Coronavirus latest: Spain released from seven-week lockdown
May 2, 2020
- Spaniards have been venturing outside after 48 days of strict coronavirus lockdown
- Russia's coronavirus cases hit a new high, Moscow warns of a clampdown
- A cruise ship off Germany's north coast has quarantined some 3,000 crew members after one individual tested positive
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel joins the chorus of calls for international funding for a coronavirus vaccine
Updates in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC/GMT)
23:11 UK's Department of Health and Social Care announced Saturday that the country's death toll from the novel coronavirus exceeded 28,000 – just short of Italy. The death toll on May 1 was 621, while total infections in the UK are currently 182,260.
The recent report follows Prime Minister Boris Johnson's claim on Thursday that the UK had "passed the peak" of infections. The UK is currently working on a plan to ease lockdown measures, which have been in place since March 23.
22:21 Brazil has reported 4,970 new cases of COVID-19 and 421 deaths over the last 24 hours, the health ministry said.
The South American country, the hardest-hit on the continent, has now registered 95,559 confirmed cases of the novel virus while its death toll currently stands at 6,750.
New cases have increased roughly 5.4% on Saturday from the previous day, while deaths rose by approximately 6.7%.
22:18 The Eiffel Tower joined other famous landmarks around the world on Saturday in capping a sparkling tribute to those fighting against COVID-19. The initiative was first launched by the Empire State Building in New York last month.
At 8 p.m. local time (1800 GMT), the Paris monument lit up in "sparkling white" to hail "the unfailing courage of care workers confronting the coronavirus pandemic," said SETE, the firm that manages the Eiffel Tower.
The nine-day #HeroesShineBright initiative first began on April 24 in New York. Each night a different color is shone into the night sky to express gratitude towards healthcare staff, transit workers, and police or military personnel, SETE said.
Other landmarks that have seen similar acts are the Euromast in Rotterdam, the 360 Observation Deck in Chicago, the UAE'S Burj Khalifa, the CN Tower in Toronto, the Macao tower in China, the Busan Tower in South Korea, the Ostankino TV Tower in Russia, the Tallinn TV Tower in Estonia and the OVNI Tower in Slovakia.
21:31 The Green Party in Germany are demanding that any coronavirus aid handed out to businesses must come with a pledge from firms to make commitments to the environment and to protect the climate.
Germany has already approved a stimulus package worth over €750 billion ($832 billion) but the Greens are seeking assurances that any companies that wish to take advantage of this financial aid, can do so if they promise to make their firms environmentally sustainable.
"The money we mobilize now must be linked to the economy to make it carbon neutral," party leader Robert Habeck said.
The Greens would have liked to have seen similar actions taken by the German government after the financial crisis of more than ten years ago but billions were "burned" back then. "This time it must be different," Habeck stressed. This time there is a "real chance" that this crisis might be used differently.
21:00 Inmates at a prison in Manaus, a city deep in the Brazilian Amazon that has been hit hard by COVID-19, briefly took seven guards hostage, according to news agency Reuters, before police thwarted the prisoners' efforts.
The plan involved rioting to create a distraction for prisoners to then build a tunnel to escape but police put a stop to the scheme after raiding the prison and freeing the guards.
As a result of the rebellion, ten guards, two police officers and five inmates were slightly injured, the prison authority said in a statement.
The riots at the prison came as the pandemic begins to take hold in Brazil. Indeed, public services in Manaus are at breaking point with authorities burying victims in mass graves and warning residents of an imminent shortage of coffins. There have been two confirmed COVID-19 cases at prisons elsewhere in the state of Amazonas, where Manaus is situated, according to local authorities.
18:25 The number of people who have died from coronavirus infections in France has risen by 166 to 24,760 while hospitalizations for the disease and people in ICU units continue to decline. Saturday's daily tally was markedly lower than the 218 recorded on Friday.
The French health ministry said the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 fell to 25,827 from 25,887 on Friday, and the number of people in intensive care with COVID-19 fell to 3,827 from 3,878. Both numbers have been on a downward trend for more than two weeks.
17:55 Hundreds of protesters have gathered in the German cities of Stuttgart and Berlin to demonstrate against the restrictions imposed to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
Stuttgart police said the demonstration in that city was peaceful and that participants mostly kept the required distance from one another. Police in Berlin said some 300 protesters gathered in the central Mitte district, although only two demos with up to 20 people each had been approved. Police warned ahead of the scheduled start that the area was full.
Critics say such protests, of which there have been several in Germany in recent weeks, are often initiated by or attract right-wing populists and conspiracy theorists.
17:40 Sweden says its reproduction rate of the new coronavirus has been below 1 for several days, meaning that one infected person has been passing on the infection to fewer than one other person on average. An epidemiologist with the Swedish Public Health Agency, Anders Tegnell, told broadcaster SVT the trend meant "the pandemic will gradually abate."
Sweden has attracted both praise and criticism for an approach to the pandemic that has been more relaxed than that of its neighbors, relying on the good sense of its citizens rather than strict lockdown measures. However, the country has a higher rate of infections and deaths than other Scandinavian nations, with more than 22,000 infections and a death toll of 2,650. Finland, its neighbor, has fewer than 6,000 cases, and 220 deaths.
17:36 Iran says there's been a "clear drop" in the number of new coronavirus infections as it reported 802 fresh cases, the lowest daily count since March 10. New deaths from COVID-19 rose slightly to 65 in the past 24 hours, reaching a total of 6,156, health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said on state television.
The new cases brought to 96,448 the number recorded in Iran since it announced its first cases in mid-February. Jahanpour added that more than 77,000 of those hospitalized have since been discharged, claiming it is a "one of the highest recovery percentages in the world."
Read more: Coronavirus: Iran's female singers familiar with restrictive measures
17:25 Police in the German capital, Berlin, have admitted that they were unable to enforce coronavirus social distancing measures and prevent large demonstrations on May Day, also celebrated as Labor Day, on May 1. Police chief Barbara Slowik told public broadcaster RBB that "several thousand people" may have taken part in the protests traditional on the day, even though they were banned.
The GdP police union head, Jörg Radek, said that "hygiene regulations ... were flouted, thousands of people gathered in the tightest of spaces and thus massively increased the risk of infection." The union said almost 20 police officers were injured by aggressive protesters at one march in the central district of Kreuzberg.
17:19 German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier says he welcomes a public debate about the extent of the country's coronavirus curbs. But in comments to the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung (FAZ), he rejected claims that the restrictions were damaging democracy.
"It exerts a healing pressure each day on politics to justify how long such measures are responsible," Steinmeier told FAZ. While there were examples of the coronavirus crisis being exploited in order to strengthen authoritarian structures elsewhere in the EU, Steinmeier does "not see this concern being justified in our country."
He said he had "a large amount of respect" for how politicians attempted to find a balance between protecting citizens and enabling relief from the COVID-19 restrictions.
16:26 Italy has announced its largest daily rise in COVID-19 deaths since April 21, with 474 fatalities compared with 269 the day before. The rise was largely due to a steep increase in the death toll from Lombardy, the worst-hit region, where 329 died in the past 24 hours compared with 88 on Friday.
The Civil Protection Agency said the number of new infections was fairly stable at 1,900 as against 1,965 on Friday. Italy has the second-highest coronavirus death toll in the world after the United States, with 28,710 people dying there of COVID-19 since the outbreak became apparent on February 21.
16:10 Germany's Green party has held the first online party conference in the country amid the coronavirus lockdown. Its co-leader, Robert Habeck, called for economic aid packages offered by the government to help businesses stricken by the coronavirus crisis to be conditional on those businesses agreeing to implement measures to protect the environment and climate. "The money that we mobilize now must convert our way of doing business to climate neutrality," Habeck said. In particular, he said the car and aviation industries should be compelled to become more environmentally friendly in return for any financial assistance.
Read more: Working from home, even when the coronavirus crisis has passed
15:47 Malaysia has rejected accusations by rights groups that the government acted inhumanely in arresting hundreds of immigrants without valid documents in areas badly affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Senior Minister Ismail Sabri said the immigrants had to face the law for breaching immigration rules. He said 586 people detained in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Friday had all tested negative for the virus and were now in detention camps.
Rights groups had slammed the government for taking action against migrants who came out of cover to be screened for the novel coronavirus, saying the move could make it more difficult to stem the virus' spread.
15:45 The UK has announced 621 more deaths, taking the overall cumulative toll to 28,131, just behind Europe's worst-hit country Italy. The government said that 182,260 people had tested positive for COVID-19, up 4,806 on Friday. But hospital admissions have fallen.
15:20 Austria is allowing all retail businesses to reopen whatever their size, after permitting smaller stores, DIY stores and gardening centers to resume trading some two weeks ago. Restaurants are next in line to reopen on May 15, followed by hotels at the end of May. Social distancing measures are to remain in place for the time being, and face masks must be worn in shops and on public transport. Some 15,000 people have tested positive for the virus in the country so far, with 580 confirmed COVID-19 deaths.
15:05 Singapore will allow some businesses to reopen from May 12. The city-state has experienced two months of partial lockdown in response to the coronavirus. Food manufacturing, food retail outlets, laundry services, barbers and pet supplies are among those sectors permitted to start up again, along with enterprises based at home.
The relaxation is part of a gradual approach to easing restrictions. The government said this is necessary to avoid a second wave of infections. Some measures remain in place, including confining more than 300,000 migrant workers in their dorms until June 1. The majority of confirmed infections are linked to migrants living in crowded conditions.
15:02 British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his fiancee Carrie Symonds have named their recently born baby son partly after two doctors who cared for the UK leader when he was hospitalized with a severe case of COVID-19. The child was also given the forenames of the couple's grandfathers, and is called Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson.
In an Instagram post on Saturday, Symonds, 32, said Dr. Nick Price and Dr. Nick Hart were "the two doctors that saved Boris' life last month" when he was in intensive care at London's St. Thomas' Hospital.
Johnson, 55, returned to work just days ago, having been ill for weeks with the infectious disease. The baby was born on April 29 at University College Hospital.
14:41 Masks will be obligatory on public transport in Spain from Monday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced, just as people in the country headed outside for the first time at the end of a seven-week lockdown.
Until now, the government had "highly recommended" the use of masks. Madrid said it will distribute six million across the country from Monday and supply another seven million to local authorities.
14:34 France plans to extend its coronavirus state of health emergency by two months until July 24. Health Minister Olivier Veran announced the decision after a cabinet meeting. The proposal will be put up for debate in parliament on Monday.
Lifting the state of emergency, which has been in place since March 24, at this stage would "be premature" and "could see a risk of the outbreak" intensifying, he said.
Despite the extension, France is beginning to relax some of its lockdown measures. From May 11, masks will be obligatory on all public transport, and businesses will be able to re-open.
14:01 The governor of Taiz province in Yemen has announced a closure of mosques and markets, and a ban on large gatherings. The war-torn country reported its first deaths from coronavirus earlier this week.
Millions in the country rely on food aid and live in poverty and there are concerns that a wider outbreak could have devastating effects on the country’s population. Lack of testing capabilities and medical facilities may also hamper relief efforts.
13:55 Rail service Eurostar says all its passengers must wear a face mask beginning Monday to safeguard against coronavirus. It warned that passengers without masks could be refused travel.
The company has significantly reduced its services connecting Brussels and Paris with London. Only four trains a day are currently running.
13:39 Deaths in the United States have passed 65,000, according to statistics compiled by Johns Hopkins University. There have been over 1.1 million confirmed cases and the US has by far the most cases and deaths of any country in the world.
Lockdowns have put in place with varying levels of strictness and many US states have begun to ease restrictions on public life in the last week. Federal guidelines on social distancing expired on April 30.
President Donald Trump has stressed the importance of restarting the economy in recent days, concerned about the fallout of an extended lockdown. Conservative and pro-business groups have put increased pressure on Trump to focus on reopening rather than increased testing, for the good of the economy.
At least 6.2 million people have been tested so far, while Trump has pledged that the US will be testing 5 million people a day "very soon."
13:16 A day after three staff members at Bundesliga club FC Cologne tested positive for coronavirus, a doctor said that the club is not breaking rules by continuing to train.
"There are clear guidelines for all businesses," Dr. Paul Klein told the club’s website. "It is not true that in a similar case at another company, everyone would all have to go into quarantine.”
Those affected will go into quarantine for 14 days, another major blow as Germany’s top soccer league mulls reopening behind closed doors. The German government postponed any decisions on ending the ban on sports events earlier this week.
Read more: Coronavirus and sports: Bundesliga club Cologne report three positive tests
12:57 Confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Netherlands have passed 40,000. Infections rose by 435 on Saturday, bringing the total to 40,236. Health authorities also reported 94 new deaths, with the total number of fatalities now at 4,987.
The Netherlands began to ease its lockdown this week, allowing children to exercise outside and reopening schools on a part-time basis.
12:40 Around 50,00 EU citizens are still stranded abroad despite a huge retrieval operation arranged by the bloc, German newspaper Die Welt has reported.
The EU chartered flights and helped arrange tickets for 550,000 citizens during March and April, the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell told the newspaper. The number is around 50,000 short of the goal of 600,000 set by the EU when travel restrictions were put in place owing to the coronavirus outbreak.
Germany was responsible for the retrieval of around 240,000 EU residents.
12:22 Saxony-Anhalt has become the first German state to relax social contact restrictions by allowing people to meet in groups of five from Monday. For the past six weeks, Germans have only been allowed to meet with one other individual who is not a member of their household.
The state government announced the change on Saturday, despite Berlin saying this week that strict contact restrictions should remain in place for the time being.
From Monday, inhabitants of Saxony-Anhalt will also no longer have to have a specific reason for leaving the house, and all retail shops will be allowed to reopen, regardless of their sales area. However, it is still compulsory for people to wear masks on public transport and in stores.
"As well as protecting the health of the population, it is also necessary that we gradually return to normal social and economic life," Saxony-Anhalt Premier Reiner Haseloff said.
His state has fairly low rates of infection compared to other parts of Germany. So far, almost 1,600 cases have been confirmed there, with only a few new infections recorded each day.
11:47 German politician Friedrich Merz, one of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s potential successors, says Germany’s federal system has helped it respond more effectively to the coronavirus crisis.
"Federalism also makes us stronger, because it calls for a constant process of consultation between the players, which, for example, in the US and France doesn’t take place in this way at all,” he told Die Zeit newspaper on Saturday. "This makes things more complex for us, but the result is better."
Merz stressed that politicians still had work to do to better communicate to the German public how decisions are made.
“There must be a certain predictability in decision-making processes and in further steps over the coming months,” he said, adding that it wouldn’t hurt to have the federal states acting more uniformly, with justifications offered for differing decisions.
Read more: Emergencies, disasters, curfews: Who decides what in Germany?
11:23 A Chinese virologist at the center of speculation about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 has rejected rumors that she has fled the country. Shi Zhengli, a leading researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), was part of the team behind the first study to suggest the novel coronavirus came from bats. Her work has since come under scrutiny amid unproven claims COVID-19 may have accidentally escaped from the WIV, causing an outbreak.
"No matter how difficult things are, there will not be a 'defector' situation as the rumors have said," Shi wrote on the Chinese messaging app WeChat. "We have not done anything wrong and we continue to have strong faith in science. There must be a day when the clouds part and the sun comes out."
According to the South China Morning Post, rumors circulating online claimed Shi and her family had fled the country with hundreds of confidential documents and were seeking refuge at the US embassy in Paris.
Shi has also rejected the idea that the virus came from her lab. The exact origin of the novel coronavirus is still unknown, and a number of countries have called for an international investigation to find out where it came from. Chinese scientists have said it likely jumped from an animal to humans at a wet market in Wuhan. US President Donald Trump has said he has proof it came from the WIV lab.
Read more: Did coronavirus really originate in a Chinese laboratory?
10:10 German Chancellor Angela Merkel has appealed for international cooperation to develop a coronavirus vaccine and ensure it's made available to all people.
"It is one of the most important tasks to save millions of lives," the chancellor said during her weekly video address on Saturday. "Today an estimated €8 billion ($8.8 billion) is still missing for the development of a vaccine."
Without specifying an amount, Merkel said Berlin would make "a significant financial contribution" towards this effort at an international donor conference to be co-hosted by Germany on Monday.
"Germany is assuming this responsibility, and that's why we will also make sure that once a vaccine has been developed, it will benefit all people," the chancellor said. “We are counting on the fact that only through joint action, international and multilateral action, can we overcome this pandemic."
09:25 The German arm of the UN refugee agency is warning that the coronavirus pandemic could spark a humanitarian catastrophe in Africa.
"Europe must act quickly and help to establish functioning state structures before the situation deteriorates further," director of the UNHCR in Germany, Peter Ruhenstroth-Bauer, told the Saarbrücker Zeitung newspaper.
Even before the outbreak there were millions of people in regions hit by violence, drought and hunger needing international aid, he said, adding that COVID-19 had made the situation worse.
"If this isn't stopped, a humanitarian catastrophe is imminent, and the consequences of it will also be felt in Europe," he said.
09:13 People in Spain are heading outside to exercise for the first time in seven weeks as part of an easing of coronavirus restrictions. Joggers and cyclists filled boulevards in Barcelona and Madrid early Saturday following the government's decision to lift a ban on outdoor recreational activities.
"I have been looking forward to this for weeks," runner Charlotte Fraser-Prynne in Madrid told Reuters. "I am very happy to be out after six weeks of yoga videos."
Spain imposed a strict lockdown in mid-March that only allowed people to go outside to buy food or medicine. The country is among those hardest-hit by COVID-19, with more than 215,000 cases and 24,824 deaths.
The government has slowly started reopening the country following a fall in the rate of infection. Children under 14 were allowed out for the first time for one hour last weekend.
07:22 About 2% of Moscow's residents, or about 250,000 people, have likely been infected with the coronavirus, according to the Russian capital's mayor.
In a blog post, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin wrote that the city of 12.7 million had significantly stepped up testing capacity over the past few weeks. He said lockdown measures had managed to "contain the spread of the infection," but stressed that the virus threat was still growing.
Russia has so far reported 1,169 deaths and more than 114,000 cases of the coronavirus, with Moscow a main center of infection.
07:17 Empty toilet paper and pasta shelves became a common sight in many supermarkets at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. A new survey in Germany suggests that younger people were the main culprits.
In a Nielsen poll released on Saturday, 53% of 18 to 29-year-olds, and 51% of 30 to 39-year-olds, said they had purchased more food, toilet paper and soap than they usually would during the outbreak. Meanwhile, only 19% of the over-60s, and 24% of those in their 50s, said they had stocked up on supplies.
Nielsen stressed that larger households, especially those with children, as well as people with higher educational qualifications, tended to buy more products. Households with lower incomes tended not to.
Around 43% of 18 to 29-year-olds also said they had stocked up on medicine, compared to 15% and 9% for people in their 50s and 60s respectively. About three-quarters of respondents said they had bought medicine despite having no symptoms, mainly because they feared shortages down the track.
Around 1,000 Germans were surveyed for the poll in mid-April.
05:53 Authorities in Malaysia say they are rounding up undocumented migrants in the capital in a bid to contain the coronavirus outbreak, Reuters reports. Police detained more than 700 migrants, including children and Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, in raids in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Friday, according to rights groups.
Officials cited by state news agency Bernama said the operation aimed to prevent undocumented migrants from traveling around the country, which has imposed restrictions on movement to curb COVID-19. The raids come amid rising public anger aimed at the migrant community, who some in Malaysia accuse of spreading the virus and adding to the strain on the health system. The Southeast Asian country has around 2 million registered foreign workers, but authorities estimate there are many more who do not have proper documents.
The detained migrants will be kept in a single location for monitoring until the travel restrictions were lifted, police told Bernama.
05:18 The head of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) is demanding the government give businesses a planning horizon, warning that an extended coronavirus lockdown could do permanent damage.
"Our companies want and need to know in which stages social and economic life should reopen," BDI Dieter Kempf told the Funke Media Group on Saturday. "Shutdowns cost the German economy a double-digit amount in the mid billions every week … That kind of hit cannot be sustained for months, and causes a massive loss in prosperity and permanent damage to the economy and society."
Kempf said he hoped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s meeting with state premiers next week results in a clearer path for businesses. He also called for coronavirus testing to be expanded to limit uncertainty surrounding infection and boost economic activity.
04:00 Hawaii's Lt. Gov Josh Green said the US state has successfully reduced the rate of new COVID-19 infections and "flattened the curve," as it reported just one new case on Friday. The state has begun removing restrictions on some businesses, although the authorities have extended the stay-at-home order till May 31.
03:53 Commuters from the Czech Republic who are working in Germany have been protesting against the restrictions applying to those trying to cross the border between the two countries. The restrictive measures are in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.
Roughly 100 people convened at the border crossing between Folmava and Furth im Wald, in Bavaria, and a petition has also got underway. The demonstrators were venting their anger at having to present lab results showing they have tested negative for the virus before they can return to the Czech Republic. The test needs to be conducted every four weeks, otherwise, citizens must stay at home and self-isolate for two weeks.
"This government order is discriminatory and harasses cross-border commuters," Jan Pruha, one of the organizers of the protests, told news agency CTK. He said that those commuting within the country, say from Plzen to Prague, are not subject to the same circumstances.
More than 37,000 Czechs commute to Germany while 12,000 regularly go in and out of Austria to work.
03:48 The number of registered cases in Germany rose by 945 to 161,703, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases revealed.
This figure is a significant decrease on Thursday's daily infection count of 1,639.
The death toll, meanwhile, has risen by 94, bringing the total number of fatalities from COVID-19 in Germany to 6,575.
02:35 China has reported one new case of COVID-19 in its daily update, down from 12 a day earlier, according to data from the country's health authority. The new case was imported, the National Health Commission (NHC) revealed.
The NHC announced 20 new asymptomatic cases, down from 25 a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed infections in China is 82,875 while the death toll remains at 4,633 after no new fatalities from COVID-19 were registered in the last 24 hours.
02:22 The International Monetary Fund has given the go-ahead to a $643 million (€580 million) loan for Ecuador after the South American country requested emergency funding to help combat the coronavirus outbreak.
Ecuador has been among the hardest-hit countries in Latin America, with 24,675 confirmed cases and 883 deaths, plus a further 1,357 deaths that were likely caused by the novel coronavirus.
"This financing will allow us to have the necessary liquidity to support the reactivation of the economy, and protect jobs," Ecuador's ministry said via a statement.
01:41 US regulators have allowed emergency use of the first drug that appears to enable some patients infected with the novel coronavirus to recover faster.
The Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to Gilead Science's intravenous drug for hospitalized patients with "severe disease," such as those experiencing breathing problems requiring supplemental oxygen or ventilators, issues that COVID-19 patients suffer from.
Remdesivir is the first drug shown to help fight the novel virus that has so far been responsible for the deaths of almost a quarter of a million people worldwide.
President Donald Trump made the announcement at the White House alongside Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn.
"This was lightning speed in terms of getting something approved," Hahn said, describing the drug as "an important clinical advance."
The FDA acted after preliminary results from a government-sponsored study demonstrated that the drug shortened the recovery time by 31%, or about four days on average, for those hospitalized with the coronavirus.
Read more: Antiviral drug remdesivir shows promise in trial on monkeys with coronavirus
00:51 President Donald Trump says he's hoping that the total number of coronavirus deaths in the United States will be below 100,000, even though he acknowledged the figure as a "horrible number."
So far, more than 1.1 million infections have been reported in the US, with 64,789 deaths due to the novel coronavirus.
After his briefing, Trump, who has remained in the White House since March 28 due to the coronavirus lockdown, flew to Camp David, Maryland, for a weekend away at the presidential retreat.
00:34 Nearly 3,000 crew members of a cruise ship owned by German tourism company TUI have been quarantined onboard after one individual tested positive for COVID-19, the travel giant stated.
Fifteen of those aboard "Mein Schiff 3" were tested due to having mild flu-like symptoms. One of them ended up testing positive.
All 2,899 crew would remain in quarantine on board in the cruise liner's home port of Cuxhaven, on Germany's North Sea coast, until further notice, TUI said in a statement. The vessel had no passengers on board, TUI added.
00:00 Catch up on yesterday's coronavirus news here: Coronavirus latest: India extends world's biggest lockdown
In reporting on the coronavirus pandemic, unless otherwise specified, DW uses figures provided by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Coronavirus Resource Center in the United States. JHU updates figures in real-time, collating data from world health organizations, state and national governments and other public official sources, all of whom have their own systems for compiling information.
Germany's national statistics are compiled by its public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). These figures depend on data transmission from state and local levels and are updated around once a day, which can lead to deviation from JHU.
js,ed,jsi/shs,mm (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)