More US election news: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has slammed Trump’s campaign rallies, saying they are spreading more than just Covid-19 – they are dividing the nation politically.
Biden also criticised the Trump camp’s approach to managing the spread of Covid, with the president playing down its impact despite rising case numbers across the country:
Joe Biden says Donald Trump’s rallies are ‘spreading more than the virus’ – video
Australian officials said on Friday there just under 200 active cases of Covid-19 in the country, the lowest number in more than four months and well down from a peak of just over 8,000 in mid-August, Reuters reports.
Officials reported just 11 new infections in the past 24 hours, the bulk of which were people already in hotel quarantine after arriving from overseas.
Australian states and territories have begun further relaxing domestic travel bans, although some restrictions remain.
In Victoria state, which accounts for more than 90% of the country’s 905 Covid-19 deaths, a weeks-long stringent lockdown in the city of Melbourne was eased earlier this week.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Friday said her state would reopen to visitors from neighbouring New South Wales, with the exception of Sydney residents.
Australia has recorded just over 27,500 novel coronavirus infections, far fewer than many other developed countries.
Podcast: Are the signs really pointing to a Biden win?
With less than a week to go, Jonathan Freedland is joined by the national affairs correspondent for Guardian US Tom McCarthy. They look at the many variables influencing next week’s US presidential election:
A dash by Parisians to either escape the new national lockdown or scramble back to the French capital to prepare for the restrictions caused record traffic jams on Thursday night.
The movement in and out of the city created a record 706km of traffic on roads in the region by 6pm, according to France’s traffic department.
France’s new four-week lockdown comes into effect at midnight on Thursday, prompting those who can afford it, or who don’t have children, to leave Paris to spend “réconfinement” in the country – and those already on holiday to return en masse:
Johns Hopkins University has revised some of its global daily case figures since we reported on them this morning – taking the most recent toll to lower than the toll reported two days earlier.
We reported based on earlier figures that October 28 saw a record daily case total. Based on Johns Hopkins most recent figures, the last record was on 26 October, with 537,851 infections reported in 24 hours.
The total for 28 October is now listed as slightly lower, at 517,010 cases. Either way, three days in the last week have seen totals of over 500,000: on 23 October, there were 506,713 new coronavirus cases reported worldwide.
The United States, the worst-affected country worldwide in terms of the number of coronavirus cases and national death doll, is on the brink of the terrible milestine of 9m cases.
In recent days the US has twice reported daily infection totals of over 80,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
It currently has a total of 8,944,632, with the next daily infection figure expected to take that number over 9m.
At roughly the current rate, the US will have 10m cases around two weeks after the US presidential election on 3 November.
Japan reached the 100,000 mark as the new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, was reportedly considering extending the Go To Travelcampaign to help boost consumption in the world’s third-biggest economy. Critics have said the recent addition of Tokyo to the heavily subsidised programme, which was introduced amid confusion in late July, may have contributed to the rise in infections.
But the deputy chief cabinet secretary, Naoki Okda, told reporters the government believed it was possible “to continue social and economic activity by taking effective measures to keep the number of serious cases and deaths to a minimum”.
Authorities in Tokyo are preparing for the anticipated rise in Covid-19 infections during the forthcoming flu season by dramatically ramping up its testing capacity, NHK said. The metropolitan government can currently conduct up to 10,200 tests a day, but that will rise to around 60,000 a day by the end of the year, NHK added, citing unnamed officials.
The total number of Covid-19 cases in Japan has topped 100,000, as experts warned that Tokyo – the most-affected part of the country – should prepare for another wave of infections this winter.
Japan had recorded 100,516 cases and 1,761 deaths as of Thursday, according to a tallyby public broadcaster NHK. The number of new infections nationwide totaled 809, the first time it had exceeded 800 since the end of August. Experts have attributed the uptick to domestic travel – encouraged by government subsidies – and a rise in economic activity.
An employee wearing a protective mask to help curb the spread of the coronavirus sweeps near pinwheels whirl in the breeze at rows of small stone statues of “jizo” representing the unborn children at a temple in Tokyo Thursday, 29 October, 2020. Photograph: Eugene Hoshiko/AP
While daily case numbers have slowed since their August peak, experts advising the health ministry have warned of a recent upward trend in Tokyo and Hokkaido, the country’s northernmost main island and one of the first regions to be affected by the coronavirus outbreakat the start of the year.
The health ministry said Japan had 3.21 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people during the week from 20 October, up from 2.84 in the week from 6 October, the Kyodo news agency reported.
Google searches for “loss of taste and smell” correlate with increases in coronavirus cases, the Washington Post reports.
The trend was first spotted by author Dan Sinker on Thursday, prompting the Post’s numbers expert Philip Bump to investigate whether there was something to it.
???? damned sinker ???? (@dansinker)
I just did a Google Trends search for “loss of taste” and I gasped at the chart shape. pic.twitter.com/K9RpRaVBeu
Bump writes, “Sinker’s tweet […] made me curious about whether there was a consistent relationship between searches for those terms and case totals nationally or in states. Using Google’s online Trends tool and The Washington Post’s coronavirus data set, I compared the two.
“Sometimes data analysis yields a truly stunning result. This was such a time.”
Philip Bump (@pbump)
First spotted by @dansinker, this is just a remarkable correlation.
“In larger states and nationally, though, the correlation is striking. We’ve repeatedly seen increases in searches for information about losing one’s sense of taste or smell shortly before states saw surges in new coronavirus cases,” writes Bump.
“It’s not necessarily causation, but it’s hard to believe that it isn’t.”
Causation is where two things that correlate (or “line up neatly,” in Bump’s words) are actually linked.
New Zealand’s government has ordered Air New Zealand to freeze all international bookings to the country as quarantine facilities near capacity, Stuff.NZ reports, as more citizens try to return home ahead of the Christmas holidays.
From Tuesday, they will need to have a voucher in order to board a flight home:
New Zealand has 32 managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities across the country with capacity for about 7200 people. Since March 26 there have been 66,441 people pass through the facilities.
An Air New Zealand spokeswoman told Stuff it was instructed by the Government on Wednesday evening to put a hold on new bookings on international services until Tuesday to help ensure there was space available in quarantine accommodation for inbound passengers for the required 14-day period.
…
From Tuesday, it will be compulsory for anyone planning to come to New Zealand to have a confirmed booking at a facility using a new voucher system, dubbed the Managed Isolation Allocation System (MIAS).
Airlines will not allow travellers to board a New Zealand-bound flight unless they have a voucher.
The United States still has the highest death toll and infection count in the world, and, like Europe, it is battling a fresh spike with tens of thousands of new daily cases as fears grow that hospitals could be overwhelmed, AFP reports.
But there were positive signs on the economic front, with the US posting its strongest recovery on record with a 33.1 percent annualised growth rate in the third quarter, plus a drop in applications for jobless benefits.
The much-loved holiday of Halloween, however, is unlikely to be the same this year even if mask-wearing has long been a tradition on October 31.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned the holiday could present a high risk, while several states have discouraged children from trick-or-treating.
Children wearing a face mask trick-or-treat from the back of their car during a Halloween drive-thru trick-or-treat event organized by the various city services during the coronavirus pandemic at Highland Park in Monterey Park, California, USA, 29 October 2020. Photograph: Étienne Laurent/EPA
In US college football news, Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence has tested positive for Covid-19, putting into doubt whether the face of college football will be available to play the top-ranked Tigers’ biggest game of the season.
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said in a statement released by the school Thursday night that Lawrence is in isolation with mild symptoms.
Swinney said Lawrence would miss Clemson’s game Saturday against Boston College. The Tigers are scheduled to play No. 4 Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, on 7 November:
