Live news about the coronavirus: the death toll in Europe approaches 100,000 as the United States seeks to lift the restrictions | World News

Canada and the United States have agreed to extend the border restrictions for another 30 days to help control the spread of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday. Washington and Ottawa agreed last month to clamp down on nonessential travel while allowing trade to continue across their long shared border during the coronavirus outbreak. The deal was due to expire this week.

Trudeau says he will keep people on both sides of the border safe amid the pandemic. United States President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the border between the United States and Canada will be one of the first to open. Almost 200,000 people normally cross the border daily.

Paris bus stops and subway entrances will be equipped with hand gel dispensers, and travelers will likely be required to wear face masks to use public transportation once the coronavirus containment measures are lifted, according to the mayor of the city.

France is expected to start coming out of its strict closure starting May 11, with schools slated to reopen at the time, but the government has yet to explain when businesses such as cafes and movie theaters can restart and to what extent it will be allowed to people move.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told the Journal Du Dimanche (JDD) in an interview published Sunday that the hand gel would become widely available as the French capital tries to keep the virus under control.

This will include free dispensers in swimming pools, sports stadiums and daycares, but also on the street and at bus stops, he said, adding that JCDecaux, a company known for making billboards, was working on the scheme.

When asked if authorities in the wider Paris region should make wearing face masks mandatory on subways and commuter trains, Hidalgo said they were debating that.

Israel approved relief on its tight coronavirus restrictions on Saturday, while avoiding announcing the first stage of an exit from the blockade.

In a televised speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described a “responsible and gradual” plan that would allow some workers to return to offices and industry.

He also promised to reopen some high street stores and allow children with special educational needs to return to school, in groups of up to three.

The measures will take effect from Sunday, the first day of the Israeli week.

By Saturday, Istrael had recorded 13,107 cases of the disease, with 158 deaths.

The past few days have seen a slowdown in new confirmed cases, but Netanyahu warned that if infection rates started to rise again, there would be a new crackdown.

More now in Spain, where Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced on Saturday that the national blockade against the coronavirus will extend two weeks to May 9, hours after the official death toll exceeded 20,000.

“We have done the most difficult part through responsibility and social discipline … we are leaving behind the most extreme moments,” Sánchez said. But the Spanish must not jeopardize the fragile achievements made so far with hasty decisions.

However, the current restrictions would be loosened a bit to allow the children to pass on April 27, Sánchez said.

Until now, only adults have been able to leave the house for specific reasons: to go to work, to buy food or medicine, for a medical appointment or to work the dog.

But there were more and more calls to let children out, as is allowed in most other countries that observe a shutdown.

Spain, which has been locked up since March 14, has registered 20,043 deaths from the virus, the latest figures from the Ministry of Health showed, the third highest official figure after the United States and Italy.

Soon we will have the story of Washington correspondent David Smith on the latest developments in the US. But in the meantime, in case he missed it, United States President Donald Trump warned Saturday that China could face consequences if it were “consciously responsible” for the coronavirus pandemic. .

“It could have stopped in China before it started and it didn’t,” Trump told reporters at a White House briefing. “And now everyone is suffering from it.”

The Trump administration has said it does not rule out that the new coronavirus has accidentally spread from a bat-investigating laboratory in Wuhan.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who previously alleged that the US military may have brought the virus to China, rejected US media reports on the matter, saying “there is no scientific basis.”

Trump also questioned official Chinese figures showing that the country has suffered just 0.33 deaths per 100,000 people.

“The number is impossible,” he said. “It is an impossible number to reach.”

The United States, according to a table shown in the briefing, has had 11.24 deaths per 100,000 people, while France has had 27.92 and Spain 42.81.

Ireland has “successfully flattened the curve” for coronavirus transmission and is no longer expecting a spike in infections, said medical director Tony Holohan. “We think we have flattened that […] It curves so much that there is no peak, “he said on RTE’s Late Late show on Friday.” We believe we can move to a low level and reduce it further.

He said adherence to a national blockade, imposed until May 5, “had already saved hundreds of lives and admissions to intensive care.” There have been 530 Covid-19-related deaths and 13,980 confirmed cases of the virus in Ireland, according to health department figures released on Friday.

Ireland, like many other countries, had been preparing for a surge in cases, where transmission would increase and hospitals would be saturated with patients. But Holohan said the analysis shows that the rate of reproduction of the virus, the number of people to whom a confirmed case spreads, is now below one.

“That means that, on average, an infected person transmits it to less than one person,” he said.

“If you continue on that path, the infection rate in the population will continue to decline.”

Concerns remain about the large number of cases and mortality in residential care homes across the republic. About 60% of people who die from the virus come from long-term residential care homes, the Irish Health Service Executive reported on Friday.

British Muslims find new ways to be together for Ramadan under lockdown

The world’s 1.8 billion Muslims face the most important period of the Islamic year, the holy month of Ramadan, which begins this week, under closure due to the global coronavirus pandemic.

Mosques in most countries are closed and meetings are prohibited. The holy places of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia are under curfew. The al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in the Old City of Jerusalem are closed and prayers are suspended.

In the United Kingdom, the Muslim Council of Great Britain (MCB) called for the suspension of all congregational activities in mosques and Islamic centers on March 16, a week before the government announced that all places of worship should close under the closing order.

Hello and welcome to a new coronavirus live blog with me. Helen Sullivan. Get in touch Twitter @helenrsullivan.

As the number of people in Europe who have lost their lives in this pandemic so far approaches 100,000, Spain plans to extend its blockade. But in Italy, a church in Bergamo that served as a temporary morgue at the height of Italy’s coronavirus epidemic “is finally empty,” the mayor said Saturday.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Donald Trump has announced that some states will begin to reopen: Texas and Vermont will allow certain businesses to reopen on Monday while continuing to observe coronavirus-related precautions, and Montana will begin to lift restrictions on Friday.

Several dozen protesters gathered in the Texas capital Austin on Saturday chanting “United States! UNITED STATES!” and “Let’s work!”

• The Prime Minister of Spain will request the extension of the blockade until May 9. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Saturday that he would ask Parliament for a third 15-day extension of the blockade imposed to curb one of the worst outbreaks of the new coronavirus in the world, taking the restrictions until May 9.
• Restrictions to be lifted in some states of the United States. Texas and Vermont will allow certain businesses to reopen Monday while continuing to observe coronavirus-related precautions, and Montana will begin lifting the restrictions on Friday. However, some state governors have warned that they will not act prematurely to reopen their economies until more tests are available to detect the virus. Business leaders have also told Trump that the country needs to run widespread tests before its companies can return to normal operations.
• Turkey’s coronavirus cases surpass Iran to become the highest in the Middle East. Confirmed cases of Turkey’s coronavirus have risen to 82,329, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Saturday, beating neighboring Iran for the first time to record the highest total in the Middle East.
• Morocco has extended its blockade measures for another month. Morocco will extend the blockade measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus for another month until May 20, the government said on Saturday.
• France reports 642 more coronavirus deaths when the death toll reaches 19,323. France recorded 642 more deaths from coronavirus infections on Saturday, bringing the total to 19,323, the fourth highest number in the world, although the number of people in the hospital fell for the fourth consecutive day.
• The death toll at Covid-19 hospital in the UK is over 15,000. In the UK, the official death toll from Covid-19 exceeded 15,000, with 888 new deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. It means that as of 5pm on Friday, of those hospitalized in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 15,464 people died.
• Bangladeshi garment workers crowd the streets to demand wages during the coronavirus blockade. Hundreds of workers in Bangladesh have taken to the streets in defiance of physical distancing rules to demand unpaid wages during the closure of Covid-19.
• Daily death toll in New York in at least two weeks. Deaths in New York State increased by 540 on Friday, the lowest daily death toll since early April. Andrew Cuomo, the state governor, said new hospital admissions stayed around the 2,000-patient mark, which he said was still an “overwhelming number.”
• Some stores in Iran have reopened as the country’s daily death toll fell to 73. Iran allowed some companies in the capital Tehran to reopen on Saturday as the number of daily coronavirus deaths dropped to 73, its lowest level in more than a month. .
• Croatia extends its blockade for another 15 days. Croatia is extending its coronavirus blockade for another 15 days, but a minister says the country is exploring the possibility of gradually reducing the restrictions.