Evening roundupFriday's key coronavirus developments in Luxembourg and abroad

Starting with Luxembourg

• Luxembourg recorded 659 new cases from 12,338 tests on Friday, with three deaths. There are 171 (-8) patients in standard hospital care while the number in intensive care has increased by one to a total of 37. For the full update in both writing and graphs, look here.

• 279 out of a total of 6,500 retirement and care home residents had tested positive by Wednesday evening, said Minister for Family Affairs Corinne Cahen.

• Starting on 9 November, residents of Canada, the Republic of Georgia and Tunisia will no longer be allowed to enter the country.

• The Luxembourg charity “Stëmm vun der Strooss” has been serving twice as many people as usual during this pandemic.

• Pupils and teaching staff will be able to benefit from tests directly in schools, which will also be able to authorise quarantines themselves. Minister of Education Claude Meisch provided further details in an interview with RTL on Friday morning.

• According to the head of the National Health Directorate, Dr Jean-Claude Schmit, contact tracing was currently in a “difficult phase”. Recently, the delay was between four to five days.

• In the current context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 34th edition of the traditional Student Fair will take place in virtual form on 12 and 13 November.

And around the world

• A protest against Slovenia‘s coronavirus shutdown sparked some of the most violent scenes the country has seen in years, as police moved in with teargas and water cannons to disperse the crowd.

• Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for a united effort to tackle spiking coronavirus infection rates, as 56 million people in England went into a second lockdown but with the public weary of restrictions and fearing for their livelihoods. Meanwhile, Italy‘s northern regions began a month-long lockdown Friday and the country braced for a new curfew.

• Beijing on Thursday banned foreign arrivals from France and a host of other countries, the latest in a growing number of entry bans as China closes itself off from a world still battling the virus.

• The USrecorded a third day in a row with deaths above 1,000, while more than 120,000 infections were reported -- smashing a daily record set the day before, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

• For weeks now, the coronavirus has been mercilessly lashing Switzerland, and in particular its French-speaking region, where hospitals are rapidly becoming overwhelmed.

• The second wave of the coronavirus in Belgium, the hardest-hit country in the world in terms of its proportion of fatalities, may have peaked, health authorities said on Friday.

• Singapore Airlines on Friday reported a record net loss for its fiscal second quarter.

• Denmark on Friday defended the strict measures it has imposed on the north of the country after a mutated version of the new coronavirus linked to mink farms was found in humans. Copenhagen has warned that the mutation could threaten the effectiveness of any future vaccine, and has ordered the slaughter of all of the country’s minks, estimated at up to 17 million.