Spain reports lowest daily death toll in over two months – as it happened

We are closing this live blog now, but you can stay up to date on all our coverage with our new global blog which you can find below.

22 May 202019.09 EDT

Summary

Jedidajah Otte

Here the latest developments at a glance:

• Latin America has reported more new coronavirus cases than either the United States or Europe for three days in a row, driven by high numbers in Brazil, Peru and Mexico, CNN analysis of Johns Hopkins University and World Health Organization data shows. The region reported at least 32,854 new cases on Wednesday, more than half of which were in Brazil.
• Italy’s coronavirus death toll in March and April could be nearly 19,000 higher than the official figure of 32,000, the national social security agency said Thursday. As of Friday, the pandemic has claimed 32,486 deaths in Italy, of which 26,715 have been in Lombardy alone, Europe’s worst affected region.
• Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro said he will sign off a 60 billion-real ($10.72 bn) federal aid programme for states and cities hit by coronavirus, but asked governors for support by freezing public sector pay increases. Brazil has just passed another grim coronavirus milestone, with more than 20,000 deaths now officially confirmed.
  
• A scientific adviser to the British government, Ian Boyd, has said that, had ministers acted “a week or two weeks earlier” in the virus pandemic, it would have made “quite a big difference” to the death rate.
• Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov is possibly ill with Covid-19 and in a Moscow hospital suffering from suspected coronavirus, Russian news agencies reported, adding the ally of Vladimir Putin was “under medical supervision” and in a “stable” condition.
  
• Russia’s industrial output fell by 6.6 percent in April compared to the previous year, with its economy predicted to shrink by up to six percent in 2020. Russia imposed a “non-working” period across the country at the end of April, and Russia’s Audit Chamber predicts that the number of unemployed will grow from 2.5 million to eight million this year.
• Half of Facebook’s workforce could shift to permanent home working by the end of the decade, founder Mark Zuckerberg has revealed, saying it was “quite possible” that over the next five to 10 years about 50% of staff at the company could be working from hom
• More than 1,200 California pastors say they will resume in-person services this month in defiance of Governor Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home order to slow the spread of coronavirus. California has more than 85,700 coronavirus cases and more than 3,400 deaths.
• Puerto Rico will cautiously reopen beaches, restaurants, churches, malls and hair salons next week under strict new rules as the US territory emerges from a two-month lockdown that stifled business activity on an island that now has a 40% unemployment rate.

That’s all from me, I’m now handing over to my colleague Alison Rourke.

21 May 202018.52 EDT

Tom Phillips

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro

Brazil has just passed another grim coronavirus milestone, with more than 20,000 deaths from Covid-19 now officially confirmed here.

On Thursday evening Brazil’s health ministry announced a daily record of 1,188 deaths confirmed in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of officially recorded deaths to 20,047.

Brazil also confirmed another 18,508 infections, taking the total number to 310,087. That is the third highest number in the world, after the US and Russia.

Despite Brazil’s rising death toll the country’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, continues to downplay the dangers of the coronavirus, which he has repeatedly dismissed as “a bit of a cold” and “a little flu”.

On Thursday, just hours before the new death toll was announced, Bolsonaro claimed the pandemic’s threat had been exaggerated with “a great deal of propaganda”.

“This has brought dread to the heart of the Brazilian family,” Bolsonaro complained.

Sub-notification and low rates of testing mean the real number of infections and deaths are likely to be substantially higher. Some experts fear Brazil’s death toll could rise to at least 100,000 in the coming months.

A scientific adviser to the British government has said that he would have liked ministers to have acted “a week or two weeks earlier” in the virus pandemic, the BBC reports.

Ian Boyd, who sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which advises ministers on Covid-19, said “it would have made “quite a big difference” to the death rate.

Ministers have always insisted they have been guided by the scientific advice during the pandemic.

The official death toll in the UK currently stands at 36,042.

Boyd started attending Sage meetings a month ago.

“Acting very early was really important and I would have loved to have seen us acting a week or two weeks earlier and it would have made quite a big difference to the steepness of the curve of infection and therefore the death rate,” he said.

“And I think that’s really the number one issue - could we have acted earlier? Were the signs there earlier on?”

Boyd suggested that the government based its initial assessment on the transmissibility of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) virus, which is less infectious than this coronavirus.

Here a picture of US president Donald Trump holding up but not wearing a face shield during a tour of Ford Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan on Thursday. The wearing of masks is mandatory at the plant.

The plant is manufacturing ventilators, masks and other medical supplies during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Austria’s hotels will reopen as planned on 29 May, chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced on Thursday.

Infection rates were low enough to allow a reopening of the tourism sector, he said, according to Der Standard newspaper.

Up to 65,000 tourism industry workers will be tested regularly for coronavirus until early July, under a programme that is financed by the government.

Austria has so far recorded 633 Covid-19 deaths.

Puerto Rico will cautiously reopen beaches, restaurants, churches, malls and hair salons next week under strict new rules as the US territory emerges from a two-month lockdown that stifled business activity on an island already beset with economic woes.

Governor Wanda Vázquez announced Thursday that most businesses will reopen on Tuesday, but a 7pm to 5am curfew will remain in place until June 15, the Associated Press reports.

All people will be required to wear a mask when outside or inside a business, regardless of what they are doing.

Restaurants will be allowed to operate at 25% capacity. Hair salons and barber shops will welcome clients by appointment only. People doing exercise, such as surfing, jogging, swimming or kayaking, will be allowed at the beach from 5am to 7pm. Stores and malls will be allowed to reopen but under limited capacity, and people will be prohibited from trying on clothes, among other restrictions.

Many Puerto Ricans, including business owners, cheered the highly anticipated announcement. Health experts warned that the government has not tested enough people or conducted enough contact tracing and is not prepared for a possible spike in new infections.

Puerto Ricos Health Department has reported more than 2,900 confirmed Covid-19 cases and at least 126 deaths, and dozens of additional infections still emerge every day.

Officials do not regularly update statistics, including how many people have been tested or how many have recovered. Until recently, the island had a lower per-capita testing rate than any US state.

Puerto Rico’s lockdown caused the unemployment rate to spike to an estimated 40% on an island of 3.2 million people with a poverty rate of more than 40%, higher than any U.S. state.

US president Donald Trump is eager to get back on the campaign trail and said on Thursday he may have to stage rallies at outdoor sites until the coronavirus pandemic settles down enough for traditional events, Reuters reports.

“We got to get back to the rallies,” Trump told reporters during a tour of a Ford auto plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan. “I think it’s going to be sooner rather than later.”

With little more than five months left until the election, Trump is behind Democratic rival Joe Biden in national polls and in some battleground states, such as Michigan, which he won in 2016.

A senior campaign official said the campaign was aiming for as early as mid-June to hold a rally, with preferred locations in battleground states like Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

A Trump adviser said a mid-June timetable might be too optimistic, that it might have to wait until after the July 4 holiday.

The president has been told by his advisers that he is facing a race in 2020 tougher than his improbable victory in 2016, the adviser said.

Trump said rallies could be held first in his adopted home state of Florida or Georgia, “whoever opens first.”

“We might do some outdoor big ones and we also may just wait until some of the stadiums can open up,” he said. “The demand has been incredible to get going with the rallies.”

Half of Facebook’s workforce could shift to permanent home working by the end of the decade, founder Mark Zuckerberg has revealed, according to the Press Association.

The social network’s chief set out his vision to employees on Thursday, prompted by the coronavirus crisis which has forced companies across the globe to embrace remote working in recent months.

Zuckerberg said it is “quite possible” that over the next five to 10 years about 50% of staff at the company could be working from home, though he warned that those interested could see salaries cut if they decide to be located away from big cities where living expenses tend to be higher.

The tech giant also plans to “aggressively open up” remote hiring, though the process will be staggered, starting with experienced engineers living in the US and Canada.

“This is fundamentally about changing our culture, in the way that we all are going to work long-term, so I think I’m optimistic about this direction, but I want to make sure that we move forward in a measured way,” Zuckerberg said.

“At the same time, I also want to emphasise that I just think Covid is going to be with us for a while to come.”

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The 36-year-old hopes that the move will help retain workers that want to live in areas further away from offices, while attracting new talent from further afield.

More than 95% of Facebook’s staff are currently working from home due to Covid-19.

The success of permanent remote working would “rely on the honour code”, Zuckerberg said, adding it was vital for tax and accounting purposes for people to declare their locations.

Italy’s coronavirus death toll in March and April could be nearly 19,000 higher than the official figure of 32,000, the national social security agency said Thursday.

The Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale (INPS), the largest social security and welfare institute in Italy, said in a new study that the official death figures were not “reliable”, according to AFP.

Its study showed that 156,42 total deaths were recorded in Italy in March and April, which is 46,909 higher than the average number of fatalities in those months recorded between 2015 and 2019.

But only 27,938 deaths linked to coronavirus were reported during that period by the Civil Protection Agency, whose toll forms the basis of national statistics, the INPS said.

That meant there were 18,971 excess deaths during this period, with the vast majority of 18,412 recorded in the coronavirus-ravaged north of the country.

“Given the fact that the number of deaths is quite stable in these times, we can - with necessary caution - attribute a large portion of these deaths during these past two months to the epidemic,” the INPS said.

It added that the increase in deaths was likely not only due to the disease, but from people suffering from other illnesses unable to get healthcare due to hospitals being overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic.

As of Friday, the pandemic has claimed 32,486 deaths in Italy, of which 26,715 have been in Lombardy alone, Europe’s worst affected region.

A two-day-old baby has died because of a coronavirus-related condition in South Africa, the government said Thursday.

The baby was born preterm with lung difficulties and had to be put on a ventilator, according to a statement from the health ministry, CNN reports.

“The mother had tested positive for Covid-19, and the child subsequently tested positive for Covid-19 as well. It is important to appreciate the complexities of the underlying condition of prematurity,” the statement read.

The baby is among the 27 coronavirus deaths announced Wednesday, bringing the total number to 339, according to the ministry.

With more than 18,000 cases, South Africa has the highest number of coronavirus patients on the continent.

Our US live blog is reporting that once again Donald Trump has carried out an official visit without wearing a face mask. The US president, who was touring a Ford factory in Michigan that has been adapted to making medical equipment, said that he did not require a mask all the time as he is tested frequently for coronavirus.

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Read more on our US blog.

Data on coronavirus infections that was a key driver in Governor Brian Kemps’ aggressive push to reopen the US state of Georgia was flawed and may have distorted perceptions of progress against the virus, the Associated Press reports.

Georgia Department of Public Health spokeswoman Nancy Nydam said in a statement on Thursday that the department included antibody tests when calculating the total number of tests conducted since early April.

She said about 57,000 of the 407,000 total tests reported to the state had been antibody tests, about 14%.

Conflating tests looking for antibodies and tests aimed at detecting the virus can create confusion about the current impact of the virus, said Richard Rothenberg, an infectious disease expert at Georgia State University, adding that the mistake would have made a substantial impact on the perception of the outbreak.

Kemp relied on the state seeing a downward trajectory of the percentage of positive tests when making his decision to be one of the first states in the nation to allow business to reopen. Salons, restaurants, gyms and other businesses in Georgia were given the green light to reopen in April.

Kemp’s spokeswoman Candice Broce declined to comment.

Speaking of churches: More than 1,200 California pastors say they will resume in-person services this month in defiance of Governor Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home order to slow the spread of coronavirus.

California has more than 85,700 coronavirus cases and more than 3,400 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The number of people infected is probably higher because of a lack of testing.

More here:

Churches in the Iranian capital Tehran were given a deep-clean on Thursday, according to Living in Tehran.

So far, 7,249 Covid-19 deaths have been recorded in Iran, and new infections have risen sharply since the country relaxed its restrictions on movement on 11 April.

Russia’s industrial output fell by 6.6 percent in April compared to the previous year, dampened by the country’s coronavirus lockdown, according to the state statistics agency Rosstat.

Russia imposed a “non-working” period across the country at the end of April which “served as the decisive factor in lowering industrial output,” Rosstat said in a statement, AFP reports.

Industries were delivered a double blow as president Vladimir Putin ordered companies to stop work activities but continue paying salaries.

At the same time, “consumer demand fell for a range of goods and services,” the agency said.

Russia’s commodities sector only decreased by 3.2 percent year on year, and oil production actually grew by 0.2 percent, the agency said, noting that for many of those companies ceasing activity was not possible.

The automotive sector was the worst-hit, plummeting by 79.2 percent, while the pharmaceutical industries showed growth of 13.5 percent year on year.

Each month in lockdown could cost Russia between 20 and 30 percent of monthly growth, according to calculations by the ING.

The Central Bank last month predicted that Russian economy would shrink by up to six percent in 2020.

Russia’s Audit Chamber predicts that the number of unemployed will grow from 2.5 million to eight million this year.

Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov was on Thursday in hospital in Moscow suffering from suspected coronavirus, Russian news agencies reported, according to AFP.

“Ramzan Kadyrov was taken by plane to Moscow with a suspected case of coronavirus. Now (he) is under medical supervision,” state news agency TASS reported, citing a medical source who also said Kadyrov was in a “stable” condition.

News agency RIA Novosti also quoted a medical source as saying Kadyrov, 43, was in hospital in Moscow, while Interfax quoted a Moscow medical source saying he was being treated and “suspected of having coronavirus”.

If confirmed, Kadyrov would be the latest senior official to contract the virus after prime minister Mikhail Mishustin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and several ministers.

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There was no immediate comment from officials in Chechnya or Moscow.

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro said he will sign off a 60 billion-real ($10.72 billion) federal aid programme for states and cities hit by coronavirus, but asked governors for support freezing public sector pay increases.

The bill to distribute federal money to states and municipalities was approved by Congress earlier this month. However, Bolsonaro has not signed off on it due to pressure from economy minister Paulo Guedes, who is pushing for more fiscal austerity, Reuters reports.

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Bolsonaro is under growing pressure for his handling of the outbreak, which looks set to cripple the Brazilian economy and threatens his re-election hopes. In the coming days, Brazil is likely to become the world’s second-worst affected country, behind only to the United States.

Nearly 19,000 have died so far from the virus in Brazil, with 291,579 confirmed cases. The true number of infections and deaths is likely to be higher as Brazil has not been carrying out widespread testing.

Bolsonaro’s relationship with governors and mayors has grown increasingly bitter. The president is angry over shutdowns they have implemented to stop the virus’ spread and argues that keeping the economy running is more important.

In return for signing off on the aid package, Bolsonaro asked governors for their backing in specific measures freezing public sector pay increases for two years.