May 12 coronavirus news

A law extending France's state of emergency went into effect today, a day after lockdowns began lifting across the country.

The state of emergency law gives the government the power to enforce measures to avoid a second Covid-19 peak.

France has been in a state of emergency since March 17 and the new law extends this through July 10.

The law gives the state the power to enforce measures like restricting travel to within 100 kilometers (62 miles) from home, making masks mandatory on public transport, and banning gatherings of more than 10 people.

The bill passed through parliament this weekend and was reviewed by the Constitutional Court on Monday. The court removed some provisions, such as allowing the government to mandate quarantine for overseas travelers without a judge’s order. It also reinforced privacy protections around the personal data that would be collected in a tracing system that has yet to be developed.

France has reported 177,547 total Covid-19 cases and 26,646 related deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Lockdown lifted: The country eased lockdown measures on Monday for the first time in more than 50 days. In Paris, traffic returned to the Champs Elysees, shops reopened, and people gathered with friends on the banks of the River Seine.

At least 102 coronavirus cases have been linked to nightclub cluster in South Korea, the head of the country's National Institute of Health, Kwon Jun-wook, said.

The cluster emerged in Seoul's Itaewon district.

Two people among the cases first started showing symptoms on May 2, Kwon said, adding that the outbreak may have “various epicenters or sources."

South Korea's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been widely praised but the official said recent lapses had caused the latest spike in cases.

Local media has linked the cases to what it has described as the capital's "gay clubs," raising fears that the LGBT community will be further stigmatized. Government officials have condemned the language used in some press reports.

As far as first dates go, the one 14-year-old Jake Scott had with his new 15-year-old girlfriend, Abby Westrope, back in early March was epic.

It started at Scott's baseball game, where Westrope watched him play. From there they went back to his dad's house, watched Netflix, played catch outside and ate tacos. The two talked about life, friends, hopes and dreams. At some point(s), the Northern California teens might have even kissed.

Three months later, the duo is still dating, only it looks much different in the face of a global pandemic.

They FaceTime for hours each day. They text. Once or twice a week, they don masks, meet up on the driveway at a parent's house and sit in lawn chairs spread apart by a minimum of 6 feet apart. They're not allowed to touch or kiss or do anything else that eighth and ninth graders typically might do -- one parent is always watching. In Scott's words, it's "rough." But they have made it work.

Read the full story:

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Spain will implement a 14-day mandatory quarantine for travelers arriving from overseas starting May 15, according to a decree from the country's health ministry.

The decree covers “people coming from other countries, on their arrival in Spain.” Travelers will be required to provide a completed passenger location card to the authorities so they can be contacted during quarantine, and will have to quarantine at home or in their place of accommodation.

They will be allowed out for essential needs like food, pharmaceutical products, visiting healthcare centers and for emergency situations, but are required to wear a mask if they go outside.

Some people, like freight carriers and healthcare workers, will be exempt from the quarantine rules as long as they haven’t been in contact with any known patients.

Emergency restrictions: Spain remains under a state of emergency, which began on March 14 with strict stay-at-home confinement orders. It is in place until at least May 23, but officials have begun to ease some restrictions in low-risk territories.

Singapore reported 884 new cases of coronavirus today -- the vast majority from foreign worker dormitories, according to the city-state's Ministry of Health.

Of the new cases, only three were Singaporean citizens or permanent residents.

For more than a month now, Singapore has been struggling with clusters linked to dormitories where migrant workers live in close quarters.

In these dorms, home to hundreds of thousands of workers, each room houses about 10 to 20 residents on average. They share toilet and shower facilities, eat in common areas, and sleep just feet away from each other. It's therefore nearly impossible to conduct social distancing.

Since the clusters emerged in early April, 21,410 dormitory residents have tested positive for the virus, according to government figures.

The government has implemented several measures, including transferring workers to alternative accommodation to space them out, providing workers with food and wage subsidies, and cleaning supplies. They placed all dormitories under total lockdown in April.

But the measures haven't particularly slowed the spread of the virus -- in the past two weeks, the number of new daily cases has remained high. It only dipped below 500 on two days, and reached a high of 914 on May 1.

Read more about Singapore's migrant worker dormitories:

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You're about to get a blood test to see if you have been exposed to Covid-19.

You're hoping it will tell you that you have -- that your blood is full of beautiful antibodies, the body's soldiers called to fight when a known enemy invades our systems again, and that this may mean immunity to the virus in the future.

Not so fast.

In today's reality, testing positive for antibodies to Covid-19 means nothing of the sort. In fact, it may not mean much at all -- at least right now. There are still too many unknowns, both about the accuracy of the antibody tests that are available and about the nature of the virus itself.

What is an antibody test? An antibody test can only be administered by gathering blood, either through a finger prick or from a vein. It's designed to detect antibodies, the Y-shaped proteins called immunoglobulins that circulate in our blood to help fight off infections in our bodies.

Even if you've never had any symptoms of Covid-19, the presence of antibodies in your blood would show your body has encountered the virus.

How accurate is the test? There are some complicating factors:

Read more:

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Rail services in India partially resumed on Tuesday despite an ongoing nationwide lockdown.

Thirty special trains were operating today in accordance with government guidance, according to the Ministry of Railways.

All passengers will be screened, and only asymptomatic passengers will be allowed on the trains, according to the Home Ministry. Passengers must also wear face coverings during the journey, and should maintain social distancing.

The partial rail reopening includes cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today that the train services were “needed to rev up the economic activity,” but only a limited number of routes would be operational.

Indian railways stopped passenger services for the first time in 167 years on March 24 after a nationwide lockdown was announced. The lockdown will continue through at least May 17.

Toyota expects profits this year to plunge nearly 80% as it deals with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. 

The Japanese automaker, one of the world’s largest, said Tuesday that it expects operating profits to reach just 500 billion yen ($4.7 billion) this fiscal year -- a forecast that would result in Toyota's lowest profits in nine years.

For the year ended March 31, the company posted a 2.4 trillion yen ($22.3 billion) profit. That was just slightly under the estimate it released in February. 

Toyota said it expects to sell 7 million cars this year, down from the nearly 9 million it sold last year, not including sales from smaller automakers it owns like Daihatsu and Hino. The company said it was “extremely hard to predict sales because it is likely to vary greatly from region to region.” 

In addition to the roughly 20% drop in car sales, Toyota said that its profits would also be hurt by the value of the yen, which is strengthening against the US dollar. (The yen is a safe haven currency that investors traditionally flock to during times of market volatility.)

Read more here.

Five coronavirus patients were killed in a fire at a hospital in Russia today, Russian state news agencies reported.

The victims were connected to a ventilator on the sixth floor of an intensive care unit at the St. George Hospital in St. Petersburg, state news agency TASS reported. TASS, citing medical personnel, said the patients were seriously ill with coronavirus.

Some 150 people were forced to evacuate from the hospital, according to TASS.

Initial findings suggest the fire may have been caused by a short circuit in the ventilator or its malfunction, state news agencies said.

Russia's top law-enforcement body, the Investigative Committee, said a criminal investigation had been opened into the matter.

This is the second deadly hospital fire in recent days: On Saturday, a fire broke out in a Moscow hospital treating coronavirus patients, killing one patient and forcing 200 people to be evacuated, Russian state news agencies reported. 

TASS, citing preliminary data, said the fire occurred in an intensive care unit due to the malfunction of medical equipment.