greatest increase in global cases, with the total rising by 237,743 in 24 hours. The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a daily report.
• In Brazil, the spread of the virus is no longer thought too be exponential, though there is no guarantee it will recede without intervention, health officials have said. The news presents an opportunity to get the outbreak under control, the World Health Organisation (WHO) emergencies programme head Mike Ryan has said.
• India has became the third in the world to record more than one million coronavirus cases, while the list of US states requiring face coverings in public grew as the country reported at least 70,000 new cases, a record daily jump for the seventh time this month.
• The European Union is negotiating advance purchase deals of potential Covid-19 vaccines with drugmakers Moderna, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson and biotech firms BioNtech and CureVac, two EU sources told Reuters.
• Russia will unveil a deal with AstraZeneca to manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by the pharmaceuticals giant and Oxford University, its wealth fund head said.
• The reproduction rate of the novel coronavirus in the Brittany region has risen sharply in less than a week, the latest indication that the virus is again gaining momentum in France.
  
• Authorities urged some four million people in Spain’s Catalonia to stay home, as the region battles a growing number of new coronavirus clusters.
• In the US, public health specialists who have for months warned the government that shuffling detainees among immigration detention centers would help spread Covid-19 were right, according to a Reuters review of court records and ICE data.
• The Japanese government is facing a blowback after excluding Tokyo residents from a multibillion dollar campaign aimed at reviving domestic tourism, even as the capital on Friday reported a record number of new Covid-19 cases.
• Hong Kong authorities reported 50 locally transmitted cases on Friday, stoking further concern about an escalating third wave of infections in the global financial hub.
• The steepest dive in cocoa demand in a decade has thrown into jeopardy a plan by top producers Ivory Coast and Ghana to guarantee some two million farmers a living wage, sources within the countries’ regulators said.
• Israel imposed a new weekend shutdown on Friday and tightened a series of curbs to lower infection rates.
• South Korea approved an early stage clinical trial of Celltrion Inc’s experimental Covid-19 treatment drug, making it the country’s first such antibody drug to be tested on humans.
  
• Global equity benchmarks treaded water on Friday and government bond yields edged lower as investors waited on the European Union to iron out the details of an expected 750bn euro recovery fund.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported the greatest increase in global cases, with the total rising by 237,743 in 24 hours.

The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a daily report. Previously, the most new cases recorded in a 24-hour period was the 230,370 seen on 12 July. Deaths have held steady and averaged fewer than 5,000 per day in July.

Total global cases are approaching 14m on Friday, according to various tallies, marking another milestone in the spread of the disease that has killed more than 590,000 people in seven months.

Azerbaijan has extended lockdown restrictions, including the closure of its borders, until 31 August after a further rise in the number of infections, the government has said.

People in big cities, including the capital Baku, will be allowed to leave their homes only with special permission from 20 July until 5 August. Shopping centres, cinemas, restaurants, cafes and museums in those cities remained closed, while beauty salons will be reopened.

Azerbaijan introduced lockdown measures on 24 March and has extended them several times, most recently until 1 August. The South Caucasus country of about 10 million people had registered 26,636 confirmed cases and 341 deaths as of Friday.

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

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.

“The health ministry cannot risk recommending something that doesn’t have a scientific basis,” said Miguel Ángel Delgado, a senior ministry official.

However, Bolivia’s opposition-controlled congress is promoting the use of chlorine dioxide. Last week, the senate approved a bill authorising the emergency “manufacture, marketing, supply and use of chlorine dioxide solution for the prevention and treatment of coronavirus”.

The EU is no closer to a stimulus deal designed to help its member states’ economies recover from their lockdowns, the Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, has said.

Views remain widely different among EU leaders after hours of talks on Friday on the plan to inject hundreds and billions of euros to restart growth. Babis also said he did not feel the 27 EU heads were getting closer to a deal and that there was no agreement on the size of a new fund proposed at €750bn.

The US has suffered another 926 deaths and recorded 72,045 new cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has said. That takes the respective totals to 137,864 and 3,555,877.

A top medical official has linked a recent spike in coronavirus cases in Canada to groups of young people gathering in bars, nightclubs and parties.

Deputy chief public health officer Howard Njoo said during a briefing:

When we examine recent trends in case reporting, there is some cause for concern. After a period of steady decline, daily case counts have started to rise.”

Njoo said the daily case count had risen to an average of 350 over the last week up from 300 a day earlier in July. More than 430 cases were reported on Thursday.

This coincides with increasing reports of individuals contracting COVID-19 at parties, nightclubs and bars as well as increasing rates of transmission among young Canadians.”

Canada has reported 109,266 total cases and 8,827 deaths, far fewer than in the United States.

Officials and experts this week said they saw signs of a new spike as the 10 provinces lifted social and economic restrictions imposed in March to fight the outbreak.