E3: US may never restore funding to World Health Organization, says Mike Pompeo - as it happened
Unemployment in US up by 4.4 million to a total of over 26 million; world has ‘a long way to go’, warns WHO chief; Iran reports lowest new daily infections for a month. This live blog is now closed –follow our new live blog below
We are closing this blog now. You can stay up to date with all our coverage on our new live blog below
Related: Coronavirus live news: US passes $480bn relief bill as Ramadan begins
We will be closing this blog shortly and moving to a new live blog (I will give you those details shortly), but you can stay up to date on all of our latest coverage with our latest At a Glance summary of global coronavirus news.
Related: Coronavirus latest: at a glance
People across the UK stepped out for the fifth weekly clap for key workers on Thursday, and many called on the government to provide workers with adequate PPE. Watch the Guardian’s video round-up here.
Here is a summary of key events from the last few hours:
Trump is asked if federal distancing will be extended until the US summer?
“We may, we may go beyond that - we’ll have to see where it is. Until we feel it’s safe, we’re going to be extending,” Trump said.
The Guardian’ s Manvi Singh, who is running our US blog says: We cannot immediately fact-check Bryan on the emerging research he is presenting on the effect of heat, light, and humidity on the coronavirus, but we’ll circle back to it. While there are a few preliminary studies suggesting that hotter temps could slow the virus, most of this research so far has not been through a rigorous process of peer review.
You can see all of our coverage of the briefing on our US blog (below), including that Congress has just passed a coronavirus relief package worth $484bn.
Related: Coronavirus US live: White House daily press briefing begins
President Trump has begun his daily briefing. He has been joined today by Bill Bryan, who heads the science and technology directorate at the Department of Homeland Security. Bryan is presenting more information on how the virus reacts to heat, humidity and light.
He says the virus survives best indoors, in dry conditions. UV rays and hotter, more humid temperatures seem to cut down the half-life of the virus.
Ecuador’s health minister has said the country’s coronavirus case total was twice as high as previously confirmed, as authorities added 11,000 new infections that resulted from delayed testing.
With 560 confirmed deaths, Reuters reports that the outbreak has devastated the oil-producing country’s economy and overwhelmed sanitary authorities in the largest city of Guayaquil, where corpses remained in homes or for hours on the streets.
Algeria has become the latest country to announce it will ease confinement measures from the first day of the holy month of Ramadan on Friday.
The prime minister’s office said the full lockdown in the Blida province south of Algiers will be replaced with a curfew from 2 pm to 7 am while a 3 pm to 7am curfew in nine provinces, including Algiers, will be shortened to run from 5 pm to 7 am. No changes have been announced in the remaining provinces where a 7 pm to 7am curfew has been imposed for weeks.
Wondering why the UK is struggling to reach its coronavirus testing target? The Guardian’s health editor Sarah Boseley explains:
The UK started ramping up testing too late, having abandoned it as a core principle on 12 March, when Johnson declared the virus could no longer be contained. People with symptoms should just stay at home, he said. Only hospital patients would be tested. Thus Britain went to the back of the queue for testing kits, reagents and other commodities that the world was scrambling for.
Related: Why the UK is finding it so hard to reach 100,000 Covid-19 tests a day
A reminder that you can get in touch with me on Twitter @cleaskopeliti. I won’t have time to reply to everything but will read all your messages. Thanks so much.
UK prime minister Boris Johnson will be back at work as soon as Monday, the Telegraph reports.
Johnson has been recovering from the coronavirus in Chequers since his release from hospital. He was hospitalised for a week, including three days in intensive care.
Four people in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon have tested positive for the coronavirus, a health official said, bringing total cases in the settlement to five.
AFP reports that the residents of the Wavel camp in the eastern Bekaa Valley were tested after a member of their household, a Palestinian refugee from Syria, was admitted to the state-run Rafic Hariri hospital in Beirut earlier this week after developing Covid-19 symptoms.
Contact tracing and initial investigation by @mophleb of the refugee patient who tested positive with #Covid19 in Baalbek yesterday reveals four members of her immediate household affected. All the rest tested negative. All contacts are in quarantine and under observation.
The 2020 European Athletics Championships, due to be held in Paris at the end of August, have been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, organisers have announced.
“The decision to cancel was driven by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the associated risks linked to the current situation, which are far from being under control, as well as the existing ban on mass gatherings in France,” said European Athletics in a statement.
The Paris 2020 European Athletics Championships, scheduled to take place at the Charlety Stadium from 25-30 August, have been cancelled.
: https://t.co/WsFBeJ0oIv pic.twitter.com/kLXkUnlYiX
Related: European Athletics Championships in Paris cancelled due to Covid-19
Dan Collyns has written this dispatch on how Peru will extend its lockdown faced with an rising number of Covid-19 infections:
Peru’s president Martín Vizcarra told the country’s 32m people in his daily press briefing that the strict lockdown they had endured for the last 39 days would be extended until May 10 rather than lifted this Sunday.
Cameroon has freed over 1,300 prisoners in its two main cities in an effort to ease overcrowding and limit the spread of the coronavirus, officials have said.
President Paul Biya signed a decree to commute sentences and free some prisoners in April, AFP reports. The country’s justice minister said that 608 prisoners had been freed in Doula, the economic capital, and another 700 released in the capital Yaounde.
European Union leaders have clashed over how to rescue their economies from an economic slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic and forecast to be unparalleled since the 1930s Great Depression, Jennifer Rankin reports.
Meeting via video-conference summit, as the confirmed Covid-19 death toll passed 108,000 lives across the European Economic Area and UK, the 27 leaders instructed the head of the EU executive Ursula von der Leyen to draft a recovery plan.
Related: Clashes over trillion-euro Covid-19 aid as EU meets online
Armenia has turned off street lights nationwide as President Armen Sarkisian acknowledged the coronavirus lockdown altered the annual commemoration of the victims of WWI-era genocide by Ottoman Turks.
In the capital Yerevan, a torch-lit procession traditionally held annually on 23 April had been cancelled and access was closed to the genocide memorial. Instead, street lights were switched off and church bells chimed across the country, while many lit candles or mobile phone flashlights at windowsills.
Nina Lakhani has written in from New York with the latest on the pandemic’s forecasted economic effects:
Global remittances are projected to plummet by about 20 percent - or $109 billion - in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic which has pushed the world towards recession, according to the World Bank.
Jason Burke, the Guardian’s Africa correspondent, has written this dispatch on how South Africa will begin to ease its lockdown:
South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa spoke to the nation for the second time in three days on Thursday night, giving 56 million people the good news that the very strict lockdown that they have endured for nearly month would be lifted at the end of the month, but undoubtedly disappointing some by making it very clear that changes to the lives of many would not be substantial.
Dubai has become the latest city to ease lockdown restrictions, announcing that cafes and restaurants are to reopen with a maximum capacity of 30 per cent.
Reuters reports public transportation services, including the subway, will resume from 26 April. Shopping malls will also be partially reopened.
The Czech Republic is speeding up plans to relax its coronavirus lockdown by two weeks to get all shops, restaurants and hotels running again by May 25 as the number of infections stabilises, Reuters reports.
The central European country has used drastic measures including shop and school closures, limiting people’s daily movements and making masks obligatory in public in an effort to prevent any uncontrolled spike in the new coronavirus.
Peru’s reported coronavirus cases have rapidly increased this week, reaching 20,914 on Thursday. The country has the second highest number of cases in South America after Brazil despite introducing tough lockdown measures.
The health ministry says it expects patient numbers to peak within the following week, as hospitals strain to deal with the sharp rise in infections. Reuters reports cases of bodies being kept in hallways, masks being reused, and protests from medical workers concerned about their safety.
Hello, I’ll be taking over the live blog for the next few hours. As always, tips and suggestions are most welcome. You can reach me via Twitter DM @cleaskopeliti or by email at clea.skopeliti.casual@guardian.co.uk. Thanks in advance.
Here are the latest lines from our global coronavirus news coverage.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Turkey increased to 101,790 on Thursday, the Turkish health minister said.
The country registered 115 Covid-19 deaths and 3,116 new cases in the past 24 hours, Fahrettin Koca said on his official Twitter account.
An experimental drug that had touted as a potentially effective treatment for coronavirus has flopped in its first comprehensive clinical trial, according to draft results accidentally published online by the World Health Organisation.
According to a report in the Financial Times, which saw the documents, remdesivir failed to improve the condition of patients or reduce the among of the virus in the blood.
Singapore’s ministry of health has reported 1,037 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, the fourth day in a row that it has discovered more than a thousand infections in the city.
Yet again the majority of new cases were among migrant workers housed in dormitories, with the numbers found among Singaporeans and so-called “permanent residents” actually fewer on average than last week.
The main increase today continues to be for Work Permit holders residing in dormitories, where we are picking up many more cases because of extensive testing. Most of these cases have a mild illness and are being monitored in the community isolation facilities or general ward of our hospitals. None of them is in the intensive care unit.
As of 23 Apr, 12pm, we have confirmed and verified an additional 1,037 cases of COVID-19 infection in Singapore. Breakdown: 0 imported, 25 cases in the community, 30 Work Permit holders residing outside dorms & 982 Work Permit holders residing in dorms. https://t.co/hspThmXQkU
Of the new cases, 75% are linked to known clusters, while the rest are pending contact tracing. https://t.co/hspThmXQkU
As of 23 Apr, 12pm, 36 more cases of COVID-19 infection have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities. In all, 924 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged. https://t.co/hspThmXQkU
There are currently 1,368 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and 26 are in critical condition in the intensive care unit. https://t.co/hspThmXQkU
South Africa has recorded 318 new confirmed cases of coronavirus.
As at today the total number of confirmed #Covid_19 Cases are 3953 and the total number of deaths is now 75. pic.twitter.com/fIYKLyvXuU
Indonesia will ban all air and sea travel until June, officials said Thursday, in an apparent effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus during Ramadan.
The temporary ban takes effect Friday, the first day of the fasting month, and lasts until 1 June, AFP reports.
Italy reported 464 new deaths from coronavirus on Thursday, 27 more than on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 25,549, Angela Giuffrida, the Guardian’s Rome correspondent, reports.
The number of people currently infected with the virus fell for the fourth day in a row, by 851 to 106,848, while the number of people recovered increased by 3,033.
Sweden on Thursday said it had had recorded more than 2,000 deaths from Covid-19 in the country, while revising earlier statements about when the capital Stockholm was believed to have passed the peak of infections, AFP reports.
The country’s public health agency said it had recorded 16,755 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, and 2,021 deaths. It also corrected a report it published earlier this week on Stockholm, the epicentre of the Swedish epidemic.
Criminal justice experts have warned that chronic overcrowding and underfunding have left prisons around the world vulnerable to being ravaged by coronavirus, Hannah Summers reports.
The challenges of a record global prison population of 11 million have been brought to light in a report published by Penal Reform International (PRI) which found that 102 countries have prison occupancy levels of more than 110%.
Related: Pandemic potentially a 'death sentence' for many prison inmates, experts warn
Health authorities in Kenya have reported 17 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, bringing the total in the country to 320.
COVID-19 UPDATE
✔️668 samples tested
✔️17 positive cases today
✔️Total confirmed cases stand at 320
✔️6 recoveries today
✔️Total discharged and recovered stands at 89#KomeshaCorona
All the 17 are Kenyans.
✔️12 from Mombasa
✔️5 from Nairobi.
✔️15 were picked by the surveillance teams.
✔️2 are from mandatory quarantine centers.
Gender distribution:
✔️9 males.
✔️8 females#KomeshaCorona update by @DrMercyHealth pic.twitter.com/GWVh6U97rj
#KomeshaCorona update pic.twitter.com/c1NJdjXI8F
European Union leaders were expected to clash over the size and scope of a coronavirus recovery fund on Thursday, as they stood on the precipice of an economic slump unparalleled since the 1930’s Great Depression, Jennifer Rankin reports from Brussels.
The 27 leaders in the bloc’s video-conference summit were to debate a variety of trillion-euro proposals to resuscitate the single market, following the pandemic that so far has claimed more than 108,000 lives in the European Economic Area and UK.
Related: Clashes predicted over trillion-euro Covid-19 aid as EU meets online
Zambia has reported two new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours - and two recoveries.
Catch the daily update by Hon. Chitalu Chilufya on the @mohzambia facebook page https://t.co/RgMSnWnnKR the last 24hrs, #Zambia recorded 2 new confirmed cases of #COVID19 from Chingola, Copperbelt. 2 recoveries were recorded from Levy #StayHome #StaySafe #WashYourHands #MaskUp pic.twitter.com/ugHeUY1fxY
From forest ranger to care home cleaner: volunteering to take on coronavirus in Spain - video diary
Javier is a 50-year-old forest ranger in Soria, a popular tourist region in the north-east of Spain and one of the regions hardest hit by the coronavirus crisis. Alongside local firefighters and trainee police, he has joined a group of volunteers dedicated to containing the spread of Covid-19 in the most vulnerable settings: care homes for the elderly.
Mirroring a similar move by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates has shortened its nationwide coronavirus curfew by two hours for Ramadan, Reuters reports.
The curfew will run daily from 10pm to 6am for the Muslim fasting month, the state news agency WAM said on Thursday. It had been in force from 8pm to 6am daily.
Health care services in Gaza are not ready for an outbreak of coronavirus, the Red Cross has warned, as it donated intensive care equipment to the territory.
Palestinians say 13 years of economic sanctions by Israel and its border blockade have crippled their economy and undermined the development of medical facilities, weakening their ability to face a pandemic.
The prospect ofCovid-19 escaping control in Gaza is frightening, given the weakness of the health system and the dense population of the Gaza Strip.
For the time being there have been only a handful of cases, but Gaza needs to stay vigilant. This equipment will help, yet much more is needed to help the local health facilities cope with any kind of scenario, including the worst-case one.
The president of Botswana and all the country’s MPs ended 14 days of self-isolation on Thursday, after they were quarantined following contact with a nurse who had contracted the coronavirus.
President Mokgweetsi Masisi and the country’s 63 legislators all tested negative for the virus, AFP reports. It was Masisi’s second period of quarantine in the past month. His office said in a statement:
The director of health services has released [President] Masisi … and [Vice-president] Slumber Tsogwane from home quarantine today.
This follows release of their Covid-19 test results which came out negative.
PRESS RELEASE
The Office of the President wishes to inform the public that Director of Health Services has released His Excellency, Dr Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi, President of the Republic of Botswana and His Honour, pic.twitter.com/u99d0KLk5X
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has said his country, until recently the World Health Organization’s biggest donor, may never restore funding to the UN health body.
Last week Donald Trump announced he was freezing donations to the WHO, accusing it of “severely mismanaging and covering up” the threat posed by the coronavirus outbreak.
A key minister in the government of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has urged the media to stop using footage of coffins and bodies, after images of mass graves in the jungle city of Manaus emerged, and Brazil’s death toll from coronavirus continued to rise, Dom Phillips reports for the Guardian from Rio de Janeiro.
Gen Luiz Eduardo Ramos said an overload of negative new coverage was spreading fear among the population, as Brazil’s confirmed cases reached 45,757 and deaths hit 2,906 – 165 of those reported in the last 24 hours.
Manaus começa a enterrar vítimas de coronavírus em trincheiras. Um vídeo que circula na redes sociais mostra máquinas usadas para o sepultamento de várias pessoas pic.twitter.com/mg0QzYMGnu
China did not cover up the coronavirus outbreak and the US should not seek to bully the country in a manner reminiscent of the 19th century European colonial wars, the Chinese ambassador to London said on Thursday.
Liu Xiaoming was quoted by Reuters as saying:
I hear quite a lot of this speculation, this disinformation, about China covering up, about China hiding something – this is not true ... The Chinese government was transparent and very quick to share data.
... Some other country – their local courts sued China – it is absurd ... Some politicians, some people, want to play at being the world’s policeman – this is not the era of gunboat diplomacy, this is not the era when China was still a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society ...
Beyond the pandemic: Confidence and solidarity https://t.co/79MhcCzjoN
Related: Missouri sues China for 'not doing enough' to stop coronavirus spread
Egypt has shortened its night-time curfew for an hour for the month of Ramadan, the prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, has said, according to Reuters.
The curfew will start at 9pm instead of the previous 8pm and run until 6am, Madbouly told a televised news conference.
The WHO’s Africa director, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, in a briefing today again emphasised the risk that lockdowns across Africa could hamper health services on the continent from tackling other diseases.
Dr @MoetiTshidi: "On Saturday we commemorate #WorldMalariaDay. These are two reminders of the importance of essential health services."
"In 2018, there were 213 million malaria cases & 360,000 related deaths in the African Region – accounting for over 90% of the global burden."
Deaths from malaria could double across sub-Saharan Africa this year if work to prevent the disease is disrupted by Covid-19, the World Health Organization has warned, Kaamil Ahmed reports.
The UN’s global health agency said that if countries failed to maintain delivery of insecticide-treated nets and access to antimalarial medicines, up to 769,000 people could die of malaria this year. That figure, which would be more than double the number of deaths in 2018, would mark a return to mortality levels last seen 20 years ago.
Related: Pandemic could 'turn back the clock' 20 years on malaria deaths, warns WHO
The number of coronavirus patients in intensive care in Belgium has fallen below 1,000 for the first time since the end of last month.
According to the latest epidemiological bulletin from Belgium’s Sciensano health institute, 993 patients were in intensive care beds with Covid-19 related health complications, a fall of 27 on the day before. It is the first time there have been fewer than 1,000 Covid-19 patients in Belgian ICU’s since 30 March. Overall, 4,527 patients were in hospital with the disease, 238 fewer than on Wednesday.
Damien Gayle back at the controls now.
Remember, you can reach me with any tips, comments or suggestions for coverage at damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or via Twitter DM to @damiengayle.
Another sign that the world of sport is attempting to return to some version of normality, via Sid Lowe, in Madrid.
Spain’s footballers will undergo daily coronavirus tests under a protocol for a return to training La Liga hopes to set in motion from the second week of May.
There will be three stages to training – individual, small group and full team – and the first tests are pencilled in for next Tuesday. From the second stage, squads will be obliged to live together in isolation, away from their families. A match-day protocol, first drafted in March, is being updated, with the league’s president, Javier Tebas, warning clubs that fans are unlikely to be able to attend games until after Christmas.
Related: Daily Covid-19 tests and biodegradable kit bags: La Liga's plan to restart season
Face masks have become a familiar sight throughout the world, and in many different forms, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Here is an extensive gallery of some of the contexts in which they are being used globally:
Related: Coronavirus face masks around the world – in pictures
Indonesia has banned all domestic air and sea travel until June to try to prevent further spread of coronavirus, Reuters reports.
The ban on air travel will be in place until 1 June, Novie Riyanto Rahardjo, the transport ministry’s director general of aviation, said. The ban on travel by sea will be in place until 8 June, the sea transportation director general, Agus Purnomo, said.
Humanitarian agencies are in a “race against time” to help Yemen address Covid-19, according to the UN.
“The threat of Covid-19 is so terrifying we have to do everything we can to stop the spread of the virus and help the people who may become infected,” said Lisa Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.
From our UK-focused live blog, NHS England has announced 514 more deaths of people who tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 16,786.
Wales has also announced another 17 deaths. Its total now stands at 641. The figures for England and Wales are broken down here:
Related: Coronavirus UK live: Scotland reveals lockdown exit plan but warns normal life won't return yet
Earlier today, the Chelsea and Germany footballer Antonio Rüdiger announced that – through the foundation he runs – he will provide 60,000 face masks to low-income traders in Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone. So far, 61 Covid-19 cases have been reported in the country, with no deaths.
I am pleased to announce that my Foundation Antonio Rüdiger For Sierra Leone will be partnering with @madam_wokie and @LunchBoxGift to provide 60,000 face masks to low income market traders in Freetown, Sierra Leone. This will hopefully reduce the spread of Covid19.
Deaths from malaria could double across sub-Saharan Africa this year if work to prevent the disease is disrupted by Covid-19, Kaamil Ahmed writes.
“While Covid-19 is a major health threat, it’s critical to maintain malaria prevention and treatment programmes,” said the WHO’s Africa director, Dr Matshidiso Moeti. “The new modeling shows deaths could exceed 700,000 this year alone. We haven’t seen mortality levels like that in 20 years. We must not turn back the clock.”
Related: Pandemic could 'turn back the clock' 20 years on malaria deaths, warns WHO
Emmanuel Macron has told mayors in France that a plan to unwind the country’s Covid-19 lockdown will be unveiled around Tuesday next week, Reuters reports. France’s lockdown was imposed in mid-March. It currently has the fourth-highest Coronavirus death toll, with 21,340 deaths recorded from 157,135 confirmed cases.
Plans are already well underway to refine what form the easing of present restrictions might take. The government wants retailers to open when the lockdown ends on 11 May although restaurants, bars and cafe will not be among those allowed to start up again. Curbs on travel between regions are expected to remain after that date.
This is Nick Ames taking over for the next hour or so of global coronavirus news. As ever, any tips, updates or suggestions are always warmly welcomed. You can email me on nick.ames@theguardian.com or tweet/direct message me at @NickAmes82.
An additional 4.4 million Americans filed for unemployment last week, adding to a total of more than 26 million since the coronavirus pandemic shut down swathes of the US and brought its economy to a near standstill, report Dominic Rushe and Amanda Holpuch in New York.
The pace of layoffs appears to have slowed slightly, but a backlog of claims means millions more are likely to file in the coming weeks. States across the country are encountering problems with the sheer number of people applying for unemployment benefits.
Related: US unemployment applications reach over 26m as states struggle to keep pace
If astronomers, clerics and officials agree, tomorrow will mark the first day of Ramadan. And amid a global pandemic, this year’s month of fasting and reflection for the world’s Muslims will be very different, writes Martin Chulov, the Guardian’s Middle East editor.
Normally a sociable time, where abstaining from food and water during daylight hours gives way to sumptuous meals and gatherings at dusk, the 2020 rituals have been modified to fit public health directives that urge people to maintain a distance from each other while the coronavirus remains active.
In most of the world, medical staff have been lauded as heroes for their response to the coronavirus pandemic. But in Mexico, the growing number of Covid-19 cases has brought with it a wave of violence against nurses and doctors who have wrongly been accused of spreading the disease, reports Analy Nuño in Guadalajara.
At least 21 medical workers have been attacked in 12 states across the country, according to Fabiana Zepeda, the head of nursing for the Mexican Social Security Institute.
Related: 'What's wrong with you Mexico?' Health workers attacked amid Covid-19 fears
Greece is extending coronavirus lockdown measures by a week to 4 May, the government said on Thursday, AFP reports.
“Restrictive measures that apply until 27 April are extended by a week to 4 May,” government spokesman Stelios Petsas told reporters.
One of the Bank of England’s top policymakers has warned that, because of the coronavirus crisis, the UK faces potentially its worst economic shock in several hundred years.
Jan Vlieghe, a member of the Bank’s interest-rate setting committee, made this warning in a speech just released:
Based on the early indicators, and based on the experience in other countries that were hit somewhat earlier than the UK, it seems that we are experiencing an economic contraction that is faster and deeper than anything we have seen in the past century, or possibly several centuries.
Related: Bank of England warns of worst contraction in centuries, as economic activity slumps - business live
Regular readers of the blog will have tracked how Singapore has shifted from one of the world leaders in tackling the coronavirus outbreak, to in recent weeks facing accelerating transmissions.
It turned out that even while the city state had been aggressive in testing, contact tracing, quarantining, and blocking travel from infected areas, the disease was silently spreading through the army of migrant workers it relies upon to carry out basic services. Yesterday, after days of recording more than a thousand new infections a day, the number of cases in Singapore passed 10,000
The dormitories in which Singapore’s migrant workers live have, until recently, been almost hidden from view. The vast, steel buildings are mostly on the outskirts of town, tucked inside industrial estates, far away from the city-state’s glittering skyscrapers and luxury hotels.
Inside, the men who carry out back-breaking work to build Singapore’s infrastructure sleep on bunk beds, crammed into rooms with as many as 20 people. The biggest dormitory complex houses up to 24,000 workers.
Related: 'We’re in a prison': Singapore's migrant workers suffer as Covid-19 surges back
Iran has reported its lowest daily number of new coronavirus cases since 21 March, with 1,030 detected in the past 24 hours according to its health ministry spokesman.
Ninety more people had died from Covid-19 since Wednesday, Kianoush Jahanpour said, while 3,105 patients with the disease remain in a critical condition. However the latest figures suggest that the epidemic in the country, which has so far suffered the Middle East’s worst coronavirus outbreak, is on a downward curve.
Ratings agency Fitch says the world is heading for a recession of “unprecedented depth in the post-war period” with global gross domestic product to tumble by 3.9% in 2020. “This is twice as large as the decline anticipated in our early April GEO [global economic outlook] update and would be twice as severe as the 2009 recession,” said Fitch’s chief economist.
Vietnam eased social distancing measures on Thursday, after reporting no new coronavirus infections for six consecutive days.
After a decisive - and early - response to the pandemic, including mass quarantines and aggressive contact tracing, the Southeast Asian nation has recorded just 268 virus cases and zero deaths, according to official tallies.
We go to each and every alley, knocking on each and every door. We follow the guidance from our government that ‘fighting the pandemic is like fighting our enemy’.
The number of new coronavirus cases has fallen in Russia for a second day and remained below record levels for four days, raising hopes that the disease may have reached a plateau in the country, Andrew Roth, the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, reports.
But concerns remain that the disease’s progress into the regions beyond Moscow may fuel a new explosion of cases in the weeks to come.
More than 24,000 Covid-19 cases have been reported on the African continent, with over 6,250 recoveries and 1,100 deaths, the World Health Organization reported on Thursday morning.
In his press conference yesterday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said he believes that Africa is still at the beginning of its coronavirus outbreak.
This is Damien Gayle taking the reins of the live blog now, keeping you up to date with the latest in coronavirus world news for the next eight or so hours.
I’m always interested in hearing about any tips, suggestions or updates from where you are in the world. If you have anything to share, please send me an email to damien.gayle@theguardian.com, or a direct message on Twitter to @damiengayle.
I can’t be alone in finding evidence of wildlife benefiting from the absence of humans heartening in these times.
This is an excellent example - Thai authorities have released drone footage of a herd of dugongs - a rare sea mammal - cruising off an island in the south of the country.
Watch: Thai authorities have released drone footage of a herd of dugongs – a rare type of sea mammal – cruising slowly off an island in the south of the country. Travel restrictions imposed to counter the COVID-19 pandemic have left coastal regions undisturbed pic.twitter.com/GYcYF9EXEd
The Spanish government has just given more details on what the loosening of lockdown restrictions means for children in Spain, who have been confined to their homes since 14 March, writes the Guardian’s Sam Jones in Madrid.
From Sunday, children who are 14 or under will be allowed out to walk and play in the streets for an hour a day between 9am and 9pm.
They will need to stay within one kilometre of their homes and be accompanied at all times by an adult, who will be permitted to take a maximum of three children out at a time.
Germany has agreed on a further aid package to help its economy survive the coronavirus crisis. The extra 10.8bn euros (£9.4bn, $11.7bn) will go towards tax cuts for businesses and further employment benefits for workers. Families are to be given help to buy equipment like computers for home learning.
Workers staying at home due to the lockdown will now receive 70-77% of their net salary from the fourth month of unemployment, a 10% increase over what they got for the first three months. From the seventh month, they will receive 80-87%.
Related: Germany opens some shops as Merkel warns of second wave of coronavirus
The Spanish health ministry said on Thursday that 440 people died from the coronavirus in the previous 24 hours, which brought total fatalities to 22,157.
That figure ids slightly higher than the previous day when 435 people died. The number of diagnosed cases rose to 213,024 from 208,389 the day before.
China said on Thursday it would donate a further $30 million to the World Health Organization (WHO), which is seeking more than $1 billion to fund its battle against the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 180,000 people worldwide, Reuters reports.
The pledge comes about a week after U.S. President Donald Trump suspended funding to the WHO and accused the Geneva-based organisation of promoting Chinese “disinformation” about the virus, which emerged in the central city of Wuhan last year.
China has decided to donate additional $30 million in cash to WHO to support its global fight against #COVID19, in particular strengthening developing countries' health systems. China already donated $20 million in cash to WHO on March 11.
I hope the U.S. believes that this an important investment, not just to help others, but for the U.S. to stay safe also.
In the UK, vaccine trials on humans lead by Oxford University are due to start on Thursday.
The New York Times says that Germany has joined the race for a vaccine, giving the green light to human trials of potential vaccines.
Germany gave the green light for human trials of potential coronavirus vaccines developed by German biotech company BioNTech, which is racing teams in Germany, the U.S. and China to develop an agent that will stop the pandemic.
The trial, only the fourth worldwide of a vaccine targeting the virus, will be initially conducted on 200 healthy people, with more subjects, including some at higher risk from the disease, to be included in a second stage, German vaccines regulator the Paul Ehrlich Institut said on Wednesday.
The Philippines’ health ministry on Thursday reported 16 new coronavirus deaths and 271 confirmed infections, ahead of President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision whether to lift or extend quarantine measures on the country’s main island
In a bulletin, the health ministry said total deaths have increased to 462 while infections have risen to 6,981. But 29 more patients have recovered, bringing the total recoveries to 722.
Afghanistan has recorded its biggest one-day rise of coronavirus cases as the number of confirmed patients with Covid-19 reached 1,226, triggered by a surge of infections in Kandahar and Kunduz, writes my colleague Akhtar Mohammad Makoii in Herat.
In the last 24 hours 83 new cases have been reported, most in the southern province of Kandahar.
Germany’s confirmed virus cases have increased by 2,352 to 148,046, officials said on Thursday. The number of deaths linked to Covid-19 has risen by 215 to now 5,094.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has thrown her support behind the embattled World Health Organization, distancing her government from President Donald Trump’s pause in US funding to the global body.
Speaking in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, Merkel said:
The WHO is an indispensable partner and we support it in its mandate.
It’s not the end phase but still just the beginning. We will be with it for a long time.
I know how difficult the restrictions are, it’s a challenge to democracy, it limits our democratic rights.
It’s the biggest challenge since World War Two, for the life and health of our people.
The question of how we can prevent the virus from overwhelming our health system and subsequently costing the lives of countless people, this question will for a long time be the central question for politics in Germany and Europe.
Russia recorded 4,774 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, a fall in the number of daily new cases for the third day running, bringing its nationwide tally to 62,773, the Russian coronavirus crisis response centre said on Thursday.
Forty-two people with the virus had died in the last 24 hours, pushing the death toll to 555, it said.
European Union leaders are expected to sign off on a huge rescue package for countries hardest-hit by the coronavirus crisis when they hold a video conference later on Thursday.
The €500bn (£438bn) package was agreed after fierce debate between richer countries in the north of the EU and weaker economies in the south which have suffered most from the pandemic.
The French interior minister, Christophe Castaner, has said he does not think this week’s outbreak of violent clashes in French housing estates will result in scenes similar to the 2005 riots that broke out throughout the country.
“We are not in this sort of scenario,” Castaner told BFM TV.
Related: Disruption on streets of France as lockdown tensions rise
More than a thousand Hong Kong residents are still stuck in India, after the country went into a sudden lockdown last month, writes my colleague Helen Davidson.
The Hong Kong legislator Priscilla Leung has told reporters today the government is working on bringing them home in groups, but that the 200 or so citizens among the group should be first priority. The rest are Hong Kong permanent residents with Indian or other passports.
This story from my colleagues in the US is worth flagging:
A senior US government doctor who worked on the search for a coronavirus vaccine has claimed he was fired after resisting Donald Trump’s push to use the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit.
While I am prepared to look at all options and to think ‘outside the box’ for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public.
Related: Top vaccine expert claims he was fired for resisting Trump on hydroxychloroquine
I’m sure that the whole world now shares an aversion to using handles to open doors, or cupboards or fridges in supermarkets or literally anything else.
Well, those good folk in Finland have starting thinking about this tricky problem and come up with the below. Once again proving beyond doubt that Finland is the best country in the world.
Hands-free door handles at this Finnish supermarket allows customers to open doors with their arms pic.twitter.com/a1fSJOID5z
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. I’ll now be handing over to my colleague Alexandra Topping – but before I go, here’s a Welsh minister not switching off his mic and being caught ranting about one of his colleagues on an especially crowded Zoom chat:
Related: Coronavirus latest: at a glance
GUARDIAN: Revealed: scale of coronavirus’s deadly toll on ethnic minorities #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/mYntYpDCyn
Army of thousands to help trace virus victims#TomorrowsPapersToday@hendopolis pic.twitter.com/HvDrfJZEXt
Tomorrow's @independent front page #tomorrowspaperstoday To subscribe to the Daily Edition: https://t.co/XF8VnDpHYF pic.twitter.com/ViWtn4oWgm
TELEGRAPH: Social disruption will last for a year #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/mP1BlMfnlw
FT: Universities plea for £2bn rescue falls on deaf ears in the Treasury #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/WXRzV3E3ZS
The world-famous song “Pata Pata”, a South African dance hit from 1967, is being re-released with new lyrics to spread information about coronavirus to vulnerable communities.
Meaning “touch touch” in the Xhosa language, “Pata Pata” was written by Grammy-winning singer Miriam Makeba who named it after a dance move popular in Johannesburg at the time:
This new Angélique Kidjo version of Miriam Makeba's Pata Pata – coronavirus edition – SLAPS: https://t.co/rjDoCqVqPk
Caelainn Barr, Niko Kommenda, Niamh McIntyre and Antonio Voce have this report for the Guardian:
The UK government has been urged to recognise that race and racial inequalities are a risk factor for Covid-19 after Guardian research which has revealed that ethnic minorities in England are dying in disproportionately high numbers compared with white people.
Related: Ethnic minorities dying of Covid-19 at higher rate, analysis shows
More than 232,000 people might have been infected in the first wave of Covid-19 in mainland China, four times the official figures, according to a study by Hong Kong researchers.
Mainland China reported more than 55,000 cases as of 20 February but, according to research by academics at Hong Kong University’s school of public health published in the Lancet, the true number would have been far greater if the definition of a Covid-19 case that was later used had been applied from the outset.
Related: China coronavirus cases might have been four times official figure, says study
Thanks for following along. A reminder that you can get in touch with me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
At least 183,441 people have lost their lives in the coronavirus pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University data, with the number of confirmed cases worldwide at more than 2.6 million.
The US accounts for more than 842,000 cases and almost 47,000 deaths.
As the coronavirus lockdown continues, many of us holed up at home with family will be wondering how much more of it we can take. But what is it like if you have 11 kids or live with your extended family? We asked some of Britain’s biggest families how they are coping.
Related: ‘I even get followed to the loo!’: how Britain’s biggest families are coping with lockdown
Here’s the full story on the Australian billionaire who was allowed to self isolate at home, despite the Australian government having ordered 11 days earlier that everyone arriving from overseas would be held in a hotel or other accommodation for a period of supervised quarantine
Australian media mogul Kerry Stokes and his wife were allowed to avoid mandatory hotel quarantine on medical grounds when they arrived in the state of Western Australia by private jet two weeks ago, and instead spent 1