People wearing face masks to protect against coronavirus infection leave a mall in St.Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Sept. 11, 2020. Russia has seen an uptick in new cases of coronavirus in recent weeks and hospitalizations have started to increase. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

NEW ORLEANS — Bars in a handful of Louisiana parishes will be allowed to re-open under new, looser coronavirus restrictions announced Friday by Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Bars in the state have been closed since July unless they have licenses to operate as restaurants. Under the guidelines announced Friday, bars in parishes where the percentage of positive COVID-19 deaths is 5% or below for four weeks can open if parish leaders give the OK, Edwards said.

Bars that are allowed to open will be limited to 25% capacity. They will have to shut down alcohol sales at 10 p.m. and close at 11 p.m.

Bar openings won’t happen in New Orleans, where Mayor LoToya Cantrell is maintaining stricter rules.

The latest plans were released on the day the number of coronavirus-related deaths in Louisiana surpassed 5,000. Hospitalizations, however, continue to drop, totalling 723 in Friday’s figures. There had been nearly 2,000 hospitalized in early April, when the state was a U.S. hot spot for infections.

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HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK

— Daily US virus deaths decline, but trend may reverse in fall

— Latvia bursts Baltic travel bubble as COVID-19 cases surge

— Schools that are mostly Black, Latino favour starting online, which could worsen inequalities in education

— Americans are commemorating 9-11 with tributes that have been altered by coronavirus precautions

— In Peru, where virus has been particularly deadly, Indigenous people turn to ancestral remedies

— Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

MILAN — The number of people found positive for coronavirus continued to rise for the sixth straight week in Italy, mostly driven by people returning from holidays as Italy increases its testing capacity.

Another 1,616 people tested positive in the last 24 hours, according to Health Ministry statistics released Friday, as Italy carried out 99,000 more nasal tests.

Authorities have emphasized that many of the new cases do not represent people who are suffering symptoms but who have been identified by contact tracing. At the same time, the average age of those testing positive is on the rise, with nearly one-third over 50.

The focus on tracing new cases comes as Italy prepares to open schools on Monday for the first time since last winter, and as Italy considers reducing quarantine for anyone who had contact with someone testing positive from 14 days to 10 days.

Italy has totalled 284,796 people testing positive for the virus during the pandemic, with 35,597 dead — 10 of those in the last 24 hours.

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PARIS — French Prime Minister Jean Castex warned that the virus situation is “obviously worsening” in the country as health authorities recorded the biggest one-day jump in new cases since the pandemic began.

Castex announced Friday that the self-isolation time for COVID-19 is reduced from 14 days to seven days because it is the period “when there is a real risk of contagion” and in order to better ensure the enforcement of the measure.

French health authorities argued this week that the 14-day quarantine was not well respected by many in the country who considered it too long.

Castex himself is on self-isolation this week after he was in close contact with a person infected with the virus.

He also announced that specific testing centres will be set up to provide results in priority to people who have symptoms or have been in close contact with someone tested positive or are medical staff. People around France have reported long queues to get tested and several days to get the results.

French authorities have reported 9,843 new cases Thursday and a steady increase in virus-related hospitalizations in recent days.

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LUSAKA, Zambia — Zambia’s bars have been closed since March because of coronavirus restrictions, but now the president says they will reopen on a limited basis on weekends.

President Edgar Lungu in a speech to lawmakers warns that “should there be any flouting of these public health guidelines, I will be left with no option but to close them again.”

Zambia has been among a number of southern African nations restricting alcohol sales, including South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Lungu also says all schools and universities will reopen starting Monday after students lost a half-year of studies.

The president expressed concern about the “vices” such as teenage pregnancies that have increased with schools closed for so long. The southern African nation has more than 13,000 confirmed virus cases.

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MADRID — Spain, the European country where the new coronavirus is currently spreading faster, on Friday added 12,183 new confirmed infections to a total tally of 566,326.

Although the day-to-day increase was the highest since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 7,000 of those were cases diagnosed earlier and only reported on Friday.

The Health Ministry recorded 48 new fatalities for COVID-19, bringing the total death toll to 29,747.

Spain’s cumulative incidence, a variable closely watched by epidemiologists, showed nearly 240 coronavirus infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past two weeks, the highest in Europe.

The high figure comes a day after the top official designing the response to the pandemic hailed that the curve of contagion was “possibly stabilizing.”

On Friday, Health Minister Salvador Illa told Spain’s public broadcaster TVE that barring some specific regions with high levels of spread, “the situation is being brought under control.”

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The Dutch public health institute says that 1,270 people tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, the highest number since mid-April.

The rise Friday marks the second time this week that Dutch daily infections have topped 1,000 and are the latest sign that the virus is making a resurgence in the Netherlands.

The increase comes despite a bottleneck at testing stations around the country due to delays at laboratories that process the tests.

More than 6,200 people are confirmed to have died in the pandemic in the Netherlands, though the true number is higher because not everybody who died of suspected COVID-19 was tested.

On Tuesday, the public health institute reported that 5,427 people tested positive in the previous week, an increase of 1,830 compared to the week earlier.

The percentage of positive tests also rose to 2.8% from 2.2% earlier in the week.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Norwegian health authorities say the Scandinavian country must “plan for a new, national wave” of the coronavirus as Norway sees a spike in the number of cases.

“If it should come, it is more likely that it will happen in the autumn and winter when people gather to a greater extent indoors,” the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said in a report published Friday.

Line Vold of the government agency said that there are several local outbreaks, chiefly among young adults, adding “This is expected, and we think we will see more such outbreaks in the future.”

Norway has recorded 11,866 cases and 265 deaths.

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ROME — The Vatican says one of Pope Francis’ top collaborators, Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, has tested positive for the coronavirus.

The Vatican said that Tagle, who heads the Holy See’s powerful office in charge of the Catholic Church in Asia, Africa and other mission territories, last saw the pope in an official audience Aug. 29. He tested negative as recently as Sept. 7 but tested positive upon his arrival Thursday in Manila.

In a statement Friday, the Vatican press office said Tagle doesn’t have any symptoms and is self-isolating in the Philippines. In the meantime, the Vatican is tracing his recent contacts.

Francis brought the 63-year-old Tagle, the former archbishop of Manila, to Rome earlier this year to take over one of the biggest and most important Vatican congregations, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Francis subsequently made him a cardinal-bishop, a ranking that made clear the pope’s esteem for him.

Both moves have boosted Tagle’s visibility within the church hierarchy and have given him experience working within the Holy See bureaucracy — two factors that, despite his relatively young age, help make Tagle a possible papal contender in a future conclave.

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MIAMI — Florida officials have announced that bars will be allowed to reopen at 50% capacity starting Monday.

At the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation Secretary Halsey Beshears issued an emergency order on Thursday night rescinding a previous order that halted the sale of alcohol at bars.

“In meetings with hundreds of owners of bars and breweries across the state, I’ve heard their stories of struggle, and I’ve observed their serious commitment to making health and safety a continuing priority in their businesses,” Beshears said in a statement. “It’s time that we take this step, and it’s vital that we start moving forward with this sector of our hospitality industry who have endured one of the toughest paths for sustaining a business during this pandemic.”

DeSantis said earlier Thursday he was planning to soon ease restrictions imposed on the state’s restaurants. He told a meeting of restaurant industry executives in Fort Myers that the current limitation of 50% capacity for indoor dining and requiring that tables be kept 6 feet (2 metres) apart seems arbitrary.

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LONDON — A study of coronavirus infection in England indicates that the epidemic is doubling every seven to eight days.

The finding came in a study of over 150,000 volunteers, who were tested between Aug. 22 and Sept. 7, by Imperial College London and polling firm Ipsos MORI.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the pandemic is “not over, and everyone has a role to play to keep the virus at bay.”

Separately, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, which advises the government, said the transmission rate was increasing across the whole of the U.K.

It said the reproduction rate is now between 1.0 and 1.2, meaning anyone with the virus is infecting, on average, a little more than one other. During the summer, the R number fell below 1, meaning the epidemic was getting smaller.

Earlier this week, the British government tightened restrictions in England on social gatherings as a result of a recent spike in new confirmed coronavirus cases. Gatherings will be limited to six people from Monday both indoors and outdoors.

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BANGKOK — Health officials in Thailand say a 29-year-old player from Uzbekistan who is a member of the Buriram United Football Club has tested positive for the coronavirus.

Dr. Yong Poosvorawan, an expert from Chalulongkorn University, said Friday that there is a high chance that the player, whose name was not released, contracted it outside of Thailand. The incubation period for the disease can sometimes be longer than 14 days.

Dr. Sophon Iamsirithaworn, director of the Communicable Disease Control Department, said the team’s 44 players and staff have been put under a 14-day quarantine. The player, who has shown no symptoms, was admitted to a Bangkok hospital.

The player arrived in Thailand a month ago and tested negative three times during his initial 14-day quarantine period in Bangkok ending Aug. 27. He travelled to the northeastern province of Buriram, and then tested positive on Sept. 8 ahead of the planned season opener.

The other Buriram personnel tested negative, but the team’s match for this Sunday was postponed, as were matches of two teams with which they warmed up.

A prison inmate earlier this month became Thailand’s first locally transmitted coronavirus case shortly after the country marked 100 days without one.

News from © The Associated Press, 2020