Coronavirus live news: India reports daily tally of 96,000 cases, a global record

With that, we’ll be closing this blog for today.

We have started a new blog where you can continue to follow the latest developments in Australia and around the world. You can follow that here.

There’s a summary below of what has happened over the past few hours

Thanks for reading, and stay safe.

• The Australian state of Victoria recorded 37 new cases of Covid-19, the lowest for months, as it also braces for illegal anti-lockdown protests and potential arrests.
• Brazil’s death toll passed 130,000, according to the country’s health ministry. It has the second highest death toll in the world, after the US.
• France has ruled out imposing a new national lockdown despite recording more than 9,000 new cases for the second consecutive day. Instead the prime minister, Jean Gastex, announced an increase in test and trace measures and a reduction the quarantine period for those with the virus from 14 to seven days.
• Spain has reported 4,708 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours. It brings its cumulative total to 566,326 – the highest in western Europe.
• A further 3,539 people have tested positive in the UK, the largest daily figure since mid-May. It was also announced that the R value for both the UK and England is between 1 and 1.2.
• The US government’s infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci said he disagrees with President Donald Trump’s assessment that the country has “rounded the corner” on the coronavirus pandemic, saying the statistics are disturbing.
• The first European pandemic “travel bubble”, created in May by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, has burst after Latvia said it was mandating a 14-day quarantine on everyone arriving from Estonia.
• Iraq has recorded another 4,254 new cases and 67 more deaths from the virus. Despite the recent surge in cases, thousands of supporters of Iraqi shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr gathered at a mosque in east Baghdad for the first time since March.
• India has set another global one-day record for coronavirus infections. The country reported 96,551 new cases. Deaths have remained relatively low in the country, but are seeing an upward trend, with more than 1,000 deaths being reported every day for the last ten days.
• Global infections have passed 28.2m and deaths stand at 911,282,according to Johns Hopkins data. The first four countries in terms of infections, the US, India, Brazil and Russia, account for nearly 58% of all cases.
• Austria has expanded mandatory mask-wearing and imposed restrictions on events in response to a surge in new cases.
• In the UK, the Covid-19 smartphone app will be launched across England and Wales on 24 September.

Coronavirus cases in Colombia surpassed 700,000 on Friday as deaths from the virus climbed toward 23,000.

The Andean country has 702,088 confirmed cases of the virus according to the health ministry, with 22,518 reported deaths. Active cases number 95,398.

Colombia began its months-long lockdown in March. It is now in a much-looser “selective” quarantine phase and making plans to restart international flights.

Intensive care units in Bogota are at about 62% capacity, according to local health authorities. The capital is home to a third of Colombia’s cases.

It’s Saturday morning in Australia and Melbourne is bracing itself for more anti-lockdown protests planned for today, after 17 people were arrested last week.

A “freedom walk” is planned for 11am today in the city, as well as other protests, despite the strong warnings of police and the state’s premier, Daniel Andrews.
Andrews told protesters on Friday that “All you’re potentially doing is spreading the virus”.

The assistant commissioner of police, Luke Cornelius, went even further saying “I feel a bit like a dog returning to eat his own vomit.”

“I’m sick of it,” he said.

Meanwhile, the chairman of St Basil’s Homes for the Aged in Fawkner, where 44 residents died, has stood down. The Melbourne aged care home recorded the single most deaths in aged care of the pandemic so far.

Federal data has also emerged this morning showing that 95 per cent of Australia’s coronavirus aged care deaths have occurred in Victoria.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was “optimistic” about Congress passing coronavirus relief legislation before the Nov. 3 presidential election.

“I’m optimistic. I do think that we should have an agreement,” Pelosi said in a CNN interview.

“That’s what we all want.”

It comes after Trump voiced opposition to another massive coronavirus relief package a day after the Senate failed to pass the Republican “skinny” relief bill.

Melbourne residents are experiencing some of the strictest and longest coronavirus lockdown measures in the world as Victoria continues to work to contain a second wave of Covid-19 infections. An overnight curfew from 8pm to 5am is in place, leaving the streets of a once thriving city deserted.

Saturday’s Mirror splash in the UK.

The Telegraph’s front page.

Saturday’s Times front page.

A selection of Saturday’s front pages in the UK, starting with the FT.

How vaccine hesitancy could undermine Australia’s Covid response. A piece on a New South Wales town, which is the country’s counter-culture capital.

US hospitals turned down about a third of their allocated supplies of the Covid-19 drug remdesivir since July as need for the costly antiviral wanes, according to unpublished government statistics provided to Reuters by a pharmacists’ group.

Some hospitals said they are still buying the Gilead Sciences medicine to build inventory in case the pandemic accelerates over the winter. But they said current supplies are adequate, in part because they are limiting use to severely ill patients.

The Food and Drug Administration has allowed more liberal remdesivir use, but 6 out of 8 major hospital systems contacted by Reuters said they were not using it for moderate cases.

The slowdown suggests that a shortage of the drug is over and threatens Gilead’s efforts to expand use of remdesivir, which it sells under the brand name Veklury in some countries.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told hospitals and other healthcare organisations on Friday that between July 6 and September 8, state and territory public health systems accepted about 72% of the remdesivir they were offered, Michael Ganio, senior director of pharmacy practice and quality at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, told Reuters.

Hospitals in turn took only about two-thirds of what states and territories accepted, he added. It was not immediately clear what happened to the surplus supplies.

More from Dr Fauci who said it would probably take another year before life returns to a sense of “normality” in the US even if a coronavirus vaccine is approved in the coming months.

The coronavirus death toll in Mexico is primed to hit 70,000 when official data is released on Friday.

And excess mortality data from mid-March through early August indicates that the total number of deaths beyond the official count is likely tens of thousands higher.

On Thursday, the health ministry announced that 652,364 infections and 69,649 deaths have been attributed to the strain of the coronavirus that was first detected late last year in China.

Based on official data, Mexico is the nation with the fourth highest number of deaths globally, and the 13th highest on a per capita basis, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

But earlier this month, the health ministry said it recorded more than 120,000 “extra” deaths from mid-March through August 1. The measure compares mortality figures this year with a four-year average from 2015 to 2018.

Twelve children who likely contracted Covid-19 at three childcare operations in the US infected some of their parents and siblings, according to a study, adding to evidence that young kids can transmit the disease.

Previous studies had suggested children aged 10 years or older can efficiently transmit the virus in school settings.

The study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published on Friday found that much younger children can also spread the virus, including a case of an 8-month-old who apparently infected both parents.

From the 12 documented cases acquired at the childcare facilities in Utah, virus transmission was found among at least 12 of 46 non-facility contacts, such as parents – one of whom required hospitalisation – siblings and an aunt.

Transmission was observed from two of three children with confirmed, asymptomatic Covid-19, researchers found, further evidence that those without symptoms can spread the virus.

From April 1 to July 10, Salt Lake County identified 17 childcare facilities, including daycare centres and day camps, with at least two confirmed Covid-19 cases within a 14-day period. Data in the CDC report involves only outbreaks in three of these.

At two of the facilities, the researchers traced the primary infection to staff members exposed to Covid-19 through a family member.

A tweet from the WHO’s director general on the potential Covid-19 vaccines.

All five intensive care beds dedicated to Covid patients are in use at the Laveran Military Training Hospital in Marseille, and its doctors are bracing for more.

France’s Prime Minister Jean Castex warned Friday that virus situation was worsening in the country.

“For the first time in many weeks, we are noting a substantial increase in the number of hospitalised people”, Castex said.

The Laveran hospitals medical staff suit up to enter the Covid zone, hook patients up to monitors and tubes for hydration, nourishment and medicine, and meet frequently to discuss their prognosis.

The 70 ICU beds dedicated to virus patients in Frances second-biggest city and the surrounding Bouches-du-Rhone region were all occupied by Tuesday.

And the number of ICU virus patients in the region has doubled in the past 10 days and now surpasses 100.

Restrictions on private indoor gatherings across the west of Scotland have now been extended to Lanarkshire, the Scottish government has announced.

The restrictions will apply from midnight and will be the same as for those already in place for more than 1.1 million people living in Glasgow City, East Renfrewshire, Renfrewshire, East Dunbartonshire and West Dunbartonshire.

The restrictions mean that people should not meet with individuals from other households indoors, whether in the affected local authority areas or elsewhere. Members of up to two households, and up to a maximum of six people, can continue to meet outdoors, including in gardens, and in hospitality settings, provided all existing guidance is followed.

At her daily briefing on Friday, Sturgeon confirmed that an additional 39 people had tested positive for the virus in Lanarkshire since Thursday, with 205 positive cases since 4 September.

The restrictions, which were recommended by the National Incident Management Team chaired by Public Health Scotland, will apply to people living in or visiting the North and South Lanarkshire local authority areas – which are home to more than 660,000 people – and will be reviewed in seven days.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that it was “clearly regrettable” that the restrictions had to be extended and asked everyone in the affected areas to be “extra vigilant”. She added:

I understand that this will not be welcome news for people living in these areas, especially ahead of the weekend, but we must act now to protect people and get more control over the virus in the area”.

Local public health teams have looked at where cases are being identified and, by restricting indoor meetings, we are helping to protect those who are most at risk from Covid-19 – as they are more likely to be meeting others in a household setting rather than in a public setting.

It has been a grim day for Covid figures in the UK, writes Nicola Davis.

Several datasets released today have shown the same trend: there is a resurgence in coronavirus in the UK.

Now the increase has been underscored by the latest figures, which show a further 3,539 people have tested positive for Covid-19: the largest daily figure since mid-May and more than a 20% rise on yesterday’s figure of 2,919 new cases.

While testing has increased since May, that alone does not explain the recent surge. A Guardian analysis of the seven-day average of cases by specimen date per 1,000 tests also shows a steep rise in recent weeks.

The news comes as the Government Office for Science and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies reveals the R value for both the UK and England is between 1 and 1.2 – although they caution these numbers reflect the situation over the past weeks, given time lags in the range of data used.

More recent data from a survey called React-1, albeit based on 136 positive swabs out of more than 150,000 collected, reveals the R value in England to be about 1.7, with cases doubling roughly every eight days.

Experts say the rise is not confined to hotspots, although the increase in prevalence is greater in some regions than others, nor is it confined to hospitals and care homes. Whichever way you look at it, Covid-19 is spreading.

AFP has more on the announcement by the French prime minister, Jean Castex, not to impose a new lockdown. It quotes him as saying:

We have to succeed in living with this virus, without returning to the idea of a generalised lockdown.

Our strategy is not changing. We must fight the virus without putting on hold our social, cultural and economic life, the education of our children and our ability to live normally.

Castex said 42 of France’s 101 departments were now classified as “red zones” where the virus was circulating rapidly, up from 28 earlier this week.

“There is no Maginot Line – inevitably it ends up reaching the most vulnerable,” he said, referring to the supposedly unbreakable defences France built before the second world war.

But he did not announce any major new restrictions, urging people instead to respect social distancing guidelines and use face masks.

And the quarantine period for people with the virus would be shortened to just seven days from 14, to better match “the period when there is a real risk of contagion,” Castex said.

The move is a tacit acknowledgement that enforcing quarantines has proven nearly impossible, given the number of new cases.

Castex also said testing capacities would be ramped up in response to long waiting times for appointments and results.

Priority cases involving people with confirmed exposure to Covid-19 patients or already showing symptoms will be given reserved spots at testing centres, and 2,000 more people will be hired to carry out contact tracing.

The UK government is facing a mounting backlash from Tory MPs over its new “rule of six” law, including its refusal to follow Scotland and Wales in exempting younger children, amid reports that cabinet ministers were split over the measures.

Boris Johnson unveiled new rules on Wednesday to replace existing guidance and make it illegal for groups of more than six to gather indoors or outdoors in England from Monday, slashing the current legal limit of 30, following a surge in Covid-19 cases.

But, announcing Scotland’s own version of the new measures on Thursday, Nicola Sturgeon said under-12s would be exempt and, on Friday, the Welsh government made the same move for under-11s.

The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, said groups of up to 30 could continue to meet outdoors because “we see no evidence here that coronavirus is being transmitted between people when they meet in the fresh air”.

It has prompted calls from Tory MPs, some of whom fear the rules are too draconian and risk criminalising people for exercising basic freedoms, to call for a rethink.

Here’s some reaction to the lack of action announced by Castex.

The UK has reported 3,539 confirmed new cases, the biggest daily rise since 17 May.

There’s more on the UK coronavirus live blog.

Greece’s death toll from the virus has reached 300, the state health agency said, as the total number of infections topped 12,700, AFP reports.

The Eody agency said 287 new cases were confirmed on Friday, a day after an all-time record of 372 infections in 24 hours was announced. More than half of the country’s 12,734 infections since the pandemic began were recorded in August, mostly among Greeks.

The increase has been attributed to large gatherings in violation of social distancing rules.

Greece’s civil protection agency has made masks compulsory in all indoor public areas.

The government has ruled out a general lockdown after gradually reopening the economy in May, while foreign visitors have been allowed in since June in hopes of salvaging part of the economically vital tourism season.

Armenia has said its land borders would remain closed until January, AFP reports.

Foreign nationals will not be able to cross Armenia’s land borders until 11 January and public gatherings of more than 60 people will also be banned into the new year. Mask-wearing will also remain mandatory in enclosed public spaces, the government said in a statement.

The restrictions are being imposed to halt the “spread of the disease in Armenia” and protect public health, the government said.

But the former Soviet country did not extend a state of emergency, which was declared in March and ended on Friday.

With a population of about 3 million, Armenia has registered 45,503 coronavirus cases and 909 deaths. In June, the prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan – who has himself tested positive and later recovered – denounced widespread quarantine violations.

Armenia’s neighbour Georgia – among the world’s least affected countries – postponed on Friday the reopening of schools in big cities until 1 October after registering a surge in the number of new coronavirus cases.

In about 15 minutes, France’s prime minister, Jean Castex, is due to announce new measures to tackle the spread of the virus after a record surge in infections.

AFP has this preview:

Officials have been increasingly concerned about the high number of infections in France, even if the death toll and admissions to intensive care are way below the highs recorded in March and April.

However, there is no indication Castex will announce restrictions as severe as the nationwide two-month lockdown France experienced from March to May at the peak of the epidemic.

The health ministry said 9,843 new coronavirus infections were recorded on Thursday, the highest number since large-scale testing began. France’s total death toll from the pandemic stands at 30,813.

Jean-Francois Delfraissy, the head of the scientific council advising the government on the pandemic, said Wednesday that “tough” decisions may be required at the meeting.

People at high risk because of old age or health problems including diabetes, obesity and respiratory issues may require a protective “bubble” around them.

There was the danger of a “very rapid, exponential rise” in some places, Delfraissy said, singling out the French Riviera and Provence regions.

Castex himself is in a seven-day period of self-isolation, having spent part of last weekend with the boss of the Tour de France Christian Prudhomme, who tested positive for Covid-19.

Switzerland has announced that people travelling from part of France and Austria will need to be quarantined because of rising coronavirus cases there, but exempted immediate border regions, AFP reports.

Switzerland considers that countries that count more than 60 new daily Covid-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants for 14 consecutive days are at-risk, and reserves the right to impose restrictions, including a 10-day quarantine.

Neighbouring France passed that bar at the end of August, sparking concern that border closures could be looming.

Swiss health minister Alain Berset told a news conference that the government had decided to place nine of 13 French regions, including Paris, on its at-risk list, as well as Vienna in neighbouring Austria.

“We have seen a number of new infections in France, which are today already higher that the numbers in March and April,” he said, stressing that “this is a situation to take seriously … We’re trying to keep the pandemic under control.”

At the same time, he said, the government had sought a “pragmatic” approach and thus exempted the border regions in France and other neighbouring countries from the order, set to take effect from Monday.

Switzerland has recorded a steady rise in cases in recent months. The country of 8.5 million people has counted more than 46,000 cases of coronavirus and over 1,700 deaths.

Daily case numbers regularly topped 1,000 in March, before dropping to single digits in mid-June. Since then, they have steadily risen, and on Friday topped 500 for the first time since April.

A Black man who is going to trial for murder in the US must wear a mask even though he thinks it could prejudice jurors against him, a judge ruled, AP reports.

Carine Reeves, of New York, contended that a mask would subject him to racial profiling and stereotyping by jurors who associate masks with criminals.

Court rules require everyone in a courtroom to wear a mask during the coronavirus pandemic.

Justice Harold Stewart II said jurors will understand why Reeves and all others in the courtroom are wearing masks. And Reeves could be subjected to undue attention if he were the only one without a mask, the judge said.

“During this pandemic, the court cannot think of a greater state interest than taking measures that prevent the spread of the virus, for everyone’s health and safety,” the judge wrote on Thursday in his decision.

Reeves is charged with murder in the 2017 killing of Sally Shaw, who was shot in the head and left on the side of a road in Cherryfield, in eastern Maine. The trial, scheduled to begin later this month, is the first murder trial in Maine since the pandemic reduced courthouse hours and delayed trials.

Reeeves’ attorney, Stephen Smith, had pointed to a study by North Carolina researchers who wrote, African Americans are particularly prone to racial profiling solely due to the fact that they are wearing masks.

Health authorities in Thailand have confirmed another coronavirus infection in an Uzbek professional footballer, eight days after the virus resurfaced following a more than three-month absence, Reuters reports.

The unnamed man tested positive after a mandatory pre-match test on Tuesday, despite having completed quarantine on 27 August after three prior negative tests, health officials said.

The 29-year-old player arrived in Thailand on 13 August.

Yong Poovorawan, a virology expert from Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said the virus incubation period in the man would have been longer than 14 days and it was unlikely to have been domestically transmitted.

“I believe he was infected abroad,” Yong said.

By sealing off the country to all but returning Thai nationals and approved foreigners, and requiring all arrivals to quarantine, Thailand has kept the number of coronavirus cases to 3,461, the vast majority of which have recovered.

The country has reported 58 deaths.

It had been more than 100 days without a domestic infection until a mysterious case appeared in Bangkok last week, with no travel history or known exposure to the virus. Authorities have since tested hundreds of people who may have come in contact with the man, a DJ who was recently imprisoned.

There were 43 other people potentially exposed to the Uzbek footballer but all had tested negative for the virus and were undergoing quarantine, said Sophon Iamsirithaworn, the director of the bureau of general communicable diseases, adding that a further 27 individuals would be tested.

Cases of coronavirus in England are doubling every seven to eight days, research has revealed in the latest figures to show a resurgence of Covid-19.

The study, known as React-1, is a population surveillance study that began in May and uses swabs from about 120,000 to 160,000 randomly selected people in England across 315 local authority areas each month to track the spread of coronavirus using PCR analysis – the “have you got it now” test.

“The prevalence of the virus in the population is increasing. We found evidence that it has been accelerating at the end of August and beginning of September,” said Steven Riley, professor of infectious disease dynamics at Imperial College London and a co-author of the work.

Finland will allow holidaymakers to visit the country for up to three days in order to help the struggling tourist industry, ministers have announced, AFP reports.

Under the new measures, travel restrictions will be eased to allow visitors from Germany, Sweden and other countries with fewer than 25 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the past fortnight.

Arrivals from countries with higher levels of infection, such as France and the UK, will also be admitted without quarantine requirements if they are travelling with a charter flight or organised tour group, and if their stay does not exceed 72 hours.

In recent years, tourist numbers in Lapland, in Finland’s far north, have grown to record levels. Among 3m overnight stays in 2018, British tourists were the largest group.

The Finnish government has come under pressure to ease travel restrictions to help businesses in Lapland, where tourism generated €1bn (.1bn) of revenue in 2018 according to the area’s regional council.

Finland’s tight border restrictions ban arrivals from all but a handful of EU countries in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The economic affairs minister, Mika Lintila, told a press conference on Friday the new policy “will bring clarity to the business and tourism sectors”.

“The decision takes into account safety and the needs of business.”

The extradition case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will resume on Monday after a Covid-19 scare turned out to be a false alarm, PA Media reports.

On Thursday, a hearing at the Old Bailey was brought to a halt amid fears a lawyer for the US government may have been exposed to the virus. Judge Vanessa Baraitser adjourned until Monday so the barrister could be tested for coronavirus.

On Friday, it emerged the test result was negative, meaning the case could continue on Monday with the next witness, US lawyer Eric Lewis.

Assange is fighting extradition to the US following leaks of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011 exposing alleged war crimes and abuse.

The 49-year-old, who has been in high-security Belmarsh prison for 16 months, is facing 18 charges – including plotting to hack computers and conspiring to obtain and disclose national defence information.

His defence claim the prosecution under the Donald Trump administration has been politically motivated.The extradition case is due to go on for up to four weeks.

The Covid-19 app will be launched across England and Wales on 24 September, said the Department of Health and Social Care.

Ahead of the roll-out, businesses including pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and cinemas are being urged to ensure they have NHS QR code posters visible on entry so customers who have downloaded the app can use their smartphones to check in.

DHSC said ongoing trials in the east London borough of Newham, on the Isle of Wight and with NHS volunteer responders showed the app was “highly effective when used alongside traditional contact tracing to identify contacts of those who have tested positive for coronavirus”.

Thousands of supporters of Iraqi shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have gathered at a mosque in east Baghdad for the first weekly prayers since the onset of the pandemic, AFP reports.

Iraq’s mosques have been closed to gatherings for close to six months, but Sadr said on Wednesday he would hold open-air prayers in his stronghold.

In east Baghdad’s Sadr City, worshippers put on medical masks and gloves and had their temperatures taken before being allowed into the courtyard of the main mosque, where volunteers were spraying disinfectant.

“We urge everyone to abide by social distancing and protect themselves against this virus,” the imam said in the opening to his brief sermon.

Sadr had issued a list of restrictions on Twitter this week, including that worshippers must stand exactly 75cm apart and sermons must last only 15 minutes.

One worshipper, Qassem al-Mayahi, 40, said he was “happy to finally be able to pray on Fridays, as this is one of the five pillars of Islam.We need to figure out how to live” with the virus, “we may as well pray.”

Other prayers at Sadrist mosques were expected in the Shia holy city of Najaf on Friday.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit Iraq hard, with nearly 280,000 confirmed cases and more than 7,800 deaths. In March, Iraqi authorities shut down airports and imposed total lockdowns to halt the virus’s spread. Top Shia authority Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani halted his weekly sermons, and they have yet to resume.

But rules have generally been relaxed, with most airports reopening in July and curfews now only in place overnight.

On Monday, the Iraqi government’s coronavirus crisis cell announced restaurants could seat customers – rather than just providing takeaway services – if they abide by health ministry protocols and that sports events could resume, but in the absence of spectators.

The loosening of restrictions came just a few days after Iraq recorded its highest daily caseload yet, with more than 5,000 new Covid-19 infections recorded on 4 September.

The United Arab Emirates has announced 931 new cases, its second highest rise in daily cases since a first peak of 994 on 22 May.

Iran has announced a further 2,313 cases in the last 24 hours – the highest daily rise since the 19 August.

It also announced a further 115 deaths, taking its total to 22,913. Iran has been reporting at least 100 deaths a day from virus since June.

And that’s me for today. Please give a big hand to Matthew Weaver, who will guide you safely through the next few hours of breaking news.

Americans are commemorating 9/11 amid disputes in New York over coronavirus-safety precautions that led to split-screen remembrances on Friday, the Telegraph is reporting.

There will be one site of remembrance at the September 11 memorial plaza at the World Trade Center and another on a nearby corner. The Pentagon’s observance will be so restricted that not even victims’ families can attend, though small groups can visit the memorial there later in the day.

Around the country, some communities have canceled 9/11 commemorations because of the pandemic, while others are going ahead, sometimes with modifications.

The New York memorial is changing one of its ceremony’s central traditions: having relatives read the names of the dead, often adding poignant tributes.

Thousands of family members are still invited. But they’ll hear a recording of the names from speakers spread around the vast plaza, a plan that memorial leaders felt would avoid close contact at a stage but still allow families to remember their loved ones at the place where they died.

Vaccines normally require years of testing and additional time to produce at scale, but scientists are hoping to develop a coronavirus vaccine within 12 to 18 months.

With more than 170 teams of researchers racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Track and trace their progress with our Covid vaccine tracker: when will a coronavirus vaccine be ready?

Donald Trump is citing Churchill and British wartime spirit for reason he “played down” coronavirus, the Daily Telegraph is reporting.

“As the British government advised the British people in the face of World War II, Keep Calm and Carry On. That’s what I did,” Trump said.

Trump told a rally in Michigan on Thursday night that he was being “calm” like Churchill in the second world war when he “played down” coronavirus to the American public.

The US president recalled the famous slogan from a British wartime poster: “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

It came as Trump was criticised for having told journalist Bob Woodward that he publicly played down the potential impact of the virus in February and March, despite privately knowing how deadly it was.

Joe Biden has accused him of lying to the American people in an “almost criminal” way.

US schools that are mostly Black, Latino favour starting online, even outside cities, according to an analysis conducted by the Associated Press and Chalkbeat.

Districts where the vast majority of students are white are more than three times as likely to be open for in-person learning than school districts that enroll mostly students of colour.

While that stark divide often reflects the preferences of parents, it’s one that could further exacerbate inequities in education, the analysis warned.

In every state, the research found that the higher a district’s share of white students, the more likely it is to offer in-person instruction – a pattern that generally holds across cities, towns, suburbs and rural areas.

There are a number of possible explanations for the racial divide. One is politics. Schools in areas that supported President Donald Trump in 2016 are more likely to open in person.

Another potential reason is that school officials are responding to families: national and state polls show that Black and Latino parents are more likely to be wary of returning to school in person than white parents. That likely reflects the disparate toll of the pandemic, with people from those communities dying at higher rates from Covid-19.

The Telegraph is reporting on a report from Nanjing University Medical School in China that coronavirus antibodies fade after only a month.

Understanding antibody responses against Covid-19 is fundamental for the development of effective treatments and a preventive vaccine, experts say. But if antibodies decline overtime it could suggest immunity from a potential vaccine would also fade, rendering it less effective or require boosters.

In this latest study published in PLOS Pathogens, researchers from Nanjing University Medical School in China monitored Covid-19 antibody responses in 19 non-severe and seven severe coronavirus patients for seven weeks from disease onset.

They found that most patients generated antibody responses against the virus.

But only a small portion produced a potent level of antibody neutralisation activity and around one in five (20%) produced no antibody response at all.

The New York Times has an interesting read titled: Science Versus Politics’: School District Defies Governor’s Reopening Order

In one of the US’s sharpest clashes over school reopening, the paper reports on how officials in Des Moines are saying Iowa’s Republican governor is pushing them to risk public safety.

Most state and local officials have found a way to arrive at some sort of plan by the first day of classes. But not in Des Moines, where school began this week with local officials openly defying Iowa’s governor and a judge’s order by teaching remotely.

Iowa remains hard hit by the pandemic. Over the past week, the state has had the nation’s third-highest number of new coronavirus cases per capita, according to New York Times tracking data.

The decision not to reopen schools puts the district’s funding and administrators’ jobs at risk, and leaves students locked out of athletics and their parents uncertain whether online classes will even count.

The conflict is perhaps the nation’s starkest example of the tension between Republican state officials, who have followed the lead of President Trump in pushing schools to reopen classrooms, and local administrators, often in Democratic-leaning cities, who fear that in-person instruction will put students’ and teachers’ health in danger.

“It kind of feels like science versus politics,” the Des Moines schools superintendent, Thomas Ahart, said. “The last thing I want to do is make this political. What I desperately want to do is to be able to honestly tell my staff and my students and their families that I’m doing everything in my power to keep them safe.”

The United Nations independent expert on poverty is warning that the worst impacts from the coronavirus pandemic on poverty are yet to come, and that measures taken by governments to protect people so far have been insufficient.

The social safety nets put into place are full of holes, said Olivier De Schutter, a Belgian legal scholar appointed by the UN Human Rights Council as special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

These current measures are generally short-term, the funding is insufficient and many people will inevitably fall between the cracks, AP is reporting De Schutter as stating.

His message was directed to world leaders meeting this month for the UN general assembly. He called on them to take more decisive steps to eradicate poverty and reduce inequalities, according to a UN statement released Friday.

De Schutter said the economic downturn resulting from the pandemic is unprecedented in times of peace since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

He warned that a further 176 million people worldwide could fall into poverty, with .20 per day being used as the poverty baseline.

Even though governments have pledged social schemes to help, the world’s poorest people are often excluded because they don’t have the digital literacy or internet access, he said.

In some cases, government programmes are now running out. Families in poverty have by now used up whatever reserves they had and sold their assets, he said. The worst impacts of the crisis on poverty are still to come.

Covid world map: which countries have the most Coronavirus cases and deaths?

Covid-19 has spread around the planet, sending billions of people into lockdown as health services struggle to cope. Find out where the virus has spread, and where it has been most deadly.

AP is running a fascinating feature on how young protesters are forcing Nepal to improve its management of the pandemic.

“For months we stayed home and gave our support to the government obeying the orders, but during the lockdown we realised the incompetence of the government to handle the coronavirus situation,” said Robic Upadhayay, a 29-year-old filmmaker.

Upadhayay joined friends locked at home in a social media campaign that quickly organised street protests under the banner “Enough is Enough”, attracting hundreds of thousands of online followers – a significant feat, Reuter’s said, in a country of 30 million.

A social media post from Iih, a 29-year-old high school dropout who previously had campaigned for the rights of ethnic minorities, gathered 400 demonstrators at the first protest.

But response from the government did not come quickly. Iih was detained by police and went on repeated hunger strikes until he had to be hospitalised in July.

The government finally gave in to the pressure of the growing campaign and signed an agreement with Iih on August 9th to scrap the use of rapid diagnostic tests for coronavirus, and instead rely entirely on the gold-standard PCR tests.

The government also agreed to provide better personal protective equipment to front-line health workers treating Covid-19 patients and regular consultations with health experts. It promised better access to medicines, which previously had not reached all the hospitals, and committed to free treatment of Covid-19 patients.

The government has increased testing to more than 10,000 daily and has allowed private hospital to do tests. It has also given authority to local district administrations to impose lockdowns and isolate areas of infection.

“The government has taken the demands by the youth positively and has agreed to the demands that are we are able to address. We assure to work together with the youths to combat the disease in the country,” health ministry official Sameer Shrestha said.

Coronavirus restrictions on pools and beaches in Hong Kong have left thousands of competitive swimmers out of the water and struggling to stay fit, say Reuters, heralding a downturn for one of the city’s favourite sports at an elite level.

The Chinese special administrative region reopened all sports facilities on Friday amid a drop in coronavirus cases but not swimming pools, which have been closed for over six months.

Public beaches remain cordoned off with blockades and police standing guard to prevent anyone accessing the ocean.

This has puzzled many as there have been no cases of coronavirus transmitted via swimming in Hong Kong and pools have opened in other countries such as Britain and Australia where wider community transmission has been much higher.

Hong Kong’s Amateur Swimming Association (HKASA) said the pool closures would seriously affect the training system that develops elite swimmers.

“That will bring catastrophic effect to our elite swimmers in a few years’ time,” it said in an email.

A high school senior was arrested on Thursday in Long Island, in the US state of New York, after repeatedly showing up to the building in protest on days he had been scheduled for remote learning.

Maverick Stow, 17, was issued a five-day suspension for appearing on Tuesday at William Floyd high school and returned on the following two days, Newsday reported. He said he believes students should be in school five days a week.

Officials warned on Wednesday that Stow would be arrested, AP reported, and on Thursday he was arrested by Suffolk county police on a charge of third-degree criminal trespass and told to appear in court on 24 September.

If Stow continues to try to attend school in person, the high school will have to close, school spokesperson James Montalto said.

“We are still in the midst of a pandemic and will abide by the regulations set in place by our government and health officials designed to keep our students and staff safe,” Montalto said in a written statement.

“As we have said, Mr Stow’s rights as a student do not surpass the rights of any of our other 8,799 students. Most in-person classes are at capacity, and it would be impossible to have all students back under social distancing guidelines,” Montalto said.

The school district said in the statement it was naming Stow and his family because, while it takes student privacy seriously, the student and his family already disclosed the information in public forums.

The Associated Press is also identifying Stow because he has spoken publicly.

Stow has vowed to continue to attempt to attend school five days per week after his suspension is served. “I don’t feel my son should have been arrested”, said Nora Kaplan-Stow. “I certainly didn’t like seeing my son in handcuffs, but I support him 1,000%.”

Hungary will not impose blanket school closures to curb the spread of the coronavirus but will aim to protect the most vulnerable elderly as the goal is to keep the economy going, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said on Friday.

Reuters is reporting that Orban told state radio the mandatory wearing of masks on public transport must be enforced and if necessary mask-wearing would be more widely imposed later. But he said the second wave of the pandemic required a different strategy than the first, which dealt a blow to the economy in March and April.

“The goal now is not for everyone to stay at home, and for the country to come to a standstill. The goal is to protect the ability of the country to keep operating,” Orbán said. “We cannot afford the virus crippling the country again.”

In the UK, Conservative former minister Steve Baker told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think it is now time to say that this is not a fit legal environment for the British people.

“It’s time to move to a voluntary system – unless the government can demonstrate otherwise.

“And it is time for us to actually start living like a free people, not subjecting ourselves to constantly shifting legal requirements, which I think now no one can fully understand.

“It seems to me the effect of having Covid marshals will be to turn every public space in Britain into the equivalent of going through airport security where we are badgered and directed … I’m not willing to live like this.”

We’re running a story now about how Britain’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic continued in July as shops reopened and manufacturing activity resumed but the economy has recovered little more than half the ground lost since the onset of the crisis.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 6.6% in July, continuing a rebound from the Covid-19 crisis as non-essential shops reopened and lockdown measures were relaxed.

The figures come after Britain entered the deepest recession since records began in the three months to June, in an economic decline outstripping any other advanced economy after the UK entered lockdown later than other countries and took longer to relax restrictions.

GDP is now 18.6% higher than its lowest ebb in April after the pandemic brought activity around the globe to a standstill. However, it remains 11.7% below the levels recorded in February 2020 before the disease spread to Britain.

Myanmar has imposed its toughest measures so far to control the spread of coronavirus, AP is reporting, banning travel out of the country’s biggest city, Yangon, and grounding all domestic flights.

Both measures, announced just hours before taking effect, will be in place until 1 October.

Until the latest outbreak, Myanmar appeared to have largely been spared from the pandemic but a surge in coronavirus cases that began in August in the western state of Rakhine, has since spread to other parts of the country.

Health authorities had already ordered partial lockdowns in 29 of Yangon’s 44 townships, the country’s main transportation hub and transit point. New roadblocks were set up Friday in parts of the city, with some smaller streets closed while main roads remained open.

Some might think that these rules and regulations are too restrictive,” said the country’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. “However, if we all obeyed these restrictions strictly for two or three weeks, we can arrive at a situation when this disease would be under control.

The health ministry on Friday announced 115 new confirmed cases, bringing the total to 2,265, including 14 dead. The Yangon regional government said the number of locally transmitted cases there from 24 August to Tuesday had reached 656.

And it’s Good Morning from Amelia Hill. I’ll be keeping you company as the news rolls over the next few hours.

Ukraine registered a record 3,144 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the country’s national security council said on Friday, up from a previous record of 2,836 registered on 5 September.

The council said a total of 148,756 Covid-19 cases had been recorded in Ukraine as of 11 September, with 3,076 deaths.

Global infections have passed 28m and deaths stand at 909,479, according to Johns Hopkins data. The first four countries in terms of infections, the US, India, Brazil and Russia, account for nearly 58% of all cases.

Brazil is still to decide if it will join the COVAX Facility, a global Covid-19 vaccine allocation plan co-led by the World Health Organization, the acting health minister said on Thursday.

Eduardo Pazuello said the decision was still under consideration.

“If we opt for membership, Brazil could be the biggest contributor,” Pazuello, an active duty Army general, said.

Brazil’s was making available its “robust vaccine production capacity” and its experience with universal access to health services and vaccination of the entire population, he said.

The decision on joining COVAX is up to President Jair Bolsonaro. The deadline is 18 September.

Brazil has recorded 4.2m infections, and nearly 130,000 deaths.

Germany has recorded 1,484 new cases of coronavirus, taking the total of confirmed cases in the country to 256,850, and 9,342 deaths.

In the Australian state of Victoria, which has had a sizeable outbreak of coronavirus over the past few months, today’s number of new cases is 43, with 9 deaths. That means 710 Victorians have now lost their lives to the virus.

Daniel Andrews, the Victorian state premier says:

The rolling average 28 August to 10 September Metro is 65. 3. Regional Victoria is 4.7. So, regional Victoria is poised to take at least a step and potentially two steps. We will have more to say about that next week as we get closer to that 14 day marker.

This is substantially better than a few weeks ago, where the state was recording numbers in the five, six and seven hundreds each day.

In the neighbouring state of New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, there have been 10 new cases recorded, six of which are in hotel quarantine and the other four are linked to known clusters.

The country’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, this week held up New South Wales as the gold standard of tracking and tracing, and, so far, fears over the explosion of a cluster in the centre of the city, seem to have been unfounded.

In South Korea, the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 176 new cases of Covid-19 as of midnight Thursday, bringing the total number of infections to 21,919, with 350 deaths.

Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said the government was weighing up whether to ease or extend social distancing rules, given continued and consistent community transmission.

“It would be right to lift the restrictions, considering the sacrifices the people are making, but we’re as much worried if any hasty easing would lead to a re-spread of the virus and cause even greater pain for the public,” Chung told a meeting.

Intensive care medics were significantly less likely to have been infected with Covid-19 than cleaners and other healthcare workers in departments deemed lower risk, according to a study of several British hospitals at the peak of the pandemic.

Agence France-presse reports that the research also found that people of black, Asian and minority ethnicity were nearly twice as likely to have been infected as white colleagues.

It follows several studies suggesting race, income and allocation of personal protective equipment (PPE) create biases in the burden of infections.

Researchers said the results could be because those working in intensive therapy units (ITU) were prioritised for the highest level of masks and other equipment.

“We presumed intensive care workers would be at highest risk … But workers in ITU are relatively well protected compared with other areas,” said lead author Alex Richter, a professor of immunology at the University of Birmingham.

In the study, published in the journal Thorax, researchers tested more than 500 staff at the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, which runs several hospitals and employs more than 20,000 staff.

All the staff were at work in late April, when cases were peaking around a month after the UK went into lockdown.

At this time the trust was admitting five patients with serious Covid-19 infection every hour, but capacity to perform tests for infection was severely constrained even for healthcare workers.

Researchers offered to give staff who had no symptoms two different tests – one to see if they were currently infected and the other to test for antibodies indicating that they had previously had the virus.

Nearly 2.5% – 13 out of 545 – staff tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19 infection.

Researchers also took blood samples from 516 staff and found that 24% of them had antibodies for the virus. This compares to 6% generally in the Midlands region of England at the time.

Ten out of 29 cleaners involved in the study – or 34.5% – had antibodies suggesting a previous infection.

The rates were similar for clinicians working in acute medicine and general internal medicine – 33% and 30% respectively – while staff working in intensive care had the lowest rates (15%, or nine out of 61 participants).

The authors said it was not clear from their observational study whether the higher rates of infection among some staff “arises from a greater risk of exposure to the virus, or a greater risk of infection if exposed”.

“Regardless of the cause, this finding demands urgent further investigation, particularly in view of the ethnic disparities in the outcome from Covid-19,” they said.

I’m just circling back on President Trump’s claim at his recent Michigan rally that Joe Biden is an anti-vaxxer.

“Joe Biden is once again hurting innocent people with his dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracies,” Trump said, claiming the “only reason he’s (Biden) doing that is he knows we are right next to having a vaccine” and he doesn’t want Trump to get credit for it.

For the record, Biden’s website says a government led by him would “plan for the effective, equitable distribution of treatments and vaccines because discovering isn’t enough if they get distributed like Trump’s testing and PPE fiascos.”

It says says if Biden is elected, his presidency would invest bn in a “vaccine manufacturing and distribution plan that will guarantee it gets to every American, cost-free”.

It adds: “As we enter the height of the political season, politics should play no role in determining the safety and efficacy of any vaccine.”

Seems like it’s too late by some way to keep politics out of this issue.

Just on Trump calling Bob Woodward a “whack job”, he’s clearly trying to discredit the damaging stories in the investigative journalist’s new book, Rage, that details in Trump’s own words how the president knew how dangerous the virus was, but publicly played it down.

But it’s hard to think of a better-credentialed journalist in the US than Woodward, who’s best known for covering the Watergate affair and the consequent fall of an earlier scandal-ridden president, Richard Nixon.

Woodward has rejected the president’s suggestion that he sat on his coronavirus recordings for months, defending his decision not to publish immediately. In an interview with the Washington Post’s media columnist, Margaret Sullivan, Woodward said he needed to provide more complete context than he would a news story.

Woodward told Sullivan he did not know where Trump acquired his information and “the biggest problem I had, which is always a problem with Trump, is I didn’t know if it was true”.

“My job is to understand it, and to hold him accountable, and to hold myself accountable,” said Woodward, explaining that it took months to contextualise everything with reporting.

Further revelations in Woodward’s book tell how allies tried to rein in “childish” Trump’s foreign policy. As the Guardian’s Julian Borger reports:

Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president.

Trump’s golfing partner that day was Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, and who urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”.

Graham warned Trump he would be raising the stakes from “playing blackjack to ,000-a-hand blackjack”.

Bob Woodward rejects criticism that he sat on Trump ‘deadly’ virus remarksRead more

“This is over the top,” the senator said. “How about hitting someone a level below Suleimani, which would be much easier for everyone to absorb?”

Trump’s chief of staff at the time, Mick Mulvaney, also begged Graham to help change Trump’s mind.

Trump would not be persuaded, pointing to Iranian-orchestrated attacks on US soldiers in Iraq, which he said were masterminded by the Iranian general, the leader of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Suleimani was killed in Baghdad on 3 January, triggering a retaliatory Iranian missile strike against a US base in Iraq, but so far not the large-scale conflict Graham and others warned the president about.

You can read the Julian Borger’s full story below:

Re Churchill’s rooftop speeches (see below), I’ve established that he sometimes watched air raids from rooftops in Whitehall, according to Roy Jenkins’ 2001 book, Churchill. Nothing about speeches however, but if anyone reading knows, please feel free to get in touch via alison.rourke@guardian.co.uk

President Trump has now arrived in Freeland, Michigan, where he’s holding a rally at the airport. He’s currently criticising Joe Biden.

Many of his supporters are crowded together, shoulder to shoulder, and few with masks on. It’s become a theme at Trump rallies. In Michigan there is state rule against gatherings of over 50 people.

I’ll bring you any virus lines from the rally as they pop up. Interestingly, Fox News has cut away from the rally to talk to studio guests, while the president is in full flight.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, with me, Alison Rourke.

Leading US infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci has said the country needs to “Hunker down and get through this fall and winter, because it’s not going to be easy.”

Fauci told a panel discussion with doctors from Harvard Medical School that there was a difficult few months ahead for the country. It came as Trump claimed the US was “rounding the final turn” in its coronavirus crisis as the country’s death toll passed 190,000.

The president said during a White House press conference today: “We’re rounding the final turn, and a lot of good things are happening.” In reality, at least 191,536 Americans have already died from the virus, representing a far higher death toll than any other country in the world.

• France has recorded nearly 10,000 new cases, its highest ever single-day total, a day before a cabinet meeting that might consider imposing fresh, local lockdowns to curb the spread of the disease.
• The United Nations has called for an immediate ‘quantum leap’ in funding for global programmes developing coronavirus treatments and vaccine candidates. A bn funding gap needs to be plugged over the next three months, the the UN secretary-general said.
• Finland’s prime minister will work remotely until further notice after the country’s new coronavirus tracing app warned that she may have been exposed to virus.
• Greece has reported 372 new cases of the coronavirus, its highest daily figure since the pandemic began, bringing its total caseload to 12,452. Another four deaths were registered, taking the toll to 297.
• Brazil recorded 40,557 additional confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 983 deaths from the disease, the health ministry said on Thursday.
• Tougher coronavirus restrictions are to be imposed in Portugal ahead of the start of the school year, including halving the size of permitted gatherings and new curbs on drinking. Sales of alcohol will also be barred from 8pm as will drinking in public spaces.