Coronavirus latest: Germany's infection rate climbs again - DW (English)

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Fears are growing over fresh virus clusters in China's capital, Beijing. Also, a day before most EU internal borders reopen, Germany's seven-day virus reproduction rate is on the rise. Follow DW for the latest.

• China fears resurgence in local transmissions as parts of Beijing go under lockdown
• Germany's seven-day virus reproduction rate has risen to 1.09
• More than 100,000 new cases are confirmed globally every day, according to Johns Hopkins University
  Nearly 7.8 million coronavirus cases have been confirmed globally, with more than 430,000 deaths

All times in GMT/UTC 

13:38 Bangladeshi police have arrested a university professor for allegedly mocking an ex-health minister, who died of coronavirus.

Sirajum Munira, 28, was arrested under the South Asian country's controversial digital security laws over her social media post.

Munira, a lecturer at northern Begum Rokeya University, later apologized and deleted her Facebook comments.

Bangladeshi authorities have arrested at least 44 people since March under internet laws for allegedly spreading rumor and propaganda amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Rights activists say internet laws in Bangladesh are being used to suppress dissent and target those who criticize the government's handling of COVID-19.

As of Sunday, Bangladesh has reported nearly 90,000 coronavirus cases and around 1,200 related deaths.

13:00 Chinese authorities reported eight new COVID-19 cases in Beijing city in the first seven hours of June 14.

Health official Pang Xinghuo said at a second press conference on Sunday that all these eight cases were linked to the Xinfadi food wholesale market in the city's southwestern Fengtai district.

Beijing recorded 43 new coronavirus cases in the previous three days – also linked to the food market.

There had been almost no new COVID-19 cases in Beijing city for almost two months until an infection was reported on June 12. Since then, the authorities have confirmed 51 cases there.

The dozens of new cases in recent days have raised concerns about a second wave of the disease, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.

"Beijing has entered an extraordinary period," city spokesman Xu Hejian told a news conference on Sunday.

Experts fear the Beijing outbreak could spread to other parts of the country, and subsequently to other countries. It has already spread to the neighboring northeastern province of Liaoning, where two new cases were confirmed on Sunday. Both infected people had been in close contact with confirmed cases in Beijing.

11:50 German railway company Deutsche Bahn (DB) plans to gradually increase its connections beyond Germany after the re-opening of EU borders, DB chief Michael Peterson has announced. 

The company has scheduled international long-distance routes to resume by the end of June including all trains to Switzerland, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, France, Belgium, Denmark, Poland and the Netherlands. Some routes abroad had already resumed in the past few weeks.

In addition, a new connection between Berlin and the Austrian city of Innsbruck is planned from June 27 onwards, and a new direct connection from Berlin via Dresden, Prague and Vienna to Graz is planned from June 16.

As of midnight on Sunday, Germany will end its border controls introduced due to the coronavirus pandemic. Travelers will no longer have to prove a valid reason for entry. 

Germany had introduced controls at the borders with Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg and Denmark, but restrictions have been reduced in the past few weeks

11:38 Britain says it is considering making changes to its newly introduced 14-day quarantine rule for international arrivals.

The policy has been heavily criticized since it was introduced last week, with airlines and others in the tourism sector saying it would have a damaging impact on demand and jobs.

 "We all want to see travel open again, of course we do, and like everything else we want to make sure we have the right measures at the right time informed by the science and everything else that we have to consider," Finance
Minister Rishi Sunak told BBC television on Sunday.

"We are looking at all options to ensure that that is possible and people have got suggestions about how we might be able to open up some travel corridors over time and so the transport secretary is actively looking at all of those options."

The minister added that the government was also looking into relaxing social distancing rules, such as reducing the 2-meter (6.5-foot) requirement that has prevented many pubs and other spaces from reopening. Sunak said the retail sector would largely reopen this coming week, with the hospitality sector expected to follow in early July.

Britain has the third-highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world behind the US and Brazil.

11:15 Iran has reported more than 100 new deaths from the coronavirus — the highest single-day toll it’s had in two months.

Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said there had been 107 fatalities confirmed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths to 8,837. More than 185,000 people have been infected, and there is skepticism about the official figures, with critics saying the real toll could be higher. 

Iran, the worst-affected country in the Middle East, imposed strict measures in March, such as closing schools and mosques, to slow the spread of the virus. But since April, many of these restrictions have been eased.

On Saturday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani voiced his disappointment during a televised address after a report found that only 18 to 20 people were respecting social distancing measures.

10:13 Germany’s government plans to launch its coronavirus warning app on Tuesday, the DPA news agency reports.

The app is designed to be able to better trace chains of infection at a time when the easing of lockdown measures has sparked concerns about a second wave.  

The app is voluntary and uses Bluetooth to measure whether smartphone users come within a few meters of each other for a period of more than 15 minutes. Anonymous identification numbers are then generated and transferred by phones with the app. 

If a user tests positive for COVID-19 and that information is shared with the app, users who came near that infected person will be automatically notified. 

The app will be unveiled by Health Minister Jens Spahn, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and Head of Chancellory Helge Braun in Berlin.

09:52 Spain will reopen its borders to tourists from countries in the EU’s Schengen zone on June 21, instead of on July 1 as previously announced, El Pais newspaper reports.

The plan does not apply to neighbor Portugal, where border restrictions will still remain in place until July 1.

Also excluded from the rule are some 10,000 German tourists who are set to travel to the Balearic Islands from Monday as part of a trial program. Mallorca and other islands off the Spanish coast rely heavily on tourism, especially from Germany and the UK, and have suffered from the travel restrictions.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Spain would also open its borders to other third countries from July 1, depending on reciprocity and the epidemiological situation.

The EU has recommended that member countries open their borders with each other on June 15. Some countries are planning to do just that, while others have made individual arrangements.

Germany, for example, already opened its borders to neighboring Austria, Switzerland, and France on May 16 under tightly controlled conditions. It will relax all inter-EU travel on June 15.

Read more: EU calls for reopening of borders from June 15 and gradually resume tourism

08:54 Germany says its "top priority" is to make sure the summer travel season doesn't lead to a surge in new coronavirus infections. 

"If holidaymakers return from a hotspot to their homes all over Germany, and we're not able to identify the chains of infection, we would quickly end up in a situation where we would have to implement nationwide measures," Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff, Helge Braun, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagzeitung newspaper. 

He said a new coronavirus warning app, set to be unveiled in the next few days, was designed to help contain the spread. Those who sign up to the voluntary app will be automatically notified if another user in their vicinity has tested positive for COVID-19.

Braun's comments come as Germany's 7-day virus reproduction rate, which measures the disease's ability to
spread, rose above the critical value of 1 to 1.09 on Sunday from 0.99 on Thursday and 0.86 on Wednesday.

08:25 A government minister in Bangladesh has died of Covid-19. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, 75, the state minister for religious affairs, died soon after being rushed to hospital in the capital Dhaka on Saturday night, his personal aide Nazmul Haque Shaikat said.

Ministry spokesman Anwar Hossain said the physicians collected a sample after Abdullah's death and found he had "tested positive for the novel coronavirus."

Abdullah is the first government minister to die of the virus in Bangladesh. Two other ministers of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's cabinet are undergoing treatment for Covid-19.

Bangladesh, which reported its first three cases of the deadly virus in March, has since reported more than 88,000 infections with more than 1,100 deaths as of Saturday.

Read more: Coronavirus: Economy down, poverty up in Bangladesh

08:11 Germany plans to allocate €500 million ($563 million) to safeguard apprenticeships amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Fearing a slump in the country's practical training programs for young people from the economic fallout of the crisis, the government wants to give training bonuses of €2,000 or €3,000 for small and medium-sized enterprises that have been affected "to a considerable extent." 

"We must prevent the COVID-19 crisis from becoming a crisis for the professional future of young people and the securing of skilled workers," a government report sighted by Reuters stated.

The country's apprenticeship system is well-regarded as an alternative to fulltime tertiary education whereby young people learn through a mix of ‘on-the-job’ training (70%) as well as in the classroom (30%). Most apprenticeships take around three years and almost always lead to secure employment.

07:52 India's coronavirus pandemic has exposed a deadly shortage of hospital beds in parts of the country.

Officials in the capital New Delhi have estimated that the city could need 80,000 beds by the end of July, and warned hotels and wedding venues that they are likely to be turned into hospitals. Currently, government hospitals have 8,505 designated pandemic beds while private hospitals have 1,441. 

Meanwhile, local media has been full of tragic stories of people dying after being turned away by hospitals. One pregnant woman died as she was being transferred between hospitals due to a lack of available space. A 78-year-old man petitioned the Delhi High Court for a ventilator bed but died before his case could be considered.

Twenty-year-old Kashish lost her father to the virus after she and her family pleaded several hospitals to take him in.
"They don't care whether we live or die," Kashish told the French news agency AFP. "The government is doing nothing. They are just playing with our feelings … I have lost my father, he was the world to me."

Families say they are being forced to spend a small fortune for the few private beds that are available, prompting Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to accuse private hospitals of lying about availability and promised tough action if they were found extorting money.

Meanwhile, mortuaries are overflowing with corpses while cemeteries and crematorium workers say they cannot keep up with the backlog of victims.

India has registered more than 300,000 coronavirus cases with nearly 9,000 fatalities. In Delhi alone, more than 1,200 people have died from the virus and more than 1,000 new cases are being reported each day.

07:04 European border agency Frontex recorded a sharp increase in migrants hoping to enter the EU last month, German media reported Sunday.

The spike comes after coronavirus lockdowns and widespread border closures cut the number of potential asylum-seekers able to reach Europe. As a result, traffic along the continent's main migration routes reached record lows in April.  

In May, there were almost 4,300 illegal border crossings, newspapers from the Funke Media Group reported, citing figures from Frontex. That's almost three times as many compared to the previous month.  

06:32 The Yemeni Embassy in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, is closing indefinitely due to a number of confirmed cases among staff. The embassy made the announcement on Twitter late Saturday, but did not specify how many people had contracted COVID-19.

Similarly, the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh also announced that starting Sunday its office for labor affairs will close after six staffers tested positive for the disease. The office is being sterilized and employees were working remotely, according to the embassy.

Despite taking early and unprecedented measures to curb the spread of the virus, Saudi Arabia's numbers continue to climb by more than 3,000 cases daily with more than 123,000 confirmed cases overall.

05:46 Beijing should expand the scope of nucleic acid testing for the virus following a new cluster of cases in the Chinese capital, a city government spokesman said on Sunday. 

He told a news conference that Beijing has entered an "extraordinary period" after the city reported a record 36 confirmed new cases of the virus on Sunday.

Of the 57 new coronavirus cases that were logged by Chinese authorities, 36 were domestic infections in the capital, Beijing, where a large wholesale food market at the center of the outbreak has been closed and nearby housing estates put under lockdown.

A temporary ban on inter-provincial travel has also been imposed and local schools and other markets have been closed.

05:15 A 70-year-old coronavirus patient from Seattle has been handed a $1.1 million (€980,000) medical bill after being discharged from hospital, the Seattle Times reports.

According to the newspaper, Michael Flor was admitted to a hospital in the northwestern US city on March 4 and stayed for 62 days. At one point his condition was so critical that nurses held up the phone so that his wife and children could say goodbye. But in the end, he made a full recovery and was sent home on May 4, after which he was given the 181-page hospital bill.

Health care in the US is notoriously expensive. But fortunately, Flor is covered by Medicare, the government insurance scheme for the elderly, which means he won't pay the fee himself, according to the Times.

The newspaper quoted him as saying he felt guilty knowing taxpayers' money would cover the cost: "It was a million bucks to save my life, and of course I'd say that's money well-spent ... But I also know I might be the only one saying that."

04:46 Egypt has reported 1,677 new coronavirus cases, its biggest daily increase in infections since the virus was first detected there in February. It now has almost 43,000 cases. 

The Health Ministry also confirmed 62 more fatalities from COVID-19, bringing the death toll to 1,484.

Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, has had the highest death rate among Arab nations. It is also the third-worst-affected country in the Middle East behind Iran and Turkey.

04:36 In Germany, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has risen by 247 to 186,269, according to the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.

The death toll climbed to 8,787, with six new fatalities reported on Sunday. Around 300 more people were added to the list of 172,200 recovered patients, bringing the total number of patients who have overcome the virus to 172,200, according to the RKI.

The virus reproduction rate, which measures the disease's ability to spread, rose above the critical value of 1, to 1.02 on Sunday, meaning each infected person is spreading the virus to around one other. The day before, it was 0.86.

Since the middle of May, the RKI has also been measuring a seven-day reproduction value, which is less subject to fluctuations. This number was 1.09 on Sunday, reflecting the rate of infection of the previous 8-16 days.

Read more: EU nations sign deal for coronavirus vaccine

03:35 France has nearly 20 million unsold face masks after the coronavirus crisis. Earlier this year, hundreds of textile and luxury goods companies in the country had stepped in to churn out cloth masks to protect people from COVID-19 amid fears of a shortage.

However, within weeks the demand for these domestically produced masks decreased.

Both the government and the manufacturers said that many suppliers and consumers were still choosing cheaper, disposable face masks from Asia. The French companies are now asking the government to assist them in promoting and finding buyers for the unsold surplus.

01:30 The United States on Saturday reported 734 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours. The country, which has both the highest number of deaths and infections, is recording around 20,000 daily cases of COVID-19.

President Donald Trump's administration has acknowledged the new rise in coronavirus cases in some states, but has stressed the economy will not be shut down if there is a second wave.

01:05 China on Sunday reported its biggest rise in new coronavirus infections since April. According to health authorities, 57 new cases were registered within 24 hours.

Thirty-six of these were domestic infections from a new cluster in Beijing.

00:30 Fears are growing in China of a resurgence in local transmissions as a lockdown was imposed in parts of Beijing to prevent the spread of a new COVID-19 cluster.

On Thursday, Beijing reported its first infection in two months. It then went on to announce 50 more infections, all traced back to a meat and vegetable market in the city.

China, believed to be the source of the coronavirus outbreak, had strict local and regional lockdown measures that had till now largely eliminated transmission within its borders.

Read more: Beijing orders lockdown amid fresh outbreak

The recent transmissions have fuelled fears of a resurgence in the country, where the curve of the outbreak has been months ahead of the rest of the world.

Authorities have announced mass testing and ordered residents in 11 residential estates to stay home. A "wartime mechanism" that saw hundreds of police officers deployed was also activated.

00:00 Catch up on yesterday's coronavirus updates here.

In reporting on the coronavirus pandemic, unless otherwise specified, DW uses figures provided by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Coronavirus Resource Center in the United States. JHU updates figures in real-time, collating data from world health organizations, state and national governments, and other public official sources, all of whom have their own systems for compiling information. 

Germany's national statistics are compiled by its public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). These figures depend on data transmission from state and local levels and are updated around once a day, which can lead to deviation from JHU. 

dvv/mm(AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters) 

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