France reports 1,695 new instances, Spain 1,772; Record greek government number of physical fitness since April 22
Hello, Helen Sullivan joins you now.
I’ll bring you the latest news for the next few hours. Contact us on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: [email protected].
Here are the most recent coronavirus-related latest hours:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is cutting down another 353 workers as the coronavirus pandemic wreaths havoc in museums around the world due to movement restrictions and considerations of public gatherings.
The reduction will come through a combination of the elimination of positions, voluntary retirements and furloughs, a spokeswoman for the museum said.
The museum expects a $150 million loss due to the pandemic, the spokeswoman said. Its annual budget is $320 million.
The Met fired more than 80 people in April after the final in March when the pandemic spread to New York City. The most recent discounts will raise the number of workers to about 1,600, compared to 2,000 in March.
The New York Times cited a memo sent to the museum’s staff on Wednesday, specifying 79 staff members had been laid off, 181 were furloughed and 93 took voluntary retirement.
The number of other people treated in hospitals throughout the coronavirus state continued to decrease by two weeks, with 7622 patients defeated Wednesday morning, 175 fewer than the day before and highs of 9,500 two weeks ago.
If Ryanair continued to break the rules ENAC would “suspend all air transport activities at national airports, requiring the carrier to re-route all passengers already in possession of tickets,” it said.
“The claims made in ENAC’s press release today are factually incorrect,” Ryanair responded.
“Ryanair complies fully with the measures set out by the Italian government and our customers can rest assured that we are doing everything to reduce interaction on both our aircraft and at airports to protect the health of our passengers.”
Italy, the first European Union country to be severely affected by the pandemic, which officially killed more than 35,000 people, yet its rate of contagion lately is well below the levels elsewhere in the bloc.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US government official on infectious diseases, expects drug manufacturers will have tens of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses at the start of 2021.
Speaking in a Reuters interview, he said production would likely ramp up so that it hits a billion doses by the end of 2021.
Fauci said he has not seen any pressure from the White House to announce a vaccine close to the 3 November election, in the hopes of boosting President Donald Trump’s re-election chances.
He added that regulators have promised “they are not going to let political considerations interfere” with the approval of a Covid-19 vaccine and “safety and efficacy” will be primary considerations.
Colombia’s former president Álvaro Uribe has tested positive for Covid-19, just a day after he was placed under house arrest as part of a witness tampering probe.
Uribe, a very debatable figure, will be a component of the at-risk population. Due to his detention, he will already be far from his property near the Caribbean coast of the country.
Rumors began circulating in the early hours of Wednesday that the besiegged statesman would possibly be in poor physical condition after the hounds camped outdoors and his box saw an ambulance arrive.
He later announced that he had tested positive, supposedly having no more symptoms than a flight.
The announcement came here less than 24 hours after Colombia violated the Supreme Court ruling to place Uribe under space arrest.
He was president of Colombia from 2002 to 2010, which led a brutal crusade against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), a Marxist insurgent organization that took up arms opposed to the Colombian government in 1964.
Yet despite leaving office a decade ago, he remains as divisive and influential as he did when he lead the country. His supporters say he neutered a violent leftist group that had terrorized the country since the 1960s. His critics say he did so at an inexcusable cost to human rights.
During his tenure, right-wing paramilitary groups flourished, often terrorizing civilians suspected of collaborating with rebels.
Since leaving office, he has twice shown that he is a king-maker. In 2016, he led the crusade to vote against a referendum on a peace agreement with the Farc. This agreement was ratified in Congress. In 2018, his protégé, the current President Ivon Duque, was elected with his support.
Recently, Colombia has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 335,000 cases shown Tuesday night and 11315 deaths. New newspapers are expanding to more than 10,000.
The country has been quarantined since March.
British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA) has been court for the first day of hearings in a case against a government-imposed ban on tobacco sales to limit the spread of coronavirus.
South Africans have been unable to legally purchase cigarettes since the country went into a strict nationwide lockdown on 27 March.
BATSA, which covers 78% of the legal cigarette market in South Africa, decided to sue the state in May after talks with the government fell through.
Speaking at the Western Cape Supreme Court on Wednesday, BATSA’s attorney Alfred Cockrell argued that the ban is “unconstitutional” and “unsotrasical.”
Cockrell said the measure had “devastated” tobacco in an economy that was already suffering and that charges the state about 38 million rand ($2.2 million) per day in excise duty.
Government rep Andrew Breitenbach argued that the case involved “lives and livelihoods,” but said the prohibition minister had “taken steps” to allow the industry between tobacco manufacturers and cigarette manufacturers.
“The ban is a sales ban,” Breitenbach added. “Rights violations are just fortuitous.”
BATSA estimates that South Africa has around one million smokers.
Its legal action has been supported by Japan Tobacco International and by teams and organizations representing tobacco consumers, shops and producers, who agree that the ban fuels an illicit cigarette market.
The Independent Fair Trade Tobacco Association (FITA) legally challenged the “irrational” ban last month, claiming it had diverted profits from a multibillion-dollar company to the black market.
Since then, the court in favor of the government granted FITA permission to appeal.
The BATSA case will resume on Thursday.
South Africa was already in recession before the coronavirus arrived in March and the economy is now expected to contract more than six% this year as a result of the pandemic.
The country is most affected in Africa with at least 521,318 infections diagnosed to date, accounting for more than part of the continent’s cases.
However, its mortality rate has remained low, with more than 8,800 deaths reported to date.
Customers flock to a coffee shop in downtown Wellington after a QR code is displayed on the door that allows others to sign up for the New Zealand government’s Covid-19 tracking app.
None of them take a break to get their phones out. On the sidewalk, ribbon crosses, which denote physical estrangement measures for buyers who ended months ago, seem like a reminder of a bad dream.
New Zealand has achieved the prestige of one of the safest countries in the world for coronavirus; there is no known network transmission in the country and life has largely returned to normal.
But with an eye on countries where the virus was cancelled before re-equipping, officials and the government have replaced their language in recent days to start a new war, this time opposed to complacency.
“Surely we need to be on guard,” Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s most sensible fitness official, said in an interview with Radio New Zealand on Wednesday. “It’s not just the physical care system … it’s everybody.”
It has been 96 days since the last national case of Covid-19 broadcast from an unknown source in New Zealand; The 24 diagnosed cases of the virus are among returning travelers who are quarantined in government-run isolation hotels. But it’s inevitable, Bloomfield said Wednesday, that New Zealand would have an epidemic beyond isolation facilities.
“It’s a matter of when, yes, ” he said. “We rely on the basis that it can be at any time.”
A group of Senate Republicans have backed extending a $25bn payroll assistance programme for US airlines after warnings carriers may be forced to cut tens of thousands of jobs without government action, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
Airline stocks moved sharply higher on the news. Shares of American Airlines were up 8.9% in afternoon trading while shares of United Airlines rose 6.3%.
The letter was the first public disclosure of significant support in the Republican-led Senate for additional emergency funding for US airlines.
The senators who signed the letter said they backed a new six-month extension of the $25bn payroll support program “to avoid furloughs and further support those workers”.
Airline officials and unions have been urging US lawmakers to extend new assistance in the face of the coronavirus epidemic’s devastating impact on airline travel. The letter said:
As air travel is expected to remain weak in the near future, Congress deserves to take into account provisions to help and provide flexibility for affected aviation companies, such as airport dealerships and the aviation industry.
On July 27, the Democrat-controlled majority of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter calling for a six-month extension of the payroll program, which they say is to keep thousands of contracted aviation employees through March 31.
The letter signed through 195 Democrats and 28 Republicans.
Congress provided $25 billion in payroll assistance to U.S. airlines in March, as well as $4 billion for carriers and $3 billion for airport contractors. Most of the rescue budget must be refunded.
Airlines and unions have warned that mass layoffs could take place after the existing $25bn in aid expires on 30 September, just over a month before the 3 November US elections.
Between American Airlines and United Airlines, more than 60,000 frontline people have been warned that their jobs are at stake.