Known global Covid-19 deaths pass 215,000 – as it happened

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Three US children infected with the coronavirus are being treated for a rare inflammatory syndrome that appears similar to one that has raised concerns by doctors in Britain, Italy and Spain, Reuters reports.

All three children - who range in age from 6 months to 8 years - have undergone treatment at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York, and all had fever and inflammation of the heart and the gut.

“Right now, we’re at the very beginning of trying to understand what that represents,” Columbia’s Dr Mark Gorelik told Reuters.

Italian and British medical experts are investigating a possible link between the coronavirus pandemic and clusters of Kawasaki disease, a severe inflammatory disease among infants arriving in hospitals with high fevers and swollen arteries.

The syndrome has been largely undetected in the United States, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Gorelik said he believes the cases are likely not Kawasaki disease, but a similar process that shares an underlying mechanism with Kawasaki, which is thought to be triggered by an infectious agent that sparks an immune response.

• Known global death toll exceeds 215,000. According to the Johns Hopkins researchers, at least 3,110,219 people have been infected worldwide and at least 216,808 have died since the outbreak began. The numbers are likely to be significant underestimates due to suspected underreporting and differing testing and recording systems around the world.
  
• US passes 1 million confirmed cases. The country, by far the world’s worst affected, reaches the milestone of 1 million confirmed cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The US death toll is now at more than 57,000 people.
• Confirmed deaths in Brazil exceed known Chinese toll. Brazil’s total number of confirmed deaths overtakes the WHO’s figure for China as cases accelerate in Latin America’s biggest country.
• UK reports 586 more deaths. The heath secretary, Matt Hancock, says the country has suffered 586 more deaths, bringing the total death toll in British hospitals to 21,678.
• Portugal to end state of emergency. The country’s president announces that its state of emergency will end at the weekend. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa says the third such 15-day period will end at midnight on Saturday and “we hope it will not be necessary to use it again in the future”.
• Spain outlines ‘plan for transition to normality’. The Spanish government sets out details of its lockdown strategy, as the country’s daily death toll continues to decline and the rate of contagion falls.
• 12,000 BA staff face redundancy. British Airways sets out plans to make as many as 12,000 of its staff redundant due to the global collapse in air travel caused by the pandemic. The airline’s chief executive, Álex Cruz, has told its 42,000 staff the company “must act decisively now to ensure that British Airways has a strong future” and that more than one in four jobs must be cut.
• Streamed films to be made eligible for Oscars. Films released on streaming platforms only will be eligible for Academy Awards next year because of the pandemic’s disruption to the industry, the organisers of the Oscars say.

Here is vice-president Mike Pence earlier today, failing to wear a mask at the Mayo Clinic’s facilities in Minnesota.

Pence triggered a storm of controversy on Tuesday by failing to wear a face mask on a visit to the facilities. Pence leads the US government’s coronavirus taskforce, but his staff have claimed he does not need to wear the protective covering because he is regularly tested for the coronavirus:

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My colleague Sam Levin has this story:

Iranian scientist in Ice detention tests positive for Covid-19

An Iranian scientist who has been pleading for weeks to be released from a US immigration jail due to his fragile health has contracted Covid-19, according to his family and attorneys.

Dr Sirous Asgari, a materials science and engineering professor who spoke out in March about the unsanitary and “inhumane” conditions in detention, was placed in an isolation cell this week inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) jail in Louisiana. His lawyers learned on Tuesday that his Covid-19 test was positive.

He and his family are calling for his release to a medical facility where he can receive proper care.

Hi, Helen Sullivan with you now. Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

Doctors on the frontline also widely believe that the real numbers are much higher – one factor being people dying at home.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one medic in Rio de Janeiro state said three patients who were intubated after testing positive using faster, less accurate serological tests died during his overnight shift last weekend at a public hospital in the town of Nova Iguaçu.

If one doctor saw this (in one night) I think it’s unlikely the number for the whole of Brazil is 474.

Brazil’s total number of confirmed deaths has now overtaken the WHO’s figure for China as cases accelerate in Latin America’s biggest country.

On Tuesday, the Brazilian health ministry reported 474 deaths over the previous 24 hours, taking the total to 5,017 – more than China, where the virus was first reported and which has seen 4,643 deaths so far, according to the WHO.

Brazil now has 71,886 confirmed cases after adding 5,385 in the last 24 hours, though widespread underreporting and a generalised lack of tests means numbers are almost definitely much higher. The G1 news site reported on Tuesday that deaths in São Paulo are 168% more than the official number of 2,049.

Films released on streaming platforms only will be eligible for Academy Awards next year because of the pandemic’s disruption to the industry, the organisers of the Oscars have said.

The change, announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, follows the closure of cinemas across the US. Previously, a movie had to have been screened in a cinema in Los Angeles for at least seven days to be eligible for Oscar consideration.

The number of cases in Peru has passed 30,000, with 854 associated deaths, the country’s health ministry has confirmed.

Tuesday’s 31,190 confirmed cases represents the second-highest caseload in Latin America. The number has more than doubled in nine days, according to a Reuters tally.

Infections have prompted the collapse of some medical facilities, with bodies being kept in hallways, masks being repeatedly reused, and protests breaking out amongst medical workers concerned over their safety.

28 Apr 202016.55 EDT

Haroon Siddique

In the UK, leading BAME campaigners have said the credibility of an inquiry into why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are being disproportionately affected by Covid-19 is being undermined among those it seeks to serve by the appointment of Trevor Phillips.

The former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission was selected despite being suspended from the Labour party last month for alleged Islamophobia, including a reference to UK Muslims as being “a nation within a nation”.

The first four UK doctors with Covid-19 known to have died were all Muslim.

And Labour’s former shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, has said:

We need a public inquiry. Very sadly, the public health executive have chosen to make Trevor Phillips one of their advisers on their inquiry, which I think means that their inquiry is dead on arrival.

Morocco has insisted that allegations of police brutality in enforcing the lockdown there are unfounded after an official in the office of the UN high commissioner for human eights included it in a list of countries where crackdowns have raised concern.

High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet has accused some governments of using emergency powers invoked over the coronavirus “to quash dissent, control the population, and even perpetuate their time in power”.

Bachelet did not name any countries. But at a news conference in Geneva, Georgette Gagnon, the director of field operations for the UN high commissioner’s office, included Morocco among 15 countries where police actions in enforcing lockdown measures were deemed most troubling.

Morocco’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said measures it has adopted are in line with “the rule of law in full respect of human rights”.

False information on alleged violations shared by some media are unfounded and were not mentioned in any official document of the High Commission for Human Rights.

Moroccan police have registered nearly 77,000 violations of lockdown measures and nearly 41,000 people are awaiting trial, a Moroccan source told Reuters. Prosecutors said 5% of them are in detention. Morocco has confirmed 4,252 cases of the coronavirus, including 165 deaths.

28 Apr 202016.05 EDT

Joan E Greve

The US vice-president Mike Pence has been heavily criticised for failing to wear a face mask on a visit to the Mayo Clinic’s facilities in Minnesota.

Pence leads the US government’s coronavirus taskforce, though he is typically overshadowed by Donald Trump or medical experts at the regular press briefings.

Nearly 70 residents of a single home for military veterans in the US state of Massachusetts have died, local officials have said.

While the death toll at the state-run Holyoke Soldiers’ Home continues to climb, federal officials are investigating whether residents were denied proper medical care while the state’s top prosecutor is deciding whether to bring legal action.

“It’s horrific. These guys never had a chance,” said Edward Lapointe, whose father-in-law lives at the home and had a mild case of the virus.

According to the Associated Press, officials said 66 residents who tested positive and the cause of another death is unknown. Another 83 residents and 81 staff have tested positive.

A state of emergency in the Czech Republic is set to be extended until 17 May after a vote in the lower house of the country’s parliament.

The extension is a week shorter than the government sought. The prime minister, Andrej Babiš, had asked for an extension until 25 May to be able to keep restrictions on business in place. The state of emergency was due to expire on 30 April.

The government is reluctant to end the emergency early, even though it has already reopened some shops and services over the past week as the pace of new infections has declined.

It has announced that it now expects to reopen the economy faster than previously forecast, although not in time for the deadline now set by parliament.