Health News at Your Fingertips

The first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, has described the actions of an MP who took a train from London to Scotland knowing she had tested positive for Covid-19 as “utterly indefensible”.

Margaret Ferrier, the SNP MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, apologised unreservedly for two major breaches of Covid regulations.

Taking to Twitter, Sturgeon said.

It’s hard to express just how angry I feel on behalf of people across the country making hard sacrifices every day to help beat COVID. The rules apply to everyone and they’re in place to keep people safe.

A lawmaker from Nicola Sturgeon’s ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) has been suspended after travelling home by train from London to Scotland, despite having received a positive test result for Covid-19.

Margaret Ferrier was told her test was positive on Monday after she had spoken in Britain’s parliament at Westminster. She said in a statement:

On Monday evening I received a positive test result for Covid-19. I travelled home by train on Tuesday morning without seeking advice. This was … wrong and I am sorry.

The SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford said on Twitter he was suspending her, and that Ferrier would refer herself to the police.

It is mandatory in England for people to self-isolate if they test positive for the coronavirus, with fines of £1,000 for those who breach the rules.

The opposition Labour party’s Scotland spokesman had earlier said the SNP should condemn Ferrier and discipline her.

“It can’t be one rule for Margaret Ferrier, and one rule for everyone else,” Ian Murray said on Twitter.

The US Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, were still not in agreement on a coronavirus relief package.

“I spoke to Speaker Pelosi a few minutes ago, and they are not in an agreement yet, they have a lot of issues of disagreement,” Schumer told reporters.

Pelosi and Mnuchin discussed coronavirus aid in a phone call on Thursday but “distance on key areas remain,” a Pelosi spokesman said.

“Their conversation will continue this afternoon,” Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, said on Twitter.

The French health ministry has reported 13,970 new cases in the past 24 hours, up from 12,845 new cases on Wednesday.

Here’s a summary of the key global coronavirus developments over the past few hours.

• Restaurants and bars could be closed in Paris from Monday if coronavirus rates do not improve by Sunday. The capital could be placed on “maximum alert”, the health minister, Olivier Véran, at a press conference on Thursday, warning that “we have to anticipate this possibility”.

• The Turkish government has been criticised for underreporting cases by the country’s medical association. In a press conference on Wednesday, the health minister, Fahrettin Koca, appeared to acknowledge that Turkey did not record cases of Covid-19 that were not symptomatic.

• Italy has recorded more than 2,000 daily cases for the first time since April. The country registered 2,548 new Covid-19 infections on Thursday, the first time it has exceeded 2,000 cases in a single day since the end of April.

• Poland is expecting more than 2,000 new cases a day. On Thursday, the country recorded a record 1,927 new cases, while its health minister said he expected daily cases to continue peaking above 2,000 in the next few days.

• Sweden has recorded its highest daily caseload since June. A total of 752 new cases were recorded on Thursday, its highest daily rise since 30 June when the health agency registered just over 800 new cases.

• Italy’s prime minister is seeking to extend the country’s state of emergency until January. On Thursday, Giuseppe Conte said he would ask parliament to extend the current state of emergency beyond mid-October to try to avoid the surge in infections being seen in other European countries.

Turkey’s top medical association and the main opposition party have criticised a decision by president Erdogan’s government to only publicly disclose new coronavirus cases if the patient is showing symptoms.

Members of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) said the policy, acknowledged late on Wednesday by the health minister, hid the true scale of the pandemic and was meant to keep the economy moving.

In a Wednesday press conference, the health minister, Fahrettin Koca, appeared to acknowledge the government did not publish the full number of daily positive Covid-19 cases when he said it only tallied those who were symptomatic.

The TTB, which has warned of government underreporting for months, said its doubts were confirmed. “You have not led a transparent process. You hid the truth. You did not prevent the pandemic from spreading,” it said on Twitter.

After a summer dip, Turkey’s official daily coronavirus cases rose in recent months to more than 1,700, matching levels in May, when a partial lockdown was in place. The tally shows cases fell in recent days to roughly 1,400, with 60-70 deaths.

Beginning on 29 July, the health ministry began publishing the number of new daily “patients” – which Minister Koca defined as symptomatic – rather than “cases”, that he said showed the total number of new positive tests.

While Koca said the government did not disclose asymptomatic cases, he stressed that contact-tracing teams still managed to isolate them and prevent the virus from spreading.

“Those in this group are not of primary importance for the pandemic,” he said on Wednesday.

France could declare the capital an area of “maximum alert” meaning closure of all restaurants and bars as of Monday if the Covid-19 situation doesn’t improve.

The government use three criteria to decide whether a maximum alert can be applied to any territory – including the overall number of infections, the number of cases in vulnerable people and the number of intensive care beds available.

Our Paris correspondent, Kim Willsher, has been posting more details on this on Twitter:

The rate of positive Covid-19 tests in 20 New York “hot spot” ZIP codes rose to 6.5% from 5.5% the day before, governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters on Thursday.

The overall rate in the state was 1.27%, or 1,382 positive tests out of the 109,218 reported on Wednesday, Cuomo said.

He encouraged New Yorkers to download a new contact-tracing app created by the state’s health department and called COVID Alert NY on their smartphones.

The app will alert users if they have recently been near someone who goes on to test positive for coronavirus.

Many of the 20 hot spots include Orthodox Jewish communities, and Cuomo said he had had productive conversations with community leaders about enforcing social distancing measures.

“A cluster today can become community spread tomorrow,” Cuomo said on a briefing call with reporters. “These ZIP codes are not hermetically sealed.”

He implored local authorities to increase enforcement measures. “If they’re not wearing masks, they should be fined,” Cuomo said. “If you speed in your car, you get a ticket. That’s how it works.”

Thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers who lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic are struggling to find work and are at risk of destitution without urgent support, advocates said.

At least 70,000 people are estimated to have been laid off after $3.5bn worth of clothing orders were cancelled or suspended and exports plummeted by 84% in April, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) said.

Most of the country’s 4,000 clothing factories, which employ about 4 million people – mostly women – reopened in April after a month-long break to stem the spread of Covid-19.

Bangladesh has seen at least 364,900 confirmed cases and 5,250 deaths to date.

While factory bosses say the sector has seen a recent uptick
– with 90% of cancelled orders reinstated – and is hiring again, activists said demand for jobs outstripped supply and pointed to a lack of alternatives and assistance for fired garment workers.

“For every 10 workers who lost their jobs, only one is being hired,” Kalpona Akter, the founder of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

“This is putting the lives of thousands of workers and their families at risk, because they haven’t earned for the last three to four months,” Akter said.

With no social security to tide them over, many of the workers have had to leave Dhaka to return to their villages and are now relying on food handouts from local charities, she said.

Italy has registered 2,548 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, the first time the country has exceeded 2,000 cases in a single day since the end of April.

The health ministry said there were 24 Covid-related deaths on Thursday against 19 the day before – far fewer than at the height of the pandemic in Italy in March and April.

Iran reported a new record number of Covid-19 cases on Thursday, with 3,825 infections confirmed in the past 24 hours, according to official statistics.

The figure surpasses the previous record single-day case tally of 3,712, reported on September 22.

The number of deaths per day linked to the disease has remained stable, according to Iranian authorities.

“We have unfortunately lost 211 of our dear compatriots to the Covid-19 illness over the past 24 hours,” health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said in a press briefing.

The new fatalities bring the total number of deaths to 26,380, out of 461,044 cases recorded in the Islamic republic, which has been battling the Middle East’s deadliest outbreak of the novel coronavirus since February.

Madrid and its suburbs are preparing to enter a soft lockdown that restricts trips and out of the Spanish capital following a weeks-long political turf fight that experts say has prevented an effective response to the coronavirus in Europe’s latest infection hotspot.

The regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, said she would implement new national health regulations that imposed restrictions on movement and business and social activity in large Spanish cities with high infection rates, while Madrid also mounts a legal challenge to the national government order requiring the measures.