Spanish Government Seals Off Madrid As COVID-19 Crisis Worsens; Merkel Says “Tougher Measures” Coming: Live Updates

Summary:

• Italy tops 5,000 new cases
• Spanish gov’t locks down Madrid
• Merkel says she will impose tougher measures if no improvement seen in ten days
• London mayor says lockdown “inevitable”
• Netherland reports latest record jump
• Spain declares “public health emergency” in Madrid
• France places more cities on lockdown
• Confirmed COVID-19 cases neared daily record yesterday
• Russia reports new record
• Takeda enrolls first patients for new drug trial
• China joins WHO vaccine initiative
• Iran bars hospitals from taking non-urgent cases as COVID hammers country

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Update (1120ET): The WHO is holding a press briefing starting momentarily in Geneva.

Media briefing on #COVID19 with @DrTedros https://t.co/IyMNzCfTJG

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) October 9, 2020

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Update (1100ET): Italy just recorded 5,372 new cases on Friday, topping 5,000 new cases for the first time since March 29, according to JHU data. Yesterday, Italy reported 4,458 new cases, which was, at the time, the largest daily tally since April 11.

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Update (1000ET): Spain’s government is using its emergency powers to reimpose a ban on people entering and leaving Madrid, per the FT.

The move to trigger Spain’s “state of alert” will give national and regional authorities sweeping powers for two weeks (which can later be extended). The news comes a day after a Madrid high court struck down similar previous curbs because of a lack of legal basis.

The issue has pitted the left-wing national government against the center-right regional administration of Madrid.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the press following a conversation with the mayors of 11 German cities. She warned of “uncontrolled and uncontrollable” spread of the virus across Germany. She warned that, if infections don’t stabilize in ten days, she will reimpose “tougher measures”. Merkel and the mayors said that their ultimate goal is preventing a second lockdown.

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France reported more than 18,000 new cases yesterday, and now its third-largest city, Lyon, is joining Paris and Marseille in closing bars and other non-essential businesses in the coming days as COVID-19 infection rates surge in the countries hot spots. As the French government continues to insist that national lockdowns will only be a measure of last resort, public health officials are doubling down on the targeted approach as COVID-19 patients fill the country’s hospital beds.

Yesterday, French Health Minister Olivier Veran said Lyon, Lille, Grenoble and Saint-Etienne would go on maximum coronavirus alert level from Saturday. This means they will have to close their bars for two weeks in coming days, as Paris did on Tuesday and Marseille, France’s second-biggest city, did earlier this month.

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And more localized measures could be implemented in Toulouse and Montpellier; those cities could see their alert level raised to the maximum s of Monday. Dijon and Clermont-Ferrand would also see their alert levels rise on Saturday. “Unfortunately, the health situation in France continues to deteriorate,” Veran said at his weekly COVID-19 briefing, per Reuters.

Minutes ago, London Mayor Sadiq Kahn told the LBC that new London lockdown restrictions are “inevitable” as officials have tightened restrictions in and around Manchester in the north of England. Meanwhile, Spain declared a public health emergency in Madrid, as expected.

Additionally, the Netherlands just reported another 5,983 new cases, a new daily record, while 69 new patients were reported in the country’s hospitals, bringing that total to 1,139, while deaths climbed by 14 and ICU cases climbed by 11 to 239.

As of earlier this morning, global cases had reached 36,435,290, according to Johns Hopkins data, while the global death toll had climbed to 1,060,869. New cases were just shy of the record set on Sept. 24, with 359,337 new cases confirmed yesterday, along with 6,234 deaths. The surge in new cases is being driven by Europe, Russia, the US, India, Brazil and Southeast Asia. The Czech Republic, which, along with Poland, yesterday announced new restrictions to try and slow the raging outbreak. The Czech Republic reported 5,394 new infections on Friday, its highest daily total yet. The country has now recorded 15% of its entire COVID-19 outbreak tally in the past 3 days. Poland, meanwhile, just reported 4,739 new cases Friday, the third-straight record day.

Russia shot passed its peak from May on Friday as it recorded another 12,126 new infections and 201 virus-linked deaths in the 24-hour period leading up to Friday.

In a lengthy report published in Friday’s FT, the paper examines how a resurgence in the Brazilian city of Manaus, which was hit hard in the spring, only for the virus to slink away over the summer, is raising serious questions about the prospects for herd immunity. The trend “poses fresh challenges…and difficult questions for the scientists and policymakers worldwide who have been edging towards herd immunity policies as an alternative to economy-crushing lockdowns.

This comes after a group of scientists in the US and UK published the Great Barrington Declaration earlier this week. The document calls for public policymakers to examine a strategy of “focused protection” to try and build up herd immunity as safely as possible. The virus, they argued, should be allowed to circulate among the young and healthy, while the elderly and the sick should be shielded. In Western Europe, antibody surveys have determined that roughly 8% of the population has already been infected, and the WHO recently declared that it believes 11% of the global population has already had the virus.

However, it seems, many of the same ‘hot spots’ from the spring are suffering again in the fall. This could also be a factor of population density, however.

As Eli Lilly and Regeneron apply for EUAs from the FDA for their antibody therapeutics, CNBC had Gilead CEO Dan O’Day on Friday morning to talk about the latest remdesivir trial results.

Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day shares 3 key findings from Remdesivir study results with @megtirrell:
-Helped people recover faster
-Prevented people from getting sicker
-Reduced number of people who died by 70% in the largest subgroup of patients — those receiving oxygen pic.twitter.com/vhY39TBGVa

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) October 9, 2020

At any rate, here’s some more COVID-19 news from Friday morning, as well as overnight.

Iran’s health ministry has prevented all hospitals from admitting non-urgent cases after the military also designated all its hospitals for coronavirus patients in response to a new surge in infections (Source: FT).

Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical says an alliance of drugmakers it spearheads has enrolled its first patient in a global clinical trial of a blood plasma treatment for COVID-19 after months of regulatory delays. The Phase 3 trial by the group, known as the CoVIg Plasma Alliance, aims to enroll 500 adult patients from the United States, Mexico and 16 other countries. Patients will be treated with Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir alongside the plasma treatment, which will be provided by CSL Behring, Takeda and two other companies (Source: Nikkei).

China will join a World Health Organization initiative aimed at ensuring fair distribution of Covid-19 vaccines when they become available, the country’s foreign ministry announced on Friday (Source: FT).

India reports 70,496 cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, down from 78,524 the previous day, bringing the country’s total to over 6.9 million. The death toll jumped by 964 to 106,490 (Source: Nikkei).

Australian states and territories report 16 cases in the past 24 hours, down from 28 a day earlier. They also report no deaths for two days — the first time Australia has gone 48 hours without a COVID-19 death since July 11 (Source: Nikkei)