Germany lifting some restrictions, world death toll tops 131,000
GENEVA, Switzerland — Germany on Wednesday unveiled plans to lift some restrictions imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic, becoming the first major European nation to take on the delicate task of reopening without triggering a new wave of infections.
As US President Donald Trump came under increasing fire for ordering a freeze on American funding for the World Health Organization, the Group of 20 (G20) announced a one-year debt moratorium for the world's poorest nations.
The number of COVID-19 cases around the globe soared past two million, meanwhile, according to an AFP tally, and the death toll topped 131,000.
Germany was the largest of several European countries announcing tentative steps on Wednesday to reopen their economies and societies.
Denmark began reopening schools for younger children after a month-long closure and Finland lifted a two-week rail and road blockade on the Helsinki region.
Lithuania said it would allow smaller shops to reopen from Thursday.
Other countries are also tweaking confinement rules, with Iran set to let some small businesses reopen and India allowing millions of rural people to return to work.
In South Korea, people went to the polls on Wednesday and delivered a strong show of support for President Moon Jae-in, commending his handling of the epidemic.
Once home to the world's second-largest outbreak, South Korea has largely brought the virus under control through widespread testing, contact-tracing and social distancing.
Yet a full-scale return to normality still appears a long way off in most other countries.
Harvard scientists have warned that repeated periods of social distancing could be needed as far ahead as 2022 to avoid overwhelming hospitals.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who has allowed work to restart in some factories and building sites, warned that "nothing will be the same until a vaccine is found."
Belgium extended its stay-at-home order until at least May 3 and banned mass gatherings until the end of August.
'Extreme caution'
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced first steps in undoing coronavirus restrictions that have plunged the economy into a recession.
Most shops will be allowed to open once they have "plans to maintain hygiene" although schools must stay closed until May 4 and a ban on large public events will remain in place until August 31.
"We have to proceed with extreme caution," Merkel told reporters in Berlin.
Schools will gradually be reopened with priority given to pupils about to take leaving examinations.
And the government urged people to wear face masks when out shopping or on public transport, but stopped short of making it a requirement like in neighbouring Austria.
Offering a lifeline for the world's poorest countries, the G20 -- a group of the world's leading economies -- said it would temporarily suspend debt repayments from the most impoverished nations.
The reprieve will free up more than $20 billion for those countries to focus on the pandemic and will last at least a year, according to Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan.
But the global economic outlook remains gloomy, with Germany already in recession and US industrial output declining by 6.3 percent -- its biggest fall in seven decades.
More than a third of French workers are on temporary unemployment, the government said.
The virus death toll topped 17,000 in France but in a hopeful sign hospitalizations went down for the first time.
On the horizon looms the worst economic downturn in a century, which the IMF has said could see $9 trillion wiped from the global economy.
'Lessons'
As the world tries to chart a way out of the crisis, Trump came in for criticism for his freeze on payments to the WHO, the UN's health agency.
"No doubt, areas for improvement will be identified and there will be lessons for all of us to learn," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
UN chief Antonio Guterres condemned Trump's move while billionaire Bill Gates, a major WHO contributor, tweeted that cutting funding was "as dangerous as it sounds."
European allies were similarly disapproving and Washington's rivals also took aim -- Russia condemning the "selfish approach" of the US, and China and Iran blasting the decision.
Trump accused the WHO on Tuesday of "severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus" and said it could have been contained if the organisation had accurately assessed the situation in China late last year.
As European nations made tentative moves to open up, in poorer and more densely populated countries, governments are still struggling to enforce restrictions on movement that are piling misery on the needy.
Fears over hunger and possible social unrest are especially acute in parts of Africa and Latin America.
In Cape Town, clashes erupted Tuesday as police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at residents protesting access to food aid.
A similar crisis is taking hold in Ecuador, where hunger trumps fear of the virus for residents in rundown areas of the badly affected city of Guayaquil.
"The police come with a whip to send people running, but how do you say to a poor person 'Stay home' if you don't have enough to eat?" said Carlos Valencia, a 35-year-old teacher.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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