The Latest on the coronavirus pandemic. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.
TOP OF THE HOUR:
— Seoul shuts down nightclubs, bars and discos after spread of virus linked to clubgoers
— Federal judge deals blow to Kentucky’s ban on mass gatherings
— Pakistan begins lifting weeks-long lockdown despite another big jump in virus cases
— South Korea reports 18 new cases of coronavirus, partly connected to clubgoers
— Kim sends Putin letter on WWII anniversary and for virus fight
— Hawaii reports no new virus cases for the first time in nearly two months
— Louisiana to hire at least 250 contact tracers.
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SEOUL, South Korea — Seoul has shut down more than 2,100 nightclubs, hostess bars, and discos after dozens of infections were linked to clubgoers who went out last weekend as the country relaxed social distancing guidelines.
The measures imposed by Mayor Park Won-soon on Saturday came after the national government urged entertainment venues around the nation to close or otherwise enforce anti-virus measures, including distancing, temperature checks, keeping customer lists and requiring employees to wear masks.
Park said that the entry bans on the facilities will be maintained until the city concludes the infections risks as meaningfully lowered.
South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier said 18 fresh cases were reported in the 24 hours to midnight Friday, all but one of them linked to a 29-year-old man who visited three clubs in Seoul’s Itaewon district last Saturday before testing positive on Tuesday.
But Park said 16 more cases were confirmed in Seoul alone in the following hours since. He said this brought the total number of infections linked to clubgoers to 40 — 27 in Seoul, 12 in neighboring Incheon and Gyeonggi province towns, and one in the southern port city of Busan.
The KCDC, which complies data from local governments, couldn’t immediately confirm Park’s numbers.
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FRANKFORT, Ky. — A federal court has halted the Kentucky governor’s temporary ban on mass gatherings from applying to in-person religious services.
The temporary restraining order issued Friday prevents Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration from enforcing the ban on mass gatherings at “any in-person religious service which adheres to applicable social distancing and hygiene guidelines.”
The ruling sided with the Tabernacle Baptist Church, but applies statewide. Two other federal judges had previously ruled the ban was constitutional. But also on Friday, one of those judges in a separate order granted Maryville Baptist Church an injunction allowing in-person services at that specific church.
Beshear had previously announced that places of worship could hold in-person services starting May 20, as part of a broader plan to gradually reopen the state’s economy. Earlier Friday, he outlined reopening requirements, including limiting attendance at in-person services to 33% of building occupancy capacity.
Beshear’s office had not issued a statement on the injunctions as late Friday
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ISLAMABAD — Pakistan has begun lifting the weeks-long lockdown that was enforced to curb the spread of the coronavirus, as authorities reported another big jump of 1,637 cases which rose to 27,474 with 24 new fatalities.
Army soldiers who manned roadside checkpoints along with police since late March when the lockdown was enforced, were seen leaving for their barracks in the capital, Islamabad and elsewhere in the country on Saturday.
The latest development comes two days after the prime minister Imran Khan said he was ending the lockdown in phases because his government was unable to financially help those millions of people who rely on their daily earnings to survive and feed their families.
Khan says he tried to financially help the country’s poor amid the pandemic, but he was unable to support all those who lost their jobs due to the lockdown. So far, Khan has bowed to pressure from the country’s powerful clerical establishment by allowing mosques to remain open, even as the number of new cases has recently increased.
So far, Pakistan has reported 618 coronavirus-related deaths, although it had its first case in February.
Pakistan has warned that it will reimpose the lockdown if people do not adhere to social distancing guidelines, which experts say could cause a peak later this month. Although Pakistan has lifted curbs on several economic sectors and allowed business activities to reopen, schools will remain closed until July 15
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MANAUS, Brazil — A funeral home business leader for Brazil’s state that covers much of the Amazon region says emergency coffin shipments have started to arrive for people who have died of COVID-19.
Manuel Viana is president of the Amazonas Union of Funeral Companies and said Friday that more than 500 coffins were delivered by ship to Manaus, the largest city in Amazonas state.
He says hundreds more are on the way and will be distributed in Manaus and other cities in the region.
Manaus is one of the hardest hit Brazilian cities for coronavirus deaths and Viana says there are predictions that the city of more than 2 million could have more than 4,300 deaths in May.
A Johns Hopkins University count says there have been more than 10,000 COVID-19 deaths so far in Latin America’s largest and most populous country.
A Brazil funeral home association last week requested an airlift of coffins to Manaus.
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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea says leader Kim Jong Un sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin to congratulate him on the 75th anniversary of the allied victory in World War II and wishing Russia success in fighting its coronavirus outbreak.
The report by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency on Saturday came a day after it reported Kim sent a personal message to Chinese President Xi Jinping to praise what he described as China’s success in getting its COVID-19 epidemic under control.
Some experts say the North could intensify its diplomatic outreach to neighbors, particularly China, as it seeks economic help after closing its border for months to fend off the virus.
KCNA says Kim’s message “sincerely wished the president and people of Russia sure victory in their struggle to build a powerful Russia by carrying forward the tradition of the great victory in the war and to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus infection.”
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HONOLULU — Hawaii is reporting no new cases of the coronavirus for the first time in nearly two months.
The state Department of Health said the number of positive cases remained at 629. The last time there was no new case was on March 13. At that point, Hawaii had a total of just two cases.
Hawaii has been under a statewide stay-at-home order since the last week of March to slow the spread of the virus. Gov. David Ige has begun relaxing some restrictions.
Hawaii also requires those arriving in the state and traveling between the islands to observe 14 days of quarantine.
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ASHLAND, Ore. — The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a major tourist draw in southern Oregon, is cancelling its fall season due to the coronavirus outbreak.
In a statement the festival noted Oregon Gov . Kate Brown recently said that large gatherings wouldn’t happen in the state until at least late September. The company’s season was to begin Sept. 8. The festival urged 2020 ticketholders to donate tickets or consider a voucher for use in 2021.
The Tony Award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival is among the oldest and largest professional nonprofit theaters in the nation. It prides itself on offering outdoor showings of Shakespeare’s plays performed in a venue similar to what his contemporary audiences would have experienced, but it also offers other types of theater in indoor performance halls.
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NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana’s governor says the state will have 250 workers in place by the end of next week to contact people infected with the new coronavirus and track down people they have been in close contact with.
Such “contact tracing” is a key factor in whether the state will be able to start easing restrictions and closures of businesses.
Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is under increasing pressure from Republican officials to restart Louisiana’s economy. Increased testing is also a factor, and Edwards said the state plans to complete a total of 200,000 tests for the month of May.
Edwards said the state has signed contracts with two companies that will establish the contact tracing system. That will bolster the 70 contact tracers currently working. The state expects to eventually hire as many as 700 contract tracers if needed.
Edwards’ current emergency order, banning gatherings of more than 10 people and closing many nonessential businesses, expires May 15. He plans to announce Monday whether the restrictions will be extended.
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OLYMPIA, Wash. — Data from COVID-19 projection models show that the rate of infection is increasing in Washington state, Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.
Washington was one of the first U.S. states to be hit hard by the coronavirus, with outbreaks in Seattle-area nursing homes.
The Democratic governor urged people to follow his measured approach to slowly reopening the state the from his stay-at-home restrictions.
Inslee did say that curbside retail sales in Washington could begin almost immediately for businesses with reopening plans approved by health officials.
He said data showed that the reproductive rate of the coronavirus in Western and Eastern Washington was above three when the outbreak was first detected in late February and March. That means each infected person infects about three others. It has since dropped to about one, Inslee said, but data up to April 19 shows that the reproduction rate is on the upswing.
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JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi’s governor says barbershops, salons and gyms will be allowed to reopen Monday but must take steps to curb the spread of the new coronavirus.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves made the announcement Friday. It was his latest step to gradually remove restrictions he had imposed because of the pandemic. Reeves said people must continue taking precautions against the virus as confirmed case numbers continue to rise. But he also said he is trying to avoid another Great Depression.
Reeves said the pandemic has been “particularly cruel to the working class — those people who work on their feet, those people who don’t have a home office or paid leave.”
Reeves said he is extending his “safer at home” order for another two weeks. It was set to expire Monday morning, and the new expiration date is May 25. It requires medically vulnerable people to stay home and suggests that people work from their homes if possible. It limits indoor gatherings to groups of no more than 10 people and outdoor gatherings to groups of no more than 20.
Rules for Mississippi restaurants took effect Thursday and will remain in place through May 25. They are allowed to reopen their dining rooms and patios with limits on the numbers of customers; servers must wear masks.
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BOGOTA, Colombia — A Colombian advertising company is pitching a novel if morbid solution to shortages of hospital beds and coffins during the coronavirus pandemic: combine them.
ABC Displays has created a cardboard bed with metal railings that designers say can double as a casket if a patient dies.
Company manager Rodolfo Gómez said he was inspired to find a way to help after watching events unfold recently in nearby Ecuador.
Families in the coastal city of Guayaquil waited with dead loved ones in their homes for days last month as COVID-19 cases surged. Many could not find or were unable to afford a wood coffin, using donated cardboard ones instead.
Gómez said he plans to donate 10 of his new beds to Colombia’s Amazonas department, where resources are in short supply. So far there is no indication whether the beds will be put to use and no orders have been placed.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio — The number of people dying from the coronavirus in Ohio’s nursing homes has continued to increase at an alarming pace.
Close to 500 residents of long-term care centers have died of COVID-19 in the past three weeks, according to data released by the state this week. That’s nearly double the total reported for the previous two weeks.
The increase in deaths could be attributed to a significant jump or a backlog of cases being added over the past week, said Melanie Amato, a spokeswoman for the state health department.
Since mid-April, more than 4,300 nursing home residents and staff members have tested positive for the virus.
The numbers don’t tell the entire story of how the virus has devastated nursing homes during the pandemic because the Ohio Department of Health has only released the totals for just the past three weeks.
Before that, the state didn’t require local health departments to report nursing home deaths linked to the virus.
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COLUMBIA, S.C. — Restaurants throughout South Carolina can soon reopen with limited, indoor dining service.
Starting Monday, Gov. Henry McMaster said restaurants could open for indoor dining as long as they kept patrons to 50% occupancy, placed tables 6-to-8 feet apart and followed stringent cleaning and sanitizing guidelines. Among the new guidelines are to keep hand sanitizer at entrances and remove previously shared condiments from tables.
“A lot of iconic restaurants have actually gone out of business, and the whole state regrets that,” the governor said Friday, in announcing what he calls “phase 2” of a process to get dining rooms back open.
The Republican governor is gradually lifting restrictions initially put in place to stem the coronavirus outbreak and promising to soon discuss reopening other businesses.
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