Global death toll passes 650k as Belgian PM warns of total lockdown – as it happened

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Amazon is under investigation in California for failing to protect its warehouse employees from the new coronavirus.

California’s attorney general Xavier Becerra, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, and the San Francisco Ddepartment of public health “have all opened investigations into Amazon’s practices” around the pandemic, San Francisco superior court judge Ethan Schulman wrote in a court filing on Monday.

Amazon and the government agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment:

Here are the latest global coronavirus developments from the last few hours:

• Global virus deaths passed 650,000 as new surges prompt fresh curbs. More than 100,000 deaths have been recorded since 9 July, and the global toll has doubled in just over two months.
• Donald Trump wore a mask and talked up the possibility of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year in battleground state North Carolina. During a visit to a Fujifilm plant in Morrisville, the president wore a mask publicly for a second time and expressed confidence in the country’s economic recovery.
• Spain’s PM said the UK quarantine decision not justified. Britain’s decision to impose a two-week quarantine on people travelling from Spain is unfair, Pedro Sánchez said. He added that the Spanish government is in touch with British authorities in a bid to get the country to reconsider its position.
  
• Google employees will work from home until at least summer 2021. The company will keep its employees home until at least next July, the Wall Street Journal reported, marking the largest tech firm to commit to such a timeline in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
• Lebanon reimposed severe Covid-19 restrictions for the next two weeks. It has shut places of worship, cinemas, bars, nightclubs, sports events and popular markets, after a sharp rise in infections.
• The International Monetary Fund approved $4.3bn in aid to South Africa to help it fight the coronavirus pandemic. The country’s finance minister, Tito Mboweni, in June predicted the economy would shrink 7.2% in 2020, its deepest slump in 90 years.
• Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli issued scathing criticism of the Italian government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. He said he was humiliated by a recent lockdown, surprise comments as the 61-year-old superstar was a symbol of national unity at the height of the lockdown.
  

The British government has promised to build thousands of miles of new bike lanes to get people moving and healthy after months of coronavirus lockdown.

Prime minister Boris Johnson’s pledge comes on the heels of a plan to force restaurants to display calories on menus as part of a broader effort to combat obesity.

Government data show two-thirds of UK adults are above a healthy weight. Some studies suggests that the virus is especially deadly to people who are obese. Johnson said:

To build a healthier, more active nation, we need the right infrastructure, training and support in place to give people the confidence to travel on two wheels.

That’s why now is the time to shift gears and press ahead with our biggest and boldest plans yet to boost active travel - so that everyone can feel the transformative benefits of cycling.

Johnson introduced a bike-sharing programme in London during his spell as the British capital’s mayor from 2008 to 2016.

But the so-called “Boris bikes” stood largely untouched during a months-long lockdown that still sees swathes of central London stand empty during working hours.

The government’s efforts to tease people out of lockdown and into their old spending habits that can give shops and restaurants a boost are complicated by Britain’s inability to safely reopen its schools.

Polls show people are also worried about using public transport. Many trains and buses are running half-empty during morning and evening commutes.

Johnson’s plan envisions more Briton’s biking and walking to work in the long term.

It promises to build “thousands of miles of protected cycle routes in towns and cities” as part of a £2bn ($2.6bn) “cycling and walking revolution”.

The government has also promised to start releasing the first batch of £50 “bike repair vouchers” to help people get old cycles fixed.

Britain’s official virus death toll of 45,759 is the highest in Europe.

A trade association representing British airports called on the government to drop the need for holidaymakers to quarantine for two weeks after returning from Spain’s Balearic and Canary Islands, warning of a further hit to the beleaguered sector.

A total of 15% of flights leaving Britain in August last year were destined for the islands, carrying just under 2.4 million people, the Airport Operators Association (AOA) said on Monday.

AOA chief executive Karen Dee said:

The government must look urgently at introducing air bridges on a regional basis which would allow travel to islands such as Lanzarote, Majorca and Tenerife, where infection rates are lower, to continue.

UK airports have already lost around £2bn ($2.6bn) since the start of the pandemic and this announcement reinforces the fragile nature of the industry.

Last year, Britons made up over a fifth of foreign visitors to Spain, which relies heavily on tourism revenues, and the government there has said it is focussing its efforts on trying to persuade London to exclude the islands from its quarantine plans.

Britain has defended the decision as a response to a rise in infections.

The death of an inmate suspected of having Covid-19 prompted rioting in four of the most populated prisons in Bolivia’s Cochabamba region over access to medical care, a government watchdog has said.

Local media showed images of inmates climbing to the roofs of the prisons, calling for medicine and access to doctors.

“We urge the entry of medical teams to do an evaluation inside the prison facilities to prevent more deaths,” said Cochabamba ombudsman Nelson Cox.

Eight inmates in total have died with symptoms of Covid-19, according to Cox, spiking concerns that the virus will spread throughout the prison population.

“There are no doctors, there are no medicines. They are dying inside,” said Susana, a relative of a prisoner in the San Sebastián prison who declined to give her last name. “It is not possible to let them die. We are human beings.”

Authorities have reported more than 60 deaths due to the coronavirus in Bolivia’s prison system, which is overcrowded at more than 240% capacity.

There have been several other deaths in recent months that were not confirmed as caused by the coronavirus due to a lack of testing.

President Donald Trump wore a mask and talked up the possibility of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year as he looked to show voters in the battleground state of North Carolina that he is responding to the pandemic.

Trump, whose approval ratings have dropped as many Americans believe he has handled the virus badly, sought for the second week to look in command after setting aside his hands-off approach. He said:

I trust all Americans to do the right thing but we strongly advise everyone to especially, especially focus on maintaining a social distance, maintain a rigorous hygiene, avoid crowded gatherings and indoor bars and wear masks when appropriate.

The Republican president spoke during a visit to a Fujifilm plant in Morrisville, North Carolina, where work on a vaccine is being carried out.

During a tour of the facility, he wore a mask publicly for a second time, the first being on a trip to Walter Reed Medical Center near Washington earlier this month.

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“I heard very positive things, but by the end of the year, we think we’re in very good shape to be doing that,” Trump said of a potential vaccine.

He expressed confidence in the economic recovery and said: “A lot of governors should be opening up states that they’re not opening.”

Infection rates have climbed since June in the United States, which is world leader in total numbers of deaths and cases.

National security adviser Robert O’Brien became the most senior official in Trump’s inner circle to test positive for the coronavirus, the White House said on Monday.

Trump, who is seeking re-election on 3 November, has his work cut out for him in North Carolina, a state he won narrowly in 2016 and where he had originally hoped to accept his nomination for a second term.

A new NBC News/Marist poll said Democrat Joe Biden led Trump by 7 points in North Carolina.

It said respondents by a 2-to-1 margin favored Democratic governor Roy Cooper’s opposition to a large Republican nominating convention event in Charlotte, North Carolina, in late August.

Cooper’s opposition prompted Trump to try to arrange a big event in Jacksonville, Florida, but that plan fell apart last week and now it is unclear where Trump will give his acceptance speech.

Republican delegates are still to meet in Charlotte in late August to conduct some convention business.

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli has issued a scathing criticism of the Italian government’s handling of the coronavirus, saying he was humiliated by a recent lockdown.

His surprise comments at a conference in Italy’s senate were remarkable because the 61-year-old superstar was a symbol of national unity at the height of the lockdown on Easter Sunday when he sang in an empty Milan cathedral in a live streamed solo performance called Music for Hope.

“I felt humiliated and offended. I could not leave the house even though I had committed no crime,” Bocelli said at the conference attended by opposition politicians including Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party who has attacked the government of prime minister Giuseppe Conte over the handling of the coronavrius crisis.

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A national lockdown began in early March and was eased in stages over three months.

Bocelli confessed he disobeyed lockdown rules “because I did not think it was right or healthy to stay home at my age”.

He also said he believed the situation could not have been as serious as authorities were saying because he did not know anyone who had to go into intensive care.

“So what was all this sense of gravity for?” he said.

More than 35,000 Italians have died from the coronavirus.
Regulations regarding social distancing and wearing masks in indoor public places such as stores are still in effect and Bocelli seemed to encourage civil disobedience.

“Let’s refuse to follow this rule. Let’s read books, move around, get to know each other, talk, dialogue ...” he said.

Quarantine for people arriving from Spain and other countries with high levels of Covid-19 will be cut to 10 days under plans being finalised by UK ministers, The Telegraph has reported.

The UK government will announce this week a new policy of testing arrivals from high-risk countries eight days after they land, it said.

If they test negative they will be allowed to come out of self-isolation two days later, reducing the mandatory quarantine period by four days, the report said.

A government spokesman told the Telegraph the 10-day quarantine period is under discussion but a final decision has not been made.

The government is also considering telling everyone who has come into the UK from Spain since 23 July, including returning holidaymakers, to take a coronavirus test, the report added.

Britain dealt a new blow to Spain on Monday by extending guidance advising against all non-essential travel, which already applied to mainland Spain, to include the Balearic and Canary Islands.

The mayor of Medellín, Colombia’s second city, has sparked outrage by calling on Cuba to send brigades of doctors to help battle his city’s coronavirus outbreak.

Daniel Quintero, the mayor of the South American city, sent a letter earlier this month to Cuba’s communist government requesting personnel to man 600 intensive care units, as the city braced for climbing Covid-19 cases.

Colombia has confirmed 248,976 cases of Covid-19, with 8,525 deaths. Cases and deaths climbed Sunday evening by 8,181 and 256 respectively.

Antioquia, the province of which Medellín is the capital, has seen 24,143 cases.

Cuba has long sent its doctors and technicians abroad, as part of a medical mission founded in the wake of Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in the 60s.

Since March, when the coronavirus pandemic swept through Europe, the Caribbean nation has sent 1,500 medical professionals abroad. One brigade was well received by locals in Lombardy, The Guardian reported in May.

Cuba’s government, led by the Communist Party since 1965, claims to have sent 400,000 health workers to tackle crises around the world.

But the Cuban government, now led by Miguel Díaz-Canel, has received staunch criticism from rights groups over the conditions its overseas doctors face.

Health workers are prohibited from forming relationships with anyone “whose actions are not consistent with the principles and values of the Cuban society,” according to Cuban law.

José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement last week:

Cuban doctors deployed to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic provide valuable services to many communities, but at the expense of their most basic freedoms.

Governments interested in receiving support from Cuban doctors should press the Cuban government to overhaul this Orwellian system that dictates with whom doctors can live, fall in love, or talk.

The Trump administration has also sought to undercut Cuba’s medical diplomacy, leading Bolivia and Brazil - both countries with new right wing leaders - to expel Cuban medical personnel.

Quintero, Medellín’s mayor, facing criticism for calling on support from one of conservative Colombia’s ideological and regional rivals, defended his decision to call for help on Sunday evening, after news of the letter was made public.

He tweeted:

We haven’t understood the message of the coronavirus. Beyond borders, races and ideologies, it was reminded as that as people we need each other.

He went on to say that his administration has also requested vaccines from the US and UK, tests from the United Arab Emirates, and personnel from span.

“Life has to come before politics,” Quintero said.

Nearly 200 federal healthcare workers have been deployed to California’s Central Valley, where hospitals are overwhelmed with Covid-19 cases as new infection rates soar, governor Gavin Newsom said.

The arrival over the past several days of Department of Defense personnel will help hospitals in the stricken region, where some hospitals and intensive care units are two-thirds full of Covid-19 patients.

That has left little room for people who are ill from other conditions and is putting immense pressure on doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers trained in providing care to the sickest patients.

To combat the virus’ spread, the state is committing $52m to the eight counties that make up the San Joaquin Valley, Newsom said.

The state is also dispatching strike teams of health care workers, employee safety specialists and business regulators to the San Joaquin Valley to educate and persuade residents and employers to adopt public health practices such as social distancing and wearing masks.

As many as 18% of those tested are showing to be infected with the coronavirus, more than twice the level as the state as a whole, Newsom said.

The spread is being driven by a number of factors, including community and family gatherings, work in close quarters in agricultural businesses, nursing homes and prisons, he said.

California is one of several US states that has become a hotspot for a second wave of coronavirus cases.

An average of 109 Californians have died daily over the past two weeks, Newsom said, and nearly 8% of those tested for the coronavirus are confirmed to have contracted it, he said.

The state has rolled back efforts to re-open its economy, closing bars, banning indoor restaurant dining and postponing the resumption of in-person school instruction in 37 counties that are home to 93% of Californians.

US senate Republicans will shortly introduce a new coronavirus relief programme to address health, economic assistance and schools, senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has said.

Speaking on the senate floor, McConnell said the package would include direct payments to Americans of $1,200 each, and help for the unemployed.

It would also include “strong legal liability protection,” over $100bn for schools, more money for a small business program, and a programme to incentivise manufacturing of personal protective equipment in the United States.

An additional 61,795 cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in the US, according to the the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday, taking the total to 4,225,687.

It said the number of deaths had risen by 564 to 146,546.

The CDC reported its tally of Covid-19 cases s of 4pm ET on Sunday versus its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

Britain’s decision to impose a quarantine on people travelling from Spain is unfair, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez has said.

He added that the Spanish government is in touch with British authorities in a bid to get the country to reconsider its position.

Sanchez said the UK’s “error” was to consider the rate of coronavirus infection in Spain as a whole, when most regions have a lower rate than Britain’s.