May 13 coronavirus news

The US Embassy in Tanzania has warned that many hospitals in the city of Dar es Salaam have been overwhelmed in recent weeks, classifying the risk of contracting Covid-19 in the country as "extremely high," in a health alert Wednesday. 

The health alert notes that the Tanzanian government has not released any data on Covid-19 since April 29.

Tanzania has had a more lenient approach to the outbreak in the region. President John Magufuli suggested his citizens "pray the virus away," and allowed places of worship to remain open while schools closed. The President also vowed he wouldn't put the country under any lockdown but did make social distancing and mask wearing mandatory. 

The embassy recommends all US government personnel and their families remain at home except for essential activities, and substantially limit entry of non-residents into private homes. The embassy also signaled that US citizens in Tanzania should expect to remain in the country for an "indefinite period" as the government "does not anticipate arranging additional repatriation flights in Tanzania at this time."

The last coronavirus report to come from the Prime Minister's office on April 29 indicated 480 confirmed cases.

Up to 420,000 jobs in trade and tourism could be lost in Italy due to the coronavirus emergency, Enrico Postacchini of the Italian Confederation of Enterprises — called Confcommercio — said Wednesday during a senate hearing in Rome.

Confcommercio estimates that 270,000 businesses in the trade and tourism sector — 10% of the total number — are in danger of closing down.

Postacchini appealed to the government to act immediately to help businesses. "Business operators have lost patience, they have not seen anything apart from the 600 euros," he said referring to the emergency bonus for workers introduced by the government in March.

Huge losses will be registered during the tourist season and once the health emergency is over, "there will be the problem of filling hotel rooms," Confcommercio’s representative for tourism Alberto Corti said in the same hearing.

Only 20% of Italians will be able to go on vacation, with the exception of those who have second homes, he said. In the tourism sector the losses could be around 120 billion euros (about $130 billion USD) between now and the end of 2020, Corti said.

The number of calls to a government run anti-violence helpline in Italy increased by 73% during the coronavirus lockdown, the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) said Wednesday.

Between March 1 and April 16, at least 5,031 calls were registered, an increase of 73% compared to the same period of 2019. Just under half of those who called the hotline asked for help, an increase of 59%, Istat said in a statement.

Remember: According to the statistical agency, the increase is not necessarily attributable to greater violence but could be due to more awareness.

Meanwhile, the worst-hit Italian region of Lombardy on Tuesday registered a small increase in the number of Covid-19 cases for the second day in a row, after a few days in which active case numbers were going down, according to the Italian Civil Protection Agency.

Lombardy officials said the increase in cases could be explained by the addition of data that was collected from the past few day.

The total number of cases in Italy, including deaths and recoveries, stands at 221,216.

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Austria will start relaxing border controls, but those along the Austrian-Italian border would remain in place for the time being, Sebastian Kurz the Austrian Chancellor said at a government press conference in Vienna on Wednesday.  

Kurz said, “We have agreed with Germany to fully open the border between Austria and Germany from June 15 as long as the number of infection cases allow for it. We are in contact with Switzerland and Liechtenstein to find a similar agreement and of course we are also in contact with our eastern neighbors to find solutions on our eastern borders."

He said Austria is in "intensive contact with its eastern European neighbors," adding, "I assume we will already be able to present a plan in the coming days, latest next week which we agreed on with these countries.''

Austria's national rail system ÖBB suspended passenger rail traffic between Austria and Italy on March 11.

Read more here.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the rise in infection rates in some countries relaxing their lockdowns is a “very clear warning” for the UK “not to proceed too fast or too recklessly”. 

In reaction to videos of packed London buses circulating this morning, Johnson said he does not want to see crowding on public transport in the UK.

“We are working very actively with TfL [Transport for London] to ensure that what we do is we have more capacity, we discourage people from going to work during the peak, and that operators — particularly TFL — lay on more tube trains when those are necessary throughout the day,” Johnson told lawmakers in parliament.

Some background: Today marks the first day people are allowed to return to work if they cannot work from home after Johnson laid out his vision for gradually reopening the economy in an address televised on Sunday.

The government's previous stance was that people should only go to work "if they must," Johnson said in Sunday's address, adding "we now need to stress that anyone who can't work from home, for instance those in construction or manufacturing, should be actively encouraged to go to work."

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has said the country is hoping for unrestricted travel within the European Union by June 15.

Speaking to journalists in Berlin, Seehofer said Germany had agreed with France, Austria and Switzerland to ease gradually its border controls, with the goal to completely end the restrictions by June 15.

Germany's federal police opened five border crossings between the state of Bavaria and Austria on Wednesday.

The country will further relax some border controls starting on Saturday, which were introduced in March to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Gilead Sciences, the maker of remdesivir, has reached agreements with five generic drugmakers to produce remdesivir for 127 countries. The move comes after growing questions over the global supply of remdesivir, which has been shown to speed the recovery of some coronavirus patients. 

Gilead signed agreements with manufacturers based in India and Pakistan, according to its website. The deals allow the companies to distribute the drug to mostly low-income and lower-middle income countries, according to Gilead, which said the companies can set their own prices.

The manufacturers also wouldn’t have to pay royalties to Gilead for the time being, although that would change if another drug or vaccine is approved to treat or prevent Covid-19 – or if the World Health Organization declares an end to the public health emergency of international concern. 

In the US: Gilead has said it will donate its existing remdesivir supply of 1.5 million vials, enough for about 100,000 to 200,000 patients. At least 40% of that is reserved for the United States, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. 

While the company has said it hopes to produce a million treatment courses by the end of the year, it’s unclear how that will be distributed internationally.

In a statement, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said Gilead’s licensing agreements don’t go far enough. It noted that much of the world’s population wouldn’t be covered by the agreements, and said Gilead should “commit its patents, data and know-how to the public domain,” instead of just licensing its technology.

About the drug: In early results from a trial sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health, remdesivir was found to shorten the duration of illness in patients with severe Covid-19, but it had no statistically significant effect on whether patients died. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it would be depressing to return to restrictions "because we want too much too soon" as the country starts to ease lockdown measures. 

Speaking in parliament Wednesday, Merkel said the country will have to live with the virus and it will remain that way for some time to come.

Stressing the importance of trying to avoid a new spike in Covid-19 cases, Merkel said: "We have the obligation to not jeopardize what we have achieved so far already."

Merkel said, as of today, she was not expecting tax rises or rises in business contributions in response to the pandemic.

The reproduction number for the novel coronavirus in Germany has dipped back below the key threshold of one, the national agency for disease control and prevention, the Robert Koch Institute, said earlier on Wednesday.

Also known as the R0 value, the figure had been above one for three consecutive days, a sign the disease may have been expanding rather than being pushed back. 

"The decline in new infections which we have seen in the past weeks is flattening and may be reaching a plateau,” the Institute wrote in its daily data brief. 

Germany continues to deal with several larger scale outbreaks in meat-processing plants and retirement homes as the country eases restrictions to combat the pandemic.

Official daily data from Tuesday showed 798 new infections and 101 Covid-19 related deaths during that 24-hour period. 

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