Summary

  • The Isle of Wight will from Tuesday test a new contact-tracing app designed to better target coronavirus in UK

  • Health Secretary Matt Hancock says the pilot will not involve any changes to social distancing measures

  • The European Commission launches a global effort to fund research on a vaccine and other tools to combat the coronavirus

  • A virtual conference has opened to try to secure billions in pledges

  • Italy - the first country in the world to order a nationwide lockdown - is easing some restrictions

  • The number of deaths there is at its lowest level since just after its lockdown began two months ago

  • President Trump says he is confident of a vaccine by year's end but admits this is optimistic

  • Global confirmed cases exceed 3.5m and the number of deaths almost 250,000

Live Reporting

Edited by Joel Gunter and Vanessa Barford

  1. Trump says vaccine will be ready this year

    Donald TrumpEPA

    US President Donald Trump has said he believes the United States will have a vaccine for the coronavirus before 2021.

    "We are very confident that we're going to have a vaccine at the end of the year, by the end of the year," he said during a Fox News town hall on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

    Scientists around the world are currently racing to develop such a vaccine but most experts expect it will only be ready for mass distribution sometime in 2021.

    Trump seemed to accept he was getting ahead of his own medical advisors on the prediction of such a fast timeline.

    "The doctors would say 'well, you shouldn't say that.' I'll say what I think," he said.

  2. First day of zero cases in New Zealand

    Child running on the beachReuters

    As of last week, people can visit beaches and restaurants again

    There have been zero new virus infections in New Zealand for the past day - the first time since 16 March.

    There was also no new fatality, leaving the number of people whose deaths have been linked to Covid-19 at 20.

    Overall, there have been only 1,137 confirmed infections and already last week, New Zealand had only single-digit daily cases.

    The country has already begun easing lockdown measures, gradually restarting businesses and allowing people to socialise beyond their bubbles.

  3. Welcome back

    Hello and welcome back to our rolling coverage of the coronavirus outbreak. We're writing to you from Singapore this morning, and will be joined by our colleagues in London later. Here's a quick glance at the main news over the past few hours:

    • US President Donald Trump has said he is "very confident" the US will have a vaccine by the end of the year. However, he said he would also be happy for another country to beat US researchers to it, saying: "I don't care. I just want to get a vaccine that works"
    • Mr Trump acknowledged he was more optimistic than some advisers, but said: "I'll say what I think"
    • US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier said there was "significant" evidence that the virus emerged from a Chinese lab. But he did not dispute intelligence agencies, who said the virus was not man-made
    • In Brazil, President Bolsonaro again downplayed the impact of the pandemic, even as the number of cases in the country passesd the 100,000 mark
    • In Europe, France, Italy and Spain have recorded their lowest daily death tolls in weeks as they begin moving towards easing restrictions
    • The worldwide death toll now stands at almost 250,000, with some 3.5 million confirmed cases according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University