US bars travellers from Brazil: Coronavirus live updates

• The United States has barred arrivals from Brazil, the country with the second-highest number of cases in the world after the US.

• Domestic flights are due to resume in India on Monday, a day after the country confirmed a record 6,767 new cases of coronavirus. 

• Children in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, returned to school on Monday.

• More than 5.3 million people around the world have been infected with the coronavirus to date, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 344,000 people have died, while more than two million have recovered.

Here are the latest updates:

Monday, May 25

04:05 GMT – Singaporean cooks up Eid feast for migrant workers

Singaporean Dushyant Kumar, his wife and a team of chefs cooked up an Eid feast of Briyani for hundreds of migrant workers spending the festival in quarantine because of the coronavirus outbreak in the city state.

“We want to make sure they don’t get left out,” Kumar told Reuters as he prepared the food for about 600 men. “The smile on their faces gives you a lot of satisfaction.”

Singapore has some 300,000 migrant workers mainly from India, Bangladesh and China who live in crowded dormitories that have become the epicentre of the country’s coronavirus outbreak.

Kumar’s initiative was funded by public donations and an NGO. He has also been delivering 1,000 meals a day to the men who have been in strict quarantine since early April.

03:40 GMT – One million jobs lost: The price of coronavirus in Mexico

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says the novel coronavirus could cost up to one million jobs, because many industries considered not essential remain shut.

“My prediction is that with coronavirus, a million jobs will be lost,” Lopez Obrador said in a televised speech on Sunday. He then promised the government would create two million new jobs.

Lopez Obrador’s government has repeatedly said it has the outbreak under control but has since posted record numbers for new cases and deaths. The Mexican economy was already in recession before the pandemic struck and some banks have predicted it could contract 9 percent this year. Read more here. 

03:00 GMT – COVID-19 emerges in Malaysia immigration detention centres

Malaysia’s top civil servant in the health ministry has called for medical attention and decontamination in the country’s immigration detention centres after three were found to have cases of coronavirus.

Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, who is secretary-general at the Ministry of Health, said there should ne no discrimination against non-Malaysians in dealing with the virus.

“We need to enhance the active cases detection and isolate and treat those positive cases immediately,” Dr Noor Hisham wrote on his Facebook page. “Quarantine those close contacts and decontaminate the respective centres. The virus knows no boundaries and does not favour any ethnicity and social status.”

Malaysia has carried out a series of raids on undocumented migrants during the country’s coronavirus lockdown. Health ministry data shows 115 confirmed cases across the three centres.

02:15 GMT – Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo to start selling face masks 

Japanese retailer Uniqlo is to start selling masks in its stores to meet coronavirus demand.

The masks will be made from the same quick-drying material as its AIRism brand of underwear to help keep the wearer cool, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.

Japanese clothing brand #Uniqlo will start selling face masks this summer at its stores, as global demand surges for protection against the coronavirus. By @NAR #coronavirus #masks https://t.co/XouzFdnWMa

— Dean Napolitano (@NapolitanoDean) May 25, 2020

02:00 GMT – Japan to lift state of emergency for Tokyo

Japan is expected to lift the state of emergency in Tokyo and four other areas that are still under coronavirus restrictions.

The government will seek approval for the plan from key advisers on Monday with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe due to hold a press conference at 6pm (09:00 GMT)

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said the capital would move to reopen libraries and museums with the state of emergency lifted and allow restaurants to open for longer. Theatres, cinemas and other venues would reopen at a later stage.

01:20 GMT – Children in NSW return to class, as parents go back to work

Chlldren of all ages across Australia’s most-populous state of New South Wales went back to class on Monday, as offices began to reopen.

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian told the media only a “very, very small proportion” of parents had chosen to keep their children at home because of concerns about COVID-19.

00:00 GMT – US bans Brazil arrivals as coronavirus toll surges 

The United States said on Sunday that it was banning all travel into the US by non-citizens who have been in Brazil.

“We hope that it will be temporary, but because of the situation in Brazil, we’re going to take every step necessary to protect the American people,” National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told CBS’s Face the Nation programme.

Brazil registered 653 deaths on Sunday and an additional 15,813 cases, bringing the total to 363,211.

Writing on Twitter, Filipe Martins, a foreign affairs adviser to President Jair Bolsonaro played down the move saying the ban was “nothing specific against Brazil” and the US was following “preciously established parameters”. 

Ao banir temporariamente a entrada de brasileiros nos EUA, o governo americano está seguindo parâmetros quantitativos previamente estabelecidos, que alcançam naturalmente um país tão populoso quanto o nosso. Não há nada específico contra o Brasil. Ignorem a histeria da imprensa.

— Filipe G. Martins (@filgmartin) May 24, 2020

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Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. I’m Kate Mayberry in Kuala Lumpur.

Read all the updates from yesterday (May 24) here.