May 7 coronavirus news

A growing number of children are showing up at New York hospitals with troubling new symptoms that state health officials believe could be linked to coronavirus.

In an advisory to health care providers, state officials said 64 children in New York have been hospitalized with a condition doctors described as "pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome."

Some of the children had persistent fever, toxic shock syndrome and features similar to Kawasaki disease, the state health advisory said.

Kawasaki disease causes inflammation in the walls of the arteries and can limit blood flow to the heart. While it's usually treatable and most children recover without serious problems, it can also be deadly. It mainly affects children under the age of five.

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While pandemic-era policies are still being developed at hotels around the globe and will no doubt vary widely, it's safe to say that guests will see big changes the next time they check in wherever they find themselves.

Hotel stays are likely to be a stripped-down affair, particularly in higher-end hotels where personalized service and amenities have long been part of the draw.

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Text by Marnie Hunter, illustrations by Will Mullery, CNN

The Dutch Safety Board has begun an independent investigation into the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.

The probe will look at the preparations for a pandemic, crisis management, the measures taken and the phasing out of these measures, a statement said Thursday.

The Safety Board will also look at the effects of the coronavirus crisis on the safety of vulnerable people in the society, for example due to discontinuation of regular care or social services, the statement added.

Its aim is to draw lessons for “potential future epidemics.”

As of Wednesday, the Netherlands had 41,319 reported positive cases and 5,204 people reported dead, according to the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment.

The estimated number of people infected with coronavirus in the Russian capital is far higher than previously reported, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said Thursday.

In an interview on state news channel Rossiya-24, Sobyanin said screening studies found that between 2% and 2.5% of the city’s population – around 300,000 people – have contracted the virus. That’s around three times higher than the capital's 92,676 officially confirmed cases. 

“Our task is to identify as many of these people as possible,” Sobyanin said.

He added it was “clear that there are even more really sick people in the city” than those identified through testing.

Sobyanin said hospitals had been able to cope with an influx of patients.

"Over the past two weeks, the number of hospitalizations [of people with coronavirus] has not increased,” he said. “Moreover, the number of hospitalized and those who have been discharged shows a positive trend now. More were discharged than were hospitalized. And this is the main result of our work.”

The mayor warned, however, that lockdown and distancing measures would not end quickly.

“Today we see that it will take a long period to overcome the epidemic,” he said. “This means that for a long time we will live in a new reality, one not very comfortable for all of us."

Poland's upcoming presidential election will be postponed amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus, the country's coalition government leaders said Wednesday.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski of the ruling Law and Justice party, and Jaroslaw Gowin of the smaller Agreement party, announced a "solution that will guarantee Poles the opportunity to take part in democratic elections" in a joint statement reported by state-run Polish News Agency. 

"The speaker of the Sejm will announce new presidential elections at the earliest possible date," the statement reads, referring to Poland's lower house of parliament. It adds that voting will be done by post, "in the interests of the safety of Poles in view of the epidemic situation." 

A total of 733 people have died from coronavirus in Poland, where 14,740 cases of the virus have so far been reported, state-run Polish Radio announced late Wednesday. 

The decision to postpone the vote comes after weeks of criticism of the government. Campaigners and academics have said that the Law and Justice party is using the pandemic to continue chipping away at democracy and tightening its grip on power.

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Members of ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom, especially black men and women, face a higher risk of dying from Covid-19, according to data from England and Wales released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) on Thursday.

According to the ONS, the mortality rate from the novel coronavirus is 4.2 times higher for black men than for white men.

The numbers are similar for black women whose death rate from Covid-19 is 4.3 times higher than for white women.

The ONS statisticians found that black people are 1.9 times more likely to die of the virus even when age, socio-demographic characteristics and measures of health and disability are taken into account.

People of Bangladeshi and Pakistani, Indian, and mixed ethnicities had “statistically significant raised risk of death” from Covid-19, compared with those of white ethnicity, the ONS said.

“These results show that the difference between ethnic groups in Covid-19 mortality is partly a result of socio-economic disadvantage and other circumstances, but a remaining part of the difference has not yet been explained,” the ONS said in its report. 

Russia on Thursday recorded a record daily rise in coronavirus cases, reporting 11,231 new cases over the last 24-hour period, the country’s Covid-19 response headquarters said in a statement.

All told, Russia has seen 177,160 official cases of coronavirus, and 1,625 deaths.

The Russian government has nationwide lockdown measures in place until May 12, and President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said those measures may be extended and strengthened in some regions of the country.

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US President Donald Trump contradicted a nurse he was honoring in the Oval Office on Wednesday, insisting there are no personal protective equipment shortages in the US despite her account that availability could be "sporadic."

A reporter asked the nurses attending the National Nurse Day event if their PPE supplies are where they need to be amid the coronavirus pandemic, and many of them nodded in agreement or answered affirmatively.

Thomas said she works at a community health center in New Orleans, and that her youngest Covid-19 patient was 4 days old.

"The infection control measures that we learned back when we went to school, one gown and one mask for one patient per day -- this is a different time," she said, adding that she has been reusing a single N95 mask for "a few weeks now."

Despite her firsthand experience, Trump disputed Thomas' account.

Read more:

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Nearly half of UK doctors surveyed by the British Medical Association said they had to buy their own personal protective equipment or rely on donations during the coronavirus epidemic.

The BMA, a trade union for British doctors, said it surveyed 16,000 doctors in the UK, asking them about access to PPE, their well-being and drug shortages.

The UK government has long been criticized for failing to provide enough adequate protective equipment for the National Health Service (NHS).

The latest PPE controversy came on Thursday, when it emerged that a much touted delivery of around 400,000 surgical gowns ordered by the government from Turkey in mid-April was never distributed among NHS workers because it did not meet British safety standards.

Dr. Chaand Nagpaul, the chair of the BMA Council, said in a news release: