The Latest on the coronavirus pandemic. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.
TOP OF THE HOUR:
— New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says it's time to relaunch New York City's economy.
— Rome’s Colosseum to open after three-month shutdown.
— British PM Johnson invites Putin to online vaccine summit.
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NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo says it's time to focus on relaunching New York City’s moribund economy after weeks of declining deaths and hospitalizations.
After ringing open the Stock Exchange, the Democratic governor laid out a plan that includes accelerating major infrastructure projects and tackling transmission of the new coronavirus in the hardest-hit neighborhoods.
The mid-Hudson Valley, including the city’s northern suburbs, on Tuesday became the latest region of New York state to begin slowly phasing in economic activity. Long Island was expected to follow Wednesday, which would leave New York City as the only region awaiting the start of reopening.
Statewide hospitalization rates continue to decline with about 200 new cases a day. The number of deaths reported Monday dropped to 73, the lowest number since late March.
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ISTANBUL — Turkey’s death toll from COVID-19 has reached 4,397 with 28 new deaths in the past 24 hours, according to the health minister.
Fahrettin Koca tweeted Tuesday 948 new infections, bringing the total number of cases to 158,762.
More than 121,500 people have recovered and people needing intensive care continued on a downward trend, according to the health ministry statistics.
Turkey ranks ninth in a tally by Johns Hopkins University for the number of cases, but experts believe the rate of infections globally could be much higher than reported. The country ranks 14th in number of deaths.
Turkey’s 83 million citizens are on the final day of a four-day nationwide lockdown. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he hoped this restriction to stay at home would be the last round. He's expected to announce new policies and easing measures against COVID-19 later this week.
The country has opted for weekend and holiday lockdowns in large cities for nearly two months and has kept people above 65 and under 20 at home.
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ROME — Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli has revealed that he's recovered after being stricken with COVID-19 and has donated plasma for research about coronavirus treatments.
Bocelli visited a hospital Tuesday in the Tuscan city of Pisa to donate.
Some coronavirus patients have received plasma from former patients as part of their treatment to boost recovery. The singer told reporters outside the hospital that he had suffered only mild symptoms after a positive swab test on March 10.
Bocelli said he finds it “hard to metabolize” the concept that a virus could “bring the whole world ... to its knees.”
On Easter Sunday in April, Bocelli sang solo in Milan’s empty Duomo cathedral during the lockdown in Italy, where the COVID-19 outbreak began in Europe.
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PHILADELPHIA — Dozens of people who have been sleeping at the city’s airport during the COVID-19 pandemic are being tested rapidly before being taken to homeless shelters, officials said Tuesday.
The airport had run out of other options for handling the crowd, spokesperson Florence Brown said.
At the peak of the encampment, more than 150 people slept at the baggage claim areas around Terminal A, which in part serves international flights and has been out of use for about two months.
Problems have mounted because of worker complaints and less access to food, staff cleaning and bathroom supplies.
Parts of the baggage claim area will be put back in use around June 4, officials have said.
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ROME — The Colosseum will start receiving visitors again after three months of shutdown during COVID-19 containment measures.
To lower the risk of possible contagion at one of Italy’s most popular tourist attractions, tourists must wear protective masks and have their temperatures taken before entering the ancient arena, which re-opens to tourism on June 1.
Entrance times will be staggered to discourage crowding and tickets must be bought online. A reduced-price ticket will be available for afternoon visitors in an effort to encourage Romans to visit the monument at the end of their working day, especially while Italy awaits for tourism from overseas to resume.
Tickets to the Colosseum also allow entrance to the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. But tourists to those two sites will no longer be able to wander at will through the sprawling ancient ruins. Instead, they will have to follow fixed paths.
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LONDON — Health Secretary Matt Hancock is reporting that Britain’s overall number of deaths involving the new coronavirus is at the lowest in six weeks.
Officials also said that for the first time since March 18, there were no such deaths recorded in Northern Ireland on Monday.
Official U.K. figures show an increase of 134 deaths recorded with a positive coronavirus test, bringing the country’s total death toll to 37,048 on Tuesday. That figure rises to 45,231 when taking into account suspected cases and all deaths where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
John Newton, the national Covid-19 testing coordinator, added that the number of coronavirus hospital admissions in England was down to 471, the lowest number recorded.
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UNITED NATIONS — Two major children’s organizations say the number of children in poor and middle-income countries living below the poverty line could increase by 86 million to 672 million by the end of 2020 as a result of the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
UNICEF and the Save the Children humanitarian and rights organization said in an analysis released Tuesday that nearly two-thirds of all children living in poverty are in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. But they said countries across Europe and central Asia could see a 44 percent increase across the region, while Latin America and the Caribbean could see a 22 percent increase from the coronavirus impact.
UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said the unprecedented socioeconomic crisis from COVID-19 “threatens to roll back years of progress in reducing child poverty and to leave children deprived of essential services.”
To mitigate the impact of the pandemic, Save the Children and UNICEF called for rapid and large-scale expansion of social protection systems and an array of programs, including cash transfers, school feeding, and child benefits to address immediate financial needs.
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MADRID — Spain’s Health Ministry is reporting a slight increase in its national death toll from the new coronavirus, to 27,117, as it changes the way cases are counted.
Authorities said 35 deaths occurred over the past seven days, though almost 250 other deaths were added to the total.
On Monday, the Health Ministry cut the death toll by almost 2,000 after sifting through and correcting data, and that review is continuing.
The total number of cases rose to 236,259, with 194 diagnosed over the previous 24 hours and 3,222 over the past seven days.
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ROME — Two northern regions account for far more than half of Italy’s latest confirmed cases of the new coronavirus.
According to Health Ministry figures, Lombardy registered 159 new cases in the 24-hour period ending Tuesday evening, while neighboring Piedmont registered 86 cases. The only other region to have more than 50 cases in the day-to-day tally was Liguria, also in the north.
Italy’s overall number of confirmed COVID-19 infections rose to 230,555 with the addition of 397 cases nationwide. Italy saw one of the lowest day-to-day number of deaths of patients since the first days of the outbreak with 78 more deaths registered.
That brings the nation's count to 32,995 known deaths.
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BERLIN — Europe’s aviation safety agency is calling on airlines and airports to participate in a new program to help evaluate new coronavirus guidelines in real-life situations.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said Tuesday that the program will focus on airlines that are fully applying the guidelines flying to airports that are also applying them.
The guidelines were published last week by EASA in conjunction with the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control with the goal of allowing air travel to restart in safe conditions. The guidelines include distancing measures, hand hygiene, mask recommendations and also rely on passengers taking personal responsibility, such as postponing travel if they learn they have been in contact with someone who has COVID-19.
The Cologne, Germany-based agency says participating airlines and airports will sign a pledge to abide by the guidelines, coordinate with national authorities, and design practical solutions when they encounter problems implementing the guidelines.
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ATHENS — Greek health officials say they are ending their regular live televised briefings on the course of the coronavirus pandemic, which has essentially been brought under control in the country.
Sotiris Tsiodras, the government’s coronavirus task force chief, said Tuesday that while he will retain his duties, from now on the briefings will be written unless some special development dictates otherwise.
Tsiodras announced 10 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours and one more death, bringing the total to 2,892 infections and 173 deaths in a country of less than 11 million.
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ROME — Italy’s health minister is appealing to citizens to answer the Red Cross call for a blood test to determine if they have antibodies to COVID-19.
Red Cross volunteers began making phone calls Tuesday to a representative sample of people throughout Italy. Minister Roberto Speranza told Sky TG24 TV the goal is to better understand how many people have developed antibodies.
Experts say many people without COVID-19 symptoms in the country where Europe’s outbreak began were likely infected but were never tested. Speranza says the blood test results of 150,000 people can be applied to the entire country.
Speranza says people with antibodies will quickly receive a test for COVID-19 to see if they have an active infection. Italy is considering a tentative lifting of restrictions of travel between regions in the country on June 3.
Scientists have cautioned they don’t know if antibodies guarantee immunity, and if they do, how long such immunity lasts.
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UNITED NATIONS — A report says Venezuela’s broken health system is “grossly unprepared” to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, warning overcrowding and limited access to water in hospitals and homes make it likely the coronavirus illness will rapidly spread.
The report by Human Right Watch and Johns Hopkins University’s Centers for Public Health and Human Rights and for Humanitarian Health says the massive exodus of Venezuelans and crossing of the country’s borders due to the pandemic is increasing the risk of spread.
The report says on Monday, Venezuela had 1,121 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 10 deaths. But “the real number is almost certainly much higher, given the limited availability of reliable testing, limited transparency, and the persecution of medical professionals and journalists who report on this issue.”
Human Rights Watch and Johns Hopkins urged U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock to lead efforts to address this “humanitarian emergency.”
They called on the Lima Group of mostly conservative-run regional countries seeking to defuse the crisis in Venezuela as well as the United States and the European Union to press Maduro to “immediately open doors to a full-scale, U.N.-led humanitarian response to prevent catastrophic spread of COVID-19.”
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MOSCOW — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend an online summit on the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
The British Embassy says Johnson has officially invited Putin to attend the Global Vaccine Summit 2020 hosted by Britain on June 4.
The embassy statement indicates the summit will focus on securing the critical support required for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to “continue its vital work and to help ensure that any vaccine developed for COVID 19 is available for the whole world.”
Several Russian labs have been developing anti-coronavirus vaccines and testing on humans was expected to start next month.
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Follow AP news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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