Keeping you up to date on the latest novel coronavirus (Covid-19) news from around the world.
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Child hand sanitiser poisoning cases spike in Spain
The number of children treated in Spain for accidental poisonings after ingesting hand sanitising gels has soared during the pandemic, the government said Wednesday, urging parents to keep the products out of reach.
There have been 874 reported cases of intoxications from hand sanitising gels so far this year, compared to just 90 during all of 2019, the National Toxicological and Forensic Sciences Institute, a unit of the justice ministry, said in a statement.
Two-thirds of the cases involved children, especially those under the age of two. The vast majority swallowed the hand-sanitiser although some became intoxicated after getting the product in their eyes or inhaling it.
No fatalities have been reported. Over 80 percent the poisoning victims recovered "in a short time", the institute said.
The most common symptoms were, vomiting, diarrhoea, coughing, blurred vision and red eyes.
In a video message posted on Twitter, Justice Minister Juan Carlos Campo called the figures "alarming" and urged parents to "keep hand-sanitising gels out of reach of children and insist that its use to disinfect hands always be supervised by an adult".
As in other European countries, used of hand-sanitising gels has soared in Spain to curb the spread of Covid-19. The country has become of the pandemic's hotspots in the European Union, with close to 910 000 registered cases and over 33 000 deaths.
-AFP
Worldwide coronavirus cases cross 38.11 million, death toll at 1 084 890
More than 38.11 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 1 084 890 have died, according to a Reuters tally. Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
-REUTERS
10 000 more children a month could die of malnutrition due to Covid impact - WHO
The director general of the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday an additional 10 000 children a month could die this year from malnutrition as a result of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking at a U.N Food and Agriculture (FAO) conference, said he expected a 14% increase this year in children suffering from malnutrition as a result of the pandemic.
This equates to 6.7 million more malnourished children, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.
"The pandemic has caused serious disruptions to essential services, immunisation, maternal services, child nutrition, family planning and more," he said.
"We can not accept a world where the rich have access to healthy diets while the poor are left behind," he added.
-REUTERS
Astrazeneca to provide Indonesia 100 million Covid-19 vaccines next year- foreign minister
AstraZeneca is set to provide Indonesia with 100 million coronavirus vaccines next year, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Masrudi said on Wednesday.
Indonesia's health ministry has signed a letter of intent with AstraZeneca, Retno added.
"The first shipment will be made by the first half of 2021," she told a news conference.
-REUTERS
New UK lockdown would be disaster but all options open: PM
Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday said a new UK-wide lockdown would be a "disaster" but refused to rule it out as demands grew for a temporary shutdown to stop the spread of coronavirus.
Opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer has thrown his weight behind a two-week "circuit break" to stop a surge in cases of Covid-19, after the proposal was endorsed by the government's scientific advisory committee.
Devolved authorities in Northern Ireland added to the pressure Wednesday by announcing plans to shut pubs and restaurants for four weeks, tighten restrictions on social gatherings and extend the mid-term school break to counter soaring case numbers there.
Johnson is reportedly mulling a similar move in England - for which the UK government has jurisdiction on health issues - which experts suggest could coincide with school half-term holiday starting on 23 October.
The Conservative leader is desperate to avoid a repeat of the devastating outbreak in March when coronavirus swept across the UK, leaving more than 43 000 confirmed deaths so far - the worst toll from the pandemic in Europe.
But his own MPs are also railing against anything that would inflict further damage on an economy set to shrink by almost ten percent this year, according to the IMF.
In a bad-tempered exchange with Starmer in the House of Commons, Johnson insisted: "We will do whatever it takes to fight this virus and to defeat it."
But he said the regional approach he outlined only on Monday, with England divided into three levels of restrictions depending on the severity of the local outbreak, was the best approach.
"The whole point is to seize this moment now to avoid the misery of another national lockdown into which he wants to go headlong, by delivering a regional solution," Johnson said.
If properly implemented, he said the plan would reduce the reproduction (R) rate of the virus "that we need in order to avert what none of us want to see... and that is the disaster of a national lockdown. We don't want to go there."
However, Starmer accused the prime minister of being "behind the curve" and ignoring the science, warning that "time is running out" to take decisive action.
'Drastic steps'The northwest English city of Liverpool was the first to be put in the highest risk category, and a ban on household mixing and pub closures came into force Wednesday for at least four weeks.
City council member Paul Brant told the BBC that intensive care units in the city were more than 90% full, with coronavirus patients making up an increasing proportion.
"I believe that this lockdown is right because that's the only way that we'll survive. If we just carry on and carry on, it'll spread and spread and spread," said Liverpool resident Jerry MacNally, 61.
But others are growing frustrated. Retired local Lynn Curtis told AFP: "I think it's a huge overreaction, I just don't think there's any need for such drastic steps."
Many lawmakers in Johnson's Conservatives have argued against new measures on the basis of the economic damage and associated risks to long-term health.
In a symbolic vote late Tuesday in the Commons on a 10pm curfew already introduced for pubs and restaurants in England, 42 Tory MPs rebelled against the government, calling for a different strategy.
"There is no silver bullet and without one, although difficult, we must learn to live with the virus," said one, Imran Ahmad Khan. "The continued peaks and troughs are unsustainable and offer false hope."
-AFP
IMF said governments should target scarce resources to new jobs
As demands increase on their limited resources, governments will need to raise taxes on wealthier families and firms and target spending away from protecting "old jobs," the IMF said Wednesday.
As countries continue to struggle with the economic damage inflicted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the IMF's Fiscal Monitor report also urges policymakers to invest in job-creating projects like infrastructure and green energy.
Governments have injected a stunning $12 trillion into the global economy since the start of the pandemic, but now "many countries will need to do more with less, given increasingly tight budget constraints," Vitor Gaspar, head of the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department, said in a blog post about the report.
As the recovery continues, policymakers "should become more selective and avoid standing in the way of necessary sectoral reallocations as activity resumes," he and his coauthors said.
"Support should shift gradually from protecting old jobs to getting people back to work," by reducing measures like wage subsidies in favor of training to give people skills to find new employment.
With low interest rates making borrowing easier, boosting public investment - beginning with maintenance and ramping up projects - can create jobs and spur economic growth.
Steps like a broad tax cut are "unlikely to be cost-effective" and would have limited impact on promoting growth and jobs, the report said.
A better alternative would be "to accelerate job-intensive public investments such as maintenance or public works."
With public debt in many cases approaching 100 percent of GDP, including in the United States, governments also may need "revenue-enhancing measures, including both increasing tax compliance and the progressivity of taxes on more affluent" firms that may have profited from the pandemic, the IMF said.
"The design of corporate income taxes to appropriately capture very high profits of firms in a rapidly changing economy, including those that made windfall profits during the crisis, can help finance priority areas."
-AFP
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