Coronavirus: Britain's death toll rises 539 to 30,615: minister

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's spokesman has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, his office said on Wednesday, raising further questions about the president's exposure to the virus.

Spokesman Otavio do Rego Barros, 59, is currently quarantined in his home and has no coronavirus symptoms, his office said in a statement. His staff is awaiting test results for the virus in their homes, the office added. Reuters reported. 

Northern Ireland does not plan to soften restrictions designed to curb the spread of Covid-19 at this time due to the high infection rate, Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill said on Thursday.

“We have no headroom for change at this moment in time,” O’Neill told a press briefing, saying that the reproduction rate, or R0, of the disease in the British province was 0.8-0.9 compared to around 0.5 in both England and Ireland.

Britain’s Covid-19 death toll has risen by 539 to 30,615, according to figures announced on Thursday by foreign minister Dominic Raab.

The figures, collated by government agency Public Health England and equivalents in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, comprise deaths in all settings following positive coronavirus tests and cover the period up to 1600 GMT on Wednesday.

Another dataset published by Britain’s Office for National Statistics published on Tuesday showed a higher toll. This included deaths where coronavirus is mentioned on the death certificate, and the data is only published weekly.

French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said that following the lifting of the coronavirus lockdown in France on May 11, the country’s borders would remain closed until further notice.

“Since the start of the crisis the closure of the borders is the rule, and the authorisation to cross a border is the exception. We have to keep this protection in place, this will not change soon,” Castaner told a televised news conference.

He said that the restrictions would remain in place until at least June 15.

Deaths from the Covid-19 epidemic in Italy climbed by 274 on Thursday, against 369 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the daily tally of new infections declined marginally to 1,401 from 1,444 on Wednesday.

The total death toll since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 now stands at 29,958, the agency said, the third highest in the world after the United States and Britain.

The number of confirmed cases amounts to 215,858, the third highest global tally behind the United States and Spain.

People registered as currently carrying the illness in Italy fell to 89,624 from 91,528 the day before.

France is ready to start unwinding its coronavirus lockdown from next Monday as planned, the prime minister said on Thursday, although some regions including the Paris area where the disease is still circulating would keep some restrictions.

The country has made enough progress in slowing down the spread of the virus and reducing strain in hospitals to gradually return to normal, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said. Schools, cafes and most shops have been shut for nearly two months.

“From Monday we will progressively unwind the lockdown that started on March 17 ... but the country is cut in two, with the virus circulating more quickly in some regions, notably in the Paris region, which is very densely populated,” he said.

US President Donald Trump offered during a phone call on Thursday with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to send medical aid to Moscow to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, the Kremlin said on Thursday.

In a readout of the phone call, the Kremlin said the two presidents had also discussed global oil markets, noting their support for last month’s output deal between OPEC and non-OPEC producers, something they said had helped stabilize oil prices.

Spain weighed up further steps on Thursday to bring life back to normal as the coronavirus epidemic ebbed, but the capital Madrid and the city of Barcelona could remain under tight restrictions for the time being.

Both cities and their surroundings have registered the highest number of coronavirus deaths and infections in Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the global pandemic. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government is anxious to get the country up and running again without igniting a second wave of infections as the economy reels and Spaniards gradually emerge from nearly eight weeks under lockdown.

Parliament voted on Wednesday night to extend a state of emergency for two more weeks from Sunday. This gives the government power to control people’s movements as it relaxes the lockdown which succeeded in curbing the outbreak.

The European Union must go “back to the future” of open borders once the coronavirus pandemic is brought under control, a senior EU official said on Thursday, after a spate of frontier closures by member states fraying the bloc’s cohesion.

The remarks signaled a coming push by the executive European Commission to have EU countries restore the cherished Schengen zone of control-free travel that has collapsed in a welter of unilateral moves to rein in transmission of the virus. The breakdown of untrammelled travel within the 26-nation Schengen zone, a cornerstone of the world’s biggest and most lucrative single market, recalled the flurry of uncoordinated border closures during the 2015-16 migration crisis.

Now, member states’ varying responses to the coronavirus pandemic - which have included summary halts to border crossings and emergency health checks of arriving travellers - has subjected EU unity to another bitter test.

One of US President Donald Trump's personal valets who is a member of the US Navy has tested positive for coronavirus.

In a statement, the White House confirmed that one of the President's valets had tested positive, reports the CNN.

The valet's being infected with Covid-19 has raised concerns about the President's possible exposure to the virus. The valets are members of an elite military unit dedicated to the White House and often work very close to the President and first family.

Trump was upset when he was informed Wednesday that the valet had tested positive and he was subsequently tested again by the White House physician.

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For Claudia Alejandra, unemployment has become a full-time job.

Since losing her position at the makeup counter at the Macy’s department store in Orlando, Florida, on March 28, Alejandra spends her days trying to secure the unemployment benefits that should have arrived weeks ago, sometimes placing more than 100 calls a day.

The online application, a 10-hour ordeal of error messages, ended with a notice that her identity could not be verified. If she’s lucky, she’ll reach a representative who will say there’s nothing they can do to help. Otherwise, it’s a busy signal, or an hours-long wait on hold, followed by a sudden hang-up.

Alejandra, 37, cashed out her retirement fund — $800, a year’s worth of savings — to make the monthly payments on her 2010 Mazda, but doesn’t know how she’ll pay the rent for her studio apartment or her phone bill. Longer-term goals — a promotion, a family, a house of her own — seem even more elusive.

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People under 35 have been made sadder and lonelier than older adults as a result of the coronavirus lockdown, a European survey found, concluding that the strain of being separated from friends and family was taking a tougher toll on the young.

The report, from an online survey of 85,000 people across the continent by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, found a sharp deterioration in reported quality of life among all ages.

With most Europeans confined to their homes by the coronavirus outbreak, 16 percent said they were lonely “all or most of the time” over the past two weeks, up from just 6 percent who described themselves as lonely in surveys before the crisis.

The foundation’s report noted that the effect was much sharper among those under 35, 20 percent of whom now said they were lonely, up from just 4 percent in normal times.

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Iran is scrambling to buy millions of tonnes of wheat, corn and soybeans to shore up its reserves, Iranian officials and traders said, despite President Hassan Rouhani's assertions that the coronavirus would not endanger food supplies to the Middle Eastern country worst hit by the pandemic.

Iran's bumper grain crops will guarantee citizens ample staple foods to the end of the Iranian year in March 2021 as the impact of the pandemic has not spread to farming, Rouhani told parliament in a televised address on the state of the coronavirus crisis on April 15.

But the previously unreported buying spree highlights concern in Tehran of a possible future supply crunch should the pandemic further exacerbate an already challenging environment for Iran to import from international sellers.

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GlaxoSmithKline has started a trial to test an experimental rheumatoid arthritis drug on patients suffering from Covid-19 related pneumonia, after screening its drugs for potential in the fight against the coronavirus.

Drug otilimab - in which GSK acquired rights from German biotech firm Morphosys in 2013 - may possibly ease the devastating effect of the virus on the lungs, while not suppressing the virus directly, a company spokesman said.

For the study, about 800 patients with severe pulmonary Covid-19 related disease will receive either otilimab or placebo, according to website ClinicalTrials.gov.

Initial results are expected towards the end of 2020 and if promising, GSK would eye regulatory filings next year, the GSK spokesman said.

Restrictions aimed at containing the spread of the novel coronavirus in Moscow have been extended until May 31, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Thursday in a blog post on his personal website.

Some measures in place since late March will be eased from May 12, he said, including the return to work for industrial and construction companies. But Sobyanin added it was still too early to reopen sports facilities, restaurants and theaters.

Moscow is the epicenter of Russia’s coronavirus crisis, with 92,676 of the country’s 177,160 cases, though Sobyanin said earlier the real number of cases in the capital was around 300,000.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will announce a very limited easing of Britain's coronavirus lockdown next week, adopting a cautious approach to ensure there is no second peak of infections that could further hurt the economy.

Johnson is due to announce the next steps in Britain's battle to tackle the novel coronavirus on Sunday following a review by ministers of the current measures that have all but shut the economy and kept millions at home.

At a cabinet meeting of his top ministers, Johnson said Britain would advance "with maximum caution" and be guided by the science and data when considering whether any of the strict social distancing measures could be eased.

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The US government on Thursday reported that an additional 3.2 million jobless claims were filed last week - the latest of the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Over 33 million people have joined the unemployment rolls in seven weeks, reports the New York Times.

The weekly tallies have declined since reaching a peak of 6.9 million claims in late March, but the numbers are still stupefying. In many states, more than a quarter of the work force is jobless.

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Japan has approved Gilead Sciences Inc's remdesivir as a treatment for Covid-19, the health ministry said on Thursday, making it the country's first officially authorized drug for the coronavirus disease.

Japan reached the decision just three days after the US drugmaker filed for fast-track approval for the treatment.

Remdesivir will be give to patients with severe Covid-19 symptoms, a Japanese health ministry official said at a press briefing. With no other approved treatments for Covid-19, interest in the drug is growing around the world.

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The closure of South Africa’s schools seven weeks ago halted a national feeding programme providing meals to 9 million extremely poor children, filling their stomachs and helping them get through the classroom day to get an education.

Now a potential hunger crisis looms.The economic hardship has been severe since President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered most citizens to stay indoors and shuttered all but essential businesses in late March.

“We have kids here at school who faint (from hunger),” said Shireen Valentyn, 41, a volunteer at Hoofweg primary school in the impoverished Blue Downs community in Cape Town.

The school is closed for classes but is providing children and their guardians meals as part of an emergency scheme, unique to South Africa’s Western Cape Province, officials said.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Netherlands have risen by 455 to 41,774, with 84 new deaths, health authorities said on Thursday.

The country’s death toll stands at 5,288, the National Institute for Health (RIVM) said in its daily update. The RIVM cautioned that it only reports confirmed cases, and actual numbers are higher.

India will within days roll out a version of its coronavirus contact-tracing application that can run on mobile carrier Reliance Jio’s cheap phones, as it looks to increase the reach of the system, a senior government official said on Thursday.

India, which has imposed the world’s biggest shutdown to battle the spread of the coronavirus, last month launched the Aarogya Setu (Health Bridge) app — a Bluetooth and GPS-based application which alerts users who may have come in contact with people who later test positive for Covid-19.

The app, which has been downloaded more than 83 million times so far, was initially available to India’s roughly 500 million smartphone users on Google’s Android and Apple devices, but not to around 400 million users of more basic feature phones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that international rivalry on global markets was rising because of a fall in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Against the backdrop of falling global demand, the struggle for international markets for deliveries of fuel and raw material goods, food, and other products has intensified,” Putin said at a government meeting broadcast on state television.

African nations are facing a surge of Covid-19 cases with less than one intensive care bed and one ventilator per 100,000 people, a Reuters survey has found.

Even in a best-case scenario, the continent could need at least 10 times the number it has now as the outbreak peaks, an analysis of researchers’ projections showed.

The shortages across Africa’s national health systems are among the starkest elements to emerge from the survey, which polled 54 countries and received responses from health officials or independent experts in 48 of them. The results provide the most detailed public picture to date of the continent’s key resources, testing and personnel for the disease caused by the new coronavirus, which has killed more than 262,000 people worldwide, according to a Reuters tally.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Africa, home to 1.3 billion people, could become the next epicentre of the pandemic.

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Georgia will lift its lockdown of the capital Tbilisi on May 11 and allow shops to reopen next week as part of a gradual easing of coronavirus-related restrictions, Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia said on Thursday.

He told a televised cabinet meeting that a lockdown imposed in another large Georgian city, Rustavi, would be lifted on May 14, and that the ex-Soviet republic of 3.7 million people would reopen to foreign tourists from July 1.

Tbilisi, Rustavi, Batumi and Kutaisi were locked down on April 15, with bans on entry or exit of vehicles, to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Batumi and Kutaisi were taken out of lockdowns last week.

Georgia reported 615 cases of coronavirus infections as of Thursday, with nine deaths.

Belonging to the third generation in a family of Indian cemetery workers, Mohammad Shameem had little other choice in life than to dig graves.

But as the novel coronavirus makes his work too dangerous, he now watches on as families in India's capital bury victims themselves. Sometimes, though, there aren't enough mortuary workers and men to lift the body. Then Shameem has to help.

"I am always tense," the 38-year-old father of four said while waiting for the next corpse to be brought for burial.

"I wonder what will happen when the body comes. I hope that I won't have to touch it."

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From Europe to Asia and across the Americas, farmers and others in the global food supply chain are innovating to keep the world fed when populations are told to stay home, street markets are closed and labourers cannot travel to work in the fields.

Didier Lenoble has gone online to sell vegetables grown on his farm near Paris as the usual street stalls he supplies are temporarily shut because of the coronavirus crisis.

“It’s a whole new business,” said Lenoble, whose family-run farm has been selling to customers via a new website.

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Russia's coronavirus case tally surged to 177,160 on Thursday after a record daily rise in infections, meaning it now has the fifth highest number of registered cases in the world and more cases than in Germany or France.

The number of new cases of the novel virus jumped by 11,231 in the last 24 hours, the country's coronavirus taskforce said.

More than half of all cases and deaths are in Moscow, the epicentre of Russia's outbreak, which on Thursday reported a record overnight increase of 6,703 new cases.

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Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani origin and other mixed ethnic groups have a significantly higher chance of dying from the novel Covid-19 than white people in UK.

"The risk of death involving the coronavirus among some ethnic groups is significantly higher than that of those of White ethnicity," the British statistics office for National Statistics said, reported Reuters.

"Black males are 4.2 times more likely to die from a Covid-19-related death and Black females are 4.3 times more likely than white ethnicity males and females," according to the statistic.

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Outraged Polish women said it with umbrellas, locked-down Serbians banged pots from open windows and environmentalists did what they have always done - climbed a tree.

But as they struggle to rekindle the spirit of protest in the age of coronavirus, despite lockdowns or bans on public gatherings, most demonstrators have sought to obey social-distancing rules.

Measures to stop contagion have stifled protest movements worldwide, from the mass demonstrations of Hong Kong to the civil disobedience of climate activists in London who last year caused gridlock by shutting roads and bridges.

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The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) on Thursday rejected an assertion by Tanzania’s president that his nation’s coronavirus tests are faulty.

On Sunday, Tanzanian President John Magufuli said the imported coronavirus test kits were faulty after they had returned positive results on a goat and a pawpaw. The next day, the head of the national health laboratory in charge of testing was suspended.

“The tests that Tanzania is using we know they are working very well,” Dr John Nkengasong told journalists on a conference call.

The Africa CDC, along with the Jack Ma Foundation, a charity run by a Chinese billionaire, supplied the tests, Nkengasong said. The Tanzanian Health Ministry and government spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

A team of Indonesian engineers working around the clock says it has produced in two months a compact ventilator to sell at a fraction of the usual cost, hoping to accelerate the fight against east Asia's second-deadliest Covid-19 outbreak.

Like many other countries, Indonesia faces a shortage of the vital mechanical breathing devices to treat people with the pandemic disease.

Using household materials such as plastic drinking tumblers to make parts, the 40 engineers from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) developed the Vent-I ventilator that is the size of a mini-oven, said team leader Syarif Hidayat.

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Gilead Sciences Inc faces a new dilemma in deciding how much it should profit from the only treatment so far proven to help patients infected with the novel coronavirus.

The drugmaker earned notoriety less than a decade ago, when it introduced a treatment that essentially cured hepatitis C at a price of $1,000 per pill.

Public outrage over the cost of Sovaldi in 2013 - despite that it was a vast improvement over existing equally expensive therapies - ignited a national debate on fair pricing for prescription medicines that the pharmaceutical industry has fought to deflect ever since.

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Bangladesh today confirmed 706 new cases of novel coronavirus infection testing 5,867 samples in 34 labs in the last 24 hours.

With this, the number of total infections stood at 12,425. The death toll from the deadly virus rose to 186 on Wednesday. Number of today's death will be informed later, The Business Standard reported. 

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Coronavirus cases in India rose past 50,000, the health ministry said on Thursday, with the pace of new infections showing no signs of abating despite a strict weeks-long lockdown in the world’s second-most populous country.

India added 3,561 cases, taking its total 52,952 - behind over 82,000 in China where the virus originated - while the death toll rose by 89 to 1,783, still low compared with the United States, United Kingdom and Italy, Reuters reported. 

Officials attributed the low toll to the government’s move to impose a stay-at-home order on the nation’s 1.3 billion people early in the cycle, but noted a spurt in cases from the densely packed economic centres of Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad.

India has reported an average of around 2,800 cases each day over the past week. By comparison, China has reported new cases in the single digits over the same period.

Indonesia reported 338 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number to 12,776, health ministry official Achmad Yurianto told reporters on Thursday.

Thirty-five more people who tested positive for the virus have died, taking the total number of deaths to 930, the highest death toll in East Asia outside China, Reuters reported. 

As of Thursday, 96,717 people had been tested and 2,381 had recovered.

The United States has recorded its first death of an immigration detainee from the coronavirus, local health authorities in the state of California said on Thursday.

A 57-year-old man who was held at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center near the US-Mexico border before being hospitalized died on Wednesday, the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency said, Reuters reported. 

The man had been held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego and hospitalized since late April, according to the agency. The ICE did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Local media reported earlier that a family representative of the deceased man had identified him. They said the man was a diabetic who had left El Salvador with his mother and sisters in 1980, adding he had lived in the Los Angeles area and had been detained since January.

Russia on Thursday reported 11,231 new cases of the novel coronavirus, a record daily rise that pushed the national case total to 177,160.

Russia's coronavirus taskforce said 88 people had died overnight, bringing the coronavirus death toll to 1,625. Moscow, the worst-hit area, also reported a record overnight case increase of 6,703 new cases, Reuters reported. 

Moscow's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said on Wednesday that the case total was rising in the capital because the amount of testing had been stepped up.

Singapore has registered 741 new coronavirus infections, its health ministry said on Thursday, taking the city-state's total number of Covid-19 cases to 20,939.

The vast majority of the new cases are migrant workers living in dormitories, the health ministry said in a statement. Five are permanent residents, Reuters reported. 

South Korean health authorities raised new concerns about the novel coronavirus after reporting last month that dozens of patients who had recovered from the illness later tested positive again.

The findings suggested that some people who survived Covid-19 could become reinfected with the virus that causes it, potentially complicating efforts to lift quarantine restrictions and to produce a vaccine, Reuters reported. 

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Swedish officials on Wednesday said the country, which has taken a softer approach to curbing the spread of the new coronavirus, was nearing 3,000 deaths from Covid-19.

The country’s Public Health Agency reported that a total of 23,918 cases had been confirmed and 2,941 deaths had been recorded, an increase of 87 deaths from the day before, AFP reported. 

“We are starting to near 3,000 deceased, a horrifyingly large number,” state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell told a press conference.

Sweden has not imposed the kind of extraordinary lockdowns seen elsewhere in Europe, instead opting for an approach based on the “principle of responsibility”.

The Scandinavian country has allowed schools for under-16s, cafes, bars, restaurants and businesses to stay open while urging people and businesses to respect social distancing guidelines.

The Swedish approach has received criticism both domestically and internationally as its death toll has leapt much higher than its Nordic neighbours, which have all instituted more restrictive containment measures.

Sweden’s virus death rate of 291 per million inhabitants is far higher than Norway’s death rate of 40 per million, Denmark’s rate of 87, or Finland’s rate of 45.

Mexico's health ministry on Wednesday reported 1,609 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 197 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 27,634 cases and 2,704 deaths.

A man wearing a protective mask walks towards El Paso, Texas, U.S. at the international border bridge Paso del Norte, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico March 13, 2020/ Reuters

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

The United States recorded 2,073 coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 73,095, according to the latest real-time tally Wednesday reported by Johns Hopkins University.

A man is wheeled on a stretcher at Maimonides Medical Center during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, April 14, 2020/ Reuters

The country — hardest hit by the pandemic in terms of the number of fatalities — has now confirmed a total of 1,227,430 cases, the Baltimore-based school reported, AFP reported. 

Iran warned of a “rising trend” in its coronavirus outbreak on Wednesday as it said 1,680 new infections took its overall caseload beyond the 100,000 mark.

The Islamic republic has struggled to contain the Middle East’s deadliest Covid-19 outbreak since announcing its first cases in mid-February, AFP reported. 

Concerns were raised last month about the threat of a “second wave” of the virus in a report by parliament that criticised the government’s slow response.

The newly reported infections brought the country’s overall number of confirmed cases to 101,650.

Each year during the fasting month of Ramadan, Indonesian tutor Ahmad Winardi has taught a special course for students in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country to deepen their knowledge of Islam.

But this year, the novel coronavirus has brought a Ramadan like never before, with shuttered mosques and strict physical distancing regulations, and so Winardi has moved his Islamic studies online, Reuters reported. 

One consequence is that the courses, previously held only in cities on the islands of Java and Sumatra, have this year attracted a wider range of students in the archipelago, including from Indonesian Borneo.

A boy peeks outside from a window, as large-scale social restrictions were introduced to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Depok, on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia, April 15, 2020. REUTERS/Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana

Known as “Pesantran Kilat”, which loosely translates as “intensive Islamic boarding school”, the course teaches students about Islam, as well as creative ways to recite the Koran, such as through hand gestures.

The gestures, Winardi explained, can act as fun prompts to help primary school students, most aged from 6 to 12 years old, recall religious verses.

Most residents of Jakarta have been staying home since March 20 as part of social distancing measures, which have seen schools and businesses close, and gatherings of more than five people banned until May 22.

Indonesia, which has the highest coronavirus death toll in East Asia outside China, has reported more than 12,000 coronavirus cases and 872 deaths, as of on Tuesday.

Brazil, one of the world's emerging coronavirus hot spots, registered a record number of cases and deaths on Wednesday, prompting the health minister to flag the possibility of strict lockdowns in particularly hard-hit areas.

The nation registered 10,503 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours, well above the previous record of 7,288 cases on April 30, according to health ministry data. Brazil also registered 615 deaths, up from the previous record of 600 on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

There are over 100,000 completed coronavirus tests that still have not been registered in the national database, health ministry subsecretary Wanderson Oliveira warned, meaning case numbers could rise steeply in the coming days.

Overall, Brazil has registered 125,218 cases and 8,536 deaths due to the virus. New cases rose roughly 9.2% over the last 24 hours, while deaths increased roughly 7.8%.
Health Minister Nelson Teich told a press conference an increasing number of local authorities may have to institute "lockdowns," as the coronavirus growth curve does not appear to be flattening.

FILE PHOTO: Passengers wearing protective face masks travel on a public bus during the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil April 29, 2020. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

The state prosecutor's office in Rio de Janeiro said it had received a report from Brazil's leading epidemiological institute, Fiocruz, recommending a lockdown in metropolitan Rio de Janeiro.

The prosecutors, who have significant independent powers in Brazil, said they had forwarded the report to the governor's office and the mayor of Rio, the state's eponymous capital city, raising the chance of a lockdown in Brazil's third-largest state.

While authorities have ordered non-essential services and businesses closed in most states, Rio residents are still allowed to circulate. A lockdown, which so far has only been implemented in the northeastern city of Sao Luis, prohibits people from leaving their homes except for necessary activities.
 

Confirmed cases of coronavirus infection in Panama reached 7,731 on Wednesday, a rise of 208 from the previous day, and deaths climbed by eight to 218, the health ministry said.

Director of Epidemiology Lourdes Moreno gave the Central American country's latest data at a news conference, Reuters reported. 

China reported two new coronavirus cases for May 6, unchanged from the same number of increases the day before, data from the national health authority showed on Thursday.

Both were so-called imported cases involving travellers from overseas, the National Health Commission said in a statement. The two cases from the day before were also imported, Reuters reported. 

South Korean President Moon Jae-in talks to a president of Daegu Medical Center, You Wan-sik at the Daegu Medical Center on Feb. 25, 2020 in Daegu, South Korea. SOUTH KOREAN PRESIDENTIAL BLUE HOUSE VIA GETTY IMAGES

The commission also reported 6 new asymptomatic cases for May 6, versus 20 from the previous day.

China's total number of coronavirus cases now stands at 82,885, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,633, the national health authority said.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,284 to 166,091, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday.

The reported death toll rose by 123 to 7,119, the tally showed, Reuters reported.