15/05/20 COVID-19 Global News Update

Restaurants, cafes and bars in Australia’s most populous state were reopening on Friday after a two-month shutdown under coronavirus lockdown measures, boosting the federal government’s bid to get people back in work and the economy back on track.

The reproduction rate for the coronavirus in Germany remained below the key threshold of 1 according to both the conventional calculation method and a new, less volatile measure, the Robert Koch Institute for disease control said on Thursday.

Transport for London (TfL) has secured £1.6bn in emergency funding to keep Tube and bus services running until September. Mayor Sadiq Khan had warned the body was close to running out of money.

Britain’s government is on track to borrow a record 298 billion pounds this year, equivalent to more than 15% of economic output, to cope with the economic damage being caused by the coronavirus.

The government has announced plans to measure the threat from Covid-19 in England, with a new five-level, colour-coded alert system.

A "traffic-light" roadmap setting out how Wales could exit the coronavirus lockdown will be published by the country's first minister later. Emphasising the need for caution, Mark Drakeford will explain how restrictions on day-to-day life, schools and businesses could begin to be eased.

Rapid testing and an adequate supply of protective equipment must be in place when the NHS reopens services cancelled during the peak of the coronavirus oubreak, health unions have said. The unions have put forward a nine-point plan for the NHS to reopen safely as lockdown restrictions ease.

The NHS coronavirus app’s advisory board is split over whether it has the authority to tell the government to ditch its version and switch to a decentralised model proposed by Apple and Google.

Garden centres and recycling centres in Northern Ireland can reopen from next Monday as part of the first steps to ease lockdown, Arlene Foster has said. On Tuesday, the executive published a five-phase blueprint for lifting restrictions but it did not include a timeframe.

Nearly a quarter of a billion people across 47 African countries will catch coronavirus over the next year, but the result will be fewer severe cases and deaths than in the US and Europe, new research predicts.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief called on China on Thursday to contribute significantly to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and said there should be an independent scientific investigation into the origins of the pandemic.

China is drawing up ambitious plans to test the entire population of Wuhan, the city where the Covid-19 pandemic began. The announcement came after the emergence of six new coronavirus cases in the city - the first ones since early April.

Britain is in talks with Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG to buy an accurate COVID-19 antibody test, following the lead of the European Union and United States which have already given preliminary approval to the tests.

Asian stocks struggled to extend gains on Friday and were on course to end the week lower as deteriorating U.S.-China relations undercut optimism over the reopening of major economies.