India has taken a significant step towards loosening its lockdown, reopening places of worship, restaurants and shopping malls, despite coronavirus cases continuing to soar and experts warning the country was far from hitting its peak.
Over the weekend India overtook both Italy and Spain to register the fifth highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, 257,000, with cases climbing by more than 9,000 each day. The death toll from Covid-19 stands at 7,135.
The easing of Indias lockdown of its 1.3 billion people, which has been in place since 24 March, went ahead as scheduled on Monday. While it is acknowledged to have slowed the spread of the virus, it has had a brutal impact on Indias poor, particularly tens of millions of migrant workers.
Shopping malls and restaurants opened their doors, and mosques, temples and gurdwaras began welcoming back worshippers, with strict limits on congregation numbers and physical distancing measures in place. In Delhi, the 400-year-old Jama Masjid mosque, one of the biggest in India, is planning to limit worshippers to just three visits a day, instead of the usual five.
Yet experts fear the easing is coming at a worrying time in Indias battle to contain the virus, with 50% of Indias total cases reported in the last two weeks. We are very far away from the peak, said Dr Nivedita Gupta, of the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research.
The situation remains particularly dire in Indias largest and most populous cities of Delhi and Mumbai, where state-run hospitals have run out of beds and are turning patients away. Maharashtra, Indias worst-hit state where Mumbai is located, has reported a reported a total of 85,975 cases.
Vikas Jain, a Delhi resident, spoke of the ordeal his brother-in-law Narender Jain, 47, experienced after he developed coronavirus symptoms and bounced between five hospitals.
He was first refused entry at two Delhi hospitals, East Delhi hospital and Pushpanjali medical centre, which both said they had no beds. Finally, at about 4am on 2 June when his condition was getting dramatically worse, Narender was admitted to the emergency intensive care unit in Max Patparganj private hospital and put on a ventilator, but only when his family agreed to pay a deposit of 50,000 rupees (520).But he was not permitted to stay.
The next morning, when the test result came through that he had tested positive for Covid-19, the hospital told us they were unable to admit him because there were no beds and no ventilators for Covid-19 patients, so we would have to take him somewhere else, said Vikas. I could not believe it. They also said their ambulances would not take Covid patients so we would have to arrange our own ambulance.
All private Delhi hospitals they called said they had no beds for coronavirus patients so the family took Narender in the privately-hired ambulance to a nearby government Rajiv Gandhi hospital, but they said they had no ICU beds for Covid patients. After another two hours, a government-run hospital agreed to admit him.
But there was no care for him, no attendants even came out and me and my sister had to carry my brother-in-law myself from the ambulance on to the stretcher and take him up two floors of the hospital with no help. We had no protective equipment, Vikas said. In the hospital, they then told us that it would be another two hours till he could go on a ventilator. Narender died that day.
Delhis chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, issued a decree over the weekend that only those with documentary proof of residency in the capital would be admitted to the citys hospitals. In normal times, up to 70% of hospital beds in Delhi are taken by those who have come from outside the city for treatment.
It has suggested reserving Delhi hospitals for the people of Delhi, because if we open the hospitals for all, then the 9,000 Covid-19 beds organised will be filled just within three days, Kejriwal said, adding: If we get more cases in such a situation, where will we accommodate the patients of Delhi? However, hours later the decision was overturned by the citys lieutenant governor, who said patients could not be denied treatment on the grounds of their address.
On Monday, Kejriwal went into self-quarantine with a sore throat and fever and will be tested for Covid-19 on Tuesday.
During two weeks of protests, fevered political debate and presidential posturing, the virus marched on killing hundreds of Americans every day and spreading faster in southern states that have so far been spared the worst of its fury.
So much about the disease remains unknown and unpredictable. Rising US cases could be due to more testing. Or fraying social distancing and business openings could be giving the pandemic new life. But it seems like a heck of a coincidence that aggressive openers like Texas and Florida now see cases rising fast.
Nuanced analysis is needed to make sense of the pandemic and end it -- not exactly the forte of President Donald Trump, who is still wishing it away, saying Friday that the US was "largely through" the crisis.
He's not the only one who wants to move on. Teenagers are reaching their breaking points at home. Millions need to get back to work. And mixed with the outpouring of grief and anger at nationwide demonstrations is also the frustration of a country helplessly locked down for too long.
If the curve starts to sharply climb, it will take a brave politician to send everyone back home.
Read: I cant breathe: braving teargas in a pandemic
Journalists from across the country have reported that police officers are wearing masks less often than protesters. The state is the one with the duty to protect public health, Alexandra Phelan, a professor of global-health law at Georgetown University, told us earlier this week. Regardless of what the police think of the protests, she said, it is their obligation under international and domestic law to keep the protesters safe, including minimizing the health risk from viral spread.
There are too many variables to know exactly what the summer has in store for the outbreak in America, including what effect the protests will have. There are some signs of hope. Masks are in use around the country. Outdoor transmission seems to be fairly unlikely in most settings. And testing availability has improved. According to data from the COVID Tracking Project, the United States can now conduct 3 million tests a week. The public-health system is discovering and diagnosing a much greater percentage of cases than it did in the early days of the outbreak. Morgan Stanley estimated that the transmission rate in the U.S. was just above 1; this suggests that there has not been explosive growth in the number of active cases in recent weeks.
But that estimated rate also implies that cases are not rapidly declining. And the slow growth reflects the time before the full data from states recent moves to reopen their economy became availablebefore large swaths of the public returned to work, and before the mass protests and jailings began.
Few people believe that the U.S. is doing all it can to contain the virus. A brief glance at Covid Exit Strategy, a site that tracks state-by-state progress, reveals that most states are not actually hitting the reopening marks suggested by public-health experts. Yet state leaders have not stuck with the kinds of lockdowns that suppressed the virus in other countries; nobody has suggested that cases must be brought to negligible levels before normal activity can resume. No federal official has shared a plan for preventing transmission among states that have outbreaks of varying intensity. The Trump administration did not use the eight weeks of intense social distancing to significantly expand our suppression capacity.
What our colleague Ed Yong called the patchwork pandemic appears to have confused the American public about what is going on. The virus is not following one single course through the nation, but, like a tornado, is taking a meandering and at times incomprehensible path through cities and counties. Why this workplace but not another? Why this city or state but not others?
The virus has not mapped neatly onto American political narratives, either. While some questions remain about their accounting, Georgia and Floridawhere leaders opened up early and residents seemed relatively defiant of public-health advicehave seen relatively flat numbers, while California, which took a more conservative approach, has seen cases grow. The state most poised for major trouble seems to be Arizona, where the outbreak is spreading very quickly. Not only is the state (which lifted its stay-at-home order on May 16) setting new records for positive tests and people in the hospital, but the percentage of tests that are coming back positive is also growing. So much for warm weather and sunshine alone stamping out viral transmission, as some had hoped: Phoenix saw only a single days high under 90 degrees during May. The states age demographics also havent played an obvious role: The state is slightly younger than the U.S. as a whole.
Americans have not fully grasped that we are not doing what countries that have returned to normal have done. Some countries have almost completely suppressed the virus. Others had large outbreaks, took intense measures, and have seen life return to normal. Americans, meanwhile, never stayed at home to the degree that most Europeans have, according to mobility data from Apple and Google. Our version of the spring lockdown looked more like Swedens looser approach than like the more substantial measures in Italy, or even the United Kingdom and France. Swedish public-health officials have acknowledged that this approach may not have been the best path forward.
For the past two months, the 9-to-5 jobs at their recruiting software company were just the start of a busy workday for Joe Essenfeld, Boris Kozak and Matt Geffken.
After a short break for dinner and a little family time, the three friends would jump on an 8:30 p.m. Zoom call with a dozen other volunteers to work on AllClear, a website to help people find information about testing locations for Covid-19, and stay at it until 2 or 3 a.m.
AllClear now has a directory of more than 10,000 locations in the United States where people can be tested for Covid-19 or for antibodies to the coronavirus. The listing for each location is displayed on a map and contains information such as the test type and whether an appointment is necessary.
The excitement of doing something new felt familiar to the three men, who worked together at Jibe, a software company Mr. Essenfeld started. Last year, Jibe was sold to iCIMS, a recruiting software company where they still work. But there is no financial reward awaiting them this time. They have already spent $35,000 of their own money for something that they promise wont ever make a cent.
They are representative of a digital volunteerism that has emerged during the pandemic. As the coronavirus spread and frustration with the federal response to the crisis grew, some entrepreneurs and engineers applied their start-up ethos to help.
Carl Bass, former chief executive of the software company Autodesk, for example, is assembling 1,500 face shields a day for nurses and doctors from a robotics warehouse in Berkeley, Calif., and sending them across the country. Lan Xuezhao, founding partner of Basis Set Ventures, a venture capital firm in San Francisco, tapped her connections in China to procure tens of thousands of medical masks straight from the factories for hospitals.
When Messrs. Essenfeld, Kozak and Geffken, who all live in the New York area, set out to build AllClear in mid-March, the vision was to create a social network for people to share their experiences with the virus, including whether they had been tested.
It was the type of half-joking, half-serious idea that the three men regularly bounce off one another, like the time they considered selling caffeinated pickles or iced coffee that smelled like hot coffee. But as the seriousness of the pandemic became clear, they felt the itch to do something.
Feeling powerless during this crisis was difficult to deal with, Mr. Essenfeld said. But building this has been helping us cope with that.
They homed in on making it easy to find testing sites. At the time, it was difficult to find information on where and how people could be tested. The information that was available was dispersed across the internet on a variety of websites and came from local health agencies, hospitals and even social media. The data was often unreliable and inconsistent.
The challenge of collecting and organizing data, however, was familiar to them. At their start-up, they had faced similar issues with job listings, information that changed frequently and was dispersed across the web.
Weve done this over and over again, Mr. Kozak said. We were confident in our ability to get it done, and we werent confident in the governments ability to do it.
There is no shortage of websites to help people find testing locations. But some are run by local or state health agencies and provide locations only within a specific region. Other websites are run by health care providers and show only affiliated locations. Some sites by volunteer groups use unverified, crowdsourced information. Apple is allowing health care providers and labs to register as testing locations that will appear on Apple Maps, but it requires busy labs and medical offices to come forward.
AllClears creators say they believe their site is the only national testing location service providing verified information that is not affiliated with a health care provider or a specific type of test.
These grass-roots initiatives are a great step in the right direction, said Jim Kyung-Soo Liew, associate professor of finance at the Johns Hopkins Universitys Carey Business School, who created an online tool to track drive-through coronavirus testing sites across the United States. Being able to test easily is important in helping curb the spread of the disease.
With no background in medical testing, the three men contacted two doctoral candidates from Cornell Universitys medical school for advice. The pair, whom Mr. Essenfeld had met at a genetics conference, were the first to agree to volunteer by helping to organize the specific information to collect about testing sites and how it should be displayed.
The AllClear founders also tapped their professional network from their start-up days, and reached out to Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, a San Francisco law firm that had represented Jibe since its early years.
The firm agreed to take on AllClear pro bono to handle the nonprofit paperwork and make sure the project complied with data privacy rules and guidelines for handling health information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. They also drafted terms of service.
The men recruited volunteers to help work on the look and function of the site. They leaned on friends and current and former colleagues to bring on engineers, designers and product strategists. The group has grown to more than 30 volunteers, many of whom gather on a nightly Zoom planning call.
Updated June 5, 2020
A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.
The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nations job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.
Mass protests against police brutality that have brought thousands of people onto the streets in cities across America are raising the specter of new coronavirus outbreaks, prompting political leaders, physicians and public health experts to warn that the crowds could cause a surge in cases. While many political leaders affirmed the right of protesters to express themselves, they urged the demonstrators to wear face masks and maintain social distancing, both to protect themselves and to prevent further community spread of the virus. Some infectious disease experts were reassured by the fact that the protests were held outdoors, saying the open air settings could mitigate the risk of transmission.
Exercise researchers and physicians have some blunt advice for those of us aiming to return to regular exercise now: Start slowly and then rev up your workouts, also slowly. American adults tended to be about 12 percent less active after the stay-at-home mandates began in March than they were in January. But there are steps you can take to ease your way back into regular exercise safely. First, start at no more than 50 percent of the exercise you were doing before Covid, says Dr. Monica Rho, the chief of musculoskeletal medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. Thread in some preparatory squats, too, she advises. When you havent been exercising, you lose muscle mass. Expect some muscle twinges after these preliminary, post-lockdown sessions, especially a day or two later. But sudden or increasing pain during exercise is a clarion call to stop and return home.
States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you arent being told to stay at home, its still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.
Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus whether its surface transmission or close human contact is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.
Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.
If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)
The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people dont need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks dont replace hand washing and social distancing.
If youve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.
Mr. Kozak said no one had said no when he asked for help.
To collect the information about testing locations, AllClear posted an advertisement on Upwork, which helps companies hire freelancers, looking for researchers to scour the internet. It offered to pay $4 to $7 per hour for the work, depending on the location and experience of the researcher.
After a day, around 130 freelancers from around the world had expressed interest. Interviews narrowed the pool to 20 candidates, focusing on those who had demonstrated some knowledge of the virus. On the first night, the 20 candidates came back with information about 2,000 testing locations.
Eventually, AllClear whittled the group down to five researchers two from India, two from Egypt and one from Poland who work 40 hours a week and monitor 10 states each. The researchers comb sites from state and local agencies, medical providers and even Twitter for leads on possible testing site information. A team of volunteers verifies that the information is correct before it is published.
So far, AllClear has spent $35,000 to pay researchers as well as cloud computing costs to keep the site up. It is hoping to find a sponsor to pay the running costs.
The site became public in late April. It is drawing several thousand people a day, and soon its location results will start appearing in Google search results.
As the crisis continues, the number of testing sites has grown and the type of information has changed. For example, some locations now offer testing for the virus as well as antibody tests.
The three friends said finding testing sites was just the beginning. Ultimately, their goal is to help people go back to living more normal lives.
Our technology and efforts will continue to focus on helping reduce anxiety around getting tested and finding out the results, Mr. Essenfeld said.
By
CHRISTOPHER RUGABER AP Economics Writer
June 9, 2020, 1:30 AM
5 min read
5 min read
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. economy entered a recession in February as the coronavirus struck the nation, a group of economists declared Monday, ending the longest expansion on record.
The economists said that employment, income and spending peaked in February and then fell sharply afterward as the viral outbreak shut down businesses across the country, marking the start of the downturn after nearly 11 full years of economic growth.
A committee within the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private nonprofit group, determines when recessions begin and end. It broadly defines a recession as a decline in economic activity that lasts more than a few months.
For that reason, the NBER typically waits longer before making a determination that the economy is in a downturn. In the previous recession, the committee did not declare that the economy was in recession until December 2008, a year after it had actually begun. But in this case, the NBER said the collapse in employment and incomes was so steep that it could much more quickly make a determination.
The unprecedented magnitude of the decline in employment and production, and its broad reach across the entire economy, warrants the designation of this episode as a recession, even if it turns out to be briefer than earlier contractions, the NBER panel said.
The way the NBER defines recessions, they begin in the same month that the previous expansion ends. Because the economy peaked in February, that is the month when the recession officially began, rather than in March, when unemployment began to rise.
Financial markets had little reaction Monday to the NBER's declaration. February is when the stock market hit its own record high before stumbling into a severe downturn from which it has mostly recovered, thanks to extraordinary stimulus and support measures from the Federal Reserve and Congress as well as expectations that the worst of the economic pain may have passed.
The unemployment rate is officially 13.3%, down from 14.7% in April. Both figures are higher than in any other downturn since World War II. A broader measure of underemployment that includes those who have given up looking and those who have been reduced to part-time status is 21.2%.
On Friday, the government said that employers added 2.5 million jobs in May, an unexpected gain that suggested job losses may have bottomed out. A recession ends when employment and output start to pick up again, not when they reach their pre-recession levels. So it's possible that the recession could technically end soon.
That would make the current recession the shortest and deepest on record. It is expected to be followed by an extended recovery before the economy manages to regain its pre-pandemic levels of production and employment. Some economists say it could take two years or more, with the unemployment rate likely still 10% or higher at the end of this year.
The most important thing to focus on is the strength of the recovery, and thats where the greatest uncertainty lies right now, said Ernie Tedeschi, policy economist at investment bank Evercore ISI.
It's unclear, Tedeschi noted, whether the virus is under control, whether there will be a second wave or whether or when a vaccine will be developed.
On Monday, the World Bank said the world was facing a health and economic crisis that has spread with astonishing speed and will produce the largest shock the global economy has witnessed in seven decades. It expects millions of people to be pushed into extreme poverty.
In its updated global outlook, the World Bank projected that international economic activity will shrink by 5.2% this year, the deepest recession since a contraction in 1945-46 at the end of World War II. The 5.2% downturn would be the fourth-worst global downturn over the past 150 years, exceeded only by the Great Depression of the 1930s and the periods immediately after World War I and World War II.
In the U.S., states have begun reopening their economies, thereby allowing businesses to recall some employees to work. But economic activity is returning only very gradually. A full recovery wont occur until Americans are willing to resume their previous habits of shopping, eating out, and traveling. That might not happen until a vaccine is developed or testing is more widely available.
Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, an accounting firm, said the NBER committee might end up declaring this recession to have already ended in May based on the fact that hiring rebounded that month.
We could have the shortest recession in history it seems ridiculous, but we could, Swonk said. Still, it will take much longer for the economy to rebound, she said.
This bottom is going to be uniquely deep, and we dont know how fast we will get out of the bottom, she said.
AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report.
Conservationists have warned that the coronavirus pandemic could spark a surge in ocean pollution adding to a glut of plastic waste that already threatens marine life after finding disposable masks floating like jellyfish and waterlogged latex gloves scattered across seabeds.
The French non-profit Opration Mer Propre, whose activities include regularly picking up litter along the Cte dAzur, began sounding the alarm late last month.
Divers had found what Joffrey Peltier of the organisation described as Covid waste dozens of gloves, masks and bottles of hand sanitiser beneath the waves of the Mediterranean, mixed in with the usual litter of disposable cups and aluminium cans.
The quantities of masks and gloves found were far from enormous, said Peltier. But he worried that the discovery hinted at a new kind of pollution, one set to become ubiquitous after millions around the world turned to single-use plastics to combat the coronavirus. Its the promise of pollution to come if nothing is done, said Peltier.
In France alone, authorities have ordered two billion disposable masks, said Laurent Lombard of Opration Mer Propre. Knowing that soon well run the risk of having more masks than jellyfish in the Mediterranean, he wrote on social media alongside video of a dive showing algae-entangled masks and soiled gloves in the sea near Antibes.
The group hopes the images will prompt people to embrace reusable masks and swap latex gloves for more frequent handwashing. With all the alternatives, plastic isnt the solution to protect us from Covid. Thats the message, said Peltier.
In the years leading up to the pandemic, environmentalists had warned of the threat posed to oceans and marine life by skyrocketing plastic pollution. As much as 13 million tonnes of plastic goes into oceans each year, according to a 2018 estimate by UN Environment. The Mediterranean sees 570,000 tonnes of plastic flow into it annually an amount the WWF has described as equal to dumping 33,800 plastic bottles every minute into the sea.
These figures risk growing substantially as countries around the world confront the coronavirus pandemic. Masks often contain plastics such as polypropylene, said ric Pauget, a French politician whose region includes the Cte dAzur.
With a lifespan of 450 years, these masks are an ecological timebomb given their lasting environmental consequences for our planet, he wrote last month in a letter to Emmanuel Macron, calling on the French president to do more to address the environmental consequences of disposable masks.
Earlier this year the Hong Kong-based OceansAsia began voicing similar concerns, after a survey of marine debris in the citys uninhabited Soko Islands turned up dozens of disposable masks.
On a beach about 100 metres long, we found about 70, said Gary Stokes of OceansAsia. One week later, another 30 masks had washed up. And thats on an uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere.
Curious to see how far the masks had travelled, he began checking other nearby beaches. Were finding them everywhere, he said. Ever since society started wearing masks, the cause and effects are being seen on the beaches.
While some of the debris could be attributed to carelessness, he speculated that the lightweight masks were at times also being carried from land, boats and landfills by the wind.
Its just another item of marine debris, he said, likening the masks to plastic bags or straws that often wash up on the citys more remote shorelines. Its no better, no worse, just another item were leaving as a legacy to the next generation.
Still, given the likelihood that porpoises and dolphins in the region could mistake a mask for food, he was bracing himself for a grim find. Were constantly getting them washing up dead and were just waiting for a necropsy when we find a mask inside, he said. I think its inevitable.
Study links blood type to lower risk of catching coronavirus Financial Times
British theatre will need some form of government intervention during the coronavirus crisis before venues can reopen, the actor David Tennant has said.
Theatres closed abruptly in March and many in the industry fear they will not be able to reopen properly until 2021.
In an interview with this weeks Radio Times, Tennant said one of the biggest issues is about audience safety. Youre asking people to pay a lot of money to potentially have someone coughing into their packet of boiled sweets and infecting them, he said.
I dont know what the answer is yet. Its urgent, because the performing arts in this country dont exist with huge profit margins.
A handful of theatres, including the Nuffield in Southampton, have already gone bust and there are warnings that 70% of theatres will run out of money by the end of the year.
The West End producer Sonia Friedman has said the performing arts face the real possibility of complete obliteration without substantial government support, while the director Sam Mendes said an ecosystem this intricate and evolved cannot be rebuilt from scratch.
Tennant said some theatres were teetering. He added: Well need government intervention until theatres can safely reopen, and audiences are happy to go back.
The government has set up a cultural renewal taskforce to help map a course out of the lockdown, but arts leaders say the solution must involve investment.
The culture secretary Oliver Dowden said on Monday he was involved in intricate discussions with the Treasury and suggested a deal was almost done.
He told the London Evening Standard: I am not going to stand by and see our world-leading position in arts and culture destroyed.
Of course I want to get the money flowing, I am not going to let anyone down.
Tennant stars with Michael Sheen in a lockdown comedy for the BBC titled Staged, in which they play actors who had been due to open in a new West End production of Luigi Pirandellos Six Characters in Search of an Author.
Their director suggests they continue rehearsals through lockdown on Zoom. The show also features their real-life partners, Tennants wife, Georgia Moffett, and Sheens partner, Anna Lundberg, both actors.
Casting existing pairs of actor partners in shows is being discussed as a possible way of working within the rules of social distancing, and Tennant said he was in favour.
He said: It would be great. Wed have to all isolate together for rehearsals. And wed need a lot of childcare for when we were on stage.
People have died at home alone of Covid-19 during the pandemic and not been found for up to two weeks, doctors who have investigated such deaths have said.
They have only been discovered after a relative, friend or neighbour raised the alarm and have in many cases gone undetected for so long that their body has started to decompose.
Campaigners for the elderly said the phenomenon highlighted the vulnerability of isolated older people living on their own with little family support and the risks being run by the large numbers of patients who have avoided hospitals and GP surgeries in recent months through fear of coronavirus.
People have lain undiscovered during the pandemic for seven to 14 days, said Dr Mike Osborn, a senior pathologist in London and the chair of the death investigation committee at the Royal College of Pathologists.
Ive seen plenty of such cases like this, where bodies are decomposed, in the Covid outbreak and also done postmortems in query Covid cases [where the disease was suspected].
The decomposition makes identifying the exact cause of death difficult, Osborne stressed. However, despite this, he was able to establish that some such deaths were as a result of Covid-19.
Doctors believe that several dozen such cases occurred in London during March, April and May.
During the pandemic doctors have certified the deaths of 700 people who lived at home in London, with or without relatives. Medics involved in ascertaining the cause of these deaths say that in many cases they have either confirmed coronavirus as the cause or judged that, combined with underlying poor health, it was likely to have contributedor resulted in the persons death
We always feared that a number of older people would be found dead alone at home, either victims of the virus or of something else, and it is extremely sad to find that this is indeed the case, said Caroline Abrahams, the charity director of Age UK.
The Guardian is investigating how the UK government prepared for and is responding to the coronavirus pandemic. We want to learn more about recent decisions taken at the heart of government. If you're a whistleblower or source and with new information, you can emailinvestigations@theguardian.comor (using a non-work phone) send us a Signal or WhatsApp to this number (UK) +44 7584 640566. (The number does not take calls.) For the most secure communications,use SecureDropand for general advice on confidentially contacting the Guardiansee our guide.
It also underlines why its such a cause for concern that the NHS has seen a significant drop in the numbers seeking help for serious conditions, even heart attacks and strokes.
It is not known how many people have died alone at home and not been found. However, all such cases have been referred to the local coroner, and inquests will happen in the months ahead.
Doctors say that while most of such cases involved older people living alone, in others the person who died had mental health problems, such as schizophrenia or depression, or had severe learning disabilities. Some are also thought to have used drugs, alcohol or both.
Another pathologist in London who has looked into a number of deaths which have gone undetected said: I know of what we call decomps involving people being found dead at home after not being heard from for a couple of weeks. The ones I know about have all been older people over-60s who lived alone. They didnt live with loved ones and seemingly didnt have many relatives close by.
A few have been described by neighbours as reclusive or private, things like that. Often they were discovered by a neighbour or acquaintance who hasnt heard from them for a while popping round, seeing no signs of life and phoning the ambulance or the police or both, who then make entry and find the deceased.
Some of these deaths were discovered after the persons family doctor, after being unable to contact them, asked the police to make a welfare check on them by calling round.
The head of the Royal College of GPs linked such deaths to the lockdown that has been in force across the UK since 23 March, which has banned mingling between members of different households in peoples homes, and people not seeking NHS care when they needed it.
The Covid-19 pandemic is also creating an epidemic of loneliness, not just for older people, and sadly there are some people who will fall through the net, said Prof Martin Marshall.
GPs are working hard to check on their patients who are shielding and the NHS volunteers have been doing a good job of looking after vulnerable people in their communities. But we are noticing an increase in people dying in the community, often at home and often due to conditions unrelated to Covid-19, such as cardiac arrest.
If people are choosing not to seek medical attention for non-Covid illnesses for fear of catching the virus, or because they are worried about being a burden on the NHS, then it is incredibly concerning, he added.
Marshall urged people to keep an eye on the movements and welfare of vulnerable neighbours who are living alone.Wherever possible, we would ask people to check on their neighbours with appropriate social distancing measures in place and alert the authorities if they have any concerns. Charities such as Age UK also have excellent tips on how communities can help each other during this difficult time.
One of the 30 doctors who certified the deaths of about 700 people who died at home alone in London during the pandemic said: Colleagues have had cases of people not being found for five or even seven days. Sometimes they were only discovered by someone noticing a smell.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that bars and bowling alleys are on the list of business that can reopen at 25 percent beginning Friday and restaurants can increase to 50 percent capacity as the state continues to go through phases to reopen the state after closing many businesses to battle the spread of the coronavirus. Eric Gay/AP hide caption
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that bars and bowling alleys are on the list of business that can reopen at 25 percent beginning Friday and restaurants can increase to 50 percent capacity as the state continues to go through phases to reopen the state after closing many businesses to battle the spread of the coronavirus.
Texas reported a record-breaking number of COVID-19 hospitalizations Monday, as the governor plans to reopen more businesses and double capacity.
Texas Department of State Health Services figures show 1,935 people were admitted as hospital patients for coronavirus-related treatment. That is up from a previous record of 1,888 more than a month ago on May 5.
The department's new figures were released as Gov. Greg Abbott moves forward with a plan to open bars, restaurants, amusement parks and other businesses to 50% capacity.
Abbott led most of the nation's governors in allowing Texas to lift statewide stay-at-home orders and urging businesses to reopen at limited capacity on May 1.
But even in states where officials left stringent restrictions in place, the number of newly diagnosed cases are also rising. About 20 states, including California and Arizona, have also reported a rise in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, according to The New York Times. All as state leaders have come under increasing pressure to restart the economy.
The pattern also holds true worldwide. On Monday, the World Health Organization warned the outbreak is worsening around the globe. The U.N. body said the world had recorded its highest daily jump of cases 136,000. And the U.S. and Brazil continue to report the highest number of new cases on a daily basis with roughly 20,000 each.
Meanwhile, virus experts and epidemiologists are concerned that the recent protests that have cascaded across the country since the killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day, will lead to an unprecedented spike in coronavirus cases.
In Texas, the availability of intensive-care beds and ventilators 1,600 and 5,800 respectively have been seen as markers of improvement and evidence that it is time to reopen the economy.
Some officials have stated the increase in cases has more to do with the spread of testing. Some counties are now including prison testing results in their data, which is driving reporting rates up.
And the numbers are likely to continue to rise. On Monday Abbott pledged to increase testing "in underserved and minority communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the virus."
Throughout Texas, more than 75,000 people have been infected and more than 1,800 others have died from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.
