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France reports record 60,486 new cases; Russia saw 9,798 deaths in September – as it happened

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Nurses wearing protective masks and suits work in the intensive care unit at Victor Provo hospital in Roubaix, France.
Nurses wearing protective masks and suits work in the intensive care unit at Victor Provo hospital in Roubaix, France. Photograph: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters
Nurses wearing protective masks and suits work in the intensive care unit at Victor Provo hospital in Roubaix, France. Photograph: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

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Key events

Summary – case records broken worldwide

  • Italy has registered 37,809 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, the country’s highest ever daily tally, the health ministry said.
  • As Canada battles its second wave of coronavirus infections, public health officials in the country’s western region are growing concerned as cases surge to new daily records. Active coronavirus cases in Alberta have quadrupled in the last five weeks. British Columbia, with 5 million residents, notched up more than 400 new cases.
  • France registered a record 60,486 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday, following the previous high of 58,046 on Thursday, health ministry data showed.
  • The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday reported 117,988 new coronavirus cases, taking the country’s total caseload to 9,581,770.The number of deaths also increased by 1,135 to 234,264.
  • Portugal’s president on Friday declared a state of health emergency that will come into force next week.
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Australian state of NSW reports five new cases of Covid-19

NSW has reported one new case of locally transmitted Covid-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.

Four cases were also reported in overseas travellers in hotel quarantine, bringing the total number of cases in NSW to 4,270.

Today’s locally acquired case is a household contact of a confirmed case in Moss Vale. Contact tracing and investigation into the source of the infection continues.

NSW Health is treating 65 Covid-19 cases. One patient is in intensive care and is being ventilated. Ninety-five per cent of cases being treated by NSW Health are in non-acute, out-of-hospital care.

Dr Michael Douglas provides a #COVID19 update for Saturday 7 November 2020. pic.twitter.com/T2q5LFhLy1

— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) November 7, 2020
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The International Monetary Fund [IMF] on Friday approved a 42-month, US$370m loan program for conflict-ravaged Afghanistan as it tries to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

The loan aims to help stabilise the country’s economy, shore up its Covid-19 response and catalyse donor support, the IMF said in a statement.

The government’s economic program was set back by the pandemic, but Kabul has put in place policies to return to growth and reduce poverty, IMF deputy managing director Mitsuhiro Furusawa said in a statement.

However, “should downside risks, including from the pandemic and the security situation, materialize, the recovery could falter and financing needs increase”, Furusawa said.

Under the Extended Credit Facility the government will receive $115m immediately, with the rest coming in instalments following semi-annual reviews of performance criteria covering economic policy and anti-corruption efforts, the IMF said in a statement.

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European deaths pass 300,000

Europe’s number of coronavirus-linked deaths has surged past 300,000 and its number of infections surpassed 12 million, according to an AFP tally from official sources.

The region’s 300,688 recorded deaths is second only to the 408,841 in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Worldwide, there have been 1,235,148 Covid-19-related deaths. The United States is the hardest hit country with 234,944 fatalities, followed by Brazil with 161,736, India with 124,985, Mexico with 93,772 and Britain with 48,120.

The US has also recorded more than 120,000 new daily infections, breaking a record set the day before.

Meanwhile, Italy is set to start a nationwide 10pm-5am curfew, as much of the country returns to lockdown with “red zone” regions shuttering non-essential businesses affecting 16m people.

Greece says it will close secondary schools from Monday, as the country enters its second nationwide lockdown.

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Brazil's Covid-19 deaths pass 162,000, with 5.6m cases

Brazil reported 18,862 additional confirmed cases of the virus in the past 24 hours, and 279 deaths from Covid-19, the health ministry said.

The South American country has now registered 5,631,181 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 162,015, according to ministry data, in the world’s most fatal outbreak outside the United States.

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Victoria records eighth day of zero coronavirus cases and deaths

Another day of 00, with zero cases and zero deaths.
👏🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩👏 Well done, Victoria💓
Over the coming days, and as we head to COVID normal, heads up that there will be changes to the data reported in this tweet. https://t.co/4BEB35r9Jj

— VicGovDHHS (@VicGovDHHS) November 6, 2020

Monday will see the resumption of direct flights from New Zealand – the first international flights into Melbourne since 30 June. Ahead of the resumption of international arrivals, a long-awaited report has suggested improvements to the state’s quarantine program, AAP reports.

Among the hotel quarantine inquiry’s 69 recommendations is that overseas travellers returning to Victoria should be able to quarantine at home, potentially with an electronic ankle or wrist bracelet to track movements and enforce compliance.

Home quarantine candidates would need to have regular Covid-19 tests during the 14-day period and face penalties if found in breach, the report said.

The report describes home quarantine as “at least as effective as a facility-based model” in preventing transmission and avoids the risk of putting people in “physical proximity with others suspected of having COVID-19”.

It also reduces the number of workers required, “thereby reducing the number of people potentially being exposed”. Those unable to quarantine at home will be accommodated at hotels located near hospitals and modified for social distancing and minimal transmission risk.

Police would be on-site 24/7 alongside units dedicated to infection prevention and control, and contact tracing. Staff will not be allowed to work across multiple quarantine sites or in other forms of employment.

Victoria’s second virus wave, which resulted in more than 18,000 infections and 800 deaths, can be traced to outbreaks among staff at the Rydges and Stamford Plaza hotels.

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In the US, a Missouri election judge who came to work despite testing positive for Covid-19 died in her sleep after a 15-hour shift at the polls, the director of her county’s election office said Friday.

The woman worked election day as an election judge supervisor at Memorial Hall in Blanchette Park in the St Louis suburb of St Charles. Officials don’t yet know if the virus was the cause of death. County officials didn’t release her name, citing privacy laws.

She tested positive on 30 October but ignored advice to isolate and worked alongside nine other election judges. More than 1,800 people voted at the precinct. Judges were required to wear masks and were mostly behind a plastic glass barrier.

St Charles County Election Authority director Kurt Bahr said in a phone interview that the woman had previously worked several other elections, as had her sister at a different polling site. It was the sister who called Bahr’s office Wednesday to let him know of the woman’s death.

But Bahr said the sister didn’t know of the Covid-19 diagnosis.

“She was just as shocked,” Bahr said. “The family was unaware she had tested positive. As far as I understand, the only person that knew was the spouse of the judge.”

Bahr said that as an election judge, the woman would have shown up around 5am to help prepare the polling place; worked the entire time the polls were open from 6am to 7pm; then spent about an hour wrapping up. She died in her sleep either late Tuesday or early Wednesday, Bahr said.

Another judge who worked at the Blanchette Park site called Bahr’s office to “try to figure out who it was” that had the illness, he said. “That judge more or less said nobody appeared sick. Nobody had symptoms.”

County health officials are urging the precinct’s other judges to be tested for the virus, St. Charles County spokeswoman Mary Enger said. Contact tracing efforts have begun. Bahr said the county is not recommending testing for those who voted at the precinct because their potential exposure was limited.

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Common cold antibodies could yield clues to Covid-19 behaviour, Nancy Lapid at Reuters writes:

Among people who were never infected with the new coronavirus, a few adults – and many children – may have antibodies that can neutralise the virus, researchers reported on Friday in Science.

Among 302 such adults, 16 (5.3%) had antibodies, likely generated during infections with “common cold” coronaviruses, that reacted to a specific region of the spike protein on the new virus called the S2 subunit. Among 48 children and adolescents, 21 (43.8%) had these antibodies. In test tube experiments, blood serum from both older and younger uninfected individuals with cross-reactive antibodies could neutralise the new coronavirus. That was not the case with serum from study participants who lacked these antibodies.

“Together, these findings may help explain higher Covid-19 susceptibility in older people and provide insight into whether pre-established immunity to seasonal coronaviruses offers protection against SARS-CoV-2,” the publishers of the journal said in a statement. The findings also suggest that targeting the S2 subunit on the coronavirus spike protein might be the basis for a drug or vaccine that works on multiple types of coronavirus.

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Melissa Davey
Melissa Davey

In Australia, Victoria has achieved a week without new cases or deaths. It follows the state’s second virus wave, which resulted in more than 18,000 infections and 800 deaths, and resulted in the state being locked down.

But steps towards normal living are about to gain pace with Covid-19 restrictions further easing and flights to resume from New Zealand. The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, is expected to announce another relaxation of rules on Sunday, including the removal of the “ring of steel” around Melbourne which currently prevents travel between metropolitan Melbourne and regional areas.

The city’s residents will no longer be confined to a 25-kilometre radius from home and allowed to travel to regional Victoria. Travel freedom will expand again when the New South Wales border reopens to Victorians on 23 November. Andrews said on Friday that his Sunday announcement would include a plan for the rest of the month.

“They will be big steps, they’ll get us much closer to normal than we’ve been for six or seven months, which is very significant,” he said.

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Portugal’s president on Friday declared a state of health emergency that will come into force next week to allow the government to impose further coronavirus restrictions.

In a televised appearance, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said he had just signed a decree “relating to a second state of emergency” since the start of the pandemic that will last at least two weeks.

It will be “very limited and largely preventative” but “paves the way for new measures such as restricting traffic to certain times and certain days, in highest risk municipalities,” he said.

The government will hold an extraordinary cabinet meeting on Saturday to decide what type of measures to introduce.

These could include a nighttime curfew similar to what has been implemented in other European nations, or taking people’s temperature at some locations.

During the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, Portuguese authorities decreed a six-week state of emergency.

Some 7.1 million people are currently living under new restrictions and have been asked to stay home and work remotely as far as possible.

But unlike the first spring lockdown, schools remain open, along with shops and restaurants, though they have to close earlier.

Since the start of the pandemic, Portugal has reported close to 167,000 cases and more than 2,700 deaths.

A man watches on a screen in a restaurant as the president declaring the state of emergency, in Cascais, Portugal. Photograph: Pedro Fiuza/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Europe’s number of coronavirus-linked deaths has surged past 300,000 and its number of infections surpassed 12 million, according to an AFP tally from official sources.

The region’s 300,688 recorded deaths is second only to the 408,841 in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Worldwide, there have been 1,235,148 Covid-19-related deaths. The United States is the hardest hit country with 234,944 fatalities, followed by Brazil with 161,736, India 124,985, Mexico 93,772 and the UK 48,120.

The US has also recorded more than 120,000 new daily infections - breaking a record set the day before.

Authorities in Slovakia say they hope a nationwide programme in which two-thirds of the country’s population were tested for Covid-19 in just two days last weekend will halve the number of cases of the virus in the country.

The Slovak testing programme has drawn interest from across Europe, as debates continue about whether or not blanket testing is the best way to fight coronavirus. A Downing Street team travelled to Slovakia last weekend to witness the testing, keen to draw lessons before a mass testing programme due to be launched in Liverpool this weekend.

Slovak officials said the team included two Downing Street advisers and two people responsible for arranging the UK’s large-scale testing programme in Liverpool.

“They are interested in our lessons and in the details and results,” said Slovakia’s deputy defence minister, Marian Majer, who added that Slovakia has offered to send a planning team to London to help with UK preparations if required.

A No 10 spokesperson declined to comment on the visit except to say that “we are constantly seeking to evolve our testing system in order to control the spread of the virus and bring the R rate down”.

Shaun Walker has the story:

Summary

Here’s a roundup of some of the key global coronavirus developments over the last few hours:

  • France, Portugal, Russia, Italy, and Sweden were among the countries to register record daily totals of new Covid-19 infections on Friday. It comes as Europe continues to experience a second wave of the pandemic, and as many countries opt for new national lockdowns.
  • Russia recorded nearly 10,000 coronavirus-linked deaths in September. Data from the state statistics service, Rosstat, shows that 9,798 deaths in the country were linked to suspected or confirmed cases of the virus in September, while deaths from all causes were up 23% from the same month last year.
  • Aspirin is to to be evaluated as a possible treatment for Covid-19 in one of the UK’s biggest trials. Patients infected by the novel coronavirus are at a higher risk of blood clots because of hyper-reactive platelets, the cell fragments that help stop bleeding. Aspirin is an antiplatelet agent and can reduce the risk of clots, the Recovery trial’s website said.
  • The World Health Organisation is looking into biosecurity in countries that have mink farms after Denmark ordered a nationwide cull of the animals. Maria van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19, said the transmission of the virus between animals and humans was “a concern”.
  • Since June, Denmark has recorded more than 200 cases of mink-related Covid. The State Serum Institute, which deals with infectious diseases, has found 214 people infected with mink-related versions of coronavirus since June. It is one strain of the mutated coronavirus which has prompted Denmark to cull its entire herd of mink. That strain has, however, been found in only 12 people and on five mink farms so far.

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