Russia's Covid-19 case tally passes 1 million as schools reopen
Reuters reports that Russia's coronavirus case tally passed the 1 million mark on Tuesday as schools and educational institutions reopened across the world's largest country with new mandatory safety precautions in place.
Russia has the fourth highest case tally in the world after the United States, Brazil and India, according to Johns Hopkins University, which has been tracking the virus since it was discovered.
But officials say more than 800 000 people have recovered from the disease, and that with just over 17 000 deaths, the death toll is lower than in many other European countries.
The Covid-19 crisis centre said on Tuesday that the overall case tally stood at 1 000 048 after 4 729 new infections were reported.
It said 123 new deaths had been confirmed in the last 24 hours, taking the official death toll to 17 299.
President Vladimir Putin, in a nationwide TV address, told school children and students to observe virus safety rules.
Germany sees strong economic rebound, no second virus lockdown
AFP reports that Germany is in a V-shaped economic recovery as it bounces back more strongly than expected from the effects of the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic, the economy minister said Tuesday.
German GDP is expected to fall 5.8% in 2020, a smaller recession than the 6.3% drop projected earlier, Peter Altmaier said, in a signal that the country is emerging from the worst of the crisis.
Altmaier said Europe's largest economy was seeing "an unfortunately strong slump but then an unexpectedly fast recovery".
Before a press conference, the minister showed off a printed V-shaped chart for assembled photographers.
The German economy slumped 9.7%in the second quarter of 2020, the "sharpest decline since quarterly GDP calculations for Germany began in 1970," the federal statistics agency Destatis said previously.
However, the "low point of the recession" passed in May, according to the economy ministry.
Altmaier said Germany "can and will" avoid lockdowns like Germans lived through in March and April.
The German economy is expected to grow 4.4% in 2021, although pre-crisis GDP levels will not be seen again until 2022.
Recent surveys have already shown an improvement in business sentiment in the country.
UK to ramp up return-to-workplace campaign after Covid-19 slump
The UK's government will launch a media campaign this week to urge people to return to their workplaces, ramping up Prime Minister Boris Johnson's calls to get the economy back up to speed after its hammering during the coronavirus lockdown, Reuters reports.
Data has shown only 17% of workers in the UK's cities had returned to their workplaces by early August, and one of the country's business leaders said last week that big urban centres looked like ghost towns.
"The next stage we'll look at is specifically the guidance on how to get back to work safely and we expect to see that later this week," Johnson's spokesman said, commenting on the government's ongoing public information campaign.
Johnson's message is that returning to work will help stimulate the economy, the spokesperson said.
The government is hoping that the reopening of schools, which began in England this week, will help parents to get back to their workplaces after working from home since March in many cases.
Some 4.6 million working households in Britain have children under the age of 16. If all of these households had to make changes to their working arrangements to provide childcare, that would have affected one in seven workers in the UK.
Britain's economic output shrank by more than 20% in the April-June period, bigger than all other large industrialised nations and its recovery has been moderate by comparison.
Scaled-down Venice film festival hopes to shake off virus gloom
Reuters reports that Indonesia's coronavirus outbreak will likely peak this month, President Joko Widodo said on Tuesday, adding he was "very confident" about access to a safe and effective vaccine by the end of this year.
The upbeat assessment came as Indonesia - which has one of the world's lowest per-capita testing rates - saw record new cases on three successive days last week, when 11% of its total 177 571 infections were recorded.
Its 7 505 Covid-19 deaths are the most in Southeast Asia.
"From what I gathered this morning, the peak will still be in September," Widodo told foreign media at the presidential palace. "After that, it will fall."
Instead of looking at overall infection numbers, Widodo said people should focus on a decline in active cases, which were about 41 000 as of Monday.
Widodo expects a return to positive growth in the final quarter and that the economy would "approach normal" next year, with spending and investment increasing after Covid-19 vaccinations begin in January.
The government's "omnibus bill", which aims to loosen scores of labour and environmental regulations, should be concluded this month and should also spur investment, he said.
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