Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has tested positive for COVID-19 four days after the mayor attended a Miami event with a Brazilian government official who later tested positive for the virus.

Inbox: "On Thursday, March 5, Senator Lindsey Graham met with Australia's Minister of Home Affairs Peter Dutton ... in Graham's Washington office. This morning it was announced that Mr. Dutton had tested positive for COVID-19."

Australia's minister for home affairs, Peter Dutton, who last week met with Ivanka Trump, said he had contracted the new coronavirus.

Sen. Ted Cruz announces decision to extend self-quarantine until March 17 out of abundance of caution. "Unfortunately, last night I was informed I had a second interaction with an individual who yesterday tested positive for COVID-19."

TORONTO (AP) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's wife has tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has tested negative for the coronavirus, his son told Fox News on Friday following media reports that his father, who recently met with U.S. President Donald Trump, had tested positive.

“The test is negative,” Eduardo Bolsonaro told Fox News Channel in an interview. The news follows some confusion today after local media in Brazil reported that Bolsonaro had tested positive. Bolsonaro himself has lashed out on Twitter at ‘Fake news.’

Romanian prime minister self-quarantines

Romania’s interim prime minister, Ludovic Orban, announced on Friday that he and other senior party leaders were going into a 14-day self-imposed quarantine after a party colleague tested positive for coronavirus, Kit Gillet reports. The senator, Vergil Chitac, had attended a recent party leadership meeting.

At the United Nations in New York, a diplomat from the Philippines also tested positive, in what is believed to be the the first case at the UN’s headquarters.

The Philippines acting UN ambassador, Kira Azucena, said: “As of today, the Philippine mission is in lockdown, and all personnel are instructed to self-quarantine and to seek medical attention should they develop the symptoms. We are assuming that all of us have been infected.”

In Australia, the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, confirmed on Friday that he had tested positive to Covid-19.

The White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, meanwhile said President Donald Trump did not need to be tested, despite meeting a Brazilian official last weekend who has been diagnosed with Covid-19.

Grisham said the pair had “almost no interactions”, despite being pictured together.

Two British companies were last week banned from using “misleading, irresponsible and scaremongering” adverts seen via the Taboola network and for face masks which made false claims about the product’s ability to prevent the spread of the virus.

The industry watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that one of the ads from Novads OU for its Oxybreath Pro masks was likely to cause fear “without justifiable reason” and highlighted the use of “alarmist language,” such as referring to the spread of the virus as being “barely controllable” and “this terrifying time.”

Facebook and Amazon have also clamped down on false advertising and price gouging.
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Amazon said it had pulled more than 1 million products for price gouging or falsely advertising effectiveness against the coronavirus

Consumers are also being warned to watch-out for coranvirus-themed emails being sent to businesses which have been infected with malaware. Cyber-criminals are also sending phishing emails and malware deployment schemes in a bid to tap into people’s desperation for information about the virus.

There have been 4,000 coronavirus-related domains, which contain words like “corona” or “covid,” have been registered since the beginning of 2020, according to cybersecurity firm Check Point. Of those, 3% were considered malicious and 5% were deemed suspicious. That means that there were about 320 sketchy websites lurking online, ready to take advantage of people’s fears.

Hackers and cybercriminals have been leveraging the hype and fear connected with the growing COVID-19 pandemic as a tool to steal passwords and data.

Coronavirus-themed domain registrations are 50% more likely to be from malicious actors, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. found in a study. Since that report was released last week, there have been some high-profile examples, most notably an attack aimed at a popular interactive COVID-19 tracking map maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

Noted security blogger Brian Krebs reported Thursday that the map has been targeted by hackers who are selling malware claiming to compromise the map and infect users. Johns Hopkins spokeswoman Jill Rosen said the university is aware of the malware that impersonates its COVID-19 site, and warned users to only trust the maps at its own site and one maintained by ArcGIS. The malware requires users to download software to generate the fake map, Rosen told MarketWatch.

“If you receive an email containing a link to download such an item or come across the code for the malicious app please report it immediately to the Esri incident response team through ArcGIS Trust Center security concern page,” Rosen said in a statement.

Gov. Andy Beshear has recommended all schools cease in-person classes for the next two weeks to combat the spread of coronavirus.

Beshear's recommendation comes as several events are being canceled locally and nationwide. He previously recommended churches cancel services this weekend.

While children are not being affected, Beshear said the recommendation is to ensure the state takes a proactive approach to avoiding the spread of COVID-19.

He said he does not ask school districts to close completely so districts can provide meal programs or help students who may need a place to stay. Beshear said it is important students go to school Friday, March 12.

An analysis of infections in Singapore and Tianjin in China revealed that two-thirds and three-quarters of people respectively appear to have caught it from others who were incubating the virus but still symptom-free.

The finding has dismayed infectious disease researchers as it means that isolating people once they start to feel ill will be far less effective at slowing the pandemic than had been hoped.

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The finding confirms recent comments from Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the World Health Organization’s emerging diseases and zoonoses unit, who said preliminary data showed patients shed more virus in the early stages of the disease, including when presymptomatic. A separate study that tracked nine patients in Germany found that levels of the virus might already be in decline when symptoms come on.

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Rowland Kao, who studies infectious disease dynamics at the University of Edinburgh, said: “One of the factors that has distinguished this coronavirus pandemic from the Sars epidemic in 2003, is that Sars was infectious only after the development of clinical signs, which made it relatively easier to control. For the current pandemic, from very early on it was suspected that a substantial number of transmissions were arising before clinical signs appeared.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – A fourth person has tested positive for the novel coronavirus after attending a February conference at Louisville’s Omni hotel, a California church has confirmed.

All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, Calif., said rector Janet Broderick “took ill shortly after returning” from the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes meeting in Louisville Feb. 19-22. Three other attendees also have contracted the COVID-19 respiratory illness.
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It’s unclear when Broderick, who is the sister of actor Matthew Broderick, began feeling sick or showing symptoms.

Another conference attendee, Rev. Dr. Robert Pace of Tarrant County, Texas, went to his doctor on February 27 when he started feeling sick, according to the Texas diocese. That was five days after the Louisville conference ended.