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Bolsonaro silent as Brazil passes 50,000 deaths; global cases reach 9 million – as it happened

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Crowded beaches after quarantine eases in Rio de Janeiro.
Crowded beaches after quarantine eases in Rio de Janeiro. Photograph: Ellan Lustosa/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock
Crowded beaches after quarantine eases in Rio de Janeiro. Photograph: Ellan Lustosa/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

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Jedidajah Otte
Jedidajah Otte

Here some of the latest developments at a glance:

That’s all from me for today, this blog will now close. My colleague Helen Sullivan will be bringing you a rolling coverage of the next developments in a new blog that will launch shortly. Thanks for reading, goodnight.

South Africa now has over 100,000 infections

South Africa on Monday said it had over 100,000 coronavirus cases, the highest on the continent, while the number of deaths inched towards 2,000.

“As of today, the cumulative number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa has breached the 100 000 mark at 101,590,” the health ministry said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Sixty-one deaths were recorded in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of Covid-19 deaths to 1,991.

Despite the grim death toll, data shows that the mortality rate in South Africa is at 2%, while 52.6% of virus patients have recovered.

The worst-hit area is Western Cape, the coastal province accounting for 1,458 of the country’s deaths and more than half of its infections.

According to the World Health Organization, more than half of the continents infections are in South Africa.

Nigeria and Ghana are next on the list, having recorded over 20,000 and 14,000 cases respectively.

A member of staff packs food hampers for people in need at the Railways cafe, Pretoria, South Africa, on 4 June 2020. The cafe has begun feeding the homeless in the area as the coronavirus lockdown has forced thousands of homeless and less fortunate into begging for food. Photograph: Kim Ludbrook/EPA

South Africa has struggled to set a strategy for dealing with the pandemic.

Officials instituted a strict lockdown when the virus first hit in March but they backtracked as the rate of infections increased and opted to reopen most sectors of the economy.

Despite an unprecedented $26 billion virus relief package and food parcels, many South Africans have struggled to get by.

Under-fire president Cyril Ramaphosa has admitted difficulties in balancing public health with saving the nation’s economy, which was already in tatters before the virus.

“For a country such as ours, which was already facing an unemployment crisis and weak economic growth, difficult decisions and difficult days lie ahead,” he said in his weekly letter to the public on Monday.

“We would urge that the difficult decisions to be taken are taken with care and with due regard to balancing the sustainability of companies and the livelihoods of workers.”

The main opposition Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen has threatened legal action if the government refuses to completely end the nationwide lockdown.

Brazil has recorded 21,432 new confirmed cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours as well as 654 new deaths resulting from the disease, the country’s health ministry said on Monday.

Brazil has registered 1.1 million cases since the pandemic began, while cumulative deaths reached 51,271, according to the ministry, the second-highest death toll in the world.

Newly dug, empty graves fill the Sao Luiz cemetery where Covid-19 victims will be buried in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Monday, 22 June, 2020. Photograph: André Penner/AP

Museums, galleries and cinemas to reopen in England from 4 July

Museums, galleries and cinemas in England will be allowed to reopen from 4 July, alongside pubs, restaurants and hairdressers, the British prime minister Boris Johnson will announce on Tuesday in a decisive but potentially risky easing of lockdown measures in England.

Two days later, millions of people with underlying health issues will be permitted to leave their homes and mix with others for the first time in three months, it was announced on Monday.

My colleagues Peter Walker, Kate Proctor and Sarah Boseley have more.

Laine Hardy, the 2019 winner of American Idol, says he has been diagnosed with Covid-19 but his symptoms are mild and he is recovering under home quarantine.

“This wasn’t what I expected on the first day of summer,” the 19-year-old singer from Livingston, Louisiana, wrote on his Facebook page and on Instagram, according to the Associated Press.

“My doctor confirmed I have Coronavirus, but my symptoms are mild,” he wrote.

Hardly had performed Friday, singing the national anthem at swearing-in ceremonies for Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ards third term, The Advocate reported.

The 2019 “American Idol” winner Laine Hardy says he’s been diagnosed with Covid-19. Photograph: Amy Harris/Invision/AP

The Belgian government is giving its citizens free rail journeys for the rest of the year, as a major incentive to take a ‘staycation’ in Belgium instead of travelling abroad this year.

Every Belgian resident aged 12 and over will be entitled to a “national tour” rail pass giving them 12 free journeys to anywhere in the country, in an attempt to boost the country’s tourism sector which suffered badly from the lockdown, Forbes reports.

The free journeys can be claimed at a rate of two per month, from August 2020 to January 2021. Bikes will also be able to travel on trains for free starting on 1 July, avoiding the normal charge of €4 per bike.

Belgium closed its borders in mid-March in response to the coronavirus outbreak and banned people from travelling within the country.

Passengers are seen at a train station after Belgian transport minister Francois Bellot announced that all citizens over 12 will be given 10 free train tickets within the government’s decision for the new type of coronavirus (Covid-19) to revive domestic tourism and the economy in Brussels, Belgium on 15 June, 2020. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Black Americans four times as likely as whites to be hospitalised with Covid-19

US government data released on Monday showed Black Americans were around four times as likely as whites to be hospitalised for Covid-19, highlighting significant racial disparities in health outcomes during the pandemic.

“The disparities in the data reflect longstanding challenges facing minority communities and low income older adults,” said the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, according to Reuters.

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The health secretary of Rio, the Brazilian state with the second highest number of coronavirus cases, said on Monday he would resign after about month in office, as the local death toll climbs.

“I have only one thing to say: I tried,” state health secretary Fernando Ferry said in a video on Brazilian broadcaster TV Globo, announcing his departure, Reuters reports.

Ferry took the job after police began investigating the state health agency for suspicious state-level contracts and equipment purchases meant to address the pandemic.

That triggered the state legislature to open impeachment proceedings against Rio’s governor.

The turmoil among health officials in Rio mirrors that of the federal government, where two health ministers resigned in the span of a month.

An active-duty military general with no medical background is now interim health minister.

The WHO is looking into a surge of more than 54,000 new coronavirus cases in Brazil in 24 hours, that was reported by the health ministry on Friday and is by far the most reported in the country in a single day, according to top WHO emergencies expert Mike Ryan.

Ryan told an online briefing on Monday that testing levels were still low in Brazil with a high percentage of positive results.

“That generally means there are probably more cases out there than reported,” Ryan said.

Sao Paulo’s Corinthians football club confirmed that 21 of its 27 players had been infected with coronavirus in recent months, although 13 had recovered, according to weekend press reports.

As the toll continues to rise, local governments across Brazil have been gradually lifting lockdown orders.

View of a graffiti that shows the president of Brazil while putting on a face mask with the inscription ‘Covard-17’, in criticism of his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and in reference to the number he used during the presidential campaign, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,on 22 June 2020. Photograph: António Lacerda/EPA

Two further Trump staffers test positive for coronavirus

Two more staff members of US president Donald Trump’s campaign who were in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for his rally on Saturday have tested positive for the coronavirus, a Trump campaign spokesman said on Monday.

The campaign announced on Saturday hours before the rally, Trump’s first since March, that six members of the campaign’s advance staff had tested positive.

“After another round of testing for campaign staff in Tulsa, two additional members of the advance team tested positive for the coronavirus,” spokesman Tim Murtaugh said, Reuters reports.

“These staff members attended the rally but were wearing masks during the entire event.”

Trump supporters without face masks cheer and applaud in the stands during a rally of US president Donald Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 20 June, 2020. Photograph: Tyler Tomasello/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

US Covid-19 death toll passes 120,000

Over on our US politics live blog, my colleague Julia Carrie Wong reports that the coronavirus death toll in the US has reached 120,225, according to the latest figures from John Hopkins University.

This latest grim milestone comes as health officials are raising alarms about “surging” cases in the southern and western US, according to the AP.

Confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Florida have passed 100,000, while Covid-19 admissions at a chain of eight hospitals in Houston have tripled over the past month to 1400. An alarming 20% of Covid-19 tests in Arizona are coming back positive.

The number of newly confirmed Covid-19 cases in the US has reached 26,000, up from 21,000 per day two weeks ago, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Marc Boom, the CEO of the Houston hospital chain, told the AP: “It is snowballing. We will most certainly see more people die as a result of this spike.”

Data from the Serbian state’s Covid-19 information system shows that more than twice as many infected patients have died than the authorities announced, and hundreds more people tested positive for the virus in recent days than the Serbian government has made public, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) reported on Monday.

In the period from 19 March to 1 June, a total of 632 people died in Serbia who had tested positive for the coronavirus, more than twice as many as the official number of 244 deaths that has been announced for that period.

Another data set from the same information system also indicates that the number of people who became infected in Serbia between 17 June and 20 June was at least 300 per day, BIRN reported.

This would be far more than the officially announced figures, which recorded a maximum of 97 new cases in a single day during that period.

The World Health Organization (WHO) called on Monday for a rapid increase in production of dexamethasone, a cheap steroid which has been shown to reduce deaths in critically ill coronavirus patients.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said demand had already surged after a British trial of the drug was publicised but he was confident production could be ramped up.

Some 2,000 patients were given the drug by researchers led by a team from Oxford University, and it reduced deaths by 35% among the most sickly, according to findings published last week.

“Although the data are still preliminary, the recent finding that the steroid dexamethasone has life-saving potential for critically ill Covid-19 patients gave us a much-needed reason to celebrate,” Tedros told a virtual news conference in Geneva, according to AFP.

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US suspends certain work visas and green cards until end of year

The government of the United States will suspend certain categories of non-immigrant work visas through the end of the year and extend an existing ban on certain green cards, as part of a move to protect US workers amid the economic devastation tied to the coronavirus pandemic.

The suspension will cover H-1B visas for skilled workers, H-2B visas for seasonal guest workers and other visa types, with an exception for workers in the food service industry, a senior official from the Trump administration said on Monday.

President Donald Trump will also block L-1 visas for workers being transferred within a company through the end of the year, the official said, adding that the move would open up 525,000 jobs.

This undated image from the US Citizenship and Immigration Service shows the back of a sample “green card,” formally known as a Permanent Resident Card. Photograph: AP

Trump had previously hinted that he might extend a 60-day hold on green cards for foreign workers that he ordered to protect American jobs during the coronavirus outbreak.

Analysts predict the number of green cards issued annually will drop from about 1 million to 300,000.

The US dollar weakened and higher-risk currencies including the Australian dollar jumped on Monday as investors focused on the prospect for an eventual economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reports.

Traders bought riskier currencies even after signs of setbacks in the battle to contain the coronavirus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported a record increase in global novel coronavirus cases on Sunday, with North America and South America showing the largest rises.

On Friday, Apple Inc said it was temporarily shutting some stores again in Florida, Arizona, South Carolina, and North Carolina due to fresh outbreaks in the US.

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Pilgrimage to Mecca to be limited to people in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia said Monday that this year’s hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca many Muslims undertake, will not be cancelled, but that due to the coronavirus only very limited numbers of people will be allowed make the journey.

The kingdom said that only people of various nationalities already residing in the country would be allowed to perform the ritual.
The government did not specify how many people would be permitted to take part.

Muslim pilgrims gather around the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest shrine, at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia’s holy city of Mecca prior to the start of the annual Hajj pilgrimage on 8 August, 2019. Photograph: Fethi Belaid/AFP/Getty Images

The pilgrimage, which is set to begin this year at the end of July, traditionally draws around two million Muslims from around the world for five intense days of worship and rituals in Mecca.

Saudi Arabia has never cancelled the hajj in the nearly 90 years since the nation’s establishment.

It halted the minor umrah pilgrimage, which can be performed year-round, in February, as the coronavirus began spreading across the region, the Associated Press reports.

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