The Times - UK (2020-08-28)

the times | Friday August 28 2020 2GM 13

News

Efforts to trace 3,000 people who went

to parties at a Sardinian nightclub

owned by the former Renault Formula

One team boss Flavio Briatore, were

being hampered because many party-

goers left false contact details.

Mr Briatore, 70, was admitted to hos-

pital in Milan on Monday with 60

members of staff from his Billionaire

club in Porto Cervo, part of a cluster of

Covid-19 infections in Sardinia which

have helped to propel the number of

daily new cases in Italy to 1,411 — the

highest since early May.

The club, which attracts celebrities

holidaying on the Costa Smeralda,

offered “dinner events” and entertain-

ment to try to respect distancing rules,

but videos on social media showed

dancing at close quarters , as in many

Sardinian nightspots.

Visitors had to leave their name and

contact details at the club’s reception so

they could be traced if there was an out-

break. Hundreds of people stated false-

ly that members of the group they were

with were close family and they left fake

telephone numbers with staff, Italian

newspapers reported.

Mr Briatore was said to be in good

condition, having originally sought

hospital care for an unrelated prostate

problem, but a barman from the

Billionaire was in intensive care. Mr

Briatore has previously promoted the

idea that the government was exagger-

ating the seriousness of the virus.

Marcello Acciaro, of Sardinia’s virus

crisis committee, cited the inter-

national nature of many of those visit-

ing the club and others like it. “Those

who frequent the Costa Smeralda are

accustomed to moving from one place

to another, around the world,” he said.

“Many of those testing positive arrived

here after stays in Spain, Greece and

Extremists plan to storm

Berlin after rally banned

Oliver Moody

Right-wing extremists have threatened

to “storm” Berlin this weekend after the

capital banned them from holding a

mass rally against Germany’s corona-

virus regulations.

The authorities are preparing for the

possibility of violence as the security

services were reported to have inter-

cepted messages in which some pro-

testers discussed taking along weapons

for “self-defence” against the police.

Since the country went into lock-

down in March there have been numer-

ous demonstrations against the restric-

tions, with some participants display-

ing neo-Nazi insignia and other far-

right symbols.

This month police broke up a 30,000-

strong march in Berlin, with demon-

strators bussed in from across Ger-

many, after the crowds largely ignored

appeals to observe social distancing.

On Wednesday the city government

withdrew permission for a series of fur-

ther rallies that had been due to begin

today as one minister said he would not

allow the capital to become a “platform

for coronavirus deniers and right-wing

extremists”.

In response some extremists using

the Telegram messaging app have be-

gun to mobilise for a “storm on Berlin”,

according to the German Press Agency.

The phrase has been widely interpreted

as an allusion to the Nazi party’s abor-

tive “march on Berlin” in the aftermath

of the Munich beer hall putsch in 1923.

The organisers of the core rally, a

Stuttgart-based group called Querden-

ken 711, also announced that they were

challenging the protest ban through the

courts, claiming it violated their consti-

tutional right to freedom of assembly.

The coronavirus protest movement

draws on a broad range of factions in

Germany, including anti-vaxxers, radi-

cal leftwingers and conspiracy theorists

such as Attila Hildmann, a celebrity ve-

gan chef, and Chris Ares, a white su-

premacist rapper.

However, the Office for the Protec-

tion of the Constitution, Germany’s do-

mestic intelligence agency, has warned

that the protests are increasingly domi-

nated by the far right. Some partici-

pants have vowed to use the demon-

strations to “overthrow” Angela

Merkel’s government.

Ministers have begun to tighten the

rules after a rise in infection rates over

the past month, although the number

of new cases appears to have stabilised

in recent days. Markus Söder, the chief

minister of Bavaria, ruled out a second

national lockdown yesterday but said

the numbers remained “too high”.

News

False contact details

hinder the hunt for

3,000 party guests

Philip Willan Rome Malta.” The national spike in cases,

with more than 1,000 new infections a

day four times in the past week, has

been attributed to more contact tracing

and tests on travellers from abroad.

“We can confidently say that the more

positive cases we find, the fewer will go

on to infect other people,” Fabrizio

Pregliasco, a professor of hygiene at the

University of Milan, said.

The surge has complicated plans for

getting children back to school on Sep-

tember 14. A meeting between minis-

ters and regional governors on the issue

broke up yesterday after they failed to

agree on measures to improve capacity

on public transport.

Large cities such as Rome struggle to

get their citizens to and from work in

normal circumstances. It is feared that

even with extra funding they will not be

able to step up the frequency of buses

and trains while providing the required

social distancing. Staggered access to

schools and a partial continuation of

distance learning may ease the strain.

“No one should have any illusions,”

said Stefano Bonaccini, the governor of

the northern Italian region of Emilia-

Romagna, whose Democratic Party

shares power in Rome with the Five

Star Movement. “If it’s impossible to

provide adequate transport to school

we will tell citizens it’s the government’s

fault. We risk a parents’ revolt in our

cities.”

Matteo Salvini, leader of the

opposition party League, said he would

be tabling a motion of no confidence in

the education minister, Five Star’s

Lucia Azzolina. Clemente Mastella,

mayor of the southern town of Benev-

ento, said Mr Salvini would be fined

€400 for appearing at a political rally in

the municipality without a facemask.

Mr Salvini has frequently been seen in

action without a mask but has not been

sanctioned before.

LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP

city. Tribe members on the Andaman Islands, below, have tested positive

threaten tribal communities

Global cases 24,021,

Global deaths 821,

World update

Countries reporting

most deaths

Source: WHO

US 5,719,841 177,332 536

Brazil 3,669,995 116,580 548

Mexico 568,621 61,450 477

India 3,310,234 60,472 44

UK 330,368 41,477 611

Italy 262,540 35,458 586

France 238,291 30,411 466

Spain 419,849 28,971 620

Peru 607,382 28,001 849

Iran 365,606 21,020 250

Colombia 562,128 17,889 352

Russia 975,576 16,804 115

South Africa 615,701 13,502 228

Chile 402,365 10,990 575

Belgium 82,936 9,879 852

Germany 237,936 9,285 111

Canada 125,969 9,090 241

Argentina 359,638 7,661 170

Indonesia 160,165 6,944 25

Iraq 215,784 6,668 166

Cases Deaths

Deaths/

1m pop

Most new cases yesterday

32

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10

19

121

India

Brazil

US

Colombia

Argentina

Spain

Peru

Philippines

France

Mexico

UK

China

1,

75,

47,

37,

10,

8,

7,

6,

5,

4,

4,

Reported new cases

every part of the country. The

National Assembly closed after a

journalist who covered a meeting of

the ruling Democrat party on

Wednesday tested positive for the

coronavirus.

Nearly all children in Seoul have

been sent home from school and

health officials warned that they

may raise their response to Level 3,

which would entail nationwide

school closures and a ban on

gatherings of more than ten people.

serbia

A Serbian hospital is to use rakija,

a traditional plum brandy, to

disinfect its Covid-19 wards. About

10,000 bottles will be turned into

70 per cent alcohol to be used to

clean hospitals. They were seized

in 2005 after failing a quality

inspection and have been stored in

a warehouse.

It follows the conversion of

350,000 bottles of wine from a

bankrupt distillery into disinfectant

during the first wave of infections.

Serbia is now in the grip of its

second wave, recording 154 new

infections over the past 24 hours. In

total 30,974 cases have been

recorded and the country has been

removed from the EU’s safe list.

Case numbers started rising again

after the government lifted

studies at home. The move came

after 70 new coronavirus infections

were reported on Wednesday, the

country’s highest single-day total

since its first case was reported in

March. The surge in new cases

mostly has been in the western

state of Rakhine, which borders

Bangladesh and hosts several

major displacement camps due to

years of civil conflict.

The government has officially

reported under 600 coronavirus

cases and six deaths in a country

of 53 million.

africa

Africa’s top public health official

said the continent had recorded a

20 per cent decrease in confirmed

coronavirus cases in the past week,

but warned that “we shouldn’t go

home celebrating that our

pandemic is over”.

John Nkengasong, of the Africa

Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, said that testing and

other efforts to contain the virus

were working, but just one or two

cases could reignite infections.

He said that 23 of Africa’s 54

countries had reported a sustained

decrease in new confirmed cases

in the past couple of weeks. Africa

has reported more than 1.2 million

confirmed cases, roughly half of

them in South Africa.

united states

Delta Air Lines has placed about

240 people on a “no-fly list’ for

failing to comply with the airline’s

facemask policy.

There is no US federal mandate

on masks in airports or on

aeroplanes, leaving US airlines to

enforce their own rules that

passengers must wear face

coverings while travelling.

In a message to employees, Ed

Bastian, the chief executive of

Delta, said: “Although rare, we

continue to put passengers who

refuse to follow the required face-

covering rules on our no-fly list.”

lockdown in June to hold

parliamentary elections, which were

boycotted by much of the opposition

and gave President Vucic’s Serbian

Progressive Party a storming

victory.

canada

Canada has set aside C$2 billion

(£1.2 billion) for its provinces and

territories to help them safely

reopen schools, Justin Trudeau, the

prime minister, said. In a speech at a

school in Toronto, he added: “We’ve

made this funding flexible so

provinces and ultimately schools

can use it for what they need most,

from hand sanitiser to remote

learning.”

Yesterday thousands of students

across hard-hit Quebec returned to

school, with masks mandatory in

common areas but not classrooms.

The move has been fiercely

criticised by parents and teachers

unions. This month Mr Trudeau said

he had not yet decided whether his

three children would be returning to

school in September.

burma

Schools throughout the country

have been temporarily closed by

government order as the country

experiences a surge in confirmed

cases. Students will continue their