Health News at Your Fingertips

The UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, has offered advice to US president Donald Trump following his positive Covid-19 test result.

Johnson was admitted to intensive care at a hospital in London in early April to receive oxygen treatment after he contracted the virus.

Johnson told BBC One’s Andrew Marr show on Sunday:

I’m sure that President Trump is going to be fine, he has got the best possible care.

The most important thing to do is follow his doctors’ advice.

He also pointed out the problems that obesity can have when fighting the virus – although he insisted he was not commenting on Donald Trump’s weight.

Health journalist and former neuroscientist, David Cox, has written about the evidence of lingering heart damage after initial symptoms of Covid-19 have dissipated.

The first indications the virus could affect the heart came from the original centres of the outbreak. Peter Liu, chief scientific officer at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, recalls receiving emails first from doctors in Wuhan during January and February, and then those in Italy as the pandemic reached Europe. They described a number of patients in intensive care wards with myocarditis or inflammation of the heart muscle.

“Because of my long-standing interest in how viral myocarditis can lead to heart failure, they asked me to participate in clinical data analysis to understand the impact of Covid-19 on the heart,” he says.

In March, the findings began to emerge. Of 68 patients who had died in one particular study, doctors reported that a third of these deaths had been caused by a combination of respiratory and heart failure. In a larger study, cardiologists at the Renmin hospital of Wuhan University found that of 416 patients, nearly 20% had cardiac injuries.

You can read more about the possible long-term effects of Covid-19 on our hearts here:

Cineworld will close all of its cinemas in the UK, Ireland and the US this week because of the impact of the pandemic, Reuters news agency has reported.

It comes after the release of upcoming Bond film No Time to Die was pushed back again until April 2021. It was originally due out in April this year but had already been pushed back to November.

The Sunday Times reported that the cinema giant would close all of its 128 theatres in the UK and Ireland, putting 5,500 jobs at risk.

It added that bosses were preparing to write to UK prime minister Boris Johnson and culture secretary Oliver Dowden to warn the industry had become “unviable” because of the postponing of big releases.

Last month, Cineworld announced half-year losses of $1.6bn.

Although demand rose for tickets to Christopher Nolan’s Tenet in August and September, other big-budget releases such as Fast and Furious sequel F9 have been postponed.

Russia’s new Covid-19 cases have topped 10,000 for the first time since May.

On Sunday, Russia’s coronavirus crisis centre reported 10,499 new infections – the biggest daily tally since 15 May, when the outbreak was at its peak and lockdowns were in place.

The country’s death toll also climbed by 107 to 21,358 in the previous 24 hours.

Hello, Amy Walker here. Welcome to today’s live global coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

The biggest news so far today is the US president Donald Trump’s continuing stay at a hospital after testing positive for Covid-19.

On Saturday evening, he posted a video message on Saturday evening saying that he is “doing well”, his wife Melania is “doing very well” and the next few days will be the “real test”. Meanwhile, his medical team says: “while not out of the woods yet, the team remains cautiously optimistic”.

Across the pond, coronavirus cases continue to surge in some European countries. On Saturday, France reported a daily record of 16,972 new cases, as well as 49 new deaths, while Italy recorded 2,844 new cases – its highest daily tally since April, when the country was still in lockdown.

In the UK, 12,872 new infections were reported in the 24 hours to Saturday, nearly double the number reported a day earlier, which was blamed on reporting delays from previous weeks, as it came to light that the government does not currently know Saturday’s actual number of new infections.

I’ll be keeping you up to date with today’s key developments. But first, here’s a roundup of the news over the past few hours:

• Top Trump aide Nick Luna has tested positive for Covid-19.
• Joe Biden’s campaign is committing to releasing the results of all future Covid tests the candidate takes.
• US secretary of state Mike Pompeo will depart for Japan on Sunday but will not go to Mongolia and South Korea as originally planned, after Trump’s diagnosis.
• Germany has reported 2,279 new cases, bringing the total number to 299,237. Two people were reported to have died, bringing the death toll to 9,529.
• Victoria, the state of Australia most affected, recorded just 12 new cases and one life lost in the past 24 hours. That’s the equal lowest death toll for almost a month.
• Mexico’s confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 757,953 on Saturday, according to the health ministry, with a total reported death toll of 78,880.
• Brazil on Saturday registered 599 new coronavirus deaths and 26,310 new confirmed cases.
• Tunisian authorities will ban all gatherings and reduce working hours for employees in the public sector in order to stop the rapid spread of the coronavirus
• Ireland is seeing a “significant escalation” in coronavirus infections, after reporting the highest daily death toll since May and the third-highest number of daily cases recorded to date.
• Thousands of Israelis protested again across the country on Saturday, flouting a new law meant to curb anti-government demonstrations during a new national coronavirus lockdown