Italy extends lockdown as toll passes 13,000
ROME, Italy — Italy on Wednesday extended its economically-crippling lockdown until April 13 to help stem coronavirus infections that have claimed 13,115 lives.
"If we start loosening our measures now, all our efforts will have been in vain," Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told the nation in a national televised address.
The extension had been expected. Italy's health minister said on Monday that businesses across the nation of 60 million would remained shuttered and public gatherings banned until at least April 12.
Italy's official infection rate has been steadily slowing but the number of daily deaths has remained stubbornly high.
The country reported another 727 fatalities on Wednesday.
It has registered 2,376 deaths in the last three days alone.
Officials are now debating how they can resume at least some business activity without spreading the new disease.
Italy's Confindustria big business union estimates that each week under lockdown slices about 0.75 percent off the country's annual gross domestic product -- now the third-largest in the European Union.
Some media reports suggest that Conte will eventually leave that decision to regional leaders.
Local officials might then decide which factories or businesses in their regions can function safely if all the various social distancing rules are applied.
The authorities are also awaiting the delivery of kits that could allow comprehensive testing so that some people can resume work.
But Conte gave no indication of when or how the current lockdown measures -- in place fully since March 12 -- might be eased.
"When the experts tell us that the numbers are looking better, we will start thinking about lifting all the measures," Conte said.
"But I cannot tell you if that will be on April 14."
Current restrictions had been due to expire on Friday.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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