WHO says US could be next virus hotspot; EU urged to evacuate Greek refugee camps; Greta Thunberg says she believes she had Covid-19 Soldiers stand guard during lockdown in Delhi, India. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Saudi Arabia has announced its first Coronavirus death.
A spokesman for the kingdom’s health ministry said the case was an Afghan national who died on Monday.
Saudi health authorities also announced 205 new Coronavirus positive cases on Tuesday, raising the total number to 767.
A partial curfew is being implemented to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Arab news reported that the saudi Ministry of Interior has issued a statement and announced that first-time violators of the curfew would be fined 10,000 riyals ($2,666).
Second-time violators of the curfew would be fined 20,000 riyals, and the penalty for a third violation is imprisonment for a maximum of 20 days.
و ز ا ر ة ا لـ صـ حـ ة السعودية
✔@SaudiMOH
#الصحة تعلن عن تسجيل (٢٠٥) حالة إصابة جديدة بفيروس #كورونا الجديد(كوفيد١٩) وأول حالة وفاة لمقيم في المدينة المنورة.
Train services are due to resume from Wednesday at train stations across China’s Hubei province, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, according to AFP’s correspondent in Hong Kong, quoting Chinese state media.
#BREAKING People with “health code” in Hubei cities other than Wuhan can leave the province from Wednesday, and those with “health code” in Wuhan can leave the city and the province from April 8.
Donald Trump has gone on a retweeting tear, relaying messages in support of his coronavirus response and controversial plan to “reopen” the US economy well before public health experts expect the outbreak to have subsided.
He managed, however, to apparently commit something of a “self-own”, retweeting footage of Dr Anthony Fauci at a White House briefing last week which most thought showed Fauci expressing clear concern at the president’s words.
The footage shows Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reacting to Trump’s reference to “the deep state department” during briefing last Friday.
As of 9am on 24 March, a total of 90,436 have been tested in the UK: 82,359 negative. 8,077 positive.
As of 1pm, 422 patients who tested positive for coronavirus have sadly died.
Developments in Britain are being covered in detail on our blog for the UK
The Australian sharemarket closed up 4.2% on Tuesday, almost clawing back losses from Monday.
Despite the solid performance, the market is still more than a third down from where it was a month ago, before it was gripped by a coronavirus-inspired selling frenzy.
And several big companies that are most affected by the pandemic are suspended from trade, meaning they cannot weigh down the benchmark ASX200 index.
Graincorp shed more than 50%, but its drop was not coronavirus-related - today was the first day of trade for its malting arm, which it has spun off into a separate company.
Consumer-exposed financial stocks that were smashed on Monday bounced back, with debt collector Credit Corp ballooning 46% and buy-now-pay-later operator Afterpay skyrocketing 26%.
Travel agent Corporate Travel, which has been smashed by the virus and is also a perennial short-seller target, soared 31%.
Greta Thunberg says she believes it’s “extremely likely” that she has had Covid-19.
In a post on Instagram, she writes that she has been staying inside for the past two weeks.
“Around ten days ago I started feeling some symptoms, exactly the same time as my father - who traveled with me from Brussels,” she writes.
“I was feeling tired, had shivers, a sore throat and coughed. My dad experienced the same symptoms, but much more intense and with a fever.”
Now, she adds, she has “basically recovered” and stresses the responsibility of people who are not from at-risk groups to think of their actions, which could be a matter of life or death for others.
Italy’s Economy Minister, Roberto Gualtieri, has said that the euro zone’s bailout fund should be used to help economies hit by the coronavirus crisis, with no strings attached.
“We must use all the resources available at the EU level, including the ESM [the European Stability Mechanism], without any conditionality,” Gualtieri told parliament.
The minister added that the EU should consider issuing a common debt instrument, or safe asset, something so far resisted by some of its richer members.
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Cuomo goes on to take aim at Donald Trump’s tweet that the “cure must not be worse than the problem itself.”
It’s all very well, the New York governor says, “But if you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy then it’s no contest.”
“No American is going to say, accelerate the economy at the cost of human life because no American is going to say how much a life is worth. Job one has to be save lives. That has to be the priority.”
People line up outside Elmhurst Hospital to get tested due to coronavirus outbreak on March 24, 2020 in Queens, New York City. Photograph: Eduardo Muñoz/Getty Images
New York is “the canary in the coalmine” and will be “going first” in terms of the impact of the virus in the US, says Cuomo.
He says that the ventilators should be moved around the country depending on how the “apex” of the outbreak moves to different states.
“Don’t leave them sitting in a stockpile and say we are going to wait to see how we allocate them across the country,” says the New York governor, who adds he will take personal responsibility to move the equipment to any state that needs them, along with healthcare professionals.
Reaction to Cuomo’s comments and the developing situation is being covered live here on our US blog
Soldiers stand guard during lockdown in Delhi, India. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
