Coronavirus live news: Iran deaths pass 4,000 as US insists isolation measures are working …

Conveniently, the health ministry publishes all the details of its latest coronavirus reporting on Twittter.

The officials told a briefing that they expected between 500 and 700 people by April 16. The death toll so far is 435, reports Reuters.

The latest rise in cases is the biggest reported to date in the south east Asian city state, which was one of the first outside China to detect the virus. It brings the total to 1,910, Straits Times reports.

Singapore’s strict surveillance and quarantine regime initially slowed the outbreak, but recent rises in locally transmitted cases have raised fresh concerns, the Guardian reported on Wednesday, as the city reported 142 new infections.

Thousands of foreign workers – many of whom work in essential services in the city – are to be moved to army camps, floating hotels and vacant housing blocks, Straits Times reports.

This is Damien Gayle taking over the blog again. You can send me tips or news from your area to [email protected], or via Twitter DM to @damiengayle.

Kristalina Georgieva said the crisis would hit emerging markets and developing countries hardest of all, which would need hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid, Reuters reports.

Georgieva said:

Just three months ago, we expected positive per capita income growth in over 160 of our member countries in 2020.

Today, that number has been turned on its head: we now project that over 170 countries will experience negative per capita income growth this year.”

If the pandemic faded in the second half of the year, the IMF expected a partial recovery in 2021, Georgieva said, but she warned the situation could also get worse.

I stress there is tremendous uncertainty about the outlook: it could get worse depending on many variable factors, including the duration of the pandemic.”

Michel Yao, the WHO Africa programme manager for emergency response, told a media teleconference on Thursday:

During the last four days we can see that the numbers have already doubled. If the trend continues, and also learning from what happened in China and in Europe, some countries may face a huge peak very soon.”

The numbers of people recorded as infected with the coronavirus in Africa have been relatively low so far, with nearly 11,000 cases and 562 deaths, according to a Reuters tally based on government statements and WHO data.

The WHO’s Africa head, Matshidiso Moeti, said there was an “urgent need” to expand testing capacity beyond capital cities in Africa, as the virus spreads through countries.

About 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week as shutdowns across the US led employers to furlough workers in nearly every corner of the job market. Economists had expected 5.25 million Americans to file for unemployment benefits for the week ending 4 April.

Layoffs that started in the restaurant and leisure industries have now spread to manufacturing, construction and even healthcare. Job losses are rising in every state and economists are predicting the unemployment rate will soon reach 15% or higher, levels unseen since before the second world war.

The latest snapshot of economic devastation wrought by Covid-19 came as the virus itself continued its relentless spread. More than 86,000 deaths have been reported around the world and the US has over 432,000 confirmed cases, the most of any nation.

But while the numbers are stark, economists cautioned it was too early to say what the long-term impact of Covid-19 will be on the economy.

Many countries around the world have made daily exercise one of the few exceptions to strict lockdowns intended to curb the spread of coronavirus. But what if your daily jog, cycle, or even walk, with sanctioned fellow runners, cyclists or walkers could actually put people at greater danger of catching the disease?

That’s what new research by a team of Dutch and Belgian researchers has found. They are warning that existing social distancing advice does not account for the increased potential spread of the virus in aerosol droplets that catch in the slipstream of heavily breathing runners and cyclists.

In a white paper made freely available online by lead researcher Bert Blocken, professor of civil engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology, they say:

Walking, running or cycling are welcome activities to ease one’s mind in times of Covid‐19. But it is best not to exercise these outdoor sports in each other’s slipstream, according to recent research by Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands and KU Leuven in Belgium.

While the official advice to remain a specified distance away from other individuals outside your household works indoors, or in calm weather, Blocken says:

If someone exhales, coughs or sneezes while walking, running or cycling, most of the microdroplets are entrained in the wake or slipstream behind the runner or cyclist. The other person who runs or cycles just behind this leading person in the slipstream then moves through that cloud of droplets.

The slipstream is the zone that arises right behind a person when they are walking or cycling, and which pulls the air a bit along with this moving person, as it were.

Cyclists like to position themselves in the slipstream of others to reduce their air resistance. But someone who walks or runs also has such a slipstream. We have seen that no matter how that zone forms, droplets end up in that air stream. So it’s best to avoid that slipstream.

Blocken has made a couple of video animations and posted them on Twitter to illustrate what he means.

A note of caution: Blocken admits that his team’s findings are not peer reviewed. But, he adds: “Given the situation, we decided it would be unethical to keep the results confidential and keep the public waiting months for the peer review process to be completed.”

He says that full details of the scientific study will be posted as a LinkedIn article.

The prime minister’s spokesman said Johnson continues to receive standard oxygen treatment, adding:

Boris Johnson had a good night and continues to improve in intensive care at St Thomas’s hospital. He is in good spirits.

Figures released by the health department suggest that the spread of the virus is continuing to slow down: between Wednesday and Thursday, the rise in the number of new cases was 3.9%, compared with a daily average of 12% at the end of March and 20% in mid-March.

To date, Spain has confirmed 152,336 cases of the virus, and 15,238 deaths. However, there are growing doubts over the way in which the country is counting the dead.

Recently released data from judicial authorities in Madrid suggest that 6,600 more people than usual died in the last two weeks of March, compared with the official tally of 3,500 Covid-19 deaths in the region.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is once again seeking Congress’s approval to extend the state of emergency – this time until 26 April.

Speaking in parliament on Thursday morning, he defended his government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis and said the continuing lockdown, which has been in effect since 14 March, was the best way to tackle contagion. He said:

We’re all aware of the enormous sacrifice that this second extension requires from people who, quite logically, are fed up with the efforts of the past month.

But we also know that it’s vitally important that we consolidate all the advances that have been made with so much pain and suffering over that time. And that’s something we’ll only manage to do if we maintain the state of emergency for as long as scientists consider it necessary.