Tens of thousands demand better pay and protection as cases rise in the Philippines, Greece and Italy
After sustaining lockdown losses, UK farmers are now cashing in on the boom in rural staycations by turning to camping and cottage rentals.
Tom Wall digs deeper into this emerging trend in the following report for the Observer:
Meat giant Danish Crown announced Saturday it had closed a large slaughterhouse in Denmark after nearly 150 employees tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
The abattoir in Ringsted, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the capital Copenhagen, employs nearly 900 people and slaughters tens of thousands of pigs every week.
Danish Crown said 120 employees tested positive for the virus in a first round of tests of 600 employees present.
It then retested all the negative cases and detected 22 additional infections.
“For this reason, we are closing the abattoir for at least a week to try to break the chain of transmission among employees on site,” Danish Crown said in a statement.
All the employees must quarantine, said the company, one of Denmark’s biggest exporters and the biggest pork product producer in Europe.
Several European slaughterhouses have been hit with the virus in recent months, particularly in Germany.
The virus cluster at Ringsted is the main active one in Denmark, where the number of cases has increased sharply in recent days.
The resurgence has forced the government to abandon plans to ease restrictions at concert halls and night clubs, and instead prepare new curbs.
Several dozen infections have been registered in Aarhus, the country’s second biggest city.
Prime minister Mette Frederiksen said on Friday that Denmark intends to make masks compulsory on public transport, even though such a measure had not even been recommended recently.
Facing a new surge of coronavirus infections, one Spanish town is deploying special police units to nightclubs to enforce health regulations to stop the virus from spreading, the Associated Press reports.
The small beach town of Fuengirola near Málaga on Spain’s southern coast has sent police to its nightclubs which are a magnet for young people seeking summer fun to keep them from becoming virus breeding grounds.
The police pressure that is carried out is essential so that people who are resistant to the law end up complying with it, police officer Jorge Moreno said, adding that since June 15, police have issued 2,000 sanctions for not complying with health regulations.
The special unit of 24 officers ensures that both workers and party-goers comply with the mandatory order to wear face masks and that clubs keep tables far enough apart to maintain social distancing between groups.
Nightclubs have been repeatedly cited by regional health authorities as sites of contagion. Northeast Catalonia has ordered them shut down.
Spain is struggling to keep an uptick in infections in check after it had managed to control an initial nationwide outbreak that forced the government to impose a strict three-month lockdown.
The health ministry on Friday reported the country’s highest daily increase in new infections since the lockdown ended in June, with 1,895 cases recorded some 200 more than the previous day.
Spain has confirmed 28,503 virus deaths in the pandemic but experts say all numbers in all countries are undercounts due to limited testing, missed cases and other issues.
Several thousand people waving rainbow flags protested in the centre of Warsaw to demand the release of an LGBT activist accused of hanging rainbow banners over statues and damaging an anti-abortion campaigner’s van, Reuters reports.
Crowds chanted “Give us Margot back!” and “Rainbow does not insult you!” outside Warsaw’s Palace of Culture on Saturday.
The peaceful gathering applauded activists hanging another rainbow flag on a statue in front of the palace, while police officers filmed the performance and the protest leaders.
On Friday the police detained 48 people, who were trying to stop the authorities from jailing Margot, the activist accused of hanging flags on statues of Jesus and others and destroying the van of an anti-abortionist.
“We are here to protest against the fact that these people were detained by the police,” Mateusz Wojtowicz, 24, a payroll specialist, told Reuters.
The police started releasing detained protesters on Saturday, but not Margot.
She is a member of the activist group “Stop Bzdurom”. The group have said they hung flags on statues last week as part of a fight for LGBT rights, an issue thrust into the heart of public debate in Poland during last month’s presidential election.
The commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe, a rights watchdog, called for the immediate release of the activist.
“Order to detain her for two months sends very chilling signal for freedom of speech and LGBT rights in Poland,” commissioner Dunja Mijatovic tweeted.
The ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party says LGBT rights are part of what it calls an invasive foreign ideology that undermines Polish values and the traditional family.Condemning Friday’s protest, justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro said authorities had to act or face “even more violent” attacks by activists.
Face masks must be worn outdoors in Paris along the banks of the River Seine and along the Canal St Martin as well as in open-air markets and other places where social distancing is difficult, the Paris prefecture said on Saturday.
Masks will be mandatory from 6am on Monday and the order will remain in place for one month, the prefecture said.
Suppose the jury found you not guilty, but you had been punished by spending years in a cell on remand as if you were a guilty man. No government should have the power to lock you up and forget your existence.
Covid-19 has given this government precisely that power.
In his latest column, Nick Cohen looks at how the “basic tenets of law are being further eroded in an already shambolic legal system” amid the pandemic:
So, could going on a plane amid the pandemic be safer than going to the pub?
Dr Bharat Pankhania, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter, had this to add:
In the pub there is a free for all after a few drinks, whereas in the aeroplane it is a managed environment.
He told PA he would personally avoid going on a plane during a pandemic but thinks planes carry less risk than pubs.
He pointed out that on a plane journey people will be taking precautions such as wearing masks and there will be less conversation, adding:
When people are boarding an aeroplane they are so conscious of a potential risk that they are in prevention mode and in hyper prevention mode.
When you are in a pub your inhibitions by design are reduced and removed and you are never in a prevention mode.
Dr Pankhania pointed out that pubs attract sociable people who are likely to have met up with many other people.
He said:
So they are meeting a lot of people as well as meeting you in the pub. You might be meeting them only, but you don’t know how many they have met.
He added that even people who go to the pub alone for a quiet drink are at risk as they are putting themselves into an environment where the virus could be in free circulation.
Dr Pankhania also commented on restaurants, saying:
I personally think going into a restaurant indoors where there are lots of tables etc in a confined space, without any new attention to increased ventilation, I would say it’s best you avoid it.
Pubs create the “perfect storm” for spreading coronavirus and carry more risk than planes, academics have told the PA news agency.
Punters drinking together in an indoor pub are potentially subjecting themselves to a build-up of infected droplets caused by poor ventilation and people having continuous conversations, often speaking more loudly to be heard over the din of a noisy bar, the experts warn.
The comments come after households mixing in pubs and homes was blamed for a rise in Covid-19 cases in Preston, resulting in it being the latest area to have lockdown restrictions reimposed.
Aberdeen was also placed in a fresh lockdown after an outbreak of cases linked to a number of bars emerged.
Dr Julian W Tang, honorary associate professor of respiratory sciences at the University of Leicester, said if you can smell garlic on someone’s breath it means you are close enough to be inhaling their air.
“If the air space is poorly ventilated, that air that’s full of virus is not going to go anywhere. It’s going to linger there until the virus dries up and dies over time,” he said, adding that the most common method of transmission in the UK is probably “conversational exposure”.
He pointed out that when people laugh they produce a lot of air, so if someone in a group in the pub makes a joke then they are massively exposed to exhaled air from the laughter around them.
Asked if being in a busy pub is quite similar to being on a plane in terms of risk, Dr Tang said: “It’s even worse because the aeroplane has very good ventilation. The pubs don’t have very good ventilation.”
He said the ventilation system on a plane filters viruses out of the air, adding: “I think a plane is safer because of that ventilation system efficiency.”
Dr Tang said the general public do not realise just how good the ventilation is on planes, adding: “A lot of the fear is due to ignorance.
“To be honest, on a plane the danger is from your nearest neighbours because that air is not filtered away quickly enough before you inhale it. That’s the main risk on a plane.”
He said: “I don’t see planes as a major risk. If you ask me would I rather fly on a plane or go to a pub, I’d rather fly on a plane.”
Dr Tang added: “In a pub you go there to talk, you go there to do exactly what you need to do to transmit the virus to each other.”
Major League Soccer will resume its season once the MLS is Back tournament in Florida wraps up.
The league said on Saturday its 26 teams will each play 18 games, with the first between FC Dallas and Nashville set for 12 August.
Dallas and Nashville are playing three additional games after withdrawing from the league’s tournament because of positive Covid-19 cases.
Here’s the full report:
President Donald Trump on Saturday intends to sign an executive order intended to provide economic relief to Americans hurt by the coronavirus pandemic after the White House failed to reach a deal with Congress, a White House source told Reuters news agency.
Ireland reported 174 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, up from 98 on Friday.
Saturday’s increase is more than triple the average of 58 new cases per day seen over the last week.
Chief medical officer Ronan Glynn said 118 of the new cases were linked to the three counties – Kildare, Laois and Offaly – where some restrictions on movement were reintroduced on Friday following a surge in cases there.
“While today’s numbers of confirmed cases are high, they are not unexpected,” Glynn said.
“Our priority now … is to avoid these cases and clusters leading to widespread community transmission of the disease.”
The new rules for counties Kildare, Laois and Offaly include restricting movement with the exception of work purposes and other essential journeys; restaurants and pubs serving food to close, apart from takeaway services, deliveries and limited outdoor dining; and the closure of indoor entertainment and sport venues such as cinemas, theatres, museums, galleries and bingo halls.
Visits to prisons, acute hospitals and nursing homes will be suspended except on compassionate grounds.People have been asked not to travel to those counties unless for work.
However, retail shops can remain open with the wearing of face masks, and childcare facilities and schools that are open can remain open.
Outdoor amenities including playgrounds will also remain open with social distancing.
Algeria will further ease its coronavirus lockdown including shortening an overnight curfew and lifting some travel curbs, Reuters reports.
In addition, large mosques will be allowed to reopen, along with beaches, entertainment venues, hotels, restaurants and cafes.
As of Saturday the North African country has recorded 34,155 coronavirus infections, with 1,282 deaths.
The new measures include lifting a travel ban on 29 provinces from 9 August until the end of the month. During that period, a curfew will be shortened and will run from 11pm to 6am from the current 8pm to 5am, the government said on Saturday.
Mosques with a capacity of more than 1,000 worshipers can reopen from 15 August, though Friday prayers, which attract larger numbers of people, will remain banned throughout the country.
The use of air conditioners in mosques also remain banned, as does a prohibition of access for women, vulnerable people and children under 15 years.
The government will also allow the reopening of beaches and entertainment venues, as well as restaurants, cafes and hotels from next Saturday.
It said social distancing and protection masks would be compulsory, and warned any violation of preventive measures against the novel coronavirus would prompt it to reimpose more restrictions.
Algeria resumed some economic activity in June, mainly in the construction and public works sectors, and allowed the reopening of some businesses.
It lifted a curfew and travel restrictions for its remaining 19 provinces in July.
Brazil’s Covid-19 death toll has risen above 100,000 – the latest grim milestone in the South American country’s ongoing coronavirus crisis.
On Saturday afternoon a coalition of Brazilian news outlets announced the number of deaths had risen by 538 to 100,240, the second highest number on earth after the US.The group has been compiling Covid-19 statistics since Brazil’s health ministry was accused of seeking to conceal figures in June.
Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has played down the pandemic and undermined social distancing and containment measures, came under heavy attack as the death toll rose above 100,000.
An editorial in the conservative Estado de São Paulo newspaper said: “This tragedy has happened because ever since the pandemic arrived in our country president Jair Bolsonaro adopted such appalling behaviour towards the greatest pain inflicted on Brazilians in more than a century.”
It added: “There was no greater misfortune for the nation than having such an inadequate and indifferent leader in the presidency at such a serious moment. It is not clear whether Bolsonaro will one day face political or legal consequences for his neglect. But he should fear for what might happen.”