Philippines orders millions to stay home: Coronavirus updates

It has kept numbers low thanks to early and effective prevention work.Britain faces a second wave of COVID-19 this winter twice as widespread as the initial outbreak if it reopens schools without a more effective test-and-trace system in place, according to a study published.Researchers from University College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine modelled the impact of reopening schools either on a full- or part-time basis, thus allowing parents to return to work, on the potential spread of the virus.They concluded a second wave could be prevented if 75 percent of those with symptoms were found and tested and 68% of their contacts were traced, or if 87 percent of people with symptoms were found and 40% of their contacts tested.Russia reported 5,159 new cases of the coronavirus, pushing its national tally to 861,423, the fourth largest in the world.The country's coronavirus crisis response centre said 144 people had died in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 14,351.Germany is already contending with a second wave of the coronavirus and risks squandering its early success by flouting social distancing rules, the head of the German doctors' union said in a newspaper interview published.The number of daily confirmed coronavirus cases has ticked up steadily in recent weeks, with health experts warning lax adherence to hygiene and distancing rules among some of the public is spreading the virus across communities."We are already in a second, shallow upswing," Susanne Johna, president of Marburger Bund, which represents doctors in Germany, told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.A restaurant on Spain's northeastern Mediterranean coast is pioneering a dining experience that allows customers to avoid most face-to-face contact with staff and minimise the risk of coronavirus contagion.Customers at Funky Pizza, in Palafrugell on the Costa Brava popular with tourists, can browse the menu, order and pay via the "Funky Pay" app on their phones - the first time a purpose-designed app has been integrated into a restaurant's ordering system in Spain.A waiter does bring the order to the table. Staff manage the orders from screens behind the bar."Through this system we have tried to keep physical distance with our clients, which is what people are looking for during COVID," said restaurant owner Carlos Manich.Australia has closed the national park home to its revered indigenous site of Uluru after some in the community blocked an access route for fear that visitors could carry in coronavirus infections.The country is battling a new wave of the deadly virus, with southeastern Victoria state reeling from hundreds of infections, while Indigenous Australians are seen at greater risk as they suffer a higher incidence of other health woes."It's up to tourists to stay away if they come from hotspots or are sick," Thalia Bohl-Van Den Boogaard, the representative of a group of Indigenous Australians protesting against the visits, told Reuters by telephone.More than 27 million people on the main island of Luzon, including the capital Manila, went back into a partial lockdown for the next few weeks.   People have been told to stay home unless they need to go out to buy essential goods, for exercise or for work after the number of recorded infections surged past 100,000.  With only 24 hours' notice of the shutdown, many found themselves stranded in Manila and unable to get back to their hometowns after public transport and domestic flights were halted.    ---Hi, this is Arwa Ibrahim in Doha, taking over the blog from my colleague Ted Regencia.---South Korea has reported 34 more cases of the coronavirus, with the number of imported cases almost twice that of local infections, Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday.The 21 imported cases and 13 local infections raised country's total COVID-19 infections to 14,423, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).The accumulated number of imported cases reached 2,482 in South Korea.But the country reported no additional deaths, with the death toll remaining at 301, while the number of patients fully cured of the virus reached 13,352, up 72 from the previous day.The Trump administration's plan to provide every nursing home with a fast COVID-19 testing machine comes with an asterisk: The government won't supply enough test kits to check staff and residents beyond an initial couple of rounds.A programme that sounded like a game changer when it was announced last month at the White House is now prompting concerns that it could turn into another unfulfilled promise for nursing homes, whose residents and staff represent a tiny share of the US population but account for as many as 4 in 10 coronavirus deaths, according to some estimates."I think the biggest fear is that the instruments may be delivered but it won't do any good, if you don't have the test kits," said George Linial, president of Leading Age of Texas, a group that represents nursing homes.The weekly cost of testing employees could range from more than $19,000 to nearly $38,000, according to estimates by the national organisation.The Trump administration said nursing homes could cover the cost of ongoing testing from a $5bn pot provided by Congress, and allocated to the facilities by the White House.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the world faces a "generational catastrophe" because of school closures amid the coronavirus pandemic and said that getting students safely back to the classroom must be "a top priority", according to Reuters news agency.Guterres said that as of mid-July schools were closed in some 160 countries, affecting more than 1 billion students, while at least 40 million children have missed out on pre-school.This came on top of more than 250 million children already being out of school before the pandemic and only a quarter of secondary school students in developing countries leaving with basic skills, he said in a video statement."Now we face a generational catastrophe that could waste untold human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate entrenched inequalities," said Guterres as he launched a U.N.