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 Trump social media posts pulled
Facebook took down a post by U.S. President Donald Trump, which the
company said violated its rules against sharing misinformation about
the coronavirus.
The post contained a video clip from an interview with Fox & Friends
in which Trump said children are "almost immune" to COVID-19.
A tweet containing the video that was posted by the Trump campaign's
@TeamTrump account and shared by the president was also later hidden
by Twitter for breaking its COVID-19 misinformation rules.
YouTube said it had also pulled down the video for violating its
COVID-19 misinformation policies. However, the original interview
remained available on the Fox News page on the platform.
Fauci says politics and vaccine won't mix
U.S. regulators have assured scientists that political pressure will
not determine when a coronavirus vaccine is approved, the country's
leading infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday,
even as the White House hopes to have one ready ahead of the
November presidential election.
“We have assurances, and I’ve discussed this with the regulatory
authorities, that they promise that they are not going to let
political considerations interfere with a regulatory decision,” Dr.
Fauci told Reuters in an interview.
Fresh lockdown fears in Germany
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Germany has breached the
1,000 threshold for the first time since early May, in the latest
sign that slackening social distancing is raising the risk of a
second wave of the disease.
According to data published by the Robert Koch Institute early on
Thursday morning, the number of new infections rose by 1,045 to
213,067, breaching a key psychological barrier after creeping up for
weeks.
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The lockdown and social distancing pushed the number of new cases down to as low
as 159 in mid-July but numbers have been rising since, fuelled by local
outbreaks, including one centred on a slaughterhouse that required restrictions
to be placed on the entire town of Guetersloh.
New surge in Philippines
The Philippines recorded another jump in coronavirus infections to overtake
neighbouring Indonesia as the country with the highest number of recorded
COVID-19 cases in East Asia.
A recent surge in cases in and around the capital Manila has pushed authorities
to reimpose a lockdown affecting around a quarter of the country's 107 million
people. The Philippines recorded 3,561 new infections on Thursday, taking its
total confirmed cases to 119,460.
The Philippines imposed one the world's strictest and longest lockdowns in and
around the capital, running from mid-March to the end of May, which brought the
economy to its knees in the first half.
Melbourne enters six-week lockdown
Australia's second-biggest city of Melbourne began the first day of a six-week
total lockdown on Thursday with the closure of most shops and businesses raising
new fears of food shortages, as authorities battle a second wave of coronavirus
infections.
Abattoirs are one of the few businesses allowed to stay open in the city of
about 5 million people, though with a reduced workforce, under the "stage four"
lockdown which took effect at midnight on Wednesday.
(Compiled by Karishma Singh and Linda Noakes; edited by Philippa Fletcher)
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