Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to key eventsSkip to navigation

Spain sees surge in new cases – as it happened

This article is more than 3 years old
 Updated 
Thu 16 Jul 2020 19.24 EDTFirst published on Wed 15 Jul 2020 19.32 EDT
Key events
Cemetery workers in protective suits bury Elisa Moreira de Araujo, 79, a victim of coronavirus in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Cemetery workers in protective suits bury Elisa Moreira de Araujo, 79, a victim of coronavirus in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photograph: Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images
Cemetery workers in protective suits bury Elisa Moreira de Araujo, 79, a victim of coronavirus in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photograph: Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images

Live feed

Key events

Foreign students from Europe, some au pairs and family members of visa holders in the US are exempt from President Trump’s coronavirus travel bans, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

The newspaper is citing a memo the State Department sent to Congress on Thursday.

Ministry of Health has reported 8,037 new cases and 215 deaths from coronavirus in Colombia. In total, there are 173,206 infections (90,648 active).

#LoÚltimo | Ministerio de Salud reporta 8.037 nuevos casos y 215 fallecidos por coronavirus en Colombia.

En total, hay 173.206 contagios (90.648 activos). Hoy se procesaron 25.359 pruebas - https://t.co/7TBT12hNGn pic.twitter.com/7NFIEsbsii

— Noticias Caracol Bogotá (@NCBogota) July 16, 2020

It comes as doctors in Bogota are calling for a return to a strict city-wide quarantine to slow coronavirus infections in Colombia’s capital, warning that medical services are close to collapsing.

“We’re in a critical situation,” the president of the Bogota College of Medicine, Herman Bayona, told Reuters. “We are close to collapse.”

Colombian President Ivan Duque declared an ongoing quarantine to slow the spread of the coronavirus in late March. The quarantine is due to be lifted on August 1st, with certain sectors of the economy and parts of the country already starting to reopen.

This week the capital began strict, rolling two-week quarantines by neighborhood, something Bayona said was ineffective.

“We don’t think zonal quarantines have the power to slow the speed of infections.”

The spread of the coronavirus has spurred Mexican authorities to impose local restrictions on mobility, commerce, and leisure, particularly in popular tourist destinations, even as the government seeks to revive the battered economy.

On Wednesday, authorities in the Caribbean beach resort of Tulum threatened to fine or arrest people for disobeying rules on wearing face masks, the latest in a series of local and state-level curbs against the spread of the virus.

Eager to lift an economy that is forecast to shrink as much as 10% this year, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has encouraged people to get out, and has resisted reimposing more stringent nationwide restrictions.

But some local authorities worry if they do not take precautions, the hit to their livelihoods will be worse.

“We can’t play with the health of the citizens,” Tulum’s mayor, Victor Mas Tah, said in comments reported by local media.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp is suing Atlanta to block the city from enforcing its mandate to wear a mask in public and other rules related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kemp and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, in a suit filed in state court late Thursday, argued that Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has overstepped her authority and must obey Kemp’s executive orders under state law.

The suit comes a day after Kemp clarified his executive orders to expressly block Atlanta and at least 14 other local governments across the state from requiring people to wear face coverings.

Kemp’s order was met with defiance by Bottoms and some other mayors, who said they would continue enforcing the order and were prepared to go to court.

The lawsuit will force that showdown, resolving what had been an ambiguous situation with Kemp denying local governments could order masks, but local governments arguing it was within their power.

Bottoms last week issued what initially appeared to be orders that people had to return to sheltering at home and forcing restaurants to return to only offering takeout and delivery.

Kemp swatted that down in public statements, and Bottoms on Thursday described them as guidelines. But Kemp’s lawsuit says the court should set Bottoms straight on those orders as well.

Oliver Holmes, The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, is reporting it is unlikely the Israeli government will announce new lockdown measures tonight.

Late on Thursday, and without giving details of what steps he was suggesting, prime minister Netanyahu’s office said on Twitter that he had told the cabinet he was “making every effort to avoid a general lockdown”.

It was not clear if or when the government might announce changes, although Netanyahu added he would give ministers a week to come up with suggestions “for the safe opening up of the economy”.

Share
Updated at 

Puerto Rico’s governor has announced major rollbacks including the closure of bars, gyms, marinas, theaters and casinos and restricted the use of beaches as the U.S. territory is hit by a spike in Covid-19 cases in recent weeks.

Governor Wanda Vázquez said the changes and an ongoing curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. will remain in place until July 31.

Weve reached a level where we need to take more restrictive measures, she said. Other changes include the prohibition of alcohol sales after 7 p.m., limiting the capacity of restaurants to 50%, and barring travel to the popular nearby islands of Vieques and Culebra to everyone except residents.

Only those who are exercising will be allowed on beaches, including joggers, swimmers and surfers.

Vázquez said she also has asked the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to temporarily suspend flights from Texas and Florida, noting theyre struggling with their own spike in cases.

More from Sam Cowie reporting from São Paulo –

Brazil has passed yet another grim pandemic milestone with the total number of Covid-19 cases passing 2 million, 45,403 in the last 24 hours, with 76,688 deaths, 1,322 in the last 24 hours, according to latest data from the country’s National Council of Health Secretaries.

South America’s most populous nation continues to be the worst hit in the region in terms of total cases and deaths and the second worst in the world after the United States.

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right populist president, who has repeatedly sought to downplay the pandemic and its dangers, describing it as a “little flu”, repeatedly meeting with crowds of supporters and refusing to wear face masks, tested positive for Covid-19 for the second time Wednesday.

In a live video transmitted over social media yesterday, the president once again mentioned that he was treating the disease using the drug Hydroxychloroquine.

“The future will say whether this remedy is effective or not,” the president said, despite numerous scientific studies attesting that it’s not effective in treating Covid-19 and can even be dangerous.

Bolsonaro said he intended to take a third test in the next days and said he hoped “God willing, everything to be right for us to get back to work soon.”

The president’s cavalier attitude towards the disease has been widely decried for exacerbating the pandemic by experts across Brazil’s political spectrum, as well as by international observers.

One health minister was sacked in mid-April and another forced out less than a month later over disagreements with the firebrand president while a general with no previous medical experience has held the post since.

“2 million confirmed cases! 60 days without a health minister! 60 days of military occupation in the health ministry!” Tweeted Alexandre Padilha, a doctor and congressman with the leftist Worker’s Party.

2 MILHÕES DE CASOS CONFIRMADOS! 60 DIAS SEM MINISTRO DA SAÚDE! 60 DIAS DE OCUPAÇÃO MILITAR NO MINISTÉRIO DA SAÚDE!

— Alexandre Padilha (@padilhando) July 16, 2020

While the number of new cases recorded has stablisied or fallen in city metropolises São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, they have risen elsewhere, especially in the country’s southern and Midwestern states.

Share
Updated at 

The Guardian’s Kenya Evelyn provides some context on the coronavirus surge in the US:

Covid-19 infections are rising in 41 US states, with some southern hotspots taking crisis measures on Thursday, including calling in military medics and parking mobile morgue trucks outside hospitals, echoing scenes in New York City when it became the center of the world outbreak in the spring.

The spread of the virus has resulted in almost 56,000 hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the US currently. A month ago hospitalizations were rising in 11 states; now they are rising in 33 states.

Several states have been breaking records on many days in the last week as numbers rise. Florida set a record of almost 14,000 new cases on Wednesday as it became the focus of attention of the southern surge in Covid-19.

In other developments, Georgia governor Brian Kemp suspended local mask mandates on Wednesday, and early on Thursday, the Republican National Committee announced plans to scale back its national convention next month in Jacksonville, Florida, which it had moved from North Carolina before the surge of cases in Florida, hoping for fewer restrictions on crowds.

The RNC chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, confirmed the update in a letter to convention delegates, noting they will comply with local and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) health guidelines while adapting the events.

“We still intend to host a fantastic convention celebration in Jacksonville,” she wrote. “We can gather and put on a top-notch event that celebrates the incredible accomplishments of President Trump’s administration and his re-nomination for a second term – while also doing so in a safe and responsible manner.”

Coronavirus support to poor countries has been so far “grossly inadequate and that’s dangerously shortsighted,” U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock said as he asked wealthy countries for billions more dollars in assistance.

The United Nations increased its humanitarian appeal by more than a third to $10.3 billion to help 63 states, mainly in Africa and Latin America, tackle the spread and destabilising effects of the coronavirus. This is up from the world body’s initial $2 billion request in March, then $6.7 billion in May.

So far, Lowcock said, the United Nations has only received $1.7 billion.

As finance ministers from the Group of 20 major economies prepare to meet virtually on Saturday, Lowcock told reporters: “The message to the G20 is step up now or pay the price later.”

The United Nations has warned that if action is not taken, the pandemic and associated global recession will trigger an increase in global poverty for the first time since 1990 and push 265 million people to the brink of starvation.

“The response so far of wealthy nations, who’ve rightly thrown out the fiscal and monetary rule books to protect their own people and economies, the response that they’ve made to the situations in other countries has been grossly inadequate and that’s dangerously shortsighted,” Lowcock said.

Most viewed

Most viewed