Bhinneka News Online: Wednesday Morning Briefing: Spaniards ordered to wear masks

What you need to know about the coronavirus today

Spaniards ordered to wear masks

Spain has made it compulsory for all citizens, including children over six, to wear masks in public spaces as one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns gradually unwinds. The Health Ministry order said the masks - whose efficiency in curbing the coronavirus is hotly debated globally - would be needed from Thursday for indoor public spaces and outdoors when impossible to keep a two-meter distance.

Some are getting weary of the restrictions: up to a few hundred demonstrators have been gathering every evening to bang pots and pans and call for the government’s resignation. Mainly in wealthy, conservative neighborhoods, the protesters have often ignored social-distancing rules.

Cambridge University to hold lectures online

Britain’s Cambridge University became one of the first in the world to announce that all its lectures would be delivered online over the next academic year.

The university, which shut its campuses to students in March after the government introduced a strict lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19, said teaching would be delivered virtually until summer 2021, although it was possible some smaller teaching groups might be able to occur in person.

Arise, Sir Tom

Captain Tom Moore, who became a national hero in Britain after raising more than $40 million for the National Health Service in the run-up to his 100th birthday, is to be knighted.

Moore becomes “Sir Tom” after a special nomination from Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The World War Two veteran raised the record sum by painstakingly completing 100 laps of his garden with the aid of a walking frame, becoming a symbol of British endurance in the face of the adversity of the coronavirus crisis.

Lighting Up The Skies

On a night not too far in the future but still being kept secret, skies across Japan will light up with simultaneous fireworks displays from north to south in a plan by fireworks makers to cheer a nation weary of battling the coronavirus.

Fireworks are a centuries-old tradition in Japan, where massive, colorful displays are a symbol of summer and draw hordes of people, many wearing bright summer kimono. They began as a way of warding off bad luck and epidemics.

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Breakingviews - Corona Capital: French cars, Computers, Panties. Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe.

Reuters reporters and editors around the world are investigating the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Life under lockdown

The United States and Canada said they would extend a ban on non-essential cross-border travel by another 30 days to help the fight against the coronavirus. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said restrictions, first imposed in mid-March and previously set to expire on Wednesday, would now be extended until June 22 for both Canada and Mexico.

Human traffickers will profit from rising nationalism fueled by the coronavirus pandemic, the new United Nations expert on modern slavery said, warning that anti-migrant policies and rhetoric may prevent victims of exploitation from seeking help. Lockdowns and business closures worldwide are pushing many vulnerable workers - particularly migrant laborer's - into precarious jobs and slave labor, according to Tomoya Obokata, the U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery.

Running a restaurant in Dubai, where a discerning international clientele has more than twice as many dining options per head as in New York, was a cut-throat business even before the coronavirus struck. Now restaurateurs are having to adapt fast by learning how to make money delivering their food, a service new for some and for others more familiar as a marketing tool than a profitable sideline.

COVID Science

Immune system’s T cells play a role in attacking the coronavirus

While the immune system's B cells make antibodies that block the novel coronavirus, its T cells provide another line of attack, according to new research. Researchers found that T cells from recovered patients can target the virus. That is promising news for vaccine developers because it is "consistent with normal, good, antiviral immunity," Shane Crotty, from the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California, told Reuters.

Coronavirus affects adults and children differently

Children appear to have much lower rates of infection with the new coronavirus than adults, but most reports on COVID-19 in youngsters have focused only on small groups. A team of Chinese researchers has analyzed data from 24 earlier studies involving a total of nearly 2,600 children with COVID-19, enabling them to shed light on ways in which the virus acts differently in pediatric patients.

Coronavirus can infect patients taking hydroxychloroquine

Taking hydroxychloroquine for other medical conditions might not protect against the new coronavirus, French doctors say. The drug had nearly become a standard of care for patients with COVID-19 in many hospitals, even though randomized trials have not yet confirmed its value. But people around the world use decades-old hydroxychloroquine to treat malaria as well as inflammatory conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and researchers are seeing occasional cases of coronavirus infection in these patients despite long-term use of the drug.

Inovio says COVID-19 vaccine produces antibodies in mice, guinea pigs

U.S. immunotherapy company Inovio said its experimental vaccine to prevent coronavirus infection was shown to produce protective antibodies and immune system responses in mice and guinea pigs. “We saw antibody responses that do many of the things we would want to see in an eventual vaccine,” said Dr. David Weiner, director of the vaccine and immunotherapy center at the Wistar Institute, which has collaborated with Inovio. “We are able to target things that would prevent the virus from having a safe harbor in the body.”

Follow the money

Johnson & Johnson to stop selling talc baby powder in U.S. and Canada

Johnson & Johnson announced it would stop selling its talc Baby Powder in the United States and Canada, saying demand had dropped in the wake of what it called “misinformation” about the product’s safety amid a barrage of legal challenges. J&J faces more than 19,000 lawsuits from consumers and their survivors claiming its talc products caused cancer due to contamination with asbestos, a known carcinogen. Many are pending before a U.S. district judge in New Jersey.

7 min read

Mnuchin defends U.S. fiscal response to pandemic, seeks payroll loan extension

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin defended the Trump administration’s fiscal response to the coronavirus pandemic and told senators he was willing to consider extending and modifying a payroll loan program for small businesses. Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the nearly $3 trillion in federal rescue programs rolled out over the past two months were working to support an economy devastated by the novel coronavirus.

5 min read