Summary

  • In Australia, Melbourne residents are to go back under lockdown as border between New South Wales and Victoria has closed

  • Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is tested after showing symptoms of the coronavirus

  • UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak sets out details of a £3bn plan to cut emissions and support jobs

  • Package includes £2bn in home insulation grants to boost economy reeling from coronavirus

  • New Spanish study casts doubt on the theory that herd immunity will protect populations

  • A UN report says diseases will keep leaping from animals to humans without action to protect the environment

  • Three UK pubs which re-opened at the weekend have had to close after customers tested positive

  • There have been more than 11.5 million cases globally and more than 530,000 deaths

Live Reporting

Paul Gribben

  1. NSW - Victoria border will be shut for 'weeks, not days'

    A sign on the border on TuesdayGetty Images

    New South Wales Police Minister David Elliott has said the Victoria border closure will be a "matter of weeks, rather than days".

    "I think you can probably assume with the effort put into a deployment like this, [it will last] a couple of weeks," he said.

    "The first message and the last message from the government today is: if you don't have to cross that border, don't," he added.

    Permits will be issued for those who need to cross for essential reasons. But the police are deploying hundreds of officers to make sure people comply.

    "If you want to do the wrong thing, you'll be caught," said Elliot.

    The border stretches hundreds of miles from the Pacific coast to the Australian interior.

  2. Delhi cases cross 100,000-mark

    A man getting tested in DelhiGetty Images

    Infections in India's capital, Delhi, are soaring. With more than a 1,000 new cases reported on Monday, the city's total tally has crossed the 100,000 mark, according to health ministry data.

    But there is some good news - nearly three-quarters of those infected have recovered. And the proportion of deaths, at just over 3,000, isn't too bad either.

    Delhi dominated headlines in late June as infections swelled in the city - but in the last week or so, it seems like the situation has slowly been brought under control. Local authorities have rapidly ramped up testing and have been using antigen testing across districts.

    On Monday, India overtook Russia to become the third-most affected country with more than 690,000 cases. For the past few days, India's overall caseload has galloped at an alarming rate, adding more than 20,000 new infections per day.

    Although the country has the third-highest number of cases, it is eighth in fatalities, according to statistics from the Johns Hopkins University in the US.

  3. Spanish study casts doubt on herd immunity

    Emergency tent in SpainEPA

    One of the hopes for beating the virus is achieving so-called herd immunity. This means that if enough people in a country get infected and recover, they’ll have antibodies and be immune - and the virus won’t spread anymore.

    But a Spanish study has now cast doubt on whether that'll work for the current virus anytime soon.

    Looking at more than 60,000 people, it estimates that just 5% of the population has developed antibodies, the medical journal the Lancet reported.

    Yet it’s thought that around 70% to 90% of a population needs to be immune to protect the uninfected.

    "In this situation, social distance measures and efforts to identify and isolate new cases and their contacts are imperative for future epidemic control," the study's authors said in the report.

  4. Victoria surge continues as border closes

    At midnight (14:00 GMT), the border between New South Wales and Victoria in Australia will close for the first time in a century.

    The closure was agreed after a surge in cases in Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria. And that surge shows no sign of slowing down.

    On Tuesday, the state announced another 191 cases - a record daily tally. Of those, 154 came from unknown sources, while 37 were linked to existing outbreaks.

    In Melbourne, 3,000 tower block residents are under a week-lock lockdown after an outbreak there. At least 69 cases have been found in the blocks.

    Police outside a locked-down tower block in Flemington, Melbourne, recentlyGetty Images

    Police outside a locked-down tower block in Flemington, Melbourne, recently

  5. Hello and welcome

    Welcome back to our rolling coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest headlines:

    • For the first time in a century, the border between Australia's two most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, will close at midnight (14:00 GMT)
    • The closure was agreed after a surge of cases in Victoria, and the state announced another 191 cases on Tuesday
    • A study in Spain suggests that, despite the country's large outbreak, it is a long way from "herd immunity"
    • Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro takes another Covid-19 test, after reportedly showing symptoms - results are expected on Tuesday
    • Globally, there have been more than 11.5m cases since the outbreak began, and 537,000 deaths have been linked to Covid-19