Virus Briefs: Philippines' 30cm distancing slammed

MANILA • Experts yesterday described as dangerous and premature the Philippines' decision to cut the social distancing minimum to 30cm on public transport, as the country saw another daily record in Covid-19 deaths.

Reducing gaps between passengers incrementally to a third of the 1m minimum could backfire, experts and medical professionals warned, and prolong the wave of infections that the country has been battling since March.

The new rules took effect yesterday, when the Philippines reported 259 new confirmed deaths, a record for the second time in three days. Total fatalities increased to 4,630, while infections have doubled in the past 35 days to 265,888, South-east Asia's highest number.

REUTERS

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EU tests platform to link up virus apps

BRUSSELS • Several European Union countries have started testing a technology platform that will allow national coronavirus tracing apps to "talk" to one another to better tackle the pandemic, the European Commission said yesterday.

The commission has kicked off test runs between the servers that support the apps created by the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Latvia - whose apps share a similar design - and a new gateway to exchange data between them. The gateway would make it possible to log encounters between people while they are travelling abroad and issue push warnings should one of them be infected.

REUTERS

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Millions return to school in Italy

ROME • Millions of Italian children returned to the classroom yesterday, more than six months after schools were closed to curb the pandemic.

Although some Italian schools opened earlier this month, roughly 5.6 million students of a total of eight million went back to school yesterday, confronting a new reality of restrictions including a lack of teachers, single-seat benches and surgical masks.

Italy was one of the first countries in Europe to be hit by the pandemic, which has now officially killed over 35,500 people out of a total of 280,000 cases in the country.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE