Coronavirus live news: Cases approach 1.2m as Trump tells Americans to expect 'a lot of death'

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera sparked outrage on Friday by posing for photographs at the plaza that was the centre of anti-government protests before it was put under quarantine to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, Reuters reports.

Photographs of Pinera in the now empty Plaza Italia on Friday afternoon, sitting in shirtsleeves on the steps of a monument plastered with graffiti calling for his resignation, went viral on social media.

At least 31 people died, 3,000 were injured, and 30,000 were detained in the protests, which started in October over a hike in public transport rates and broadened to include grievances over pensions, healthcare, education and elitism.

The area around Plaza Italia is covered by a strict quarantine covering large parts of Santiago that prevents people from leaving their homes without specific permission from the authorities. Chile has 3,737 confirmed cases of the coronavirus so far, and 22 people have died.

Marianne Faithfull has been hospitalised in London with coronavirus.

The Balad of Lucy Jordan singer, who became famous amid the “swinging London” scene of the 1960s and has had a respected (and occasionally troubled) career ever since, is said to be “stable and responding to treatment”, according to her representatives.

Her friend, the performer Penny Arcade, told Rolling Stone that Faithfull had self-isolated following a cold, and then checked herself into hospital last Monday, where she tested positive for Covid-19. She has since contracted pneumonia.

A French orchestra has found a way around the coronavirus lockdown to record a 51-instrument rendition of Ravel’s Bolero. One by one.

Alone in their kitchens, lounges or dining rooms, individual Orchestre national de France (ONF) musicians played as their mobile phones recorded their parts in Maurice Ravel’s thrilling orchestral score.

Then the magic: a technician jigsawed the bits together into a video mosaic to create a near flawless, combined performance of woodwinds, brass, percussion and strings.

“I would never have imagined synchronising the sound of instruments not playing together,” said Dimitri Scapolan, a Radio France video editor in charge of the project. The ONF is one of two orchestras of Radio France.

“When I overlapped all the pieces recorded by the cellphones on my computer, to my great astonishment, everyone was in perfect harmony,” he told AFP.

“All I had to do was to adjust the levels a bit and add some resonance – it mixed itself. It was a pleasure.”

You can watch the performance here:

Ecuador’s government has begun storing the bodies of victims of the coronavirus in giant refrigerated containers as hundreds of deaths in the city of Guayaquil, the centre of the country’s outbreak, have already filled morgues and hospitals.

Ecuador has confirmed 318 deaths from the virus, one of the highest tallies in Latin America. But President Lenin Moreno said this week that the real figure was higher as authorities were collecting more than 100 bodies a day, many from relatives’ homes as a strict quarantine prevented them from being buried.

The government has installed three containers, the largest about 12 meters (40 ft) long, at public hospitals to preserve bodies until graves were prepared, according to Guayaquil’s mayor, Cynthia Viteri. So far 150 victims have been buried in a private cemetery in the port city.

On Saturday, Ecuador’s government said it would activate a new digital system that would allow families to find out where their dead relatives were buried.

Moreno said the government expected the total number of deaths in Guayaquil’s surrounding province to reach up to 3,500, and said a “special camp” was being built to bury the dead.

Here’s a summary of the latest events in the US:

• Trump touts hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19 during his daily briefing. The anti-malaria drug could be ‘one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine’, Trump claimed, but there is no magic cure.
• The president accuses states of asking for unneeded supplies and media of spreading fake news. Trump used his briefing to further his assertions that media outlets were spreading false information about shortages of ventilators and protective equipment.
• Cruise ship docks in Florida with two dead and 12 testing positive for coronavirus. The Coral Princess pulls into Miami with 1,000 passengers and 878 crew, after being refused permission to dock in Fort Lauderdale.
• Adam Schiff said Trump was ‘decapitating’ intelligence leadership amid coronavirus crisis. The chair of the House intelligence committee made the comments to MSNBC after the president fired the inspector general of the US intelligence community late on Friday night.
• Andrew Cuomo thanks China for ventilators as New York prepares for coronavirus peak. The New York governor announced the state obtained 1,000 ventilators from billionaires Joseph and Clara Tsai and Alibaba founder Jack Ma. He also said Oregon would be lending 140 more.
• US has 278,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, there are have now been nearly 278,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the US, and more than 7,000 deaths. That toll will no doubt rise today.

In his Saturday night White House press briefing, US President Donald Trump told Americans to brace for a big spike in coronavirus fatalities in the coming days, as the country faces what he called the toughest two weeks of the pandemic.

“There’s going to be a lot of death,” Trump said at a briefing with reporters.

He pushed back on criticism that the federal government has not done enough to get ventilators that many critically ill coronavirus patients need to survive to the states, saying some governors are asking for more machines than they will need.

“Fears of shortages have led to inflated requests,” Trump said of submissions his administration has received to dole out equipment from the strategic national stockpile.

The United States has the world’s highest number of known cases of Covid-19. More than 308,500 people have tested positive in the United States and over 8,376 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University figures.

“We are coming up to a time that is going to be very horrendous,” Trump said at the White House. “We probably have never seen anything like these kind of numbers. Maybe during the war, during a World War One or Two or something.”

Hello and welcome to today’s live coronavirus pandemic coverage with me, Helen Sullivan.

I’ll be taking you through the latest key developments as they happen. If you see stories you think I may have missed, have tips or want to share something that’s good for morale, get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

Here is the most important news from the last few hours:

• Spain’s number of infections has overtaken those in Italy, making the country the second-worst affected after the US. Spain has 124,870 confirmed cases and Italy 124,632.
• Deaths in Italy have passed 15,000. The country has lost 15,362 people to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University figures.
• Trump has warned that the next two weeks will be the “toughest” in the US’s efforts to tackle coronavirus, and said he would be deploying thousands of military personnel to states to support them.
• Donald Trump’s pick for a new watchdog to oversee the $2 trillion support package, issued to combat the economic fallout of coronavirus, is not independent enough, congressional Democrats have said.
• New York’s death toll has exceeded 3,000, almost a quarter of the US total.
• Two prison officers in London have become the first prison staff to die from coronavirus in the UK.
• The conspiracy theory that links 5G technology to the spread of coronavirus is “dangerous nonsense”, a British minister said at the government’s daily coronavirus briefing. The bizarre theory has led to phone masts around the UK being attacked.
• Dubai has entered a two week lockdown which will see just one resident per household allowed to leave.
• Malawi’s president and ministers will take a 10% salary cut and redirect funds to support the country in fighting coronavirus.
• A senior health official in Iran has warned that the Iranian capital could see a resurgence of coronavirus cases, after residents in Tehran flouted restrictions.
• Tunisia’s parliament have given the government new powers to tackle coronavirus, including the ability to make decrees and seek finance without the approval of the parliament.