Coronavirus: No Danish virus deaths for first time since March – as it happened

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• Confirmed cases worldwide top 4.5 million. According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, there are 4,531,811 confirmed cases worldwide. The number of people who have lost their lives is 307,001 according to official tolls, but the true number is likely to be much higher.
• The number of deaths in the US is projected to exceed 100,000 by 1 June, according to the CDC director Robert Redfield. The agency came to the conclusion after tracking 12 different forecasting models; all of which predicted at least that number of deaths.Trump has oscillated, but has previously said the toll would be lower.
• Record increase in cases in Brazil. Brazil has confirmed 15,305 new cases; a record for a 24-hour period, as well as 824 related deaths, according to data from the country’s Health Ministry. Brazil has registered 218,223 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic, as well as 14,817 deaths.
• Beijing increases pressure on European states to reject Taiwan’s WHO inclusion. China has stepped up the pressure on European states to reject Taiwan’s call to be represented at next week’s assembly of the World Health Organization, arguing that its presence can only be justified if it accepts that it is part of China.The World Health Assembly is being held virtually on Monday, and Taiwan’s attendance – as well as a possible international inquiry into the start of the pandemic – are likely to be the two big political flashpoints between China and the west.
• US president Donald Trump said on Friday the US government was working with other countries to develop a coronavirus vaccine at an accelerated pace. Trump expressed his hope that a vaccine would be in place before the end of the year at an event in the White House Rose Garden and said his administration would mobilise its forces to get a vaccine distributed once one was in place.
• UK’s reproduction rate still close to 1, bringing lockdown-easing steps into question. The latest official estimate places the national R value - the rate at which people are passing on infections to others – at between 0.7 and 1. An R value above 1 means the epidemic will start to grow exponentially again, which would result in a new surge of cases.
  
• Europe could face deadly second wave of winter infections, WHO warns. Dr Hans Kluge, director for the WHO European region, warned countries beginning to ease their lockdown restrictions that now is “time for preparation, not celebration”.
• Second health minister resigns in Brazil after less than a month on the job. Brazil’s health minister, Nelson Teich, handed in his resignation on Friday, his office said, after less than a month on the job as the country becomes a world hotspot for coronavirus. Teich is believed to have disagreed with the rightwing president, Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil has now surpassed Germany and France and had more than 200,000 confirmed cases of the virus as of Thursday.
• Spain hails large-scale antibody study as a key tool in the fight against the coronavirus. The Spanish government has hailed a large-scale antibody study as a key tool in the fight against the coronavirus, but warned that any premature or irresponsible relaxation of restrictions could have “enormous consequences” given that only 5% of Spaniards have had the disease.
• Denmark reports zero coronavirus-related deaths for the first time since March. The country reported zero coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours for the first time since 13 March.

Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now for the next few hours. Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

The number of deaths in the US is projected to exceed 100,000 by 1 June, according to the CDC director Robert Redfield.

The agency came to the conclusion after tracking 12 different forecasting models; all of which predicted at least that number of deaths.

Trump has oscillated, but has previously said the toll would be lighter. Dr Deborah Birx of the White House coronavirus task force has repeatedly asserted the number of deaths by 1 June will be between 100,000 and 240,000 if mitigation strategies continue.

Hundreds of people are expected to be evicted from their hillside homes in a slum of Colombia’s capital Bogota, despite having nowhere to go during the country’s lockdown.

The informal houses have been declared illegal by local authorities and will be knocked down as part of the evictions, Reuters reports. Residents accuse police accompanying the eviction process of excessive force.

The Altos de la Estancia neighbourhood was home to about 1,000 families when evictions began two weeks ago. Now just some 100 families remain, residents told the news agency. John Parra, 36, moved to Bogota after being displaced by the country’s internal conflict. He said:

The majority of the people that live here are unemployed because of Covid-19 and the pandemic.

Brazil has confirmed 15,305 new cases; a record for a 24-hour period, as well as 824 related deaths, according to data from the country’s Health Ministry. Brazil has registered 218,223 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic, as well as 14,817 deaths.

As the outbreak in Ecuador’s largest city of Guayaquil begins to stabilise, the government is bracing for worsening spread in the highland capital Quito, where at least six people have died in the streets in the past month.

Guayaquil was at the centre of one of Latin America’s worst outbreaks in March and April. Cemeteries ran out of space and families stored relatives’ dead bodies in their homes or on the streets as the virus strained the health system’s capacity to collect them, Reuters has reported.

But authorities’ attentions are now turning to Quito, whose 2.8 million residents are under a strict lockdown to contain the virus’ spread. The local government said that, between 4 April and 13 May, it had picked up the bodies of six people who had died in the streets, in addition to seven bodies from homes and two from nursing homes.

The government said on Thursday night that 135 of the 164 intensive care beds in the city’s public hospitals are occupied, and that it plans to install about 80 more.

“Quito’s health system is reaching its limit,” the city’s mayor Jorge Yunda said on Friday during the opening of a temporary 380-bed hospital for epidemic patients.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 2,043 more deaths and 27,191 new cases, bringing the totals to 85,990 and 1,412,121, respectively.

Panama has extended its ban on international flights by a month to 22 June, the country’s aviation authority has said.

The possibility that Americans may have to pay to be vaccinated against the virus remains open, though the US president Donald Trump says he is looking at possibly making a future vaccine available for free.

A woman in the American state of Georgia has been arrested for allegedly cheating Medicare – the US health insurance program for those aged older than 65 and the disabled – by submitting fraudulent claims related to coronavirus testing and genetic cancer tests, the US Justice Department has said.

The case against 32-year-old Ashley Hoobler Parris marks one of the first Medicare fraud cases in connection with Covid-19 billings.

The latest Australian politics live blog has been released. After taking a break, Katharine Murphy is back to speak with Labor’s shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, about the post-coronavirus economy.

They discuss the nation’s level of debt and the possible long-term changes to Australia’s welfare system. Will a universal basic income be introduced in the future? How can we stop intergenerational unemployment? What lessons from the global financial crisis can be used?

Soldiers from the British Gurkha regiments have rescued more than 100 Britons stuck in remote parts of Nepal.

Strict lockdown measures and reduced transport in the country meant many travellers were unable to reach chartered repatriation flights last month.

A total of 109 British nationals and 28 foreign nationals stranded in isolated parts of the country were picked up over three weeks.

Using the local knowledge of British Ghurka networks based in Kathmandu, Pokhara and Dharan, staff at the UK Embassy and soldiers were able to locate the travellers and devise plans to reach them.

The Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has accused international media outlets of lying as stories accumulate on the country’s alleged undercounting of its case numbers and death toll.

Investigations by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and El País have all included such suggestions.

In a rambling response to an unrelated question, López Obrador complained about reporters “going to graveyards” and crematoria to verify Covid-19 deaths. The famously stubborn López Obrador, who seldom lets critical comments pass unanswered, also called for the foreign press to practice some “self-criticism”.

There’s a crisis of the lack of ethics in the handling of information in Mexico, in the world. The world’s most famous newspapers lie, slander. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, El País, are very famous, but without ethics.

The outburst came after Reforma, a Mexican newspaper López Obrador frequently criticises, reported it had received threats from someone claiming to be part of the Sinaloa Cartel to blow up its building if it didn’t stop critical coverage.

Mexico has reported 42,595 cases and 4,477 deaths as of Thursday. A Sky News investigation estimated Mexico City’s death rate is five times higher than the official figures.

Still, parts of the country will reopen on Monday and López Obrador says the curve has been “flattened”. The president has said he will ask the health secretariat it is okay for him to resume his tours of the country to check on the progress of mega projects under construction and open branches of a government bank.

Medical experts have questioned if Mexico is ready to reopen; the country has guided its Covid-19 response with disease modelling, rather than testing. Its testing rates rank among the lowest in Latin America at 0.4 per 1,000 people.

15 May 202016.19 EDT

Paul MacInnes

English Premier League squads could be quarantined in the event of a single failed test if clubs vote to return to training next week.

Players are to be tested for Covid‑19 twice a week during a first stage of return, with a positive test requiring the player to isolate for seven days under Public Health England guidelines. But the rules also require that a “contact” of a known case should isolate, as someone would if they were living in the same house. That quarantine period should last for 14 days.

The English Football League, in training protocols sent to its clubs this week, confirmed that a “playing group” would be quarantined for 14 days if one of their number tested positive. The Premier League would not comment on the details of its protocols but confirmed it was following PHE guidelines.

15 May 202015.54 EDT

Beijing increases pressure on European states to reject Taiwan's WHO inclusion

Patrick Wintour

Beijing has stepped up the pressure on European states to reject Taiwan’s call to be represented at next week’s assembly of the World Health Organization, arguing that its presence can only be justified if it accepts that it is part of China.

The World Health Assembly is being held virtually on Monday and Taiwan’s attendance – as well as a possible international inquiry into the start of the pandemic – are likely to be the two big political flashpoints between China and the west.

Chinese diplomats have been contacting governments across Europe to limit the diplomatic support for Taiwan’s attendance, targeting northern and eastern European states. Maintaining collective EU unity on China is proving difficult.

But in a letter to the Guardian, the former Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former president of Poland Aleksander Kwaśniewski and the former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt argue that Taiwan should be permitted to attend because of its pioneering response to the pandemic, which has drawn on the lessons of the 2003 Sars outbreak.