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26 million people have sought US jobless aid in the past five weeks since the coronavirus hit. About one in six American workers have lost their jobs, by far the worst string of layoffs since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The US House of Representatives has passed a nearly $500bn spending package to help businesses and hospitals.
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More than 190,000 people have died due to the pandemic, with 2.7 million infected, out of whom almost 750,000 have recovered.
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Testing of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine began on healthy volunteers at University of Oxford in Britain, the latest in a cluster of early-stage studies in search of protection against the coronavirus.
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The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) says there are “worrying upward trends” in early epidemics in parts of Africa and Central and South America, warning that the “virus will be with us for a long time”.
Here are the latest updates:
Friday, April 24
02:20 GMT – Coronavirus tally rises to 91 on Italian cruise ship in Japan
As many as 91 crew of an Italian cruise ship docked in Japan’s southwestern port of Nagasaki are infected with coronavirus, officials said on Friday, as questions persist over how and when they will return to their home countries.
Authorities are racing to complete tests on about 290 of the 623 crew after one of them was found infected this week, Reuters news agency reported.
Those who have tested negative will be repatriated, Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said on Friday, according to Kyodo news agency, a decision welcomed by officials in Nagasaki prefecture.
02:11 GMT – Haiti receives more deportees from US despite coronavirus fears
Haiti has received a deportation flight from the United States of 129 Haitians, including minors, days after three deportees who arrived on the previous flight tested positive for the new coronavirus, Reuters news agency reported.
Haiti Foreign Ministry senior official Israel Jacky Cantave told Reuters that Haiti had asked for all deportees to be tested, but the US government had only agreed to test those with symptoms – a problem given many carriers are asymptomatic.
The poorest country in the Americas, which has limited testing capacity, is placing all deportees in a quarantine facility for two weeks upon arrival.
Haitians who were deported from the United States line up as they arrive at a hotel where they will be quarantined as a measure against the spread of the new coronavirus, in Tabarre, Haiti on Thursday [Dieu Nalio Chery/AP]
01:57 GMT – Poll: Few trusts Trump’s information on coronavirus
President Donald Trump has made himself the daily spokesman for the nation’s coronavirus response. Yet few Americans regularly look to or trust Trump as a source of information on the pandemic, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Just 28 percent of Americans say they are regularly getting information from Trump about the coronavirus and only 23% say they have high levels of trust in what the president is telling the public. Another 21 percent trust him a moderate amount.
But even as many Republicans question Trump’s credibility during the pandemic, the overwhelming majority of 82 percent say they still approve of how he is doing, helping him keep his overall approval rating steady at 42 percent.
01:42 GMT – Belgian port to test virus bracelets amid tech tracing fears
The Belgian city of Antwerp, Europe’s second-biggest port, is getting ready to test a device aimed at helping thousands of people employed there to respect social distancing.
At Antwerp in Belgium, where some 900 companies operate in an area the size of a small town, two teams of port workers will be wearing next month a bracelet originally designed to find tugboat crew members that have fallen overboard but now modified to help stop the spread of the disease, the Associated Press reported.
The bracelets are worn like a watch. Coated in black plastic, they vibrate when they move to within three meters (about 10 feet) of each other. The vibration strength, similar to that of a mobile telephone but more obvious when attached to a wrist, increases the closer the bracelets get and warning lights flash.
01:28 GMT – China reports six new coronavirus cases
Mainland China has reported six new coronavirus cases as of end-April 23, down from 10 reported the previous day, putting the total number of COVID-19 infections at 82,804.
China’s National Health Commission said in a statement on Friday that two of the new cases involved travellers from overseas. There were 6 such imported cases reported a day earlier.
Number of new asymptomatic patients, those infected with the virus but not exhibiting symptoms, rose to 34 from 27 reported a day earlier. COVID-19 death toll for mainland China remained unchanged at 4,632.
The COVID-19 death toll for mainland China remains unchanged at 4,632 on Friday [Mark Schiefelbein/AP]
01:11 GMT – Gilead’s remdesivir showing significant side effect against coronavirus
Researchers studying Gilead Sciences Inc’s experimental coronavirus drug have found that the it failed its first randomised clinical trial, with some showing signficant side effects.
The Chinese trial showed the antiviral drug remdesivir did not improve patients’ condition or reduce the pathogen’s presence in the bloodstream, according to the Financial Times report, which cited draft documents published accidentally by the World Health Organization.
Remdesivir also previously failed as a treatment for Ebola.
00:55 GMT – US CDC releasing $631m more in response to health emergency
The US Department of Health and Human Services has announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be releasing $631m to state and local governments in response to the COVID-19 health emergency.
Health Secretary Alex Azar said that the money will be awarded to 64 local governments to help states with their efforts to re-open, a controversial policy that has drawn criticism by the opposition and many health experts.
00:11 GMT – Duterte extends lockdown of Metro Manila to May 15
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has extended the lockdown of Metro Manila to May 15.
The extended lockdown announced on Friday also covers several provinces of Luzon, slightly easing the restrictions that previously covered the entire northern island, affecting more than 57 million people.
Duterte was scheduled to make the announcement on Thursday, but cancelled it at the last minute.
The lockdown in Manila has been extended until May 15 affecting more than 12 million people [Aaron Favila/AP]
00:01 GMT – Cruise ship linked to Australia’s biggest virus outbreak sets sail
A cruise ship linked to a third of Australia’s coronavirus deaths has left the country after a month docked in local waters, the authorities said on Friday, as an emergency cabinet meeting was expected to ease some social-distancing measures.
The Ruby Princess, owned by Carnival Corp, has become a flashpoint of public anger after being allowed to unload thousands of passengers in Sydney without health checks on March 19.
Hundreds of its passengers later tested positive to COVID-19, about 10 percent of the country’s roughly 6,600 infections and a third of the country’s 77 coronavirus deaths have been traced to the ship.
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Hello, I’m Ted Regencia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. You can find updates from yesterday, April 23, here.
