Coronavirus live news: US to leave WHO as organisation warns crisis accelerating

Coronavirus in the Pacific: weekly briefing

Dan McGarry reports for the Guardian from Port Vila with Tess Newton Cain:

The total number of cases of Covid-19 infection listed by the World Health Organisation for the region stands at 426, an increase of 44 since last week. The main contributor to this rise is the increase in infections in Guam.

The factors that make the Pacific resistant to infection – remoteness, scattered populations and the high cost of travel and transportation – are the very same elements driving the region deeper into economic distress.

These factors have been holding back development gains for decades. And even if it never lands on their shores, Covid-19 will further constrain livelihoods and development opportunities in Pacific nations for years.

Fiji and Papua New Guinea, with their relatively sizeable populations and economies, are the most visibly affected.

One NGO estimates that half of all Fijians are facing “severe” financial distress. A major resort in Fiji has announced that nearly 500 staff will be made redundant as of next month.

The reserve bank has predicted a contraction of 21.7% in the country’s economy, driven largely by the drop-off in tourist arrivals as a result of Covid-19 impacts.

Podcast: How Melbourne ended up under a second Covid-19 lockdown?

For weeks now the government in the Australian state of Victoria has been desperately trying to get the coronavirus outbreak under control. It locked down postcodes, public housing towers and finally Melbourne itself. In this episode of Full Story, reporter Melissa Davey explains how it all unfolded:

Texas surpassed 10,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day Tuesday for the first time, crossing a sobering milestone rarely seen since the pandemic first hit the US in March, AP reports.

The record high of 10,028 new cases in Texas served as another alarming new measure of the swift resurgence of Covid-19 nationwide and the failures of the country’s response.

Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas aggressively began one of Americas fastest re-openings in May but has begun reversing course in recent weeks, ordering bars closed and mandating face coverings.

New York and Florida are the only other states to record more than 10,000 new cases in a single day. New York hit that grim total back in April, when New York City hospitals were overwhelmed and hundreds of people were dying every day. Florida topped 10,000 confirmed cases last week.

The record mark in Texas partly reflects a lag in testing results from the Fourth of July weekend, when newly reported cases were far below what Texas has seen in recent weeks. But Abbott said the numbers should still be an alarm bell for everybody who is skeptical about whether the virus is a threat.

“We have rapid spread of Covid-19 in the state of Texas right now,” Abbott told San Antonio television station KENS.

Texas surged past 8,000 statewide hospitalizations for the first time over the long holiday weekend a more than quadruple increase on the past month. On Tuesday, the number of hospitalizations soared past 9,000. Texas also set a new high for deaths in a single day with 60.

The World Health Organization on Tuesday acknowledged “evidence emerging” of the airborne spread of the novel coronavirus, after a group of scientists urged the global body to update its guidance on how the respiratory disease passes between people.

“We have been talking about the possibility of airborne transmission and aerosol transmission as one of the modes of transmission of Covid-19,” Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on the COVID-19 pandemic at the WHO, told a news briefing.

The WHO has previously said the virus that causes the COVID-19 respiratory disease spreads primarily through small droplets expelled from the nose and mouth of an infected person that quickly sink to the ground.

But in an open letter to the Geneva-based agency, published on Monday in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal, 239 scientists in 32 countries outlined evidence that they say shows floating virus particles can infect people who breathe them in.

Because those smaller exhaled particles can linger in the air, the scientists in the group had been urging WHO to update its guidance.

“We wanted them to acknowledge the evidence,” said Jose Jimenez, a chemist at the University of Colorado who signed the paper.

“This is definitely not an attack on the WHO. It’s a scientific debate, but we felt we needed to go public because they were refusing to hear the evidence after many conversations with them,” he said in a telephone interview.

Welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan. As always, you can get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com. Tips, news, oaths of fealty and suggestions all welcome.

Washington has formally begun the process of leaving the World Health Organization. The US will withdraw on 6 July 2021 under a 1948 joint resolution of the US Congress, which also obliges Washington to pay financial support. Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic challenger for the presidency, said he would return the US to the WHO once elected.

At the same time, the WHO emergencies chief says the coronavirus is accelerating globally. Noting the marked increase in the number of confirmed cases being reported in the past five or six weeks, he warned that a spike in deaths could be soon to follow.

“In April and May, we were dealing with 100,000 cases a day,” said Dr. Michael Ryan during a Tuesday press briefing. “Today we’re dealing with 200,000 a day.”

• There are 11.7m confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, and known 540,582 deaths.
• Washington has formally begun the process of leaving the World Health Organization. The US will withdraw on 6 July 2021 under a 1948 joint resolution of the US Congress, which also obliges Washington to pay financial support. Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic challenger for the presidency, said he would return the US to the WHO once elected.
• The WHO says coronavirus cases are increasing by 200,000 a day, doubling from April and May. The WHO emergencies chief said that the number of Covid-19 deaths appeared to be stable for the moment, but he cautioned that there is often a lag time between when confirmed cases increase and when deaths are reported due to the time it takes for the coronavirus to run its course in patients.
• The World Health Organization on Tuesday acknowledged “evidence emerging” of the airborne spread of the coronavirus, after a group of scientists urged the global body to update its guidance on how the respiratory disease passes between people.
• Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive for Covid-19. He said he began feeling ill on Sunday and has been taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug with unproven effectiveness against Covid-19.
• Israel’s public health director has quit amid a spike in new coronavirus cases, saying the country had been too hasty to reopen its economy and had lost its way in dealing with the pandemic. Siegal Sadetzki, an epidemiologist, announced her resignation a day after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reimposed a series of restrictions, including the closure of bars, gyms and event halls.
• More than 200,000 people in Europe have died from coronavirus, according to analysis from the news agency AFP.
• Italy’s health minister has proposed “sectioning” people who refuse hospital treatment for Covid-19 and has suspended flights from Bangladesh.
• The Australian city of Melbourne is to re-enter Stage 3 lockdown after a record increase in cases. Victorian state premier Daniel Andrews said there was “simply no alternative” to reimposing stay at home restrictions in Australia’s second-biggest city.
• A New Zealand MP has confessed leaking private details of Covid-19 cases to reporters. Hamish Walker, an opposition politician from the centre-right National party, said he was the source of a list of private information about 18 active cases in the country.