Good morning and welcome to The Independents rolling coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.Here are the main stories from across the globe:
– Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has criticised Boris Johnson’s government for being “too slow to act” throughout the coronavirus pandemic. He warned the nation is at a “crucial point” in the fight against coronavirus and that Britain faced “a long and bleak winter” if immediate steps were not taken to ensure the country was better prepared for a second wave.
– The UK has agreed a multi-million pound joint investment with French speciality vaccines company Valneva to upgrade a manufacturing facility and increase production capacity for a possible Covid-19 vaccine.
– A group of MPs has said that the lack of quarantine restrictions for people arriving into the UK during the earlier stages of the pandemic was a serious mistake.
– Virgin Atlantic could run out of money by the end of September if creditors do not approve a £1.2 billion bailout package, a court has heard.
– The global death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 700,000 on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally, with the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico leading the rise in fatalities. Nearly 5,900 people are dying every 24 hours from Covid-19 on average. That equates to 247 people per hour, or one person every 15 seconds.
– Australia’s Victoria state reported a record rise in new Covid-19 cases and deaths on Wednesday, as it prepared to close much of its economy to control a second wave of infection that threatens to spread across the country.
– The US says Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar will visit Taiwan in the coming days in the highest-level visit by an American Cabinet official since the break in formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Taipei in 1979.
– The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 741 to 212,022, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday. The reported death toll rose by 12 to 9,168, the tally showed.
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