Evening roundupThursday's key coronavirus developments in Luxembourg and around the world

Starting with Luxembourg:

• Luxembourg confirmed 6 new coronavirus cases in Thursday’s update, with 2 patients now in intensive care.

• Minister of Tourism and Small & Medium-sized Enterprises Lex Delles held a press conference to discuss ‘Smile Again’ campaign to support local businesses after coronavirus. Find our live ticker coverage here and our summary here.

• Minister of the Economy Franz Fayot labelled a Guardian plant in Dudelange the ‘first industrial victim of the COVID-19 crisis.’

• The President of Caritas warned that the consequences of the coronavirus risked becoming worse than the disease itself.

• According to information obtained by RTL, primary school pupils will return in one single group to their schools as of 29 June.

• 150,000 invitations to participate in Luxembourg’s large-scale testing strategy are being sent out every week as of Tuesday.

And around the world

• South Asia is now reeling from the coronavirus, with the situation being described as catastrophic across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

• Travel restrictions were placed on nearly half a million people near Beijing on Thursday as authorities rush to contain a fresh outbreak of the coronavirus with a mass test-and-trace effort and lockdowns in parts of the Chinese capital.

• The novel coronavirus is twice as infectious within households than similar diseases such as SARS, with a substantial number of additional infections spreading before a COVID-19 sufferer shows any symptoms, according to modelling released Thursday.

• Kazakhstan’s 79-year-old former president and official ‘Leader of the Nation’ Nursultan Nazarbayev has tested positive for the coronavirus, a statement on his official website said Thursday.

• People who catch COVID-19 but don’t show symptoms may have significantly lower levels of immunity against the virus than those who become severely ill, new research showed.

• Layoffs caused by the coronavirus pandemic in the United States have passed 45.7 million, raising fears that despite some positive signs, the economy faces a halting recovery from the downturn.