Military conflicts

It is being billed as the long-awaited breakthrough moment in European gastronomy for mealworm burgers, locust aperitifs and cricket granola.

Within weeks the EU’s European Food Safety Authority is expected by the insect industry to endorse whole or ground mealworms, lesser mealworms, locusts, crickets and grasshoppers as being safe for human consumption.

The ruling is likely to lead to the final authorisation of their sale across the EU as a “novel food” by as soon as the autumn, opening up opportunities for mass production of a range of insect dishes to be sold across Europe for the first time.

“These have a good chance of being given the green light in the coming few weeks,” said Christophe Derrien, the secretary general of the industry organisation International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed.

“We reckon these authorisations will be a breakthrough for the sector so we are looking for those authorisations quite impatiently. They are taking the necessary time, they are very demanding on information, which is not bad. But we believe that once we have the first novel food given a green light from EFSA that will have a snowball effect.”

In the eyes of leading players in the insects-as-food industry, the potential for their high-protein delicacies has been held back by a lack of EU-wide approval.

The UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Finland have taken a permissive approach to a 1997 EU law that requires foods not eaten before that year to get novel food authorisation.

Those national regulators decided the EU law did not pertain to animals used for food. As a result, a host of insect-based products can be found in British, Dutch, Belgian and Finnish supermarkets. About 500 tonnes of insect-based food for human consumption is produced every year.

But such products are banned in France, Italy and Spain, among other countries. In 2018, a new EU law sought to bring some clarity. It stipulated that insect-based dishes would also require novel food authorisation.

A transition period was established to allow companies already producing food from insects to operate until they received a judgment on the safety of the species they work with and final approval by the EU’s institutions.

Indeed, companies such such as Protifarm in the Netherlands, Micronutris in France, Essento in Switzerland and Entogourmet in Spain are said to be preparing to ramp up their operations.

“We have many of our members building bigger factories because the key to success is to upscale your companies and produce on a mass scale. And this is already happening,” Derrien said. “We are expecting the next few years will be very interesting ones and obviously the novel food authorisations will definitely help.”

He added: “The sort of foods ranges from whole insects as an aperitif or as snacks to processed insects in bars or pasta or burgers made out of insects. We believe that insects for food is one solution for some of the biggest challenges we are facing on the planet. In the context of scarce resources, and insect production is not too demanding, you have the capacity to produce high-quality protein. That is a very promising solution.”

Germany still needs to increase its coronavirus testing rate dramatically if it wants to successfully manage the virus, scientists are advising the government.

The country has the capacity to carry out up to 500,000 tests a week, but must increase that to more than a million, or 200,000 tests a day, they say. This is despite other countries looking to Germany because of its comparatively high testing rate and relatively low death rate from Covid-19 of under 1%.

As the British government has struggled to tackle a testing shortfall, Germany has been repeatedly named as an example to follow in recent days, but a confidential scientific study commissioned by the government and recently leaked to German media showed that if it wanted to avoid a mass outbreak of the coronavirus, the country would have to greatly increase its testing capacity.

Ever since the government’s introduction of a strict lockdown, including closing the country’s borders and shutting down schools and nurseries, the scientists said around a million people in Germany – which has a population of just under 83 million – were likely to become infected, and around 12,000 would die. That outlook, however, was based on an increase in testing to 100,000 a day and within weeks to 200,000 a day.

The study’s authors said that in order to carry out testing in the most efficient and quickest way possible, it would also be necessary in the longer term to rely on the use of big data and location tracking via mobile phones, an issue that is controversial in Germany.

Lothar Wieler, the head of the government’s main public health advisory body, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), said that while German testing was high compared with other countries, it would have to be speeded up. “We need to increase efficiency,” he said, adding that he welcomed the news that the use of quicker and simpler tests, in addition to the current standard PCR – polymerase chain reaction test, which directly detects the DNA or RNA of the pathogen – would soon be available.

Germany has a large network of more than 85 laboratories and a good history of detecting illness early. A nationwide network set up between doctors’ practices, normally used to monitor the flu, was also used for testing for Covid-19 from February onwards, and the fact the system only detected a case on 12 March indicates that the virus was not widespread before then..

There has been huge worldwide interest in why the death rate in Germany from Covid-19 has remained much lower than many other countries. Germany’s death rate is around 0.5%, compared with Italy’s 9.5%, and a worldwide rate of around 4.7%.

“The fact is that Germany started testing early on and has tested broadly. That way, many cases but also milder cases have been detected, and they did not generally include the elderly,” Wieler said.

It has, he said, in effect distorted the figures. He warns that the situation in Germany is likely to worsen, as many more of the elderly who have so far not been so affected, are likely to get sick. “We are still at the start of the epidemic, and it is completely unclear as to how it will develop,” Wieler said. “But of course the number of deaths in Germany will rise.”

He has insisted there is not, as has sometimes been suspected, an “under-reporting” of deaths from Covid-19 by hospitals. It would in theory be possible that some deaths were not counted as deaths from coronavirus, if the patient had an underlying health condition. But that is seldom likely to be the case, due to the sensibility towards the illness right now. Only if someone with coronavirus was killed by something unrelated to the virus, such as a car crash, would they not be included, medical authorities say.

Testing laboratories across Germany report that while they have been at pains to increase their capacity, they face many obstacles. Germany’s federal system has contributed to an inefficient gathering of data – including an unclear picture of how much testing has been done – and delays in testing suspected cases, delivering results or informing contact people. Germany’s regional health bodies have recruited extra staff to help deal with the backlog, but say they are struggling to keep up. The RKI has recruited scouts – often medical students and trained doctors who arrived as refugees but are waiting to have their qualifications recognised – to support the system.

Accredited Laboratories in Medicine (ALM), the largest association representing laboratories in Germany working on the tests, has said that testing capacity has increased significantly since the first case emerged in the country at the end of January.

“We’re working around the clock, in a shift system, including at weekends,” Evangelos Kotsopoulos, head of ALM told Die Zeit newspaper. “Our main bottlenecks are staff – many of whom have young children and are affected by school and nursery closures – and supplies from industry. Around the world there are only five or six big suppliers for the materials that we need.”

Kotsopoulos said Germany should be far more focused on who it tested, to ensure those “who don’t have symptoms but just want to know whether they have it or not” are not tested, in favour of those such as at-risk patients for whom it is considered a necessity. “It is simply not practically possible right now to test everyone in a population of our size,” he said.

According to the RKI’s guideline, priority should be given to testing medical workers, people with underlying health conditions showing coronavirus symptoms and those in contact with those who are infected, so as to be able to place them under quarantine.

But many working on the testing frontline report concerns about a lack of materials and inefficiency, as well as a shortage of staff, forcing many people to work seven-day weeks.

“The reagents we need are produced by just three manufacturers in Germany and they have run dry,” Elisabeth Koerber-Kröll from the district medical faculty in Schwäbisch Hall, in Baden-Württemberg, south-west Germany, one of the hardest hit regions told broadcaster SWR.

Increasing emphasis is also being put on antibody tests, as well as antigen tests, as a more efficient way of managing the spread of the virus, in addition to self-testing, although many are sceptical that that this is reliable enough.

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke European law when they failed to give refuge to asylum seekers arriving in southern Europe, often having fled war in Syria and Iraq, the EU’s top court has ruled.

The three central European countries now face possible fines for refusing to take a share of refugees, after EU leaders forced through mandatory quotas to relocate up to 160,000 asylum seekers at the height of the 2015 migration crisis.

Issuing its judgment on Thursday, the European court of justice said the three member states “had failed to fulfil their obligations under European Union law”. The Czech Republic took in just 12 asylum seekers, while Hungary and Poland refused to take a single person.

The court rejected the legal argument that Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were entitled to disregard EU law in order to maintain public safety, law and order. None of the countries had proved it was necessary to invoke that opt-out clause in the EU treaties, the court concluded.

The European commission is now entitled to embark on legal action to impose fines on the three member states.

The decision to impose mandatory quotas of asylum seekers was taken in the teeth of fierce opposition from Hungary and the Czech Republic. After the nationalist Law and Justice party was elected in October 2015, Poland joined its neighbours in opposing the scheme.

The quotas have come to be seen as one of the modern EU’s defining moments, which poisoned relations between central Europe and western member states, leaving divisions that continue to thwart a common EU asylum policy.

The previous head of the European council, Donald Tusk, said the scheme had been “divisive and ineffective”, but countries, such as Germany and Sweden, which took in large numbers of refugees, have argued it is unacceptable for member states to shirk the task of easing the strain on the most-affected EU countries.

In September 2015, EU leaders took two decisions to relocate 40,000, then 120,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy to other EU countries. More than 1 million migrants and refugees arrived on Europe’s shores in 2015, triggering a political crisis that continues to haunt the union.

When the scheme closed, only 34,712 people had been relocated: 21,999 from Greece and 12,713 from Italy. The European commission claimed that the EU’s deal with Turkey meant the original number of places were no longer needed, because migrant arrivals fell sharply from March 2016.

The UN refugee agency reported last month that more than 36,000 asylum seekers were living in desperate conditions on five Greek islands in squalid camps originally designed for 5,400 people.

Greece’s minister for migration, Notis Mitarachi, told members of the European parliament’s home affairs committee on Thursday that 20 asylum seekers living at a camp near Athens had been confirmed as having coronavirus.

He said no cases had been confirmed on the Greek islands and urged other EU countries to take in people on the islands.

Responding to widespread concern about filthy camp conditions, he said: “Some have argued to transfer people to the mainland – that is from non-infected areas to infected areas – but we do not have empty spaces to do that. We will require additional funding for additional spaces, but these spaces cannot be ready within a few days.

“We will strongly welcome any offers of relocation from member states that have capacity because we cannot resolve this crisis instantly and alone.”

The EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, told MEPs that some unaccompanied children on the islands would be relocated from next week. Eight EU countries have volunteered to take in 1,600 lone children.

The nightingale was feted by John Keats as a “light-winged Dryad of the trees”. But the much-celebrated small bird with a beautiful song may be increasingly endangered because its wings are getting shorter.

The nightingale makes an epic journey from sub-Saharan Africa to breed in Europe each summer but there are barely 7,000 nesting pairs left in England.

Spanish researchers examining wing sizes of two nightingale populations in central Spain have found that the average wing length relative to their body size has fallen over the past two decades. Shorter-winged birds were found to be less likely to return to their breeding grounds after their first trip to Africa.

According to a new study published in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, natural selection driven by climate change is causing the birds to evolve with shorter wings.

In recent decades, the timing of spring has shifted in central Spain and summer droughts have become longer and more intense, leaving the nightingales a shorter window in which to raise their young.

Scientists believe that there is a suite of adaptations that make the nightingales effective migratory birds including a long wingspan, a larger clutch size and a shorter lifespan, which are controlled by a set of linked genes. This means that selective pressure on one trait also affects the other features.

If the pressure of drought is leading the most successful birds to lay smaller clutches of eggs, with fewer young to feed, then it could be causing these nightingales to also lose the other linked traits that make them such effective migrants. This is an example of “maladaptation” where species’ responses to cope with changing conditions end up causing them harm.

Homeless people in major European cities are increasingly going hungry during the coronavirus pandemic and suffering in the enforcement of the lockdown, with rough sleepers being issued with police fines for being outside.

A shortfall in protective masks, gloves and hand gels for social workers across the continent has forced the closure of the day centres, food banks and soup kitchens on which people rely to keep themselves healthy and fed.

Meanwhile, efforts to minimise the spread of the disease among those without a home have ranged from instructions for shelters in Amsterdam to be shut during the day, forcing people into the open, to what social workers describe as an “absurd” policy of herding people into gymnasiums in Paris to keep them from gathering outside.

The warning of an unfolding crisis among the homeless, who are at greater risk of sickness and death due to the prevalence of pre-existing respiratory disease, is today made by social workers across Europe in interviews with The Guardian. They claimed:

• Police in Italy have been handing fines to homeless people, prompting the Italian Federation of Organisations for Homeless People to write to the interior ministry appealing for leniency: “They cannot stay at home because they do not have a home,” the federation said. “It has happened in different cities”, said Michele Ferraris, the federation’s spokesman. “There is an economic sanction which they cannot pay, and they have to go to the magistrate. They are not on the street for fun.”
• Rough sleepers and families living in temporary accommodation, including children, were not able to get enough food. “Normally in Brussels you don’t have people starving, people can find food, but now even that is a problem for people on the street”, said Mauro Striano, a policy officer for a Brussels-based NGO, the European Federation of National Associations Working with the Homeless. Laura Slimani from the Federation of Solidarity Actors in France said: “Food aid is in a problematic situation [in Paris] because of the lack of protective material [for social workers at food banks and day centres]. Last week and until now it is one the big problems.”
• Panicked social workers in Prague were being forced to sew together masks and gloves from scrap material due to the lack of protective equipment. “There is nothing,” said Stepan Ripka, from the Czech NGO Platform for Social Housing. “People have been sewing textile protections together at their home. Once we have the first positive case in the social services it will be a big problem, because people will want to look after themselves”.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit Europe at a time when record numbers of people are living without a home. There are an estimated 700,000 people on the streets or in shelters on any given night in the EU and the UK, up 70% from a decade ago, and the figures are still on the rise in every country apart from Finland.

The European commissioner for jobs and social rights, Nicolas Schmit, told the Guardian that the fragile state of the system had shown that the policy of economic austerity in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis failed Europe.

Schmit, a former minister in Luxembourg, appealed to governments during recent meetings of ministers to use EU funds avoid more deaths among the most vulnerable.

Czech citizens have mobilised in a national effort to make and distribute home-made masks after the government decreed face-wear mandatory for everyone in an effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

The government, led by the prime minister, Andrej Babiš, has trumpeted mask-wearing as vital in controlling the spread of the virus and has urged other governments to follow suit.

The Czech Republic and neighbouring Slovakia are the only two countries in Europe to impose mandatory mask-wearing, the supposed benefits of which – although endorsed by the World Health Organization – are disputed by some.

The arguments in favour are explained in a government-sponsored video that features an appearance by the Czech health minister. Adam Vojtěch.

In an effort to set a public example, Babiš and other politicians have addressed parliament and made national television appearances wearing masks.

But rather than provide the masks itself, the government has relied on the initiative of ordinary Czechs to ensure compliance with a rule issued days after a general emergency was declared that sealed the central European country’s borders and closed all but essential shops and services – a move that transformed the tourist hub of Prague into a virtual ghost town.

Pharmacies have put up signs declaring that they do not provide specially made surgical masks, which are already in short supply for health professionals.

Fashion students at Umprum Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague were spurred into action after a plea was posted on Facebook for masks for one of the city’s biggest maternity hospitals, Podoli.

The EU is facing an existential crisis as well as a health crisis if it fails to unite to overcome the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, a French minister has said.

France’s Europe minister, Amélie de Montchalin, said the “credibility and usefulness” of the EU rested on its collective response to the health crisis and called for unity to be “more than just a slogan”.

She said many member states were cooperating on research, vaccines and the treatment of patients, but she called on European leaders to overcome “selfishness and fear” and show solidarity to avoid an economic catastrophe.

“If European unity is just a slogan then we have a problem. We need to be united not just with research with the vaccines, but the measures we are taking to ensure the economic mire is not too deep,” Montchalin told France Inter radio.

“We need to prepare together how to get out of this crisis and relaunch [economies]; we need to prepare for afterwards and show that we are efficient because we are together.”

She added: “Can we continue to work at 27 if there are those who are not showing solidarity? Those who don’t want to show this solidarity need to consider their position. EU members will need to ask how they make decisions as a group of 27 if they cannot decide on financial support for coronavirus-hit nations.”

Earlier, Jacques Delors, 94, a former European commission president, issued a rare statement saying divisions between northern and southern member states during a European council meeting on Thursday pointed to “mortal danger” for the bloc.

A rift emerged after the Dutch finance minister, Wopke Hoekstra, reportedly called for an investigation into why some EU member states lacked the financial capacity to weather the coronavirus crisis.

Portugal’s prime minister, António Costa, described Hoekstra’s comments – which appeared to be directed at southern European members – as “repugnant”.

Costa is among those who have said the pandemic could pose an existential threat to the EU. “If the EU wants to survive, it’s unacceptable for any political figure – wherever they’re from – to give that kind of answer given the pandemic we’re living through,” Costa said.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, issued a similar warning on Friday. “We’re facing the worst crisis of this generation,” he said. “The future of the European project is at stake and we need to choose between individualism and a coordinated, supportive EU. We are profoundly pro-European and we are seeking a common response to this emergency.”

Sánchez went further on Saturday night when he told Spaniards: “It’s Europe’s time to act. Europe is at risk.”

Spain’s foreign minister, Arancha Gónzalez Laya, also responded bluntly to Hoekstra on Twitter. “We’re all in the same European boat,” she wrote. “We’ve hit an iceberg and now we’re all running the same risks. There’s no time for discussions about supposedly first and second class citizens. This isn’t the time to defraud our citizens.”

Gónzalez Laya reminded the Dutch minister that “this is 2020, not 2008”, adding: “The pandemic is affecting all of us. It’s not about the failure of one sector or one geographic region.”

Italy has recorded its single biggest leap in coronavirus deaths, announcing that 969 people have died from Covid-19 in the past 24 hours.

Seemingly dashing hopes that the rate of infection might be flattening there, Italy also became the second country to overtake China in terms of the number of infections, reaching 86,498 cases. That included 66,414 current infections, up 4,401 from Thursday.

On Thursday the US became the country with the largest infection caseload, with 93,000 reported.

An extension of Italy’s coronavirus containment measures is inevitable, the country’s supreme health council (CSS) said on Friday. “We are not in a markedly declining phase, but in a phase, albeit encouraging, of containment,” said the CSS head, Franco Locatelli.

Spain, another of Europe’s hardest-hit countries, recorded 769 deaths in 24 hours, bringing its death toll to 4,858. Authorities in the country withdrew 9,000 Chinese-made coronavirus testing kits from use after it emerged that they had an accurate detection rate of just 30%.

Countries around the globe have been turning in increasing numbers to their militaries to assist with the escalating coronavirus pandemic. As officials around the world warned that their health systems were being overwhelmed, more countries joined China, Italy, Spain and the UK in deploying their armed forces to help during a pandemic that has placed more than a third of the world’s population under various forms of lockdown.

Australia, which is introducing an enforced quarantine by midnight on Saturday for citizens returning from overseas, announced that it would use the Australian Defence Force to check on people who have already been instructed to self-isolate. The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said everyone arriving by plane would be detained in a hotel in the city of their arrival for two weeks.

Israel also announced that it would be deploying its army to assist police on street patrols to enforce a lockdown. About 500 troops will join police from Sunday to help “in patrolling, isolating and securing certain areas, blocking routes, and additional similar assignments”, the military said in a statement.

The tightened lockdown is in addition to the requirement for citizens to stay within 100 metres of their home and sanctions for those defying rules.

In South Africa, which imposed a lockdown this week, the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, ordered the military to be deployed to support the police in enforcing the restrictions.

Spain’s coronavirus death toll has overtaken China’s, climbing to 3,434, while a slowdown in the rate of new infections in Italy has raised hopes that the peak of its outbreak could be within sight.

After more than a week in lockdown in Spain, another 738 people died over 24 hours, but officials expressed hope that the daily rise in deaths might be stabilising. “If we are not already at the peak, we are very close,” said Fernando Simón, the head of Spain’s health emergency centre.

Among the country’s newest confirmed cases is the deputy prime minister, Carmen Calvo, who was taken to hospital on Sunday with a respiratory infection. The latest to die include two doctors who had been on the frontlines of the pandemic.

Italy remains the centre of the crisis with a total of 7,503 deaths – more than double the number documented in China. The death toll in Italy rose by 683 on Wednesday, a decline in the daily rate following a spike the day before. The rate of new infections slowed for a fourth consecutive day, rising by 3,491 compared with 3,612 on Tuesday.

“This is an extremely positive factor,” said Ranieri Guerra, from the World Health Organization, of the slowing infection rate. “In some regions we are close to the falling point of the curve and therefore probably the peak could be reached this week and then fall,” he told Radio Capital. “I believe that this week and the first days of the next will be crucial.”

In both Spain and Italy – as in the UK – concern has grown about healthcare workers in overcrowded hospitals who have scant supplies of protective gear such as masks and gloves.

Italy’s national federation of doctors said 29 doctors had now been killed by the virus, including four on Wednesday. More than 5,000 health workers across Italy have tested positive, the Anaao Assomed union told the Ansa news agency.

In Spain, healthcare workers account for nearly 14% of the country’s 47,610 cases, officials say. Amid reports of overwhelmed emergency wards, doctors and nurses have complained of a lack of basic protective equipment that has forced them to ration crucial supplies and craft protective shields out of plastic bags.

The US could become the new centre of the global coronavirus pandemic, according to the World Health Organization, which said case numbers were rising quickly there even asDonald Trump talked of reopening the country for business.

“We are now seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the US. So it does have that potential [to become the centre of the pandemic],” said Margaret Harris, a WHO spokeswoman.

Meanwhile in India, Narendra Modi ordered a 21-day lockdown of the whole country, the world’s second most populous, after researchers warned more than 1 million people could be infected by mid-May.

“The only way to save ourselves from coronavirus is if we don’t leave our homes; whatever happens, we stay at home,” said the prime minister, who was giving his second address in less than a week to try to rally India’s 1.3 billion people to support the drastic measures.

“Every district, every lane, every village will be under lockdown. If you can’t handle these 21 days, this country will go back 21 years,” he said.

“The only option is social distancing, to remain away from each other. There is no way out to escape from coronavirus besides this.” So far India has reported 482 cases and nine deaths, but there is concern about the potential for the pandemic to spread rapidly.

Hopes that Italy’s extensive lockdown was bearing fruit, with drops in reported deaths in recent days, proved to be premature. The numbers have risen by 743 to 6,820, the head of the Civil Protection Agency said on Tuesday, ending two days of decline in fatalities. Deaths dropped from 793 on Saturday to 651 on Sunday and just over 600 on Monday.

Angelo Borrelli, the top coronavirus response official in Italy, had earlier started to sound optimistic.

“The measures we took two weeks ago are starting to have an effect,” Borrelli said in an interview with La Repubblica. He said more data over the next few days would help officials understand “if the growth curve is really flattening”.

But he noted that the real number of infections was probably 10 times higher than the official count. He also said the nation of 60 million was on course to overtake China’s total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in a week.

In the US, 46,450 people have become infected and there have been 593 deaths, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.