COVID-19

Thirteen new cases were recorded in Victoria today, health officials said, with six of the cases related to an infections cluster at a meat processing facility in Melbourne.

"What I'm worried about is the unknown unknowns," Victoria's Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said at a televised briefing, urging more people to get tested.

"We want to make sure that if we have cases that are positive in the community we can identify those individuals... this is how we are going to defeat the virus."

The Lord Chamberlain, has informed the Speaker of Parliament, the King will deliver his Royal Address from the Palace to the Parliament's Chamber.

In adherence to the current State of Emergency, only MPs, parliamentary staff and media will be present during the state opening.

Once parliament reconvenes its priority agenda is to consider the national budget for the next financial year which must be passed before 1 July.

Mayor Eric Garcetti made the announcement just hours after Los Angeles County reported its largest daily increase in new Covid-19 cases.

Until now, only essential workers and those displaying symptoms could receive tests due to a scarcity of kits.

It comes as California is expected to close all beaches across the state.

Los Angeles County currently accounts for almost half of California's confirmed coronavirus cases. The state has so far reported over 48,000 cases and more than 1,900 deaths.

Suva-based WHO representative Angela Merianos said Pacific nations were among the first group of countries receiving specially developed cartridges from US manufacturer Cepheid, for local testing of Covid-19.

South Pacific nations using New Zealand or Australia to run their testing should be getting cartridges. Some, like Tokelau where there was no testing facility, would also receive the GeneXpert system.

While the $7.4m loss represents a 37 per cent improvement on budget, NZR financial officer Nicki Nicol warned of the significant impacts Covid-19 will bring.

“At New Zealand Rugby we are forecasting up to a 70 per cent decline in revenue and we’ve had to quickly adjust our cost base accordingly,” Nicol said at Thursday’s annual general meeting.

“We know this has had an impact across all areas of our game; our players, teams, competitions, programmes and partnerships with provincial unions, Super clubs and others across the industry.

Zahara de los Atunes, near Cadiz, used tractors to spray more than 2km (1.2 miles) of beach with a bleach solution a day before Spain allowed children out of lockdown for the first time.

Environmentalists say the move caused "brutal damage" to the local ecosystem.

Spain has been badly affected by the coronavirus, with 23,800 deaths.

It recently announced a four-phase plan to lift its stringent lockdown measures and return to a "new normality" by the end of June.

The music-streaming platform says it gained six million subscribers in the first quarter of 2020.

It said the figures fell into the higher end of what had been predicted before the coronavirus outbreak.

But analysts have warned Spotify's quarterly results may not be as positive as the company suggests.

Spotify said a double-digit rise in quarterly revenue had helped offset a decline in ad sales, which contributed less than 10% of its overall revenue.

The WHO's Angela Merianos said new initiatives like the Pacific Islands Forum's fast-track humanitarian pathway are helping these efforts.

Dr Merianos leads a new space for more than 20 agencies joining forces against Covid-19 in the Pacific.

She said the team are well aware of the impact of restrictions on tourism-dependent economies.

"I think we really have to again work collectively watch this space, make sure that we're balancing the interest of public health and human safety."

The Ministry of Education said it believed the timeframe would give sufficient time for communities, families and kava clubs to refresh before they start supporting their students’ transport costs.

The offer comes as part of the COVID-19 Education Cluster Relief to ensure students can attend school, it said.

“A high number of buses are being utilised for transportation to ensure that social distancing is reasonably practiced as per direction from the Ministry of Health.” the Ministry said.

He was one of a handful of people left who survived Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in occupied southern Poland during World War II.

He spoke to the BBC in January about his experience. Asked how he survived, he said: "You did not live through Auschwitz. The place itself is death."

In a Facebook tribute, his son Michel Kichka wrote: "A small microscopic coronavirus has succeeded where the entire Nazi army had failed. My father had survived the Death March, but today his Life March has ended."