Coronavirus live news: WHO warns of 'second peak' as it drops hydroxychloroquine trial

The Guardian’s Daniel Hurst in Canberra reports on the actual origins of the splash in Australia’s Daily Telegraph which purported to reveal that Covid-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory:

Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, went big with a Saturday morning splash and six pages of reporting attributed to “a dossier prepared by concerned western governments” – and the story was quickly amplified and exaggerated by Trump’s media backers in the United States.

It gathered steam in subsequent reporting as something even more weighty: the New York Post called it “a damning dossier leaked from the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance” while Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked why it was so hard for some people to accept “objectively that the evidence suggests [coronavirus] came from a lab” in Wuhan, China. Carlson’s program contained a graphic that claimed: “Dossier was compiled by intel agencies of the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.”

But there was a problem: the document at the heart of the reporting did not contain any genuinely new information, it did not outline any direct evidence of the lab leakage theory, and it wasn’t culled from intelligence gathered by the Five Eyes network.

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The British government has lost its first minister as a result of the Dominic Cummings affair, with Douglas Ross, the MP for Moray, announcing today that he is stepping down as a Scotland Office minister, saying he accepted Cummings felt he had acted in the best interests of his family but these were “decisions others felt were not available to them”.

From my colleague Philip Oltermann in Berlin:

Not just in Britain are political figures under the spotlight for breaching lockdown laws. In Austria, president Alexander Van der Bellen has apologised for staying in the garden of an Italian restaurant beyond the 11pm curfew. Police spotted the 76-year-old head of state in the outside dining area of the Vienna restaurant shortly after midnight on Sunday. Van der Bellen has said he lost track of time during his first restaurant visit since the start of the pandemic, and said he would shoulder any fine issued on the restaurant.

In Germany, meanwhile, one sector of the economy feels they are being unfairly left out of the latest wave of social distancing relaxations. The country’s Federal Association for Sexual Services has issued a statement insisting sex workers are not “super spreaders” of the virus and proposing a three-step programme to reopen brothels, sex clubs and tabledance bars. The umbrella group argues that in most such establishments the “working situation” is one of one-on-one contacts and thus comparable to hair salons or massage parlors. A cross-party group of 16 Bundestag MPs had last week proposed a long-term shutdown of all forms of prostitution in the wake of the pandemic: “Prostitution has the effect of a virus super spreader”, the group said in an open letter. “Sexual acts are generally non-negotiable with social distancing.”

Indonesia has today reported 415 new confirmed cases of Covid-19, and 27 deaths. This brings its total number of infections to 23,165, with 1,418 fatalities. Malaysia today reported 187 new coronavirus cases, and no new fatalities.

As of a few minutes ago, the total number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide now stands at 5,508,904, according to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracker. The number of deaths worldwide as a result of the coronavirus stands at 346,326. True death tolls and cases are likely to be significantly higher due to differing definitions and testing rates, delays and suspected under-reporting.

The Philippine health ministry has reported 13 deaths and 350 new cases of Covid-19 today, the largest single-day increase in infections in seven weeks. The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 14,669 and deaths have reached 886.

The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, said late last night that he will not allow students to go back to school until a vaccine is available. Children were due to return to school at the end of August after classes for more than 25 million primary and secondary students were shut down in March. But Duterte said he believed the risk was too great, even if it held students back academically.

“Unless I am sure that they are really safe it’s useless to be talking about opening of classes,” the president said. “For me, vaccine first. If the vaccine is already there, then it’s OK. If no one graduates, then so be it.”

The first ward has been completed at the temporary field hospital being set up at the Cape Town International Convention Centre in South Africa. The hospital will eventually have 850 beds.

I’m getting plenty of mail about Dominic Cummings, from some of the many people who were apparently unconvinced many by his eye-test driving yarn. Our UK coronavirus blog is live now and focusing on this issue:

This is from Elias Visontay and AAP in Australia:

A Covid-19-infected live export ship was apparently cleared by a federal department to dock at Fremantle port, where local workers went on board. The Al Kuwait arrived on Friday after sailing from the United Arab Emirates and six of the 48 multinational crew on board have since tested positive to the virus.

On Tuesday Western Australian police commissioner Chris Dawson said half a dozen Fremantle port workers went on to the ship and authorities knew who they were but he was not aware if they had been placed in quarantine.

The WA premier, Mark McGowan, said he had been advised the federal Department of Agriculture was told crew members had a fever but didn’t pass that information on to Fremantle Port Authority before the vessel berthed.

“I don’t want to point fingers at this point in time,” McGowan said on Tuesday. “We’re just trying to find out exactly what has gone on. Obviously we’re very concerned and to a degree, disappointed.”

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