Coronavirus live news: ‘We cannot give up’ warns WHO chief; protests flare in Italy

The Australian state of Victoria, the epicentre of Covid-19 infections, said on Tuesday it had gone 48 hours without detecting any new cases for the first time in more than seven months.

Victoria, the second most populous state, will allow restaurants and cafes in Melbourne to reopen from Wednesday after more than three months under a stringent lockdown.

Despite case numbers dwindling and businesses poised to reopen, Victoria will only ease limits on social gatherings in the home, allowing two adults and dependents from one house to make one daily visit to one other household.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said the highest risk of spreading the virus remained in the family home where social distancing protocols were often not applied.

“This is just about making sure that people can connect, but we can’t have a situation where people are having visitors in the morning, visitors at lunchtime, visitors in the evening,” Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.

“What we, all of us as Victorians, have built is a precious thing, but it is fragile.”

Mexico’s health ministry reported on Monday 4,166 additional cases of the novel coronavirus and 247 more deaths in the country, bringing the official number of cases to 895,326 and the death toll to 89,171.

Health officials have said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases. On Sunday, the ministry said the true death toll from Covid-19 may be around 50,000 higher.

Pope Francis will have to forego meeting Catholics at the annual Advent and Christmas masses in the Vatican owing to the resurgent coronavirus pandemic, the specialist Catholic News Agency reported on Monday.

The 83-year-old pontiff was deprived of a congregation at Easter when he had to celebrate mass at Saint Peter’s with very few people present.

In a letter to foreign envoys to the Vatican, its foreign minister informed them that Christmas ceremonies would take “a private form” this year.

Members of the diplomatic corps would not be present, and events would be made available online, a document seen by CNA said.

Tens of thousands of Catholics typically visit Rome in December to attend services at the Vatican.

More from Italy:

The protests began shortly after the national government’s order took effect requiring bars, cafes and restaurants to close their doors at 6 p.m. for the next 30 days as Italy tries to rein the resurgence of coronavirus infections in recent weeks.

Since most Italians don’t dine out before 7:30 p.m. at the earliest, the decree effectively wiped out most of the restaurants’ already reduced revenue in the pandemic, although takeout and delivery can continue until midnight.

The crackdown was announced Sunday, a day after Italy registered more than a half million confirmed coronavirus cases since the pandemic’s outbreak.

Last week, a peaceful march by shopkeepers and other business owners in Naples, upset about a regional curfew that orders citizens off the streets at 11pm, turned violent near the Campania region’s headquarters. Investigators were quoted in Italian media as saying the violence, in which police officers were injured, bore the hand of the Camorra, the local organized crime group.

A day later, an extreme right political group staged a violent demonstration in downtown Rome.

Smaller cities, including Catania in Sicily, and towns also saw protests Monday. In Cremona, a town in northern Lombardy, restaurant owners turned out in front of the local interior ministry’s office. After banging pots and bans, they left them piled up in the street to highlight their economic woes worsened by the latest early-shutdown decree, the ANSA news agency said.

Protesters turned out by the hundreds in Turin, Milan and other Italian cities and towns Monday to vent their anger, sometimes violently, at the latest pandemic restrictions that force restaurants and cafes to close early and shutter cinemas, gyms and other leisure venues, AP reports.

In the northern city of Turin, some demonstrators broke off from a peaceful protest, smashing store windows on an elegant shopping street, setting smoke bombs and hurling bottles at police in a main city square where the Piedmont regional government is headquartered, RAI state TV said.

A photographer was injured by a hurled bottle, RAI said. Police fired tear gas to clear the protesters in Piazza del Castello.

In that same square, hours earlier, some 300 taxis peacefully lined up in neat rows to draw attention to their economic losses from the implosion of tourism and disappearance of workers from the city center as they do their jobs remotely during the pandemic.

Triggering the violence in Turin were a group of “ultras,” as violent soccer fans are known, the LaPresse news agency said. It said five of the protesters were detained by authorities.

In Italy’s business capital, Milan, police used tear gas to scatter protesters Monday night, and an Associated Press journalist saw at least two people detained.

The World Health Organization chief warned Monday that abandoning efforts to control the coronavirus pandemic, as suggested by a top US official, was “dangerous”, urging countries not to “give up”, AFP reports.

He acknowledged that after months of battling the new coronavirus, which has claimed more than 1.1 million lives globally, a certain level of “pandemic fatigue” had set in.

“It’s tough and the fatigue is real,” Tedros said. “But we cannot give up,” he added, urging leaders to “balance the disruption to lives and livelihoods”.

His comments came a day after US President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNN that the administration’s focus had moved to mitigation, not stamping out the virus.

“We’re not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations,” Meadows said, comparing the more deadly Covid-19 to the seasonal flu.

Asked about Meadows’ comments, Tedros said he agreed that focusing on mitigation, and especially on protecting the vulnerable, was important. Tedros stressed that mitigation and controlling the pandemic were “not contradictory. We can do both.”

Deaths per day from the coronavirus in the US are on the rise again, just as health experts had feared, and cases are climbing in practically every state, despite assurances from President Donald Trump over the weekend that “we’re rounding the turn, we’re doing great.”

AP: With Election Day just over a week away, average deaths per day across the country are up 10% over the past two weeks, from 721 to nearly 794 as of Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Newly confirmed infections per day are rising in 47 states, and deaths are up in 34.

Deaths are still well below the US peak of over 2,200 per day in late April. But experts are warning of a grim fall and winter, with a widely cited model from the University of Washington projecting about 386,000 dead by 1 February. A vaccine is unlikely to become widely available until mid-2021.

The seven-day rolling average for daily new cases hit a record high on Sunday of 68,767, according to Johns Hopkins, eclipsing the previous mark of 67,293, set in mid-July. The US recorded more than 80,000 new cases on both Friday and Saturday — the highest marks ever — though testing has expanded dramatically over the course of the outbreak, making direct comparisons problematic.

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

I’m Helen Sullivan, you can get in touch with me here, and this is the place to be for the latest global developments in the coronavirus pandemic.

Protests against Covid-19 restrictions are intensifying in Northern Italy. Witnesses said a number of luxury stores, including a Gucci fashion shop, were ransacked in central Turin as police responded with volleys of tear gas as they tried to restore order in the city. There were also clashes in Milan, the capital of the neighbouring Lombardy region, an area that has borne the brunt of the Covid-19 epidemic in Italy.

Meanwhile the World Health Organization chief warned Monday that abandoning efforts to control the coronavirus pandemic, as suggested by a top US official, was “dangerous”, urging countries not to “give up”.

“We must not give up,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing.

He acknowledged that after months of battling the new coronavirus, which has claimed more than 1.1 million lives globally, a certain level of “pandemic fatigue” had set in.

Here are the other key developments from the last few hours:

• France alone may be experiencing 100,000 new coronavirus cases per day – double the latest official figures – Prof Jean-François Delfraissy, who heads the scientific council that advises the government on the pandemic, said. Tougher coronavirus containment measures could be announced in the country later this week.
• Czech government tightens coronavirus measures with curfew and retail curbs. The Czech government has ordered a 9pm curfew and will limit retail sales on Sundays, as part of tighter measures adopted to stem a surge in Covid-19 infections.
• Germany is on the verge of losing control of its fight against the coronavirus, Angela Merkel has reportedly warned colleagues. In an indication of the growing concern, Merkel brought forward a meeting on additional coronavirus restrictions with the leaders of Germany’s 16 states from Friday to Wednesday.
• Belgium’s intensive care units will be overrun in a fortnight if the rate of infection continues, a spokesman for country’s Covid-19 crisis centre has said. Dr Yves Van Laethem said the 2,000 intensive care beds would be full with patients without a change of course. On Monday morning, new regulations came into force in Brussels.
• Italians have been advised against trips to other European countries because of surging coronavirus cases, with the foreign ministry warning they could get trapped overseas if travel bans became necessary.