Coronavirus live news: Brazil Covid-19 cases near 1m as WHO hails steroid treatment ‘hope’

Mexico’s health ministry reported on Wednesday 4,930 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 770 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 159,793 cases and 19,080 deaths.

The government has said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.

Qantas Airways said on Thursday it had cancelled most international flights until late October, after the Australian government indicated its border closure because of the coronavirus was likely to extend to 2021.

“We will still have some flights scheduled across the Tasman in the coming months with the expected travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand,” the airline said in a statement, referring to the Tasman Sea between the countries.

“Should travel between Australia and other countries open up and demand return, we can add more flights back into our schedule,” it added.

The number of coronavirus infections in the UK has passed 300,00, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, with the current total standing at 300,717.

At least 42,238 people have died in the UK so far.

Uki Goñi reports for the Guardian from Buenos Aires:

Argentina’s president Alberto Fernández has gone into voluntary isolation amid growing concerns over a surge of coronavirus infections, including several cases among the country’s political elite.

The decision to quarantine the president – whose popularity is riding high on his no-nonsense response to the pandemic – was taken due to the “significant increase in the circulation of the virus,” presidential doctor Federico Saavedra said in a statement on Wednesday.

Until now, Argentina’s strong coronavirus lockdown, had been a standout success in the containment of the pandemic that is ripping through its South American neighbours Brazil and Chile.

But that may start changing after Argentina’s reported cases more than quadrupled in the last month following the gradual lockdown relaxation that began on 10 May.

The sudden spike in cases has also struck a number of current and former senior politicians, including former Buenos Aires governor María Eugenia Vidal, 46, a presidential hopeful for the 2023 elections for the opposition PRO party.

Confirmed coronavirus cases in Panama reached 22,597 on Wednesday, up 635 from the previous day, and deaths climbed by 13 to 470, the health ministry said.

Director of Epidemiology Lourdes Moreno gave the Central American country’s latest data at a news conference.

The cheap steroid British researchers believe can help save lives should be used only for the most serious cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

The WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said research was at last providing “green shoots of hope”.

Trial results announced on Tuesday showed dexamethasone, a generic drug used since the 1960s to reduce inflammation in diseases such as arthritis, cut death rates by around a third among the most severely ill patients admitted to hospital.

The head of the WHO’s emergencies programme, Dr Mike Ryan, said the drug should only be used in the cases where it has been shown to help.

It is exceptionally important in this case, that the drug is reserved for use in severely ill and critical patients who can benefit from this drug clearly.

Brazil recorded 1,269 additional Covid-19 deaths on Wednesday, bringing its official death toll from the novel coronavirus to 46,510, the most in the world outside the United States.

The Health Ministry also registered 32,188 new cases of the virus since its Tuesday update, for a total of 955,377 confirmed cases, also second to the United States globally.

Hello and welcome to today’s global live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

I’m Helen Sullivan and I’ll be with you for the next few hours.

It would be great to hear from you on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com – questions, comments, tips and news from your part of the world are most welcome.

The cheap steroid British researchers believe can help save lives should be used only for the most serious cases, the World Health Organization has said. WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said research was at last providing “green shoots of hope”.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s Covid-19 cases, the second highest in the world after the US, are nearing 1 million, with 923,189 currently confirmed. Far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has resisted strong measures to stop spread of what he calls a “little flu”, with devastating consequences.

• The global death toll from coronavirus is nearing 500,000, with more than 8.2 million confirmed cases of the disease worldwide. The Johns Hopkins University tracker is recording more than 445,000 deaths from Covid-19 across the world, as of Wednesday evening UK time. One in four fatalities are in the US, making it by far the worst-hit country.
• The cheap steroid British researchers believe can help save lives should be used only for the most serious cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. The WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said research was at last providing “green shoots of hope”.
• America’s top public health expert has warned the nation it is “still in the first wave” of coronavirus infections and deaths, as six states report record numbers of new cases amid continued rapid easing of lockdown restrictions. However, the state of New York recorded 17 coronavirus deaths on 16 June, its lowest daily death toll since the start of the outbreak. Just 10 weeks ago 800 New Yorkers died in a single day, so the decline is extraordinary.
• Germany has agreed to ban large events for another four months to guard against a second spike in cases. Chancellor Angela Merkel held a meeting of all 16 state premiers where they agreed to extend the ban on big events until at least the end of October.
• Millions of people in Beijing are living under renewed restrictions as a spike in virus cases continues. The city reported another 31 cases on Wednesday, bringing the total to 137 in the past week. Before the recent spike, the Chinese capital had gone 57 days without a locally-transmitted case.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) has halted trials of hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug championed by Donald Trump for treating coronavirus. WHO said it had stopped testing hydroxychloroquine as part of its multi-country trial because it had showed no benefit. It comes two days after US regulators revoked the emergency authorisation for its use, amid growing evidence it doesn’t workand could cause serious side-effects.
• WHO welcomed the UK’s successful trial of dexamethasone, the low-cost anti-inflammatory drug found to save lives when used on coronavirus patients. The global body said it marked a “lifesaving breakthrough” in the fight against the virus and ordered its own analysis on the drug. However, some scientists – including South Korea’s top public health official – expressed caution on the drug.