Louvre reopens after four months
Pak health minister +ve; Trump to hold public rally as deaths in US top 130,000; Oz states close borders
Mona Lisa is back at work as the Louvre in Paris, the world’s most visited museum, reopened on Monday after nearly four months of Covid-19 shutdown.
Several dozen visitors queued up, eagerly awaiting the opening at 9:00 am local time as the famed museum hopes to start recuperating losses of up to $45 million due to the lockdown.
Most popular draws, including Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and the Louvre’s vast antiquities collection will be accessible. But galleries in which social distancing is more difficult, about a third of the total, will remain off-limits.
Visitor numbers were capped at 500 per half hour. Face masks are compulsory and no snacks or cloakrooms were available. Tickets must be bought online in advance, and were sold out for the first day of reopening after the Louvre’s longest closure since World War II.
Meanwhile, the first-ever online Paris fashion week began on Monday with the world of glitzy runway shows thrown into an existential crisis by the virus.
Art and culture got a boost in UK too, where minister Rishi Sunak unveiled £1.57 billion Covid-19 rescue package. Thousands of theatres, heritage sites, palaces, museums, galleries, live music and independent cinema will get emergency grants and loans under the package.
Australian officials are closing the border between the country’s two most populous states from Tuesday for an indefinite period as they scramble to contain a Covid outbreak in Melbourne.
The decision announced on Monday marks the first time the border between Victoria and New South Wales has been shut in 100 years. Officials last blocked movement between the two states in 1919 during the Spanish flu.
Israel’s government reimposed a series of restrictions on Monday to fight a spike in infections, deciding on the immediate closure of bars, night clubs, gyms and event halls, Israel Radio said.
Even as Covid-19 deaths in the US topped 130,000, President Trump’s campaign has announced he will hold an outdoor rally on Saturday in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
The rally at Portsmouth International Airport will come three weeks after an indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trump’s first of the Covid-19 era.
On Monday, Trump continued to lash out at China over the pandemic. “China has caused great damage to the United States and the rest of the world!” Trump tweeted.
US House Speaker Philip
Gunn tested positive for coronavirus. Gunn, a Republican, said in a video posted on Sunday to Facebook that he got tested because he had been in close proximity to another member of the House who tested positive.
In Pakistan, the county’s point person on Covid-19 has himself contracted the virus. Health minister Zafar Mirza said on Monday he was self-isolating at home .
The government of Singapore invoked the fake news law to crack down on critics of its stand on the testing of migrant workers, the biggest cluster of its coronavirus outbreak in the country.
The government issued five corrective directions under the law to media outlets and a local graduate club that carried comments by an opposition leader on the topic.
As the race for treatment continued, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals said on Monday it began latestage clinical trials to assess the effectiveness of its antibody cocktail in preventing and treating Covid-19.
Sri Lanka will start the phased reopening of schools after keeping them closed for 115 days.