Evening roundupThursday's key coronavirus developments in Luxembourg and abroad

In Luxembourg

• [block type="summary”]The latest figures show that 7 new cases of coronavirus were recorded in Luxembourg on Thursday, bringing the total to 4,008. No new deaths were recorded - the death toll still stands at 110. In the last 24 hours, authorities carried out 950 tests in the Grand Duchy, taking the total number of tests carried out since the beginning of the outbreak to 71,098.

  • Budget airline Ryanair is planning to resume flights at Findel airport from 22 June on.
  • Luxembourg is not planning on reducing VAT on alcohol sold in bars and restaurants despite repeated calls from representatives of the hospitality sector.
  • The “Fit 4 Resilience” programme, conducted by the Ministry of the Economy in conjunction with Luxinnovation, will complement the existing support programmes designed to help businesses struggling in the wake of coronavirus.
  • Patient visits in hospitals and care homes had been prohibited since the beginning of the outbreak - a precautionary measure that is now set to change. The Centre Hospitalier du Nord has already announced that patients are allowed to have visitors between 3 pm and 7 pm for a maximum duration of one hour. The Hôpitaux Robert Schuman have followed suit with similar steps, allowing a maximum of one visitor per patient in the room for one hour only.

  In International news

  • France will allow cafes, bars and restaurants to reopen with restrictions from next week and will also end limits on travel within the country as the coronavirus crisis eases, the prime minister said Thursday.
  • Croatia reopened its borders without restrictions to citizens from ten European Union countries Thursday as the Adriatic nation looks to salvage a vital tourism sector hit by the coronavirus pandemic. The ten countries are: Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
  • British police on Thursday said Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s top aide Dominic Cummings committed a “minor” breach by driving to a scenic spot at the height of the coronavirus lockdown and closed the politically explosive case.
  • England launched a “test and trace” system on Thursday, the latest weapon deployed in a battle to halt the coronavirus’s spread in one of the worst affected countries in the world. Under the system, a team of 25,000 tracers -- supported by 20,000 testers and up to 7,000 clinicians -- will text, email or call people who test positive for the virus and ask who they have been in close contact with.
  • Unthinkable just a few months ago, the United States on Wednesday surpassed the grim milestone of 100,000 coronavirus deaths, as the pandemic tightened its grip on Latin America.