[En continu] Japan to extend state of emergency, Melbourne reconfined: news from this Friday on virus front

The essential

In Swiss, the taskforce will adapt its system to the drop in contamination

Japan extends state of emergency to ensure the safety of the Olympics, scheduled to start in 56 days

The 5 million inhabitants of Melbourne have been confined for a week since that night

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our follow-up of the day of Thursday, May 27

■ Facebook authorizes the publication of the hypothesis of a coronavirus conceived in the laboratory

Long banned on Facebook, the thesis has now become admissible on the platform, “We will no longer withdraw from our platforms the allegations that the Covid-19 was created by man or was manufactured,” said Wednesday the Californian group on its website, a few hours after Joe Biden’s call to the American intelligence services to “redouble their efforts” and to issue within 90 days a report which explains the origin of the pandemic. China on Thursday blasted the “dark history” of US intelligence.

■ Japan: the state of emergency on the verge of being extended, 56 days before the Tokyo Olympics

But the games will take place, insist the organizers, despite persistent concerns among the population. The extension of the state of emergency until June 20 should be formalized by the government during the day. This is to consolidate the improvement in the health situation observed in recent weeks for the Olympics, according to the authorities.

“Although the number of infections is declining in Tokyo and Osaka (west), the general situation remains precarious,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Thursday. “We want to do our best” to prevent further deterioration. The device, however, has nothing to do with the containment measures imposed elsewhere in the world, consisting mainly of imposing restrictions on bars and restaurants. The European Union said Thursday that it maintained its confidence in the “safe and secure” holding of the Olympic Games this summer.

■ Barcelona test concert: results difficult to transpose

The reassuring results of the first European test concert, in December in Barcelona, ​​are difficult to extrapolate for the reopening of this cultural sector, because of the “strict conditions” in which it was carried out, warn researchers in a study published on Friday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The concert had taken place in December in Barcelona, ​​with nearly 500 masked spectators, at a concert without physical distancing in a concert hall in the Spanish city and no positive cases had been detected among the PCR tests carried out eight days later. (against two in the control group), the researchers announced in early January.

On this subject read also: Places of culture: too much vagueness and constraints

The study does not necessarily mean that all large gatherings are safe, one must take into account for example the fact that the circulation of the virus was relatively relatively low at that time. Then, the concert was held under “strict conditions” (wearing of FFP2 mask, security guards in charge of avoiding crowd movements, optimized ventilation), difficult to reproduce when the live music sector has resumed its activities, and expensive, the article explains.

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