(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was beginning a quarantine process after Hope Hicks, a top adviser and trusted aide, tested positive for COVID-19.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
* For an interactive graphic tracking the global spread of COVID-19, open https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/ in an external browser.
* For a U.S.-focused tracker with a state-by-state and county map, open https://tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T in an external browser.
* Eikon users, see MacroVitals cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?navid=1592404098 for a case tracker and summary of news.
EUROPE
* Confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 2,673 to 294,395, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Friday.
* Paris is set to be placed on maximum COVID-19 alert while Europe’s worst hotspot, Madrid, will go into lockdown in the coming days, as several European countries reported record daily jumps in new infections.
* Travellers arriving in England and Scotland from Turkey and Poland will have to self-isolate for 14 days from early on Saturday, officials said as they expanded their COVID-19 quarantine lists.
* Italy’s prime minister will ask parliament to extend the country’s state of emergency to the end of January, as the government tries to avoid the kind of surge in cases seen in other European countries.
* Moscow may reinstate tough measures if its 13 million population ignores COVID-19 protection rules, its mayor Sergei Sobyanin said after the Russian capital started to record increases in daily cases of infection.
AMERICAS
* COVID-19 trends are all moving in the wrong direction in Wisconsin, while the pandemic’s early U.S. epicentre of New York state reported an uptick of positive tests in 20 “hot spots”.
* U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin remained far from agreement on COVID-19 relief in key areas.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Malaysian authorities warned of a new wave of coronavirus cases after a spike in new infections following an election in the country’s second largest state Sabah.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* Turkey’s top medical association and the main opposition party criticised a decision by President Tayyip Erdogan’s government to only publicly disclose new cases if the patient is showing symptoms.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a fresh round of $20 billion funding for frontline healthcare providers dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
* The HHS said that U.S. hospitals can now buy Gilead Sciences Inc’s antiviral COVID-19 drug remdesivir from the company and its distributor.
* The European health regulator has started reviewing data on AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s potential COVID-19 vaccine in real time, the first of such moves aimed at speeding up any approval process in the region for a vaccine.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* Japan’s unemployment rate rose in August to its highest in over three years and job availability fell to a more than six-year low, government data showed on Friday, indicating damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic persisted through the month.
* The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell last week but remained at recession levels, while personal income dropped in August.
* Major Canadian labour unions said the aviation sector would suffer permanent damage unless Ottawa provided a C$7 billion 10-year low-interest loan to offset the effects of the outbreak, which has slashed travel.
(Compiled by Devika Syamnath, Milla Nissi and Vinay Dwivedi; Edited by Philippa Fletcher, Sriraj Kalluvila and Shounak Dasgupta)
