Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada, better known as Kenzo, died Sunday from Covid-19, his spokesperson told several French media outlets.
Aged 81, Takada was at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a residential suburb on the western outskirts of the French capital, the spokesperson said.
Kenzo, the house he founded in the 1970s, is owned by LVMH , the world’s biggest luxury group. Takada brought a “gust of color and fresh creativity” to Paris in the 1970s, fashion news website WWD.com said.
“I was a fan of the brand in the Seventies when he started. I think he was a great designer,” WWD quoted Sidney Toledano, CEO of LVMH Fashion Group, as saying. “I’m very sad. He was a great guy.”
Reuters
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Two senior Israeli public figures have tested positive for the coronavirus, as the country endures a second lockdown to stall steeply-rising cases.
Gila Gamliel, Israel’s environmental protection minister and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, announced she has the virus and was isolating.
A few hours later, Ayman Odeh, the country’s most prominent Arab lawmaker, said he was also infected and had a mild fever.
“I urge everyone to follow the rules – masks, distancing and hygiene,” Odeh said on Twitter.
Israel has recorded more than 264,000 cases and almost 1,700 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
Politicians have begun to sound the alarm about a second lockdown in southern Italy, which fared significantly better than the north in Spring, our Rome correspondent Angela Giuffrida reports.
In a characteristically stern but satirical video message last week, Vincenzo De Luca, the president of Campania, warned citizens in the southern Italian region that if the coronavirus infection rate continued to rise there would be another lockdown.
“There is no third way,” he said after announcing the mandatory wearing of face masks outside. “Masks must be worn on the face, not on the elbow. If the alternative is between having people dying on the street or taking a pleasant stroll, there will be no doubt … everything will close.”
He struck a more serious tone on Saturday after Italy’s most densely populated region, and one of its poorest, registered the highest daily tally of new infections in the country. After showing images of a crowd without masks outside a college and revellers in a bar where there was an outbreak, he said: “We must return to the strict behaviour of February, March and April, otherwise we get sick.”
It was partly De Luca’s no-nonsense style that enabled Campania to declare itself “Covid-free” in June, and determined his recent re-election. But three months on, authorities are counting on citizens falling into line again after a dramatic rise in infections. The daily rate more than doubled in the last week to 401 on Saturday, putting the region slightly ahead of Lombardy, where Italy’s pandemic began.
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A French housing association employee has been fired for serious misconduct after returning to his office before receiving the result of a coronavirus test that came back positive.
Sébastien Klem, 41, insisted he had no idea he had the virus and only took a test because he was driving past a diagnostic centre and saw there was no queue. “Apart from a light cough, I didn’t have any other symptom,” Klem told France3 television.
“It was a case of seeing an opportunity while I was driving. All I did was follow the government’s recommendations. The advice to get tested was all over the media. I felt on fine form and the day before I even went running.”
After taking the test in July, Klem returned to his office. That evening he received the positive result and immediately informed his employer HLM M2A, a social housing association, and self-isolated for 14 days with his four-year-old daughter.
However, a month later his employers, based at Mulhouse in eastern France, terminated his contract in a letter that read: “Despite carrying out a test on the morning of 16 July 2020, and despite the risk that you have put other colleagues in, you returned to you professional activity in the afternoon and mixed with work colleagues when you had doubts about your state of health in going and having a Covid-19 test. Your behaviour is totally irresponsible and constitutes a violation of your obligation towards safety.”
It added: “One does not get tested if one doesn’t have a suspicion [of having the virus].”
You can read the full report from our Paris correspondent, Kim Willsher, here:
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Nearly 5,000 people in the Iranian capital Tehran have coronavirus and 15 % of them will die according to World Health Organisation projections, Payam Tabarsi, head of the infectious disease department at Masih Daneshvari Hospital, said at the weekend. He described the figures as a disaster.
A member of the Tehran city council also reported that 136 people had died in the capital in one day, a figure that jars with official claims that only 170 people are dying nationwide each day.
Tabarsi also said he did not believe in a second or third wave of the virus, arguing the first wave never went away.
A slowly building increase in the number of infections started in late August, reaching over 3,500 a day and has now spread across the country leading to calls for a complete 2 week shutdown, similar to the circuit break once proposed by some Downing Street advisers, but never adopted.
Officials are under criticism for not doing more to enforce restrictions in workplaces, schools, roads markets and public ceremonies. Many of the powers to act have been devolved to local provinces.
In a sign that patience is running out Ghafoor Ghasempour, the governor of Karaj, announced on Sunday that the “request and request” period for the people is over and those who do not follow the health protocols will be dealt with severely. He stressed that fines and penalties are among the new measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
