Coronavirus live news: Brazil sees record increase as cases jump by 33,000 | World news

Canada is to invest 30 million Canadian dollars (US $21.8 million) to enable its provinces and territories to promote holidays in their “own back yard” because of the closure of the country’s borders due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Destination Canada, the country’s national marketing body which usually focuses on luring international visitors, is due to announce the new funding later on Sunday, according to a statement seen by Reuters before its official release.

Canada, which has had more than 7,000 deaths due to COVID-19, has closed its borders to non-essential travel since March, and it is unclear when they will be opened again. Many provinces have also shut down domestic non-essential travel.

Quebec, which shares borders with the U.S. states of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, accounts for more than 60% of the Canadian death toll from the virus, and Ontario, the most populous province, has also been hit hard.

The Irish government is considering moves to speed up plans to ease the national lockdown, including brining forward plans to scrap limits on how far the public can travel from home.

Museums, galleries, hairdressers and other amenities could also reopen by the end of June, while hotels could be allowed to operate with limited occupancies subject to the spread of Covid-19 remaining suppressed, the Sunday Independent reports.

The newspaper reports that the current 5km limit on travel is expected to be replaced by a new 20km limit from Monday week, but the Irish government is now also considering if this could be allowed to expire from June 29, three weeks earlier than had been planned.

Parties and larger social gatherings have been blamed in Spain for spikes in infection that have caused regional problems for that country’s ongoing attempts to return to some level of normality, El Pais reports.

In the western city of Badajoz, infections that are believed to have been picked up at a birthday party led to 18 people having to self-isolate, while there have been other small cases of inter-familiar infections at other social gatherings.

“An innocent party can end up with an outbreak,” said Fernando Simón, the director of the Health Ministry’s Coordination Center for Health Alerts.

“But some of the cases were not so innocent, and occurred after clear violations of the deescalation rules. This is why the Spanish authorities have been constantly calling on citizens not to drop their guard and to stick closely to the regulations of each phase. “If we are not all already in the new normality it’s for a reason.”

Fears that the easing of the lockdown in England could lead to a rise in infections after community transmission had been suppressed in recent weeks, have been expressed by a leading public health expert interviewed this morning on Sky news.

Police across swathes of Africa have failed to find more than a fraction of hundreds of people who have escaped from often unsanitary and uncomfortable Covid-19 quarantine centres in recent weeks.

There are more than 130,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Africa, but low levels of testing means the true total is likely to be much higher, reports the Guardian’s Africa Correspondent Jason Burke and Nyasha Chingono in Harare.

In Malawi, more than 400 people repatriated from South Africa and elsewhere fled a makeshift centre set up at a stadium in Blantyre, the commercial capital, last week. Police and health workers told reporters they were unable to stop the escapees as they lacked adequate protective gear.

At least 46 escapees had tested positive for the virus, officials said. Some of those who fled told reporters they had bribed police. In separate incidents 26 people left the Mwanza border post while waiting for test results and eight others, all tested and shown to be infected, broke out of an isolation centre in Blantyre.

In Zimbabwe, Paul Nyathi, a police spokesman, said a total of 148 people had escaped from centres where a 21-day quarantine is mandatory for those returning from abroad.

Government ministers in Britain have been accused of creating a “false sense of security” by launching a test and trace system that is not yet capable of controlling local outbreaks.

A series of concerns have been raised over the gaps in the system launched last week, with local health chiefs warning that they have not been given the time, powers or data to prepare for outbreaks in their area. They said that they were given details of their roles just four working days before Matt Hancock, Britain’s health minister, launched test and trace last week.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a “world-beating” operation would be in place by June.

However, those involved in ongoing attempts to set up a system to target local outbreaks told the Observer that launching too soon risked giving the wrong message to the public. They said a comprehensive system was weeks away. “Doing it all too early risks giving people a false sense of security,” said one senior local government figure.

Russia has reported 9,268 new cases of the novel coronavirus, raising the national tally to 405,843.

Officials said 138 people had died of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, in the last 24 hours, pushing to nationwide toll up to 4,693.

Amid unease and outright criticism from some scientific advisors to the British government about moves to ease the lockdown in England, the First Minister of Scotland’s devolved government has been emphasising the reasons for the more cautious approach being taken by her administration.

Nicola Sturgeon, who attends meetings of a UK-wide committee of experts and political leaders convened by Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, said the believed there was a concern on the part of some scientists that politicians had been seeking to blame them for mistakes that have been made in recent months.

On Thursday and Friday, UK government advisers voiced unease over the decision to lift England’s lockdown while thousands of people a day are still becoming infected with the coronavirus, warning that loosening restrictions could easily lead to a second wave.

Sturgeon went on to suggest that there was a question of “underreporting” of deaths in England when it came to care homes.

Over recent months, care homes across the UK have been devastated by Covid-19. Forty per cent of homes have been hit in England, more in Scotland, and at least a dozen care workers are dead.

Tens of thousands of mosques across Saudi Arabia have reopened for the first time in more than two months, but worshipers have been ordered to follow strict guidelines to prevent the spread of the coronavirus as Islam’s holiest site in Mecca remained closed to the public.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site for Muslims after Saudi Arabia’s Mecca and Medina, also reopened for prayers for the first time since it was closed since mid-March.

Throngs waited outside the holy site’s gates before it opened early on Sunday, with many wearing surgical masks, the Associated Press reports. As they were allowed to enter, the faithful stopped to have their temperature measured.

The mosque was one of Jerusalems many holy sites, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Western Wall, that were restricted to worshipers at the height of Israels coronavirus outbreak. Throughout that period, worshipers continued to pray in the alleyways outside the mosque.

Rwanda’s ministry of health on Sunday reported the East African nation’s first death caused by the new coronavirus, Reuters reports.

The victim was a 65-year-old driver who opted to return home from a neighbouring country, where he resided, after falling severely ill, the ministry said in a statement.

He passed away from severe respiratory complications while receiving treatment at a specialised COVID-19 treatment facility. (Reporting by Clement Uwiringiyimana Writing by Duncan