May 13 coronavirus news

People wait for registration and health checks at the border between Austria and Italy near Matrei am Brenner, Austria, on March 11.

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.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves 10 Downing Street to attend Prime Minister's Questions in the Houses of Parliament on May 13 in London.

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 speaks to the media on May 13 in Berlin, Germany.

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. 

Emergency personnel work at the site of a fire at the St. George Hospital in St. Petersburg on May 12.

Russia has suspended the use and circulation of Aventa-M ventilators produced after April 1 2020, following two deadly fires in coronavirus hospitals, the country’s Federal Service for Supervision in Healthcare Roszdravnadzor said in a statement Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a fire in St. Petersburg claimed the lives of five patients and forced the evacuation of 150 people. Three days earlier a similar incident killed one patient in Moscow. Both hospitals used Aventa-M ventilators, Roszdravnadzor said. 

Aventa-M is a flagship ventilator produced by KRET, which is part of state-owned defense producer Rostec.

KRET has been designated by the Russian authorities as the main supplier of ventilators in the country. According to a government contract, KRET is supplying 6,711 ventilators in total this year to Russia’s regional hospitals. In April, the company said it would increase its production capacity from 10 ventilators to 100 ventilators a day. 

Aventa-M ventilators were also part of a shipment of medical supplies sent by Russia to the US in early April.

A FEMA spokesperson told CNN the ventilators had never been deployed and the shipment was returned by New York and New Jersey.

Schools and universities in Beijing will reopen in June, according to Beijing Municipal Health Commission Spokesperson Li Yi.

Middle school students in certain grades will be allowed to resume classes on June 1. A start date for elementary school students in the first to third grade is yet to be confirmed but those in the fourth and fifth grade will be allowed to resume classes on June 8.

The health commission said that schools would work hard to prevent and control the spread of Covid-19 in their institutions.

Universities in the Chinese capital will be allowed to reopen on a voluntary basis, as long as their campuses have implemented epidemic control measures.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak makes a statement in the House of Commons in London on May 12.

Britain is likely to face a “significant recession” this year due to the pandemic, finance minister Rishi Sunak said.

The British economy contracted by 2% in the first quarter of 2020, according to UK GDP figures published on Wednesday.

Pedestrians and vehicles make their way along a street in the Kwun Tong district of Hong Kong on May 6.

Hong Kong officials confirmed that two new locally transmitted coronavirus cases have been recorded in the city, for the first time in 22 days.

The two cases are a 66-year old grandmother and her five-year old granddaughter who do not live together.

Health officials are tracing their close contacts. The pair’s neighbors, along with the students and teachers at the five-year-old’s tutorial center, will be tested for Covid-19, said Dr. Chuang Shuk Kwan of the Hong Kong Department of Health.

Chuang warned that the new cases showed an “invisible transmission chain,” and added that officials would not rule out the possibility of future locally-transmitted cases and a community outbreak.

Officials also confirmed one new imported case from Pakistan. The individual initially tested negative upon arrival in Hong Kong on May 8 but subsequently tested positive on Wednesday while in quarantine.

Hong Kong now has 1,051 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus including four deaths.

An Amazon logistics center is pictured in Lauwin-Planque, northern France, on April 16.

Amazon France has said it is extending the closure of its distribution centers in the country through May 18.

The online retail company closed the centers on April 15, after a French court ordered Amazon France to stop all non-essential deliveries during the pandemic. The ruling was upheld by the Versailles court of appeal on April 24.

The court ordered the corporation to limit its sales to technology, DIY, pet-related items, medical, hygiene, and grocery products until it resolved issues with workers’ groups about measures the company put in place to protect workers against coronavirus. The court added that a fine of 100,000 euros would apply to each item sold from a non-approved category.

Amazon had earlier blamed the ruling on labor unions, which brought the complaint accusing the online delivery giant of endangering the lives of workers by not instituting enough safety precautions to protect against the virus.

Amazon said on Wednesday that it was continuing to talk with workers’ representatives and had received their request to include an independent expert in the negotiations.

Medical workers are seen at a hospital that treats Covid-19 patients in Khimki, Russia, on May 12.

Russia reported 10,028 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, bringing its total to 242,271, according to data released by the country’s virus response headquarters.

The country has recorded 2,212 Covid-19 related deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

Russia has recorded the second-highest number of cases worldwide, after the United States. It has now reported over 10,000 cases per day for 11 consecutive days. 

British Airways planes are seen parked on May 5 at Gatwick airport in London.

British holidaymakers may not necessarily be able to travel abroad this summer, the UK transport minister said today.

Asked in a BBC television interview whether people should book flights in the summer, for instance in July, Grant Shapps said:

Asked about confusion over the UK’s new measures to ease the nationwide lockdown, Shapps said the government had to make a decision on rules to start lifting restrictions.

“There has to be a line drawn where we say this is OK and this isn’t in order to gradually release things and this is where the line is at the moment,” he said.

More than 4.2 million people have been infected by Covid-19 worldwide, including at least 291,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. If you’re just joining us, here are the latest developments from around the globe:

Shareholders arrive to attend the annual general meeting of tourism group TUI in Hanover, Germany, on February 9, 2016.

TUI Group – one of the world’s largest tourism operators – is making significant cuts following a severe loss over the last few months, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Germany-headquartered travel group announced today that it will gradually resume its travel activities after suspending the vast majority of operations in March due to the coronavirus.

However, as many as 8,000 jobs worldwide could be cut or not filled at all in order to reduce administrative costs by up to 30%, a statement posted on the company website reads.

The statement said TUI’s hotels in the German regions of Sylt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will reopen in the coming days, while hotels and clubs in European destinations are also ready to welcome tourists.

TUI is devising a 10-point catalog for increased hygiene, and protection measures are currently being implemented. 

UNICEF published a report on Tuesday saying an additional 6,000 children could die every day from preventable causes over the next six months as the coronavirus pandemic continues to weaken health systems and disrupt routine services.

The report from the UN children’s agency is based on an analysis by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, newly published in The Lancet Global Health journal.

The organization said that based on the worst case of three scenarios in 118 low- and middle-income countries, the analysis estimates that an additional 1.2 million deaths of children under the age of 5 could occur in just six months, due to reductions in routine health service coverage levels.

UNICEF also added some 56,700 more maternal deaths could occur in just six months, in addition to the 144,000 deaths that already taken place in the same countries over the same period.

According to the modeling, the 10 countries that could potentially have the largest number of additional child deaths are: Bangladesh, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Uganda and Tanzania.

A 28-year-old sumo wrestler died of complications from coronavirus on Wednesday, according to Japan’s Sumo Association.

Shobushi – real name Kiyotaka Suetake – died from multiple organ failures caused by pneumonia, and was the first person in the sport to succumb to the virus.

The wrestler belonged to the Takadagawa stable and competed in sumo’s seventh division. There are eleven divisions in all.

Shobushi was admitted to hospital on April 8 after he developed a fever on April 4. He had been in intensive care since April 19, but his condition deteriorated. 

Last month, Takadagawa’s stable master also tested positive for coronavirus. So far, six members of the sumo association have been diagnosed with the virus.

The Sumo Association held its annual March tournament without spectators after the Japanese government requested the cancellation of large sports events.

Earlier this month, the sumo association canceled the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament and changed the venue of its July 2020 tournament. It will now take place at Tokyo’s Ryogoku Kokugikan behind closed doors.

A German police officer stops a car at a checkpoint at the border to Austria, near Fussen, Germany on on April 5.

The border between Austria and Germany will start to gradually reopen from Friday, the Austrian tourism ministry said today.

A spokesman for the ministry said the chancellors of the two countries agreed to reopen the border for day-trippers and commuters in a first step towards full normalization.

The second step would see a full reopening on June 15, taking into account coronavirus numbers at the time, the spokesman said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo posted pictures of himself wearing a red, white and blue face mask after touching down at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Wednesday.

A memo went out to White House staffers on Monday saying it is now required for all staffers entering the West Wing to wear a face covering, a source familiar told CNN. Several Trump administration staff have tested positive for coronavirus in recent days.

A classroom sits empty at Kent Middle School on April 1 in Kentfield, California.

School is out for an early summer for most US kids – and discouraging signs about the spread of coronavirus are starting to cloud hopes of a return to class in the fall.

Despite pressure from US President Donald Trump for a swift resumption of lessons, forecasts of higher than expected death tolls and a stubborn plateau of infections are already threatening the 2020-21 academic year in the worst affected regions.

Since the return of kids to school will be one of the most tangible signs that the country is getting back to normal – and will begin to make significant steps towards economic recovery – the issue has a strong emotional as well as societal dimension.

While many states have expressed a firm desire to get going in August, the California State University system announced Tuesday that almost all of its classes would be conducted remotely in the fall semester. And the University of California said it was likely none of its campuses would fully reopen in the fall either. The moves highlight how schools with thousands of students are potential Covid-19 hotspots and also face concerns that students may struggle to travel to campus.

One of Trump’s top coronavirus task force advisers, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told a Senate committee it would be a “bridge too far” for colleges to expect a vaccine or widely available treatment to be ready by the time students return to campuses.

Read the full analysis:

Senators listen as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks remotely during a virtual Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing, Tuesday, May 12, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington. Seated from left are Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., center, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

Related article Somber warnings temper hopes about a fall return to school -- and normalcy

Britain’s economy contracted by 2% in the first quarter of 2020, compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, according to GDP data released on Wednesday by the UK’s Office for National Statistics.

The UK’s GDP contracted by 5.8% in March alone, the biggest monthly fall since the data series began in 1997, the ONS said.

Da Mao and Er Shun at the Toronto Zoo before they were transferred to the Calgary Zoo in 2018.

The Calgary Zoo in Canada is sending two giant pandas back to China due to a shortage of bamboo.

The zoo said in a statement that it usually flies in bamboo from China to feed the animals, but the Covid-19 pandemic had disrupted flights and caused delays in supplies.

The duo, named Er Shun and Da Mao, were supposed to stay in Canada until 2023 as part of a 10-year agreement with China, but the zoo decided to send them back early out of concern that delays could worsen if there’s a second wave of coronavirus cases.

A panda’s diet consists almost entirely of fresh bamboo, the Calgary Zoo said, and the animals typically eat about 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of it each day.

Much of the bamboo Er Shun and Da Mao ate before the pandemic was flown in directly to Calgary from China, but those flights have been canceled.

The zoo said it tried to find new bamboo suppliers to keep the pandas fed, but encountered several logistical issues. They also worry that these new supply lines could be disrupted at a moment’s notice, leaving the pandas completely without food.

Pakistan reported another highest daily rise in coronavirus cases with 2,255 new infections recorded in the past 24 hours, according to the country’s health ministry.

The country instituted a phased reopening from lockdown on Saturday.

The total number of cases in Pakistan now stands at 34,336, with 737 deaths recorded as a result of the virus.

Germany’s reproduction rate for the novel coronavirus has dipped back below the key threshold of 1, the country’s center for disease control said today. 

The so-called R0 had been above 1 for three consecutive days – a sign the disease may have been expanding rather than being pushed back. 

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. 

In January this year, Kerala became the first Indian state to report a coronavirus case. Now, four months later, it claims it has flattened the curve.

Although India has been under a strict nationwide lockdown since late March, cases have continued to rise – the country of 1.3 billion has reported more than 74,000 cases, including over 2,400 deaths.

But Kerala, a thin strip on the country’s southern coast, has appeared to buck that trend.

Although Kerala has a population of around 36 million – almost as big as Canada – it has reported just 519 cases and four deaths. As of Saturday, it had only 16 active cases, according to the state’s finance minister, Thomas Isaac.

For comparison, Maharashtra, the worst-affected state in India, has reported more than 23,000 cases, including at least 860 deaths.

Experts say part of Kerala’s success is thanks to swift action and learning from past disease outbreaks. But Kerala also shows how disparate India is – and how much a person’s chances against the virus depend on where in the country they live.

Read more:

Medical staff collect samples from people at a kiosk to test for Covid-19 in Kerala, India, on April 6, 2020.

Related article The way these states handled coronavirus shows India's vast divide

Policemen and volunteers measure body temperatures of visitors entering a market in in Bangkok on Tuesday.

Thailand today reported no new coronavirus cases for the first time since January 13, according to the country’s Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration.

CCSA spokesman Dr. Taweesilp Visanuyothin told reporters that the total number of infections in the country now stands at 3,017.

A total of 56 patients have died, while 2,844 have recovered and been discharged.

CORRECTION: This post was updated to reflect the number of deaths.

Dr. Anthony Fauci attends a coronavirus news briefing at the White House on April 9 in Washington.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, warned senators Tuesday that states and cities face serious consequences if they open up too quickly amid the pandemic.

Fauci urged states not to reopen until they know they have the capabilities to handle an inevitable uptick in cases once they relax stay-at-home orders.

In a high-profile hearing where witnesses and many lawmakers joined via video conference, Fauci also told a Senate committee on Tuesday it was a “bridge too far” for schools to expect a vaccine or widely available treatment for Covid-19 by the time students return to campuses in the fall, though he expressed optimism a vaccine would be developed in the next year or two.

Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was subdued but candid in his testimony about efforts to respond to the coronavirus outbreak and roll back stay-at-home orders on Tuesday in the Senate’s first hearing on the coronavirus outbreak since March.

Read more:

Related article Fauci to warn Senate of 'needless suffering and death' if country reopens too quickly

A cluster of coronavirus cases connected to clubs frequented by South Korea’s gay community has sparked an outpouring of hate speech towards the country’s already-embattled LGBTQ population.

At least 119 cases have been linked to nightlife venues in the South Korean capital, and on Saturday, Seoul ordered all clubs and bars to temporarily close.

The cluster has caused alarm in South Korea, which was among the first countries outside of China to deal with a large-scale coronavirus outbreak. In recent weeks, however, authorities had begun loosening restrictions as case numbers fell.

The suggestion that the outbreak is linked to the city’s gay scene has sparked a huge backlash against the LGBTQ community, including the 29-year-old man believed to be at the center of the cluster.

Local media has emphasized his sexual orientation and reported that the clubs he visited are gay venues, although the venues do not openly describe themselves as such on their official websites or social media accounts.

That reaction could make contact tracing harder, with people afraid to be associated with the LGBTQ community and having their sexuality outed.

Read more:

A couple wearing face masks walk past a night club, now closed following a visit by a confirmed Covid-19 coronavirus coronavirus patient, in the popular nightlife district of Itaewon in Seoul on May 10, 2020.

Related article Virus outbreak linked to Seoul clubs stokes homophobia

The spokesman for Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday evening. 

Spokesman Roberto Velasco Álvarez announced his condition on Twitter, saying, “I report that I tested positive for Covid-19 today. I will stay at home, remotely coordinating the tasks in my charge.”

Transmission electron microscopic image of an isolate from the first US case of Covid-19.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is preparing to release an alert warning doctors to be on the lookout for a dangerous inflammatory syndrome in children that may be linked to coronavirus infection, a CDC spokesman said on Tuesday.

The syndrome is marked by persistent fever, inflammation, poor function in one or more organs, and other symptoms similar to shock. An informal panel of pediatricians organized by Boston Children’s Hospital named it pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome potentially associated with Covid-19.

The CDC spokesman said the agency was preparing an alert to go out on the Health Alert Network, or HAN, to thousands of physicians and other clinicians around the country.

The CDC is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to get the definition of the syndrome. It could be released on Wednesday or Thursday, the spokesman said.

New York state has reported 100 possible cases. “We lost three children, (a) 5-year-old boy, 7-year-old boy and 18-year-old girl,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters on Tuesday. 

New York City has 52 cases with an additional 10 cases pending, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.

Last week, the informal panel, called the International PICU-COVID-19 Collaboration, released a consensus statement defining the condition. Dr. Jeffrey Burns, chief of critical care medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, coordinates the panel.

Medical staff guide visitors waiting to be tested for coronavirus at a testing site in the nightlife district of Itaewon in Seoul, South Korea, on May 12.

More than 4.2 million people have been infected by Covid-19 worldwide, including at least 291,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. If you’re just joining us, here are the latest developments from around the globe:

Firefighters respond to a fire at the Saint George hospital in St. Petersburg, Russia, on May 12.

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency returned a shipment of Russian ventilators after the same models reportedly caught fire in St. Petersburg, a FEMA spokesperson said.  

When asked about the ventilators the spokesperson said they had been sent at the beginning of April to the United States.

FEMA later noted that none of the Russian-supplied ventilators brought into the US had burst into flames.

People mingle in close proximity to one another as businesses in the flower district reopen on May 8, in Los Angeles, California.

The researcher behind the influential model the White House often cites when talking about projected novel coronavirus cases told CNN’s Don Lemon on Tuesday that a decision by states to reopen will increase US deaths.

Dr. Chris Murray said his model now projects 147,000 deaths in the US by August. That projection is up 10,000 deaths from two days ago and more than double what was projected two weeks ago. 

Murray is the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. He’s seeing more people gathering in groups, like they did in his neighborhood for Mother’s Day he said, and with that mingling comes new cases. 

“And that’s playing out in the projections, unfortunately,” Murray said. The numbers could increase even more as additional states loosen stay-at-home mandates, he added.

Death numbers are slowly declining, but each additional interaction brings greater risk of transmission. Murray said he hopes testing will increase, but additional testing is already accounted for in their model.

The wild card, he said, could be warmer temperatures. Flu cases decline in the summer, but with the novel coronavirus, scientists don’t know if that will happen. 

“That’s the thing about a new pandemic, we just don’t know everything,” Murray said. 

Six more people have become infected with coronavirus in northeastern China, prompting authorities to implement tighter lockdown measures in parts of Jilin province. 

China’s National Health Commission on Wednesday reported six new locally transmitted cases in Jilin province  – which borders North Korea – and local officials have linked them to an outbreak that began in the city of Shulan last Thursday.  

Following the detection of the cluster, the Chinese government has dispatched a team of experts to help local authorities cope with the situation in Shulan and its surrounding area. 

The government of Jilin City, which administers nearby Shulan, on Wednesday announced the suspension of train services leaving the city starting at 6 am local time.  

Lockdown measures have been expanded to cover the entire Jilin City jurisdiction, which has a population of more than 4 million, with more rigorous temperature checks and tracking of people’s movements. 

Gatherings and meetings are prohibited, and entertainment venues will be closed.

China also reported one more imported case in Shanghai on Wednesday but no new deaths in the previous 24 hours.  

Pedestrians wearing face masks walk through the nightlife district of Itaewon in Seoul on May 12.

South Korean authorities have traced 28 further coronavirus cases to a nightclub cluster in Seoul, bringing the total number of new infections linked to the Itaewon nightlife district to 119.

Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip said in a news briefing today that around 20,000 people had been tested in relation to the Itaewon outbreak.

According to Kim, one of those who tested positive was a private tutor in Incheon, a city bordering the capital. The patient initially hid his movement but his GPS location tracking revealed his place of work. Eight new cases were then discovered, of which six were middle and high school students, Kim said.

Two out of those eight cases had each gone to church services last weekend. Now epidemiological investigation is being conducted on the church congregations.

Kim said that Incheon city announced that it will pursue legal action against the tutor and if found guilty, he could be punished with up to two years of prison.

North Chungcheong Province office announced on Wednesday that there were at least seven members of the military who tested positive in relation to the Itaewon cluster.

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said today that 10,905 people were confirmed to have been near the clubs, based on phone records, and 11% of them had been foreigners.

Seoul city is texting those numbers in English to encourage testing, Park said. Six foreign English teachers reported that they have been to the clubs and the city is waiting for results of their tests.

Overall, Korea added 26 new cases to the nation’s overall confirmed count on Tuesday, bringing the total to 10,962. One new fatality was reported, bringing the death toll to 259.

The patient had been relatively fine for the first 10 days he was down with Covid-19.

Just 38, he didn’t fit the description of people at high risk of complications from the novel coronavirus.

“He had mild pulmonary symptoms that he was just sitting at home with,” said Dr. Sean Wengerter, a vascular surgeon in Pomona, New York. “He had been diagnosed at an urgent care clinic and it was going fine at home. He just had a little cough.”

Until one of Covid-19’s surprising effects kicked in.

Some of the other bizarre and worrying effects of the virus include:

Read more:

Nurse practitioner Capri Reese talks to a patient and holds her hand while a doctor administers an IV at Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago, Tuesday, April 28, 2020. (Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

Related article Covid-19 isn't just a respiratory disease. It hits the whole body

Colleges and universities in the US are right to think and “fret” about classes in the fall semester, in light of forecasts that there will be a substantial surge of novel coronavirus cases later this year, an infectious diseases expert said Tuesday.

Dr. William Schaffner told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that it is hard to predict whether cases will affect school openings.

“It’s not an easy decision,” said Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Much will rely on local conditions and circumstances, Schaffner said. “It’s an awful choice, because on the other side is all the financial depredation that’s been going on, the cultural and social disruption, so it’s an exceedingly difficult balancing act.” 

The California State University system announced Tuesday it was canceling nearly all in-person classes for the fall semester. The system has more than 500,000 students and 55,000 employees, according to its chancellor, who said he is concerned about the threat posed by the coronavirus coupled with the influenza season in the fall.

Prices are tumbling in America as the coronavirus lockdown drags on and people spend less.

US consumer prices declined for the second-straight month in April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on Tuesday. Prices fell by 0.8% on a seasonally adjusted basis in April, marking the largest drop since December 2008.

That’s an alarming drop, dragged down primarily by falling gasoline and energy prices. But excluding volatile food and energy, prices still fell by 0.4%. That’s the largest monthly decline in the so-called core consumer price index since the BLS began tracking the data in 1957.

Falling prices might sound like a good thing, but economists agree that deflation – the opposite of inflation – would be very bad news.

When prices fall because people aren’t buying things, manufacturers sometimes can’t charge enough to make the product they’re trying to sell. That means they’ll stop making those products and lay off workers. That can start a vicious circle in which demand continues to fall as more people lose their jobs.

Read more:

Related article Prices are tumbling at an alarming rate

A woman walks along a London Underground platform on May 11 in London.

London’s transport operator is in a “critical” financial situation and needs to reach an agreement with the government in the next 48 hours, London’s Deputy Mayor for Transport Heidi Alexander said Tuesday.

Alexander told a Transport For London (TFL) finance committee that the local government body may be forced to issue a Section 114 notice, which is the equivalent of a public body going bust, if an agreement is not reached.

Across London, tube travel has been reduced by 95% and bus travel by 85% during the coronavirus outbreak, TFL said in a statement on Monday. On April 24, the organization announced it had furloughed 7,000 staff – around 25% of its workforce – under the government’s coronavirus job retention scheme. It said this would save it an estimated £15.8 million ($19.3 million) every four weeks.

However, a TFL document submitted to Tuesday’s committee says its loss from the “steep decline” in revenue for the full year is anticipated to be over £4 billion ($4.9 billion) and the remaining gap to balance its proposed Emergency Budget for 2020/21 is around £3.2 billion. It says TFL is in ongoing discussions around how this should be funded with the Department for Transport and HM Treasury.

CNN has contacted the Department for Transport for comment.

Immune treatments and blood thinners can help children affected by an inflammatory syndrome that might be linked with coronavirus infection, pediatricians say.

A panel called the International PICU-COVID-19 Collaboration has compared notes and released a consensus statement defining the condition, naming it “Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Potentially Associated with COVID-19.”

Dr. Jeffrey Burns, chief of critical care medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, coordinates the panel.

The syndrome is marked by persistent fever, inflammation, poor function in one or more organs, and other symptoms similar to shock.

Kawasaki disease involves inflammation in the walls of medium-sized arteries and can damage the heart.

Smokers have a greater risk of developing severe cases of Covid-19 and dying from the illness, according to a new study.

Smokers and former smokers, including e-cigarette users, have a significantly greater risk of developing severe cases of Covid-19 and dying from the illness than their non-smoking counterparts, according to a new study from the University of California, San Francisco. 

The meta-analysis, or study of studies, looked at 19 peer-reviewed papers from China, South Korea and the United States. It found 30% of smokers developed more severe forms of Covid-19 compared to 17.6% of non-smokers.

“Smoking and e-cigarette use increase the risk and severity of pulmonary infections because of damage to upper airways and a decrease in pulmonary immune function in general, although these effects have not yet been studied for SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” they wrote. “Smokers have a known higher risk of infection and mortality from MERS-COV, a viral respiratory illness caused by a different coronavirus.”

The analysis likely underestimated how smoking affects the risk of contracting the coronavirus in the general population, the authors said, because the studies the analysis is based on were only focused on those who had already developed Covid-19.

But the authors urged health officials to add smoking cessation for both tobacco and e-cigarette products to the list of steps needed to curb the pandemic, and are advocating for more data collection on smokers and e-cigarette users to see if they’re at greater risk of contracting the disease.

Workplace communication tool Slack is back online after being down for a short period of time this morning.

The outage was tough timing for the platform as workers have increasingly come to depend on the service for telework during the coronavirus pandemic.

Slack said Tuesday evening that it was investigating connectivity issues with the productivity app, following reports of outages on the service. 

The company acknowledged that users were experiencing failures in sending messages, in a status update on its website.

Slack has more than 12 million daily active users, according to the company’s website.

A key coronavirus model often cited by the White House has again raised its coronavirus death projection, now predicting 147,000 deaths in the US by August 4.

That’s an increase of about 10,000 deaths compared to the model’s estimate from this weekend, which was already higher than earlier projections. 

On Sunday, Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, tied the earlier increase to “explosive increases in mobility in a number of states.”

Compared to Sunday, the model now projects about 2,450 additional deaths in New York, 2,000 additional deaths in Massachusetts and 1,700 additional deaths in Pennsylvania. Other states saw sizable increases as well. North Carolina, for example, is now expected to see about 3,200 more deaths, and Maryland about 1,200 more.

Some states saw decreases in projected deaths, however, including Georgia, which is now expected to see 1,500 fewer deaths. The model’s projection for Indiana has also gone down by 1,600 deaths.

On its website, IHME said exact reasons for the changes vary by state. But the institute pointed to “epidemiological indicators and key drivers of viral transmission,” like changes in testing and mobility. 

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Russia is reporting the second highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, after the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tally. 

The country has officially recorded at least 232,243 confirmed cases and at least 2,116 deaths from the virus, according to JHU. 

Tuesday was the 10th consecutive day that Russia reported more than 10,000 new cases.

CNN is tracking worldwide coronavirus cases here:

Iceland expects to start lifting restrictions on international arrivals to the country “no later than June 15,” the government said in a statement on Tuesday. 

Travelers will likely have to choose between being tested for Covid-19 or a two-week quarantine upon arrival. All arrivals will also be required to use the official tracing app during their stay.

The government also announced that some professionals arriving in Iceland from May 15, including essential workers, “scientists, filmmakers, and athletes will be eligible for a modified quarantine.” This means companies can request an exemption from quarantine if they can guarantee safety procedures in their work environment.

“These measures do not preclude the option of bilaterally opening borders between coronavirus-free countries,” the government added. 

Since January, Iceland residents arriving from “high-risk” areas have to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine. The rule was extended to all travelers on April 24, as Iceland kept its Schengen borders open throughout the pandemic.

So far, Iceland has only seen three confirmed infections of Covid-19 in May, according to the statement. 

People wait in line at a mobile Covid-19 testing clinic on May 12, in Montreal.

Canada is looking to strengthen surveillance at US border crossings as discussions continue between the two countries about when and how to reopen the border to nonessential travel. 

The Canadian government is looking at administering questionnaires, contact tracing apps, temperature and medical history checks.

“We’re going to be very, very careful about reopening any international travel, including the United States before we feel that it is time,” Trudeau said.

Some background: Canada and the US agreed to close the border to nonessential travel in March and the current agreement, already extended, expires May 21. There is still no decision on whether the border agreement will remain in place beyond that date. 

Canadian premiers and mayors across the country have expressed concern about fully reopening the border as the US continues to deal with Covid outbreaks and significant community spread. 

People stroll along the Navigli canals in Milan on May 8.

The worst-hit Italian region of Lombardy has reported a small increase in the number of Covid-19 cases for the second day in a row.

This comes after a few days where active case numbers were decreasing, according to the Italian Civil Protection Agency.

On Tuesday, active cases in the region increased by 264, making a total of 30,675. However, Lombardy officials said the increase in cases could be explained by additional data that was collected over the past few days.

Across Italy, at least 30,911 people have died from Covid-19, according to the Italian Civil Protection Agency on Tuesday. That is an increase of 172 since the day before and a variation in line with previous days.

The total number of cases recorded in Italy, including deaths and recoveries, is now at least 221,216.

The French death toll from coronavirus is now at least 26,994, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

At least 21,595 people remain in hospital, the country’s health ministry said.

France has recorded at least 178,349 confirmed cases of Covid-19.