Spain’s daily death toll fell to 179 on Saturday, down from 229 on the previous day, the health ministry said.

Beijing will reform its disease prevention and control system to address weaknesses exposed by the coronavirus outbreak, the vice minister of the National Health Commission has announced.

“This coronavirus epidemic is a big test of our country’s governance and governing ability, and it exposed the weak links in how we address major epidemic and public health systems,” Li Bin told reporters.

The commission intends to build a “centralised and efficient” chain of command and reform, and modernise the disease prevention and control system, he said.

The commission also aims to make better use of big data, artificial intelligence and cloud computing to better analyse the disease, trace the virus and distribute resources.

He said the commission plans to step up research on core technology, improve medical insurance and better ensure the availability of emergency materials.

Seven people have been killed after demonstrators protesting perceived inequities in food aid distribution during the coronavirus pandemic clashed with police in Afghanistan’s western Ghor province on Saturday, Reuters reports.

Fourteen others were wounded during the protest in the western Ghor province – amid growing unhappiness at the distribution allegedly favouring those with political connections, said Gulzaman Nayeb, a local politician.

Police opened fire after some among the around 300 protesters threw stones and started firing guns and trying to enter the governor’s house, a spokesperson for the provincial governor said.

Among the dead was Ahmad Naveed Khan, a local volunteer radio presenter who was sitting at his nearby shop and hit in the head by a bullet, according the Afghanistan Journalists Centre.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) is looking into the “worrying reports of police firing on protestors”, its chairperson said on Twitter.

The government has been distributing food aid around the country as the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic have led to many job losses and rising food prices.

Ms Akbar told Reuters earlier this week that the commission was being inundated with complaints from the public that food aid is being distributed unfairly.

“We hear repeated complaints from people that the ones who are receiving the limited aid that is there are not the ones that are most deserving, they are the ones who have connections to local authorities or local officials,” she said while adding it was not possible to verify the extent to which this was happening.
 

White House officials sought to shelve detailed advice from the country’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on how to safely reopen communities, according to internal government emails obtained by the Associated Press.

The correspondence contradicts the assertion from Donald Trump’s press secretary 

The emails also reportedly reveal that after
AP reported on Thursday that the guidance document had been buried, the Trump administration immediately ordered key parts of it to be fast-tracked for approval.

National Union of Students (NUS) Scotland president Liam McCabe called on the UK and Scottish governments to provide support to students who are unable to work because of the outbreak and are about to lose student funding over the summer.

“One of the things that we have been particularly emphasising is the financial impact,” he told BBC Radio Scotland. “We’re deeply and profoundly concerned about that in many different ways.”

He added: “There is no guarantee that work will reappear and it is my contention that we’re sitting on a ticking time bomb of student deprivation.

“As they have lost that part-time work and there’s no guarantee that it will reappear in future, they’re also staring down the barrels of the end of SAAS payments for those in higher education courses.”

Doulas are being blocked from accompanying pregnant women in the delivery room due to the coronavirus crisis – leaving some facing the prospect of giving birth alone, our women’s correspondent Maya Oppenheim reports.

Charities warned mothers-to-be could be needlessly traumatised because doulas – experts who help pregnant women going through labour – are being routinely barred from home births and maternity units due to women only being allowed to have birthing partners from their same household.

Read the full report with Independent Premium:
 

In a Twitter poll conducted on behalf of The Independent about the government’s plans for 14-day self-isolation for all travellers arriving in the UK, only one in five was on the side of the aviation industry in thinking the quarantine policy will do more harm than good, reports Simon Calder.

Three in 10 say it should be brought in right now, not at the end of the month. But only one in 23 believes it is the right move now. Almost 6,000 people responded within two hours.

The central European country of 5.5 million has had fewer cases and deaths than neighbouring countries, with a total of 1,455 confirmed infections and 26 deaths. 919 people have already recovered.

On Wednesday, most shops, hotels, museums, galleries and outdoor tourist attractions were reopened, with bans raised on religious services and weddings with a limited number of guests.

Schools remain closed, however, and international passenger travel is still not possible. People returning from abroad must go to state-run quarantine centres for 14 days – a measure the UK government is also said to be mulling.

Allan Wilson, the president of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences has spoken of his “frustration” at the government’s “arbitrary” target, insisting there should be a “more targeted” strategy to ensure labs across the country are not put under pressure.

Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, Mr Wilson said: “Given the fact that there was so much turmoil around the initial target of 100,000, to double that target, all it does is put pressure on the laboratories when it’s really not required.

“What we need is a much more targeted approach to how we’re going to reduce the transmission of this disease and reduce deaths, rather than another arbitrary, politically set target.”

Mr Wilson said the Government should set out where people will be tested, who will be tested and how often the tests will take place, adding that approach would “link to an overall strategy” that would allow the spread of the virus to be tracked.

He added that some labs are working “hand to mouth” to provide testing across the UK, saying: “We get deliveries of reagents and chemicals to do testing for a period of time, but there’s no guarantee that there’s another delivery coming behind that so we can maintain that capacity.”

A day after Donald Trump’s valet tested positive for Covid-19, the US vice president’s press secretary, Katie Miller, has tested positive for Covid-19 – a day after Donald Trump’s valet.

“She tested very good for a long period of time and then all of a sudden today she tested positive,” Mr Trump said at yesterday’s press briefing, appearing to indicate her doing so reflected a problem with testing in general – amid criticism of US testing capacity.

Katie Miller is married to Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is reportedly behind much of the White House’s controversial immigration policy, and is allegedly behind a plot to proliferate white nationalist ideology.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether an easing of rules in England be “problematic”, Scotland’s chief constable Iain Livingstone replied: “I think it would make consistency of the public messaging harder, people would be hearing different things when they listen to different forms of media.”

While he said people are used to distinctions between Scotland and England, on issues such as the judiciary and drink driving, the chief constable went on: “It would be harder than it’s been, but I’m confident that police would be able to respond to any differentials that the politicians decide upon.”

Read the full report by Ashley Cowburn here:
 

In a statement marking Europe Day, German foreign minister Heiko Maas said: “If we look back to the beginning of the crisis, we must admit that Europe was not sufficiently prepared for this pandemic.

“In its initial stages, many countries were very preoccupied with themselves – including Germany. But this was necessary in order to secure our own capacity to act and also to be able to help others.

“Since then, the European Union has grown stronger with each passing day of this crisis.”

A cross-party group of MPs is putting pressure on chancellor Rishi Sunak to fill a £5bn gap in funding for local councils, as town hall chiefs warn that the additional burden from coronavirus has left their finances “stretched to the maximum”, Andrew Woodcock reports.

A second £1.6bn tranche of funding promised by communities secretary Robert Jenrick to help councils deal with Covid-19 has yet to reach them, and a survey of local authorities is understood to show that additional costs and lost income due to the virus amount to four times the sums provided by government.

While local government bosses have welcomed the injection of £3.2bn in central government funds to cover extra costs from coronavirus, there is growing anger in town halls at a Whitehall narrative that their financial worries have been dealt with.

The 26 MPs who signed the letter to Mr Sunak and Mr Jenrick highlighted the extra burden on councils in supporting care homes, sourcing and distributing PPE, supplying emergency food packages and distributing business grants at a time when revenues from car parking, leisure centres, planning applications and other sources has plummeted.

The signatories, led by former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron and including the party’s current acting leader Ed Davey, senior Labour backbenchers including Hilary Benn and Sarah Champion, Green MP Caroline Lucas and SDLP leader Colum Eastwood, warned:  “On the ground, we are hearing the fear and anxiety of our councillors as they battle to keep our communities safe, healthy and housed.

Read the full report here:
 

Saudi Arabian authorities recently detained and are holding incommunicado Prince Faisal bin Abdullah, who had previously been ensnared in an anti-corruption drive and released in late 2017, Human Rights Watch has said.

Citing a source with ties to the royal family, the rights group said Prince Faisal bin Abdulla – a son of late monarch King Abdullah – was detained by security forces in late March while self-isolating due to the coronavirus pandemic at a family compound northeast of Riyadh.

The detention could not be independently verified and the Saudi government did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Earlier in March, authorities had detained King Salman’s brother, Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, and former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who was replaced in a 2017 palace coup and placed under house arrest, sources had told the news agency.

The move was a preemptive effort to ensure compliance within the ruling Al Saud family ahead of an eventual succession to the throne by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman upon the king’s death or abdication, sources with royal connections said at the time.

Scientists say warm weather is unlikely to greatly hamper the spread of coronavirus, dashing the hopes of many — including Donald Trump — who had suggested summer could provide relief from the global pandemic, Jon Sharman reports.

Researchers in Canada examined the spread of Covid-19 around the world in late March in places with different humidities, latitudes and public health measures, such as social distancing.

Dr Peter Juni, of the University of Toronto, said in a press release that the team found little or no link between infection spread and temperature or latitude, and only a weak association with humidity.