10.16am EDT10:16
Donald Trump was due to stage a rally in Alabama on Saturday night, in a city that has declared a Covid emergency and in support of a congressman who both backed Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and this week sympathised with a man who threatened to blow up the US Capitol.
The former president will speak in Cullman, Alabama, in support of Mo Brooks’ bid for a US Senate seat.
Like other southern, Republican-run states, Alabama is struggling with a surge in cases of Covid-19 fueled by the contagious Delta variant. On Thursday, the city of Cullman declared a state of emergency.
“We want to prevent as many non-Covid related things as possible, so our hospital can use its resources to focus on the pandemic and its variants,” said Luke Satterfield, an attorney for the city, according to AL.com. “We don’t want to put any extra strain on them.”
Trump’s rally was set to take the stage at York Farms at 7pm local time. Local media reported that organisers expected about 40,000 to attend.
Dr William Smith, chief medical officer for Cullman Regional, told CBS42: “We view this as a potential ‘super-spreader’ event, just like last week’s Rock the South that was [at the same location]. We’ve seen an increase in patients since that event last weekend and we’re concerned we could see the same impact.”
9.58am EDT09:58
Dan Patrick, the Republican lieutenant governor of Texas, has refused to apologise for blaming rising Covid-19 hospitalisations and deaths on unvaccinated African Americans, comments one Black Houston official called “racist and flat out wrong”.
Doubling down on his remarks to Fox News, Patrick blamed “Democrat social media trolls” and said “Democrats continue to play politics with people’s lives”.
Sylvester Turner, the Democratic mayor of Houston, who is African American, said Patrick’s comments were “offensive and should not be ignored”.
Amid widespread concern over the spread of the Delta variant, Texas is experiencing its highest hospitalisation rates since January. It emerged this week that the state had asked federal authorities for more mortuary trucks.
The overwhelming majority of Covid-19 hospitalisations and deaths in the US are among those who have not received a vaccine.
Speaking to Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday night, Patrick said: “The biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated.
“The last time I checked over 90% of them vote for Democrats in their major cities and major counties, so it’s up to the Democrats – just as it’s up to the Republicans – to try to get as many people vaccinated.”
In his statement on Friday, Patrick said federal and state data “clearly indicate that Black vaccination rates are significantly lower than White or Hispanic rates”. But statistics from the Texas health department did not back him up.
9.55am EDT09:55
These are the images from inside Ho Chi Minh City’s supermarkets, where shoppers have rushed to grab food and supplies before a lockdown is enforced on Monday.
Panic set in despite the government saying it will deliver food to people, calling on the army to help with the lockdown procedures.
9.10am EDT09:10
The streets of Colombo have been deserted during the first full day of Sri Lanka’s 10-day lockdown.
Active since late last night, the lockdown was announced by the health minister, Keheliya Rambukwella, on Friday because of surging infections that doubled to a daily average of 3,897, according to the Reuters Global Covid tracker.
Businesses have closed and soldiers have been deployed to man checkpoints. A nightly curfew will become active from Monday.
Updated
at 9.37am EDT
