Coronavirus live news: Trump appears to back down on New York ‘quarantine’ | World news

Further details on the first Covid-19 related death in New Zealand.

The woman, who authorities said had underlying health conditions, was reportedly diagnosed with influenza on admittance to hospital.

New Zealand health officials confirmed new 63 cases on Sunday – a drop from the increase of the previous two days – with the overall number of coronavirus cases standing at 514, said the director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield. Nine were receiving hospital care and one other was in intensive care on a ventilator.

From Reuters:

Mexico’s deputy health minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell called on Saturday on all residents in Mexico to stay at home for a month, saying it was the only way to reduce the transmission rate of the coronavirus.

Mexican health authorities said there was a total of 848 confirmed cases in Mexico as of Saturday, 131 more than the previous day, and 16 deaths.

President Donald Trump will send off a naval hospital ship Saturday before it heads to New York City, as he aims to highlight the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The USNS Comfort, a 1,000-bed hospital ship, had been undergoing planned maintenance, but was rushed back into service to aid the city which is now the centre of the nation’s outbreak.

It is scheduled to arrive Monday at a Manhattan pier a week after its sister ship, the USNS Mercy arrived in Los Angeles to preform similar duty on the West Coast.

Trump, 73, is in a high-risk category because of his age, and federal guidance for weeks has advised those in that pool to refrain from non-essential travel of all sorts. He has already tested negative once after close contact with officials who came down with the virus.

“It doesn’t mean I’m going to be hugging people and it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be shaking people’s hands and everything,” Trump said.

“But I think it sends a signal when the president is able to go there and say thank you. So, you know, we’ll be careful.”

China reported 45 new coronavirus cases in the mainland for 28 March, down from 54 on the previous day, Reuters reports.

All but one involved travelers from overseas, the country’s health authority said on Sunday.

The reported number of imported cases also fell from 54 on the previous day, data from the National Health Commission showed.

China also reported five new deaths on Saturday, all of which were in Wuhan in Hubei province, where the Covid-19 respiratory illness was first identified. A total of 3,300 people have now died in mainland China, with a reported 81,439 infections.

Saturday marked the fourth consecutive day that Hubei province recorded no new confirmed cases. With traffic restrictions in the province lifted, Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, is also gradually reopening borders and restarting some local transportation services.

The only domestic transmission on Saturday was recorded in central China’s Henan province, which borders Hubei.

Still in Australia, a 75-year-old Queensland woman, who had been on board the Ruby Princess cruise ship, has died overnight.

A man aged in his 80s also died in a Melbourne hospital overnight.

The deaths bring Australia’s toll to 16.

For more details on this and Morrison’s press conference, follow our Australia-focussed blog here.

Australian authorities are giving an update of the situation there.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia’s daily rate of increase in cases had dropped from between 25-30% to 13-15%.

Morrison says this shows the government’s containment measures (which have caused some confusion among Australians with some very specific limits like a maximum 30 minutes at a hairdresser, only five people at a wedding, but 10 people at a bootcamp or funeral), are working.

But the government will not release modelling to show this.

Morrison pushes back on questions about adopting tactics used by other countries.

He says they won’t “cut and paste measures from other places where they have completely different societies”.

He cites Chinese authorities welding people’s doors shut, suggesting that maybe people were “OK with that”.

Morrison has told media that of the country’s 3,809 confirmed cases, 2,562 were imported from overseas.

New Zealand, which is a few days into a lockdown lasting at least four weeks, has reported the first death attributed to Covid-19.

Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the West Coast woman was in her 70s, and was initially diagnosed with influenza. Because of this hospital staff were only wearing PPE suitable for a case of influenza, not Covid-19, and 21 people were now in self-isolation. Bloomfield said none of the staff were showing symptoms, and staffing at the hospital wouldn’t be affected because of the cancellation of all elective procedures.

New Zealand has 514 cases, most with a link to international travel.

“Today’s death is the reminder of the fight that we have on our hands,” prime minister Jacinda Ardern said.

“Stay at home, break the chain, and save lives.”

Donald Trump has now said there will be no need to enforce a regional quarantine on New York and neighbouring states.

A few minutes ago the president tweeted that he would instead have the CDC issue “a strong travel advisory”.

US president Donald Trump has flagged an enforced regional quarantine of the state of New York, and parts of Connecticut and New Jersey.

“We’re thinking about certain things. Some people would like to see New York quarantined because it’s a hotspot,” he said.

“We might not have to do it, but there’s a possibility that sometime today we’ll do a quarantine, short-term, two weeks on New York. Probably New Jersey, certain parts of Connecticut. This would be an enforceable quarantine. I’d rather not do it, but maybe we need it.”

But New York governor Andrew Cuomo says it wasn’t mentioned when they spoke, and he’s said such a move would be “a federal declaration of war”.

Why you would want to just create total pandemonium on top of a pandemic I have no idea,” Cuomo said.

“It’s totally opposite with what the president would want to do, work with the states, get the economy running and get some sense of stability. You wouldn’t at this point literally fracture the entire nation because it’s not just New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, it’s Louisiana and New Orleans. The numbers will continue to rise and every few days it’s going to be another hotspot.”

He added: “It would be chaos and mayhem. If we start walling off areas all across the country it would just be totally bizarre, counterproductive, anti-American, anti-social.”

Read more here.

Welcome to our continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks to colleagues in the UK for running the last day’s coverage, which you can catch up on here.

If you have questions, comments, or contributions, you can reach me on Twitter @heldavidson

In the meantime, here are the latest updates:

• The global death toll has passed 30,000, with confirmed cases at 660,706.
• Northern Ireland has announced a wave of new restrictive measures which came into force an hour ago, including a ban on gatherings and leaving home without a reasonable excuse.
• Spain has announced further restrictions on movement to stem the flow of the virus, with all non-essential workers being told to stay home.
• Panama’s government has said it will allow the Zaandam cruise ship to pass through the Panama Canal, after passengers got stuck on board when authorities refused to grant access. The cruise ship has 130 people with flu-like symptoms, and four have died. At least two of those with symptoms are confirmed to have coronavirus.
• The coronavirus death toll in France has passed the grim milestone of 2,000 deaths, with more than 38,000 cases.
• Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliff, the British-Iranian aid worker who has been detained in Iran on spying charges has had her prison leave extended and her case put forward for clemency, her husband said
• Cases in the US have passed 120,000.
• A letter from UK prime minister Boris Johnson will be sent to every household in Britain, warning them that the worst of the virus is yet to come.