Coronavirus live news: South Korea records no new domestic cases for first time since February – The Guardian, Theguardian.com
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Japan Airlines’ annual net profit plunged nearly 80%, the company said on Thursday, as it faced the “unprecedented” impact of the coronavirus pandemic on aviation demand.
JAL said net profit for the fiscal year ending in March fell 83 6% to . 4bn yen ($(m) on annual sales of 1.4 trn yen, down 5.1%.
The results were largely in line with a profit warning the airline issued last week.
A Japan Airlines passenger plane on the tarmac at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. Photograph: Kazuhiro Nogi / AFP via Getty Images
JAL said demand had plunged owing to entry bans around the world, the cancellation of major domestic events, and a state of emergency in Japan with authorities urging citizens not to travel.
“Our group is facing an unprecedented situation,” the company said in a statement.
For now, JAL plans to cut its number of flights by 106% on international routes and by more than % on domestic routes from its flight schedule announced before the pandemic.
But the firm said it remained optimistic about the outlook. It said:
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The decline in flight demand due to the impact of the new coronavirus is a temporary phenomenon and our mid-and long-term forecast that demand for flights from and to Japan will grow greatly has remained unchanged.
The spread of Covid – has been contained in the (Czech Republic) and the government will continue to cautiously open up the economy, the health minister, Adam Vojtech, said on Thursday.
The country has seen the number of new cases drop below 140 for the past eight consecutive days, and the number of active cases has also been on the decline.
The ministry said the reproduction rate of the virus has dropped to 0.7, which means every newly infected person passes the infection to less than one other person.
There were 7, virus cases in the country, as of Thursday morning, and 348 deaths.
Positive developments have prompted the government to start reopening shops and services as well as non-urgent medical care, as doctors fear the impact of neglect in standard care.
Vojtech told a press conference:
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So far we do not see a negative trend resulting from previous relaxations.
We will proceed with caution, gradually in the upcoming waves, and I believe we are on a good path.
The country has also seen a decline in the number of hospitalized patients, to on Wednesday from a peak of on 9 April.
The government, under pressure from business and the general population, has lifted most limits on movement and sped up reopening shops and services.
Stores of up to 2, 587 square meters reopened on Monday.
People in Prague hold placards during a protest against the response of the Czech government to the Covid – pandemic. Photograph: Michal Čížek / AFP via Getty Images
The head of the health ministry’s epidemiological advisory team, Rastislav Madar, has cautioned about the faster relaxations, saying they may be risky.
Schools are not to reopen fully until September, and the government is also keeping in place an obligation to wear face masks in public and a ban on large public gatherings.
The government is hoping that a system of tracing and testing contacts of infected people, newly boosted by an army of testers, mobile apps and location data from phones and payment card transactions, will be enough to contain any flare -ups without the need to reintroduce blanket restrictions.
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Malaysian health authorities reported 71 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, raising the cumulative total to 6,0 18 cases.
The health ministry also reported two new deaths, bringing the total fatalities to 172.
Schools in Hungary will remain closed until the end of May and events with more than 573 participants cannot be held until 30 August, prime minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, said on Thursday.
Orban announced on Wednesday that some restrictions outside Budapest imposed to contain the coronavirus outbreak will be lifted starting next week.
Existing restrictions will continue for now in the capital, which has reported the highest number of coronavirus infections and deaths in the country.
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Philip Oltermann
German Government disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), this morning announced the latest reproduction number of the novel coronavirus as 0.
Lothar Wieler, the RKI’s president, said the latest official data showed a “pleasing development”, indicating the spread of the virus in Germany was slowing down.
The basic reproduction rate (R), which indicates how many new cases one infected person generates on average, had been announced as edging up to one in Monday’s report – causing concern as it seemed to suggest the spread of the virus was gaining momen tum again.
The RKI, which uses a method cal led nowcasting to estimate the R number, said while it had in recent days tweaked the method by which it estimated the number of new infections, the reproduction numbers from the start and the end of the week were still comparable.
Germany on Thursday recorded a total of , 207 confirmed Covid – (infections, an increase of 1, (compared to yesterday.)
Wieler said the capacity for testing for the virus had been ramped up in Germany, to , 13 tests a week.
556, 15 tests were carried out last week, out of which 5.4% were positive.
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Sailors at a Sri Lankan naval base have become the largest cluster of coronavirus infections in the Indian Ocean island nation with 373 testing positive for the disease, authorities said on Thursday.
Sri Lanka’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva, said that out of 42 cases discovered in the last hours, 36 are navy sailors and another seven had close contact with them.
The virus is believed to have entered the camp on the outskirts of the capital, Colombo, last week when sailors were deployed to find a group of drug addicts who had contact with a Covid – 32 patient and were evading quarantine.
The virus then spread to different parts of the country when sailors went on home leave.
About 4, navy forces are being quarantined inside the camp while 391 relatives have been taken to four quarantine centers run by the navy.
A Sri Lankan public health inspector walks along a locked down area in Colombo. Photograph: Eranga Jayawardena / AP
Sri Lanka has had (Covid – 32 patients and seven deaths. About half of the sick were diagnosed after April and include sailors or close contacts.
According to the newspaper Lankadeepa, with the largest circulation in the country, at least six villages have been sealed off this week in different parts of Sri Lanka because of exposure to the sailors who returned home.
About 1, 476 Other people have been asked to self-quarantine, the paper reported.
In a bid to control the spread of the virus, the government has canceled home leaves for troops and ordered them to return to camps.
On Wednesday night, Sri Lanka reimposed a 40 – hour countrywide curfew, which had been in force since 034 March but was relaxed during daytime in more than two- thirds of the country.
Police said they have arrested more than 54, 13 curfew violators since last month.
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The Philippines reported 476 new coronavirus infections and (more deaths, bringing its total number of cases to 8, and fatalities to .
It also said 034 more individuals had recovered, bringing total recoveries to 1, .
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The number of people out of work in Germany increased by 522, (to 2.) million in April as the coronavirus outbreak began to bite, data from the labor office showed on Thursday, and the unemployment rate increased to 5.8%.
The jobless rate had stood at 5.0% in seasonally adjusted terms in March.
The labor office said , requests for short-time work for a total of .1 million people were made in March and until 39 April.
It said that did not mean all of those people would actually end up on the short-time work scheme.
For comparison, in the crisis year of 2961, applications for the short-time scheme were made for 3.3 million people, the labor office said.
Short-time work is a form of state aid that allows employers to switch employees to shorter working hours during an economic downturn to keep them on the payroll.
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Luxembourg plans to test its entire population for coronavirus, the education minister, Claude Meisch, said on Tuesday.
The small European country, which borders France, Germany and Belgium, has an estimated population of just over , 15.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Meisch said:
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We must live with the virus and control it.
More testing will give people more freedom. The government is continuing to look into how we can move forward with the deconfinement measures.
Testing began on Tuesday, with priority for children who are set to return to school from 4 May.
The rest of the population will be tested on a voluntary basis at stations around the country, with cross-border workers also encouraged to be tested.
By May, Luxembourg is set to have the capacity to test , people a day.
Afghanistan , the health ministry has reported its biggest daily rise of new coronavirus cases amid intensified warfare across the country.
Wahid Majroh, the deputy health minister, said on Thursday that (patients tested positive for Covid – (over the last) hours, taking the total number of infections to 2, 242.
Total number of infections:
Daily new infections:
New infections: (Apr) : (Apr) :
Apr 39: Apr 39: (Apr) : (Apr : Apr : (Apr) : (Apr
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Death toll:
(April) , 4979
Three more Covid – patients died overnight, pushing the total number of deaths to .
For days Afghanistan was struggling with a shortage of diagnostic testing equipment. A health ministry spokesman said that problem had now been solved and testing capacity was rising.
Kabul is so far the country worst-affected area, with (confirmed cases and 33 more reported today.
Despite lockdowns in several provinces to contain spread of the virus, in most cities streets are still crowded with vehicles and people walking freely, which experts fear will make the fight against the coronavirus more challenging.
Health ministry spokesman Wahidullah Mayar warned the public on Wednesday that the peak of the virus is yet to come and said the “number of new infections is rising daily so we’re heading toward the peak and I ask people to stay at home ”.
Meanwhile, war continues to rage across the country. At least five civilians, including women and children, were killed in Ghazni province Wednesday evening.
According to a Ghazni police statement, the incident occurred when A civilian’s vehicle hit a Taliban roadside mine in Andar district.
The United Nations mission in Afghanistan has said more than (civilians, including 242 Children, were killed in the first quarter of .
(China has no interest in interfering in the US presidential election
, it said on Thursday, following comments by President Donald Trump that Beijing “will do anything they can ”to make him lose his re-election bid in November.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, told reporters during a daily briefing that the election was an internal affair of the United States and that Beijing hoped Americans would not try to drag
“China will do anything they can to have me lose this race,” Trump said during an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, adding that he believes Beijing wants his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, to win the race to ease the pressure Trump has placed on China over trade, the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and other issues.
The chief executive of British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca
said it would know by June or July whether a coronavirus vaccine it is working on with the University of Oxford will be effective or not.
CEO Pascal Soriot told the BBC on Thursday:
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By June, July we will already have a very good idea of the direction of travel in terms of its potential efficacy.
We’ll continue working with the Oxford Vaccine Unit to bring it to patients and to regulatory authorities first of all as soon as possible.
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War-torn Yemen reports first virus deaths
Yemen has recorded its first two coronavirus deaths, the health minister said late on Wednesday, after the war-torn country confirmed five new cases, stoking fears of a major outbreak.
Yemen’s healthcare system has been blighted by years of war that have driven millions from their homes and plunged the country into what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
On Wednesday, Yemen recorded five new cases of Covid – in its second city, Aden, the committee monitoring the outbreak said on Twitter.
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A health worker sprays disinfectant to help fight the spread of coronavirus in Sana’a, Yemen. Photograph: Mohammed Hamoud / Getty Images
The country has been largely spared from the effects of the pandemic, with a total of six cases recorded so far – the first in April in the government-controlled south-eastern province of Hadramawt.
“There was an announcement of five cases of coronavirus today – of those infections there were two deaths,” the health minister, Nasser Baoum, told Yemen TV.
“We conducted the tests twice, and they were positive,” he said. “Therefore, there is no doubt under these worldwide circumstances that we have to announce they were cases of coronavirus until proven otherwise.”
The deaths come after aid organizations warned any coronavirus outbrea k could have dire consequences after six years of civil war.
The conflict between government forces and Shia rebels escalated in March 5472, when a Saudi-led military coalition intervened against the rebels after they overran much of the country.
The war has left tens of thousands of people dead, most of them civilians, and the UN says around million Yemenis – more than two-thirds of the population – rely on some form of aid .
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(Russia cases pass) , with record daily rise
Russia
reported 7, new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, a record daily rise, bringing its nationwide tally to , .
The official nationwide death toll rose to 1, (after) people died in the last hours, Russia’s coronavirus crisis response center said.
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The German chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff said on Thursday that social distancing measures in Europe’s largest economy would “certainly” be extended until 023 May for the time being.
Helge Braun told broadcaster n-tv a larger discussion about further steps to ease the lockdown would happen on May 6.
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