Hello and welcome to today’s rolling global coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. It’s Naaman Zhou here, bringing you the latest.
Donald Trump has just given a White House briefing after an absence over the weekend, following his controversial remarks on Friday about injecting disinfectant. In a combative briefing, he said he “does not” take responsibility for reports that people have may have followed his suggestions which were universally discredited by medical experts.
Trump also hit out at China, saying Beijing could have stopped the virus at its source and said his administration was conducting “serious investigations” into what happened: “We’re doing very serious investigations … We are not happy with China,” he said.
In other news, the World Health Organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says that the agency sounded the highest level of alarm over the novel coronavirus early on, but that not all countries heeded its advice: “The world should have listened to WHO then, carefully,” he said.
Other key developments over the past few hours include:
- The number of people confirmed to have coronavirus has passed 3 million according to Johns Hopkins University, with 207,583 deaths globally.
- Switzerland and Nigeria say they will begin easing its restrictions.
- Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said he is concerned about people missing vaccines for diseases such as polio and measles because of the coronavirus pandemic.
- UK hospital deaths rose by 360, taking the total to 21,902.
- Mexico’s president declared the country had “tamed” its coronavirus outbreak, despite widespread suspicions that Covid-19 cases are being undercounted.
- WhatsApp claims to have cut viral messages by 70% after introducing a limit on the number of people to whom users could forward messages.
- Afghanistan has recorded its biggest one-day rise in cases, triggered by a continued surge of transmission in Kandahar.
- And Sydney’s Bondi Beach has reopened again, after it was shut for being too crowded.