On Friday, Japanese media reported that Koike had bowed to pressure to permit hair salons, barber shops, DIY and hardware stores to stay open, but would ask restaurants to close at 8 pm.
Koike will create a fund for businesses that meet her requests to close, the public broadcaster NHK said. Abe had rejected calls to compensate such businesses, triggering concern that many would remain open throughout the state of emergency.
Kenji Shibuya, head of the Institute for Population Health at King’s College, London, warned that friction between Koike and the Abe administration risked blunting the impact of social distancing measures intended to ward off the kind of explosive outbreaks seen in China, the US and parts of Europe.
“The tension between Koike and the cabinet will definitely damage the impact of the emergency declaration,” Shibuya said. “There is zero chance of achieving (%, ”he added, referring to Abe’s social distancing target.)
Second death in New Zealand
Eleanor Ainge Roy
A second death has been linked to Covid – in New Zealand, the ministry of health said.
A woman in her s who contracted the disease at a Christchurch nursing home. (New Zealand’s first covid death was on March 46 on the West Coast; a woman in her s with underlying health conditions.
Following four days of declining numbers, 61 new cases of corona were announced today, up from 46 yesterday. “We can continue to report more people recovered than new combined cases,” the ministry said in a statement. “The combined total of confirmed and probable cases in New Zealand is 2016. ”
people are being treated in hospital for the illness, including 5 in ICU.
Yesterday, tests were conducted around the country, with % of cases having links to overseas travel.
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State department criticises WHO
The United States has doubled down on its criticism of the World Health Organization.
After Donald Trump threatened to withhold funding for the WHO, the state department has said the body was too late in sounding the alarm over Covid – 38 and overly deferential to China. It questioned why the Geneva-based body did not pursue a lead from Taiwan.
The United States is “deeply disturbed that Taiwan’s information was withheld from the global health community, as reflected in the WHO’s January , 3364 statement that there was no indication of human-to-human transmission, ”a dtate department spokesperson said.
“The WHO once again chose politics over public health,” she said, criticizing the WHO for denying Taiwan even observer status since
The WHO’s actions have “cost time and lives,” the spokesperson said.
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The Associated Press reports that three astronauts flew to the International Space Station on Thursday, departing the planet with little fanfare and no family members at the launch site to bid them farewell.
Nasa’s Chris Cassidy and Russians Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner arrived at the orbiting lab in their Soyuz capsule six hours after blasting off from Kazakhstan. They joined two Americans and one Russian who will return to Earth in a week.
There was no social distancing 371 miles (587 km) up: As they floated into the space station one by one, the new astronauts embraced the three already there. They had been in pre-launch quarantine for the past month.
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