Health News at Your Fingertips

France is advising its citizens not to travel to the Spanish region of Catalonia in order to help contain the spread of coronavirus, French prime minister Jean Castex said on Friday.

Castex also said the government would reinforce controls at France’s borders in the hope of better containing the pandemic, with people arriving from some countries being subject to compulsory testing.

Castex was speaking on the sidelines of a visit to Charles-de-Gaulle international airport, north of Paris.

Thirty-one more workers at a German abattoir hit by a coronavirus outbreak in mid-June have this week tested positive, authorities said on Friday.

Coronavirus outbreaks at several slaughterhouses in Germany have forced meatpacking plants to review cooling systems amid global concern over airborne transmission risks.

The Toennies plant in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck had closed in mid-June after about 1,500 workers tested positive for the COVID-19 disease.

That outbreak in turn led to about 600,000 people in the surrounding Guetersloh region being put back in lockdown, which has since been lifted.

The plant reopened last week after a new health and safety plan was introduced including testing all workers twice a week for coronavirus.

Since then, 7,300 tests have been undertaken with 31 people showing positive, said a statement from the local government authority in Guetersloh. But only three were regarded as new infections and have been quarantined.

“From the view of the health department this cannot be viewed as a second wave,” the Guetersloh authority said, adding that positive tests mainly related to remainder infections from the first bout.

Toennies said the positive tests showed its system was working. “Because of the intensive testing we will naturally in the coming days and weeks again have positive results,” it added.

Germany has had more than 200,000 cases and over 9,000 deaths in total.

Fifteen lawmakers and 11 members of staff at the Zambian parliament have tested positive for Covid-19, the health minister said on Friday, days after the assembly suspended sittings because a lawmaker had died of the respiratory disease.

Zambia’s coronavirus cases have surged to 3,856 from 1,632 at the beginning of July, with deaths rising to 136 from 30 over the same period, minister Chitalu Chilufya told reporters.

The heavily indebted southern African country, the second biggest copper producer on the continent, is bracing for an economic contraction of over 4% this year because of the fallout from the pandemic.

The UK’s decision to persist with a quarantine regime for travellers from Portugal, which has hit the tourism-dependent country hard, is not supported by facts, its foreign minister said on Friday.

Portugal initially won praise for its quick response to the pandemic but a steady count of several hundred new cases per day in and around Lisbon in the past two months has worried authorities at home and abroad.

It was this month left off an initial list of more than 50 countries Britain considered safe enough for travel without coronavirus-related restrictions, and shunned again when London updated the list on Friday, adding more countries including Estonia and Slovakia.

Portugal regretted a decision “that is neither substantiated nor backed by the facts”, foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva tweeted.

The need for holidaymakers returning to Britain from Portugal to quarantine for 14 days has particularly affected the southern Algarve region, popular among Britons for its sandy beaches and golf courses.

Other European nations including Ireland, Belgium and Finland have also imposed travel restrictions on Portugal.

Spain, meanwhile, has stayed on the UK safe list, despite a sharp increase in new cases.

Spanish health officials have warned the country could already be experiencing a “second wave” of coronavirus, as France, Germany and Belgium all reported steep rises in their number of cases.

Countries across Europe have reminded people of the need for vigilance amid rising cases as the summer holiday season continues.

Spain’s health ministry logged 971 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday – the highest daily toll since the state of emergency was lifted at the end of June – and said there were 281 active outbreaks across the country.

María José Sierra, the deputy head of Spain’s centre for health emergencies, said that while the curve had been flattened, “community transmission” was being seen in north-eastern areas.

“It could already be a second wave, but that’s not the most important thing,” Sierra told reporters. “The most important thing is that we keep following what’s going on, see what measures are necessary, and take them early.”

You can read the full report from my colleagues here:

Norway will re-impose a 10-day quarantine requirement for people arriving from Spain from Saturday after a surge in Covid-19 cases there, while it will ease restrictions on people coming from Sweden, the government said on Friday.

Residents of the European Union, European Economic Area or Schengen countries with fewer than 20 confirmed cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last two weeks are able to enter Norway without being required to go into self-quarantine.

The latest data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) showed coronavirus infections in Spain had risen to 30.9 per 100,000 inhabitants.

India has given regulatory approval for Cipla Ltd to sell the anti-viral drug favipiravir to treat Covid-19, the drugmaker said on Friday, as coronavirus infections in the world’s third worst-hit nation show no sign of abating.

The drug controller general of India granted Cipla accelerated approval to make and sell favipiravir in an effort to meet the “urgent and unmet” need for coronavirus treatment options in the country, the company said.

Indian drugmakers including Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd are racing to supply generic versions of favipiravir, originally developed by Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings Corp as Avigan for treating influenza.

India reported over 49,000 fresh cases of the novel coronavirus with 740 new deaths on Friday, marking the biggest daily surge in cases, as officials in some states complained of shortages of vital drugs for those hospitalized.

Cipla said it would launch favipiravir as “Ciplenza” in the first week of August, priced at 68 Indian rupees (91 cents) per 200 mg tablet.
Separately on Friday, much smaller Indian drugmaker Jenburkt Pharmaceuticals Ltd said it would launch its own version of favipiravir, priced at 39 rupees per tablet.

Israeli police deployed water cannon and arrested 55 people overnight at a protest in Jerusalem against the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

A few thousand people had gathered in the city for what have become frequent rallies against Benjamin Netanyahu.

The prime minister, facing an ongoing corruption trial that includes a serious charge of bribery, is fighting fresh public discontent after a recent surge in Covid infections.

Demonstrators have rallied near Netanyahu’s official residence on Balfour Street in recent weeks. On Thursday night, the last day of the working week in Israel, mostly young people in masks and bandanas gathered at a nearby intersection for a predominantly peaceful protest, including a small outdoor orchestra performance.

Several hours later, there was a standoff, with police attempting to disperse the protesters, some of whom stood their ground. Later, authorities drove large white lorries into the area, spraying the crowds back. Protesters complained that the water cannon had pinned them down, even as they were attempting to leave.

Officers arrested 55 people for causing public disorder and disturbances, a police spokesman said. Many were released, but 20 people appeared in court on Friday morning.

You can read the full report from our Jerusalem correspondent, Oliver Holmes, here:

Singapore will finish testing for coronavirus cases among migrant workers living in dormitories by 7 August, about four months after authorities started quarantining tens of thousands of workers in their quarters due to mass outbreaks of the disease.

The vast majority of Singapore’s 49,375 cases are from cramped dormitories that house more than 300,000 mostly South Asian workers.

As of 20 July, there were 247,000 workers who had recovered or had tested negative for Covid-19, according to the manpower ministry’s website.

“By the first week of August, say around 7 August, we expect to clear all our dormitories,” said Lawrence Wong, a minister who co-chairs Singapore’s virus-fighting taskforce.

The government expects the number of new daily cases to be high for the coming two weeks as it completes testing in dormitories with a high prevalence of the disease, before tapering down thereafter.

While the city-state’s cases are expected to drop after the middle of August, authorities cautioned that the fight was not over, while a potential vaccine was unlikely to be available in Singapore until the end of next year.

The health ministry’s director of medical services, Kenneth Mak, said:

Given the global demand for these vaccines, it may not even be in the beginning of next year.”

“But perhaps towards the end of next year, when we might see vaccines produced in sufficient doses, and available then for procurement and to be delivered into Singapore.”

Every day, Mory DiMaurizio looks out his window at Niagara Falls and sighs in frustration. Not at the sight of the falls – one of the most stunning natural wonders of the world – but rather at the prospect of US tour boats with blue-ponchoed Americans.

“I see it many, many times a day. I look out the window, and there it is again,” said DiMaurizio, the vice-president and general manager of the main Canadian tour company, Hornblower Niagara Cruises.

His company’s boats can carry up to 700 people, but Ontario’s strict social distancing rules have only permitted them to carry six passengers at a time.

In contrast, the US-owned Maid of the Mist boats – which can normally hold around 500 people – are operating at 50% capacity.

The stark difference reflect radically different approaches that Canada and the US have taken to tackling the coronavirus pandemic – and their dramatically contrasting outcomes.

‘It’s like night and day’: Trudeau’s and Trump’s Covid-19 responses fuel wildly different outcomesRead more

The US side of the falls lies within New York state, an area with a population of 19.5 million, and which has seen 414,000 Covid-19 cases and 32,000 deaths.

On the Canadian side, Ontario – with a population of nearly 15 million – has seen 38,000 coronavirus cases and 2,755 deaths.

You can read more on the stark Covid-19 divide between Canada and the US – including on travel bans and quarantine rules, as well as healthcare – from reporter Tracey Lindeman here:

Russia plans to resume some international flights from 1 August, deputy prime minister Tatiana Golikova said on Friday, but the list of destinations will initially be limited to Tanzania, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

International flights were grounded on 30 March after the imposition of lockdown measures to curb the spread of Covid-19, which has infected more than 800,000 people in Russia.

Golikova said the falling number of coronavirus infections had allowed Russia to resume flights from airports in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Rostov-on-Don.

Flights will resume between London in the United Kingdom, Turkish cities Istanbul and Ankara and the island of Zanzibar in Tanzania from next Saturday. More holiday destinations in Turkey would be added from 10 August, Golikova added.

Golikova said Russia would take care to ensure that the resumption in flights “does not lead to a new appearance of imported (coronavirus) cases on Russian territory”.

Russia continues to report thousands of new coronaviurs infections daily. Its nationwide tally is 800,849, the fourth-highest in the world, with 13,046 deaths.