Health News at Your Fingertips

China has stepped up a travel warning to Australia, telling its citizens of a risk of being searched “arbitrarily” by law enforcement authorities, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Tensions between the two countries have been escalating on various fronts after Beijing reacted with fury to calls for an independent investigation into the origins and spread of the pandemic, which first surfaced in central China last year.

Apart from warning of discrimination recently, China’s culture and tourism ministry advised against travelling to Australia last month due to increasing racism linked to the virus.

On Monday, the foreign ministry said that “racial discrimination and acts of violence in Australia have significantly increased”, accusing Australian media of fanning the flames of anti-Chinese sentiment.

The Chinese foreign ministry’s latest notice also came days after Australia offered about 10,000 people from Hong Kong pathways to permanent residency in response to China’s crackdown on dissent in the city, encouraging entrepreneurs or skilled workers to relocate as well. The moves drew ire from Beijing.

“Australia’s relevant law enforcement authorities arbitrarily search Chinese citizens and seize their items, and these circumstances could cause harm to Chinese citizens in Australia, as well as the safety of their assets,” said the ministry.

The notice posted on the WeChat social media app also reminded Chinese citizens to “pay close attention” to local safety risks and “travel with caution to Australia in the near-term”.

Responding to questions on Australia’s latest announcements about Hong Kong, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying warned at a regular briefing that Australia’s moves could bring negative consequences.

We urge Australia to change its course and stop interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs and China’s internal affairs in any way, or risk further damage to China-Australia relations.

The technology firm Apple has told its staff a full return to US offices will not occur before the end of the year, according to Bloomberg News, which cites an internal video message.

The company is also pushing staff to work remotely as the virus forces the company to shut some of its stores again, the report added. Apple has not immediately responded to a request for comment from Reuters.

Here’s a summary of recent developments:

• The WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that there would be “no return to the old normal for the foreseeable future”, adding: “There are no short cuts out of this pandemic.”
• Hong Kong reimposed social distancing measures after a sudden spike in coronavirus infections, banning public gatherings of more than four people.
• The US state of California did similar, closing down many businesses recently allowed to reopen. Its governor Gavin Newsom ordered bars to close and banned indoor restaurant dining, among other measures.
• A new UN report said that coronavirus could mean an additional 130m people going hungry this year. It added that “after steadily declining for decades, chronic hunger slowly began to rise in 2014 and continues to do so”.
• Angela Merkel warned that a special EU summit might not be able to agree a deal on a coronavirus recovery fund, with some countries nervous that the €750bn proposals were too extravagant.
• UK prime minister Boris Johnson said that people in England should wear masks in shops as an “extra insurance policy” against coronavirus. And he appeared to suggest that the government would have more to say on the subject in the coming days.
• The death toll in Latin America has reached 144,758, taking it past that in the US and Canada, and leaving the region second only to Europe. A Reuters tally meanwhile found that the global number of infections has risen by 1m in five days.
• In the US, the Trump administration came under fire for its apparent attempt to sideline infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci for disagreeing with the president.
• About 250,000 people in Manila will return to lockdown in an attempt to stall the infection rate there. The Philippines has the second highest number of infections in south-east Asia.

California’s governor Gavin Newsom has ordered a massive retrenchment of the state’s optimistic reopening, shutting bars and banning indoor restaurant dining statewide and closing churches, gyms and hair salons in hardest-hit counties, Reuters reports.

In Colombia, 14 medical associations have called for complete lockdown across the capital Bogotá, Joe Parkin Daniels writes from the city.

Its worst-affected neighbourhoods went under strict lockdowns on Monday, though medical experts say the measures must be city-wide. The institutions, which include doctors’ unions and medical colleges, called for a “strict and immediate quarantine” of two weeks across the entire city in an open letter.

Colombia first went under a strict nationwide lockdown in late March, a couple of weeks after the first cases were confirmed on 6 March. That lockdown was partially lifted across the country, though masks remained compulsory in public. But, with cases continually climbing, authorities are mulling another strict lockdown.

In Bogotá, the hardest-hit Colombian city, certain neighbourhoods were locked down for two weeks, with only key businesses, such as supermarkets and pharmacies, permitted to open.

Colombia has confirmed 150,445 cases, with 5,307 deaths. Bogotá has seen nearly 50,000 cases and intensive care units were at 85% occupancy on Friday. Nationwide, cases are rising by 5,000 per day.

Bogotá’s mayor Claudia López had been warning residents that a return to a strict lockdown would be necessary if cases continued to rise.

France has reported falls in hospitalisations and of patients in intensive care units in a new sign its healthcare system is able to cope with the epidemic for now.

The country’s health ministry said the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 fell to 6,983 from 7,062 as of 10 July, continuing a weeks-long downtrend. The number of people in intensive care units was down to 492 from 496. The total death toll in France stood at 30,004 people.

The US has suffered 312 more deaths registered 60,469 new cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), taking the respective official totals to 134,884 and 3,296,599.

Here’s your runthrough of recent events before I hand over to my colleague Kevin Rawlinson:

• WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that there would be “no return to the old normal for the foreseeable future’ and said: ‘there are no short cuts out of this pandemic’.
• Hong Kong reimposed social distancing measures after a sudden spike in coronavirus infections, banning public gatherings of more than four people.
• A new UN report said that coronavirus could mean an additional 130m people going hungry this year. It added that “after steadily declining for decades, chronic hunger slowly began to rise in 2014 and continues to do so”.
• Angela Merkel warned that a special EU summit might not be able to agree a deal on a coronavirus recovery fund, with some countries nervous that the €750bn proposals were too extravagant.
• UK prime minister Boris Johnson said that people in England should wear masks in shops as an “extra insurance policy” against coronavirus. And he appeared to suggest that the government would have more to say on the subject in the coming days.
• The death toll in Latin America has reached 144,758, taking it past that in the US and Canada, and leaving the region second only to Europe. A Reuters tally meanwhile found that the global number of infections has risen by 1m in five days.
• In the US, the Trump administration came under fire for its apparent attempt to sideline infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci for disagreeing with the president.
• About 250,000 people in Manila will return to lockdown in an attempt to stall the infection rate there. The Philippines has the second highest number of infections in south-east Asia.

That’s it from me. Kevin is your guide for the next few hours.

Ahead of a special EU summit to discuss plans for a pandemic recovery fund, Angela Merkel said on Monday that it was not clear that leaders would be able to reach a deal.

“The road that we have to tread is still rocky,” she said. “I don’t know if we will reach an agreement.”

The scale of the €750bn fund has led some nations, including Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden, to seek to rein in spending, replacing grants with conditional loans, AFP reported.

But Merkel said there was no point in a cut-down fund and that the money provided “must be massive”.

She was speaking after talks with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, one of the countries that would be a recipient of money from the fund.

He told reporters: “We have to act swiftly, because history teaches us that the best reaction is not worth much if it comes too slowly.”

My colleague Peter Beaumont has covered the apparent attempts in the White House to discredit infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci. Fauci, the “figurehead of attempts to combat the country’s coronavirus epidemic”, has contradicted Donald Trump’s view of the effectiveness of the coronavirus response, Peter writes:

In recent days the 79-year-old director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has come under increasing fire from the president and his proxies. Trump told Fox news interviewers that Fauci had “made a lot of mistakes” and said he “disagreed” with Fauci’s claim that the US was in a bad place in its coronavirus response…

In the latest salvo of a coordinated briefing campaign, a White House official told CNN on Saturday that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr Fauci has been wrong on things”.

Our US blog reports that governor of New York Andrew Cuomo has now defended Fauci and accused Trump of “attacking science”.

Read Peter’s piece here:

In England, following our earlier post about Boris Johnson saying that people should wear masks in shops as an “extra insurance policy”, here’s video of the UK prime minister’s comments on the subject earlier. He’s not wearing a face mask in the interview, mind you.

Worth noting that Johnson suggested there would be more to come on the subject in the days ahead, saying: “Whether we make it mandatory or not, we’ll be saying a bit more in the next few days.”

One controversial consequence of the coronavirus pandemic in the US has been the Trump administration’s decision to tell international students that they must leave the country if their classes next semester are all online. A wide range of colleges and state officials are seeking to challenge that rule, hoping to reverse it before the students who must rethink their futures have all gone.

Now a brief filed by 59 universities says that the rule throws their plans into disarray with less than a month before term begins. 200 universities are backing the challenge in total, signing briefs to support litigation by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A judge is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday in the case.

An AP report continues:

The group includes all of Harvard’s companions in the Ivy League and other prestigious schools including Stanford and Duke universities. They collectively enroll more than 213,000 international students.

These students are core members of our institutions, the schools wrote. They make valuable contributions to our classrooms, campuses and communities contributions that have helped make American higher education the envy of the world.