LONDON — Some grandparents in England will be able to hug their grandchildren for the first time in months — and couples who live apart can legally be intimate — under an easing of lockdown rules imposed during the coronavirus pandemic.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Wednesday that adults living alone or single parents adults can form “support bubbles” with another household.
Starting Saturday, two households can form a bubble that allows them to meet, indoors or out, without remaining two meters (6 ½ feet) apart. It’s an exception to social distancing rules that allow people to meet in groups of up to six, but only outdoors and if they observe social distancing.
The government says the change is intended to help people living alone who have been especially isolated during the U.K.’s 11-week lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic.
The change applies only in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can make their own policies.
Further lockdown easing is expected Monday, when non-essential stores and outdoor spaces such as zoos can reopen in England.
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HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:
— Virus pummels global economy, jobs – even without 2nd wave of infections
— U.S. expert Fauci explains where World Health Organization expert got it wrong.
— Easing restrictions in Indonesia’s capital triggers concerns
— America’s Black Belt is an agricultural region first known for the color of its soil and then for its mostly black population. Life can be tough even on a good in the crescent-shaped slice of the southern U.S. that stretches from Louisiana to Virginia. It’s where some of the poorest people in America live. They are, as usual, depending on each other to survive with unemployment intensifying and coronavirus infections raging.
— More than 30,000 indigenous people live in the Brazilian state capital hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Many among them are sick with fever, straining for air and dying. Just how many, no one knows. The AP interviewed and photographed more than a dozen indigenous people in and around Manaus. They wore the traditional dress of their tribes and masks they made to protect themselves from the virus.
— An unemployed mother of three used whatever money her family had to help out the countless number of other Filipinos in Dubai who have lost jobs during the coronavirus pandemic. Feby Dela Peña saw people lining up for free meals and founded a project she calls Ayuda. Each day, she offers 200 free meals to the hungry of Dubai, all of them foreigners. She is driven by their stories and determined to keep going.
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Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING TODAY:
ROME — Both the number of people infected with COVID-19 in intensive care or otherwise hospitalized in Italy continued to decline, according to daily figures released on Wednesday by the Health Ministry.
In the nation of more than 60 million, 249 coronavirus patients occupied intensive care beds, while during the height of the pandemic in Italy, several thousand infected patients needed ICU treatment on any given day. Italy registered 202 new cases in the 24 hours ending Wednesday evening, all but a couple dozen of those occurring in northern regions.
The latest cases raised the overall number of known coronavirus infections in the outbreak to 235,763. In the same one-day period, there were 71 known deaths of infected persons, bringing the death toll to 34,114. Authorities say both the number of cases and deaths in the pandemic are certainly much higher, but many in nursing homes or with mild symptoms never received testing.
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LONDON — A scientist whose modelling helped set Britain’s coronavirus strategy says that the country’s death toll could have been cut in half if lockdown had been introduced a week earlier.
Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, told lawmakers that when key decisions were being made in March, scientists underestimated how widely the virus had spread in the U.K.
He told Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee that “the epidemic was doubling every three to four days before lockdown interventions were introduced,” rather than the five to six days estimated at the time.
Britain went into lockdown on March 23. Ferguson said that “had we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least a half.”
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PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron will make a televised national address on Sunday evening, the fourth since the coronavirus crisis started.
His office didn’t immediately provide details about the speech.
Macron had previously addressed the nation on March 12 and March 16 to announce school closures and lockdown measures. He then spoke again on television on April 13 to say France would be ready to gradually ease restrictions after May 11.
French authorities have reported 29,296 deaths from the virus in hospitals and nursing homes.
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DETROIT — General Motors is predicting that its U.S. factories will resume normal production by the end of June, perhaps sooner, while Ford expects to have its factories humming at pre-coronavirus levels by July 6.
Company executives made the predictions Wednesday at a Deutsche Bank autos conference.
GM Chief Financial Officer Dhivya Suryadevara said many factories were on two or three shifts of production already, and the company is working to fully ramp back up as quickly as possible.
Ford, GM and the rest of the U.S. auto industry closed factories in mid-March when employees started catching the coronavirus. Most reopened in May.
Ford Chief Operating Officer Jim Farley said the company hit 96% of its production targets in the first three weeks after it reopened factories on May 18.
Ford initially had trouble restarting in Chicago and Dearborn, Michigan, due to employees testing positive for the virus or due to parts shortages. But those have since subsided.
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MOSCOW — Moscow officials have updated the number of coronavirus-linked deaths in the Russian capital last month, reporting a total of 5,260 in May.
Moscow’s Health Department said in a statement on Wednesday that 2,757 deaths were caused by COVID-19, including 433 cases in which a test didn’t confirm the presence of the virus. THe department said 2,503 other people who tested positive for the virus died from other causes.
Russian officials have started giving detailed reports on virus-related deaths in an effort to dispel doubts about the country’s low pandemic death toll and to counter allegations numbers were manipulated for political reasons.
Russia currently has the third-highest number of 493,000 confirmed virus cases and only 6,358 officially reported deaths. According to experts, only deaths directly caused by COVID-19 and confirmed by a positive test make the official count.
Moscow’s Health Department last month provided an updated count of all COVID-related deaths, reporting a total of 1,561 deaths linked to the virus in April. In April and May combined, Moscow has registered 6,821 virus-related deaths.
Shortly after, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova gave a similar breakdown for April deaths in all of Russia, bringing the nation’s total to 2,713, a number 60% higher than previously reported.
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BRUSSELS — The European Union’s top diplomat says travel restrictions implemented during the coronavirus pandemic at the EU’s external borders should be partially lifted as of July 1.
Josep Borrell said Wednesday that the European Commission will discuss a coordinated plan with member nations and “put forward an approach for the gradual and partial lifting of these restrictions as of the 1st of July, with certain third countries.”
All but essential travel from outside Europe is restricted until June 15. Many ministers from the 27-nation EU suggested earlier this month that they wanted this deadline extended until early July.
As for the EU’s internal borders, Borrell said the executive commission took note that several countries are in the process of lifting internal border controls imposed to keep out people from other member states.
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PARIS — Contract workers from France’s all-important food, catering and events industry have held a protest between the Louvre Museum and Champs-Elysees to spread the message that the virus pandemic is killing their jobs.
The flash mob-style demonstration included about 30 people dressed in black simulating strangulation with their ties and putting signs reading “sentenced to death” into a coffin.
France’s government spent billions on temporary unemployment benefits for workers, but contract workers in the food, catering and special events industry were not included.
Anne-Laure Boggio is a maître d’hôtel in Paris and isn’t sure how she and her family will make it through the year.
Boggio said: “I gave birth last year, using up parts of my unemployment benefits, now with COVID, I used the rest of my benefits. …“In September, I don’t know if I’ll receive welfare allowances, and I have two mouths to feed.”
Although restaurants and national borders are gradually reopening in France, tourism is expected to remain muted. Large gatherings are banned until at least the end of the summer, making it difficult for people like Boggio to find employment.
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WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious-disease expert, says the World Health Organization had to backtrack on its statement about asymptomatic spread of the coronavirus being rare because that simply “was not correct.”
WHO’s technical lead on the pandemic has tried to clear up “misunderstandings” about comments she made that were widely understood to suggest that people without COVID-19 symptoms rarely transmit the virus. Maria Van Kerkhove insisted Tuesday that she was referring only to a few studies, not a complete picture.
Weighing in on Wednesday, Fauci said the range of ways symptoms manifest is “extraordinary” but “there’s no evidence” to suggest that individuals with the virus but no signs of illness can’t infect others.
Fauci said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” : “And, in fact, the evidence that we have, given the percentage of people, which is about 25, 45% of the totality of infected people, likely are without symptoms. And we know from epidemiological studies that they can transmit to someone who is uninfected, even when they’re without symptoms. So to make a statement — to say that’s a rare event — was not correct. And that’s the reason why the WHO walked that back.”
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MAKASSAR, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities have arrested dozens of people suspected of snatching the bodies of COVID-19 victims from several hospitals so the dead could be buried according to their wishes.
Provincial police spokesman Ibrahim Tompo said Wednesday that at least 33 suspects have been detained by police in South Sulawesi province in the past week. Ponto said charges against 10 of them will proceed to prosecutors.
He says if convicted, the suspects face up to seven years in prison and $ 7,000 in fines for violating health laws and resisting officers.
Tompo said: “What they have done could harm the wider community.”
Videos of several incidents have circulated widely on social media in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
In one instance, a mob is seen breaking into a hospital’s isolation room and taking away a body on a stretcher.
Tompo said religious faith and funeral traditions are motives for people who see public health restrictions on burials as unacceptable.
The arrests came as Indonesia’s Health Ministry reported the highest single-day increase in confirmed coronavirus cases on Wednesday. The 1,241 new cases bring the country’s total to 34,316. The figures include 36 people who died in the last 24 hours, taking the country’s COVId-19 death toll to 1,923.
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This item has been corrected to show that spokesman’s surname is Tompo, not Ponto.
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PARIS — The French government has included in its new budget law for this year 460 billion euros ($ 523 billion) in emergency funding to support the country’s economy as it feels the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Following a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire praised the government’s effort to save jobs as part of a “massive and effective response to the crisis.”
France’s budget deficit is estimated to reach a record-high of 11.4% in 2020, with debt representing 120.9% of gross domestic product by the end of the year.
The budget revision reinforces measures to support the state-funded partial activity scheme, tax cuts and other financial aids for businesses.
It includes rescue plans for sectors affected the most by the pandemic, such as 18 billion euros ($ 20.4 billion) for tourism, 8 billion euros ($ 9 billion) for the auto industry and 15 billion euros ($ 17 billion) for aviation.
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VIENNA — Austria has announced it will open its borders to most European neighbors beginning June 16 with the exceptions of Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Britain.
Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg also said Wednesday that the border with Italy to the south would be open without conditions, but that a travel warning for Austrian citizens is in place for Lombardy. The northern Italian region has been the epicenter of Italy’s epidemic, showing triple-digit growth in daily infections while much of the rest of the country counts a handful or fewer.
While Italy opened its borders on June 3, Austria’s reluctance to open the shared border has been a sore spot between the neighbors, especially as the summer tourism season gets under way.
Austria’s opening means that visitors from 31 countries no longer are required to undergo a two-week quarantine.
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PARIS — The virus crisis has triggered the worst global recession in nearly a century — and the pain is not over yet even if there is no second wave of infections, an international economic report warned Wednesday.
Hundreds of millions of people have lost their jobs, and the crisis is hitting the poor and young people the hardest, worsening inequalities, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in its latest analysis of global economic data.
“It is probably the most uncertain and dramatic outlook since the creation of the OECD,” Secretary General Angel Gurria said. “We cannot make projections as as we normally do.”
In the best-case scenario, if there is no second wave of infections, the agency forecast a global drop in economic output of 6% this year, and a rise of 2.8% next year.
If the coronavirus re-emerges later in the year, however, the global economy could shrink 7.6%, the OECD said.
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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s health officials say places of worship that have remained closed for the past three months can reopen starting Friday subject to social distancing guidelines.
Director General of Health Services Anil Jasinghe said Wednesday that 50 people can congregate at any place of worship keeping their distance both indoors and outdoors. Sri Lanka says no COVID-19 patients have been reported outside known clusters for the past month. The country has reported 1,859 patients with 11 deaths.
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SOFIA, Bulgaria — Bulgaria’s coronavirus infections have been on the rise in the last few days, prompting the government to impose a two-week extension of the epidemic emergency until the end of June.
Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said Wednesday that no new restrictions were planned but urged people to keep social distancing and to wear face masks while in indoor public spaces like shops and public transport.
As of June 1, the Balkan country dropped a mandatory two-week quarantine for people arriving from most European countries and reopened restaurants, bars and coffee shops. Theatres and opera houses also have been opened for public, as well as kindergartens.
Bulgaria has recorded 2,889 confirmed cases and 167 deaths.
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DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh’s coronavirus death toll has surpassed 1,000 and economic growth is only 1.6% in the current fiscal year ending this month, the World Bank said.
The global lending agency said Bangladesh’s growth was expected to slow to 1.6% because the pandemic has created serious disruptions in industrial production and caused a plunge in global exports and a drop in remittances sent home by workers overseas.
Industry leaders of Bangladesh’s export-earning garment sector say orders worth $ 3.18 billion have either been cancelled or suspended by global brands, affecting the industry that earns about $ 35 billion a year from exports.
Bangladesh’s health authorities said Wednesday that 37 more people died of COVID-19, raising the total death toll to 1,012. Bangladesh has a fragile healthcare system for its 160 million people.
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MOSCOW — Moscow’s mayor says it will take the Russian capital about two months to lift all coronavirus restrictions.
Sergei Sobyanin the situation in Moscow is improving, but the outbreak hasn’t been completely eradicated. He said restrictions on mass gatherings remain, including theaters, cinemas, concert halls and sporting events. A decision whether to lift them will be made the beginning of July.
Starting Tuesday, Moscow residents are no longer required to stay at home or obtain electronic passes to travel around the city. All restrictions on taking walks, using public transportation or driving have been lifted as well.
Beauty parlors can reopen while outdoor terraces of cafes and restaurants, as well as museums and dental clinics, are set to open on June 16. Kindergartens, gyms and indoor restaurants will be allowed to operate starting June 23.
On Wednesday, health officials in the city reported a record low number of 1,195 new infections after weeks of numbers ranging from over 6,000 a day to under 2,000. In total, Moscow has registered 199,785 confirmed coronavirus cases, 40% of Russia’s caseload of over 493,000.
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LONDON — Britain is planning to reopen zoos, safari parks and drive-in theaters as part of the easing of lockdown measures from the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the move by Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing criticism amid the failure to reopen schools for all primary school students before summer, as had been planned.
Although many English primary schools have been open for children of key workers, the Conservative government had wanted to give all pupils the chance to return following months of home learning. But schools didn’t have enough space to address social distancing requirements.
Johnson is expected to make the announcement later Wednesday.
His Downing Street Office says it hopes that reopening of safari parks and zoos will help families spend time outdoors, where the chance of catching the virus is much lower.
London Zoo and other attractions across the country had warned they faced permanent closure if something weren’t done soon.
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BERLIN — Germany is prolonging its travel warning for more than 160 countries outside Europe until the end of August.
The government agreed Wednesday to extend the guidance introduced on March 17 due to the coronavirus pandemic to almost all non-EU countries, with the exception of some that have successfully contained the outbreak.
Last week, Germany downgraded its travel warning for the rest of the 27-nation EU, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland and Britain.
Also Wednesday, the government announced the end of border controls for EU citizens coming to Germany. Almost all German states require travelers arriving from countries that have 50 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the past seven days to quarantine for two weeks. This is currently the case for fellow EU member state Sweden.
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JOHANNESBURG — Africa’s confirmed coronavirus cases have surpassed 200,000.
That’s according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 54-nation continent has 202,782 cases and 5,516 deaths.
While Africa still represents a tiny percentage of the world’s total COVID-19 cases, well under 5%, officials in South Africa and elsewhere have expressed concern because the number of infections continues to climb.
South Africa leads the continent with 52,991 cases, with almost two-thirds of them in the Western Cape province centered on the city of Cape Town.
Egypt has 36,829 cases and Nigeria has 13,464.
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ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s coronavirus infections soared past 5,000 as the World Health Organization urged the government to impose a two-week lockdown to stem the relentless spike in new cases.
Pakistan has recorded 113,702 confirmed cases and 2,255 deaths.
Until now, Pakistan’s daily testing rate has hovered around 25,000, but the WHO says it should be double that.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has come under criticism from political opponents and health professionals for easing lockdowns despite soaring numbers and no progress in tracking COVID-19 outbreaks.
Khan, who has reprimanded Pakistanis for not wearing masks and keeping social distance, says the economy cannot survive a total lockdown and the poorest in Pakistan would be the hardest hit.
Pakistan was slow to rein in radical religious leaders who were initially allowed to invite Islamic missionaries to attend a massive gathering in mid-March, which was blamed for spreading infection as far as the Gaza Strip.
Khan also refused to shut down mosques during Ramadan and eased restrictions ahead of the Eid-al Fitr holiday. Since then the number of cases has continued to rise and medical workers worry the weak health system that has barely 3,000 ICU beds for a population of 220 million will be overwhelmed.
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysia reopened nearly all economic and social activities Wednesday after a nearly three-month lockdown successfully brought down viral infections.
Malaysians can now travel for domestic holidays, get haircuts and shop at street markets. Schools and religious activities also will gradually resume.
While happy to be back at work, hairstylist Shirley Chai she is nervous about the strict health rules for hairdressers, especially the one-hour limit for each client.
“I couldn’t sleep at all last night. Very excited because everything is changing,” she said at her salon in a Kuala Lumpur shopping mall.
Malaysia has entered a “recovery” phase until the end of August with certain prohibitions still in place, but officials warn restrictions will be reinstated if infections soar again. Nightclubs, pubs, karaoke bars, theme parks and reflexology centers will stay shut. Contact sports or those with many spectators, and activities involving mass groups, are still banned.
Malaysia has had 8,336 confirmed infections and 117 deaths. Daily cases have dropped to only seven since Monday, the lowest since the lockdown started March 18.
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NEW DELHI — India reported a new rise of nearly 10,000 coronavirus infections Wednesday, with a total caseload of 276,583, the fifth highest in the world.
The Health Ministry confirmed 9,985 new cases and 274 deaths in the last 24 hours. Total fatalities have reached 7,745. Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and New Delhi are the worst-hit states.
The spike comes as the government reopened restaurants, shopping malls and places of worship in most of India after a more than 2-month-old lockdown. Subways, hotels and schools remain closed.
India has so far tested more than 4.9 million people with a daily capacity crossing 140,000.
The number of new cases has soared since the government began relaxing restrictions. There has also been a surge in infections in rural India following the return of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who lost their jobs during the lockdown.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea has reported 50 new cases of COVID-19 as officials begin requiring nightclubs, karaoke rooms and gyms to register their customers with smartphone QR codes so they could be easily located when needed.
The figures from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday brought national totals to 11,902 cases and 276 deaths. At least 41 of the cases were reported from the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, where officials have struggled to trace transmissions linked to entertainment venues, church gatherings and low-income workers who couldn’t afford to stay home.
Since late May, the country has been reporting around 30 to 50 new cases per day, a resurgence that has threatened to erase some of the hard-won gains against the virus as people begin to ease on distancing.
The nationwide requirement of QR codes at “high-risk” venues come after a trial run in the cities of Seoul, Incheon and Daejeon, where some 300 businesses used an app developed by internet company Naver to collect the information of some 6,000 customers. The government is also encouraging churches, libraries, hospitals and movie theaters to voluntarily adopt the technology.
South Korea has aggressively mobilized technological tools to trace contacts and enforce quarantines.
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BEIJING — With much of the country reopened under safety measures, China has announced three new confirmed cases of coronavirus, all brought from outside the country.
No new deaths were reported Wednesday and just 55 people remain in treatment for COVID-19, while another 157 were being monitored in isolation for showing signs of having the virus or having tested positive for it without showing symptoms.
China has reported a total of 4,634 deaths among 83,046 cases of COVID-19 since the virus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.