Coronavirus live news: Trump criticised over ‘preventable’ crisis as US passes 100,000 deaths | World news

South Korea reported 79 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday, the highest one-day increase in 53 days, the BBC reports.

This week, infections continued to creep up in and around Seoul, South Korea, prompting Jeong Eun-kyeong, the director of Korea Centers for Disease control and Prevention, to say social distancing measures eased in April may need to be reimposed.

On Wednesday, South Korea reported 40 new cases, its biggest daily rise in nearly 50 days, as officials scrambled to trace hundreds of infections linked to nightclubs, restaurants and a massive e-commerce warehouse near Seoul.

Over a third of European foreign direct investment projects announced in 2019 have been either delayed or cancelled outright because of the coronavirus pandemic, an annual survey by professional services group EY found.

Some 65% of the 6,412 projects in question are already in place or continuing “albeit with downgraded capacity and recruitment”, EY said. A further 25% were delayed and 10 percent cancelled, its Europe Attractiveness survey found.

The data on the impact of the pandemic was gathered last month from a panel of 113 corporate decision-makers and a series of webinars with European investment agencies, Reuters reports.

The survey also showed France for the first time overtaking Britain as Europe’s most popular investment destination, attracting 1,197 new projects in 2019 for a 17% rise on the year before. FDI in Britain climbed 5% in the same period.

“Growth of FDI projects in France come as local and global businesses and investors welcome reforms around labour legislation and corporate taxation,” EY EMEIA Area Managing Partner Julie Teigland, said of President Emmanuel Macron’s reform agenda.

Colombia will begin easing restrictions put in place to control the spread of the coronavirus starting from June, President Ivan Duque said Wednesday, though he asked the public to continue isolating at home and keep using measures to contain the disease.

Colombia has reported more than 24,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, as well as 803 deaths. The country began a nationwide quarantine in late March.

“The pandemic hasn’t gone away,” Duque said in his televised nightly address. “This is going to be a very important month for all of us.”

Sectors like retail and non-Covid-related medical care can begin normalising gradually once the lockdown ends, but large events, bars and nightclubs will continue to be closed. Restaurants will be open for takeaway orders only, Duque said.

“We are not reviving social life,” Duque said. “We have to continue protecting health and lives and going forward we have to adapt to a disease that will be around for a long time.”

Even as restrictions begin to ease, public transport in cities must not exceed 35% of their capacity and land borders will continue to be closed. International flights, domestic flights and inter-city buses will continue to be suspended.

As part of the relaxed rules, children aged 2 to 5 years old will be allowed out three times a week for 30 minutes from the first of June, while those aged 6 to 17 will be permitted outside three times a week for up to an hour.

Adults under 70 years old will be allowed out three times a week for up to two hours at a time. People aged 70 and over are considered a high-risk population and should remain at home, though they may go out for 30 minutes three times a week.

Since allegations first emerged that Dominic Cummings had flouted lockdown measures while ill with coronavirus symptoms, the prime minister and members of the cabinet have been floundering to defend the adviser from accusations that he broke government guidance he helped devise.

Cummings has admitted to, but not apologised for, travelling to his family’s home in Durham on two occasions between 27 March and 13 April, as well as making a separate trip to Barnard Castle, which he said was to test his eyesight:

China reported two new confirmed coronavirus cases in the mainland on 27 May, up from one a day earlier, the country’s health authority said on Thursday.

Both of the cases were imported from abroad, the National Health Commission said in its daily bulletin.

China also confirmed 23 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases on 27 May, compared to 28 the day before.

Joe Biden released a video Wednesday evening marking the US death toll passing 100,000, saying, “To all of you hurting so badly, Im so sorry for your loss” and This nation grieves with you.

In the video, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee directly addresses those who have lost relatives and friends. Evoking the personal tragedies he’s faced in his own life, Biden said, “I think I know what you’re feeling.”

“You feel like you’re being sucked into a black hole in the middle of your chest, said Biden, who lost his first wife and young daughter in a 1972 car crash and an adult son to cancer in 2015. “It’s suffocating.”

Biden was attempting to display compassion in contrast to President Donald Trump, who critics say has shown little empathy and made only passing acknowledgement of the pandemic’s death toll instead focusing on issues like an escalating battle with Twitter for fact-checking a post of his, AP reports.

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

As always, please do get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan[at]theguardian.com. Comments, tips, news from your part of the world are all much appreciated.

As the US death toll passed the sombre milestone of 100,000 – accounting for more than one in four deaths worldwide and far higher than the UK’s toll, which is the next highest at 37,542 – Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said that Trump had mismanaged the crisis. “So much of this could have been prevented if we had a president who listened to someone other than himself,” Biden said in a statement.

My colleague Tom McCarthy notes that, “The first confirmed coronavirus case in the United States emerged on 20 January, in Washington state, the same day that a first case was confirmed in South Korea. The United States has increased its testing capacity but has yet to stand up a national plan for the contact tracing of positive cases, a step South Korea took immediately. That country has since recorded 269 deaths from coronavirus.”

Here are the key developments from around the world from the last few hours:

• Known global cases near 5.7m, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. According to their tally of official figures at least 5,682,389 people are known to have contracted the virus since the pandemic began, while at least 354,944 people are known to have died.
• US deaths pass 100,000. Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the United States has recorded more than 100,000 deaths from Covid-19, moving past a sombre milestone even as many states relax mitigation measures to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. The US has recorded more deaths from the disease than any other country in the pandemic, and almost three times as many as the second-ranking country, Britain, which has recorded more than 37,000 Covid-19 deaths. The latest count of fatalities is 100,047. Earlier this month, president Donald Trump said 100,000 deaths would be “horrible”, but he claimed that actions by his administration had prevented a much higher toll.
• 61 Conservative MPs continued to defy British PM Boris Johnson’s calls to “move on” from the Dominic Cummings crisis as a senior minister broke ranks to accuse the special adviser of inconsistencies in his account of his behaviour during lockdown.The intervention of Penny Mordaunt deepened the turmoil within government following revelations by the Guardian and Daily Mirror that Cummings had travelled 260 miles to his family estate in Durham with his wife suffering coronavirus symptoms.The former chancellor Sajid Javid also said the journey was not “necessary or justified” as the number of backbenchers calling for Cummings to resign or be sacked grew to 44, with a total of 60 Tory MPs weighing in to criticise him.Two of those condemning Cummings are government whips.
• Argentina ‘cordons off slums’ after surge in cases. Security forces in Buenos Aires cordoned off one of the city’s largest and poorest slums, stopping inhabitants from entering or leaving Villa Azul, on the outskirts of the Argentinian capital, after a surge of Covid-19 cases.Police officers erected barriers on Monday after widespread testing was launched in Villa Azul. By Wednesday 174 of 301 tests come back positive, and officials feared the 4,000 or so inhabitants of the neighbourhood could spread the virus to other areas.
• A medical study in France suggests even mild cases of Covid-19 produce antibodies in almost all patients. The research raises hopes that everyone who has had the disease could acquire some degree of immunity, although it is not clear for how long or to what degree.
• The European commission proposed a €750bn coronavirus recovery fund, as part of a €1.85tn budget to help member states whose economies have suffered as a result of the pandemic. The principal beneficiaries will reportedly be Italy and Spain, the hardest-hit EU member states.
• Greece is preparing to send riot police to its border with Turkey. Greece’s citizens protection minister, Michalis Chrisochoidis, visited the region ahead of the redeployment of some 400 officers, in anticipation of a resumption of people trying to cross. Turkey is home to nearly 4 million Syrian refugees.
• Restrictions on movement in Moscow are to be eased from 1 Juneafter the rate of new infections began to slow in the city, its mayor said. Sergei Sobyanin also announced plans to reopen non-food stores and services such as laundries, dry cleaners, and repair shops.
• Qatar’s contact tracing app put the sensitive personal details of more than 1 million people at risk, according to an investigation by Amnesty International. The app, which is mandatory for Qatari residents to install, was configured in a way that would have allowed hackers “to access … the name, national ID, health status and location data” of users, Amnesty said.
• Kenya recorded its highest one day rise in cases on Wednesday, hitting a triple-digit figure for new infections for the first time since the outbreak began. The health minister, Mutahi Kagwe, says it is “sombre news”.