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Monday 25 May 2020 18:31
Greece has restarted regular ferry services to its islands while restaurants and bars have reopened as the country attempts to salvage its summer tourism season from the impact of coronavirus.
Travel to the islands has mostly been off-limits since a lockdown was imposed in late March, but the country’s low infection rate has prompted the government to start the holiday season earlier than expected.
Meanwhile, children in Australia have begun returning to full-time face-to-face lessons on Monday, allowing many parents to return to offices.
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Dominic Cummings’ statement in full
Dominic Cummings defended his decision to drive up to Durham – but questions will likely remain over trips out he took during that period including a stop off at Barnard Castle to check his eyesight.
The regularly scheduled Downing Street press briefing was set to begin at 6pm – but has now been pushed back by a total of two hours to 7pm.
The Prime Minister is set to take to the podium for the second time in as many days.
The Department for Health said 36,914 people had died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK as of 5pm on Sunday, up by 121 from 36,793 the day before.
In the 24-hour period up to 9am on Monday, 73,726 tests were carried out or dispatched, with 1,625 positive results.
Overall a total of 3,532,634 tests have been carried out and 261,184 cases have been confirmed positive.
Ireland has reported no new coronavirus deaths for the first time since March.
The country has seen more than 24,000 infections over the course of the pandemic, and 1,608 deaths.
A clinical trial of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine has been suspended by the World Health Organization amid safety concerns, the body’s chief has confirmed.
“The executive group has implemented a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm within the Solidarity trial while the safety data is reviewed by the data safety monitoring board. The other arms of the trial are continuing”, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an online briefing.
The drug has been repeatedly endorsed by a world leaders including Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and US president Donald Trump – who yesterday said he had just finished a course of the medicine, which he claimed to have been taking as a preventative measure.
More below:
Coming up: The Downing Street press briefing
Away from Dominic Cummings’ statement, the regularly scheduled Downing Street press briefing will begin at 6pm – an hour later than usual.
The Prime Minister is set to take to the podium for the second time in as many days.
Dominic Cummings has said he has no regrets about breaking the lockdown and driving to Durham after his wife had fallen ill with coronavirus, in a briefing at Downing Street.
Making a statement in Downing Street’s rose garden, Mr Cummings said: “I don’t regret what I did. I think reasonable people may well disagree about how I thought about what to do in the circumstances, but I think what I did was actually reasonable in these circumstances.
“The rules made clear that if you are dealing with small children that can be exceptional circumstances.
More below:
Donald Trump has implored schools to open as soon as possible, citing that “much very good information” could make it possible as the coronavirus death toll nears 100,000.
The president’s tweet came the evening before Memorial Day when a majority of schools and colleges would’ve already ended their academic school year.
“Schools in our country should be opened ASAP. Much very good information now available,” Mr Trump wrote, tagging Fox News.
More below:
Boris Johnson’s senior aide Dominic Cummings said his decision to drive to County Durham was based on concerns that he would not be able to provide adequate care for his child if both he and his wife fell ill.
He added that stories suggested he had opposed lockdown and “did not care about many deaths”, but added “The truth is that I had argued for lockdown, I did not oppose it but these stories had created a very bad atmosphere around my home, I was subjected to threats of violence, people came to my house shouting threats, there were posts on social media encouraging attacks.”
Mr Cummings said he was worried that “this situation would get worse” and “I was worried about the possibility of leaving my wife and child at home all day and often into the night while I worked in Number 10.”
“I thought the best thing to do in all the circumstances was to drive to an isolated cottage on my father’s farm.”
Coming up: Dominic Cummings’ statement
Dominic Cummings is due to make a statement from the Downing Street garden on his travels during the nation’s lockdown – an unprecedented step from a political adviser.
The press conference was due to take place at 4pm, but has been delayed.
Barley used to make beer could become food for barnyard animals as pubs and restaurants remain closed
Barley farmers like Brett Askew cannot wait for pubs to reopen, but it is not the pints they have been missing most.
Like many farmers across Europe whose wheat plans were thwarted by a wet autumn, Mr Askew, of Kibblesworth in Tyne and Wear, waited for weather to improve and turned to later-planted spring crops like barley, which he plans to sell to maltsters, who produce malt for brewing and distilling. The timing could not have been worse.
Closing pubs and restaurants and cancelling sporting events and festivals like Germany’s Oktoberfest has hurt demand for malt used to make beer and whisky. Brewers and malt producers have shuttered or scaled down plants, just as European barley stockpiles are set to hit a decade-high. That means farms may have to offload crops more cheaply for animal feed
Russian governor appears to tell staff to change coronavirus figures in leaked audio
A leaked audio file purporting to show a regional governor instructing staff to alter data has cast further doubt on Russia’s exceptionally low Covid-19 case fatality rate, Oliver Carroll reports.
The recording, released on anonymous social media channels on Monday morning, is muffled and somewhat difficult to decipher. But the request to “change figures” — by a man whose voice appears to be that of Lipetsk governor Igor Artamonov — is explicit enough. Their publication, the voice adds, would make “people … think bad things about [the] region.
The two-minute conversation contains such phrases as: “We need to correct this, to convince Moscow that we don’t have 72 [unclear]”, “don’t put the region’s neck on the line”, “we are at a critical stage, someone’s head needs to to be chopped off”, and “don’t tell me you are soft. Is it really so hard to change the data?”
Trump defends playing golf in rambling Twitter rant as US coronavirus death toll nears 100,000
Donald Trump has defended his decision to play golf twice over the Memorial Day weekend as the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic continues to mount, Oliver O’Connell reports.
In a series of rambling tweets, the president argued that he played in order to “get outside” for “a little exercise”, before complaining about the media scrutiny.
He then attempted to deflect attention away towards former vice president Joe Biden, and former president Barack Obama, accusing the latter of extravagant trips to Hawaii to play golf.
The US is currently nearing the grim milestone of 100,000 officially recorded deaths from Covid-19.
Dominic Cummings to make public statement amid lockdown furore
Dominic Cummings is expected to make a public statement later amid growing calls for the prime minister’s most senior adviser to resign for travelling during lockdown, Whitehall editor Kate Devlin reports.
Boris Johnson is also facing mounting pressure from his own MPs to order an official investigation into his chief aide.
And police have been asked to establish the facts about Mr Cummings’s movements in Durham, when the country was being asked to stay at home.
Mr Johnson’s own MPs are concerned a number of key questions still linger over the controversy.
The government has admitted Mr Cummings drove 260 miles to stay near family in county Durham while the country was in lockdown.
Spain to lift tourist quarantine from July
Spain will lift a requirement for foreign tourists to undergo a two-week quarantine from July 1, the government said in a statement.
Under current restrictions, visitors from abroad must isolate themselves for two weeks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya had previously said the measure would be relaxed in July, without specifying the date.
Dutch outbreak spreads across border to Germany
A coronavirus outbreak linked to a slaughterhouse in the Netherlands has spread across the border to Germany.
Dutch regional health authorities said tests showed 147 of the 657 employees at a meat processing plant in Groenlo were positive for Covid-19.
They said 79 of those infected live in Germany, while 68 are resident in the Netherlands.
There have been several clusters of Covid-19 among slaughterhouse workers in Germany in recent weeks, prompting a government pledge to crack down on conditions in the industry.
Many workers in German abattoirs are migrants from eastern Europe employed by subcontractors. They often live in shared housing and are transported to and from the slaughterhouses by shuttle bus, increasing the likelihood of infection.
Covid-19 outbreak among Czech coal mine workers
A coal mine in north-eastern Czech Republic near the border with Poland has halted work after a major Covid-19 outbreak among the miners.
In recent days, tests of some 2,400 people revealed a total of 212 positive for coronavirus, mostly miners from the Darkov mine in the town of Karvina and their family members. It is currently the biggest local outbreak in the country.
Ivo Vondrak, the head of the regional government, said that only workers who are necessary to deal with ventilation and water pumping remain in the mine.
Local health authorities have limited public gatherings in Karvina county to 100, while it is 300 in the rest of the country. Visits to care homes and hospitals are banned.
The daily increase of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the entire Czech Republic was 65 on Sunday. A total of 8,957 people have tested positive in the country, while 315 have died.
West Bank to reopen after slowdown in viral spread
The Palestinian prime minister said the West Bank will reopen on Tuesday after a dramatic slowdown in the spread of coronavirus.
Prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said shops, restaurants, mosques and churches would reopen on Tuesday, while government offices would reopen on Wednesday following the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
The Palestinian Authority, which administers autonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, imposed a strict lockdown in March.
The Palestinians reported 368 cases of Covid-19 in the West Bank, with two deaths.
Macron ally criticises UK’s quarantine policy amid coronavirus pandemic
A senior member of France’s ruling party, En Marche!, has criticised Boris Johnson’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic and in particular the UK’s new quarantine policy, travel correspondent Simon Calder reports.
From 8 June, almost all arrivals at British airports, ferry ports and international rail terminals will be required to self-isolate for 14 days.
Bruno Bonnell, a close ally of Emmanuel Macron, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Europe should be as open as possible – even though we have Brexit happening.
“It’s a disappointment that the UK is excluding itself from Europe with this decision.
“I’ve been discussing Mr Johnson’s policy for a long time now and I’ve discovered that it’s always a ‘Blame it on someone else’ attitude.”
Sweden’s death toll tops 4,000
The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak in Sweden has topped 4,000, statistics published by the Public Health Agency showed.
The data published on the agency’s website showed that deaths from Covid-19, had risen to 4,029 from 3,998 a day earlier while the number of confirmed cases amounted to 33,843 up from 33,459.
Sweden has taken a soft-touch approach to fighting the virus, leaving most schools, shops and restaurants open and relying on voluntary measures focused on social distancing and good hygiene.
Accumulated deaths in the pandemic in Sweden have been many times higher relative to the size of the population than in its Nordic neighbours, but still lower than in some hard-hit countries, such as Spain and Britain, that implemented strict lockdowns.
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