BitGou: Monday Morning Briefing: To work or not to work?

What you need to know about the coronavirus today

To work or not to work?
Launching lockdowns was a relatively simple process: Winding them down is going to be much more complex. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has discovered that to his cost after his Sunday night announcement of an easing was greeted with widespread confusion and dissent. The previous "stay at home" injunction has been replaced by a much more nuanced "stay alert" call, with those who can't work from home are being encouraged to go to work - but only if they think they can do so safely. There was even confusion as to when the new policy should apply. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have said they will not be using the new guidance and will stick to the existing "stay at home" message. Johnson's government is due to release more details of its plan in the coming hours.

Second wave alarm
South Korean officials are scrambling to track down thousands of people after a small cluster of coronavirus cases emerged around several Seoul nightclubs. The new outbreak, which has sent infections rebounding to a one-month high, comes just as the government was transitioning from intensive social distancing to measures around "distancing in daily life".

Masks and fever checks as Shanghai Disneyland reopens
About thirty annual passholders in Mickey Mouse outfits waited in yellow squares drawn on the ground outside Shanghai Disneyland as it ended a roughly three-month closure on Monday.

Male vulnerability
Men's blood has higher levels than women's of an enzyme used by the new coronavirus to infect cells, the results of a big European study showed on Monday. Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, a receptor on the surface of cells that binds to the new coronavirus and allows it to enter and infect cells, is found in the heart, kidneys, the tissues lining blood vessels, and especially in the testes.

Reuters tracker shows the number of confirmed infections and deaths worldwide.

From Breakingviews: Shanghai Disneyland has a reduced reopening, and Britain’s funeral operators fail to cash in on the pandemic. Plus: Henkel shows the benefits of diversification. Catch up with the latest pandemic-related insights from Breakingviews.

Reuters reporters and editors around the world are investigating the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

We need your help to tell these stories. Our news organization wants to capture the full scope of what’s happening and how we got here by drawing on a wide variety of sources. Here’s a look at our coverage.

Are you a government employee or contractor involved in coronavirus testing or the wider public health response? Are you a doctor, nurse or health worker caring for patients? Have you worked on similar outbreaks in the past? Has the disease known as COVID-19 personally affected you or your family? Are you aware of new problems that are about to emerge, such as critical supply shortages?

We need your tips, firsthand accounts, relevant documents or expert knowledge. Please contact us at coronavirus@reuters.com.

We prefer tips from named sources, but if you’d rather remain anonymous, you can submit a confidential news tip. Here’s how.

Life under lockdown

The White House has begun informal talks with Republicans and Democrats in Congress about what to include in another round of coronavirus relief legislation, officials said on Sunday, while predicting further U.S. jobs losses in the coming months. Officials in Trump’s administration, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, said they were holding discussions with lawmakers on issues including potential aid to states whose finances have been devastated by the pandemic.

“My team’s on the court. I’m pretty proud that people are stepping up and playing different roles, setting picks and getting rebounds and blocking out,” Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb told a news conference on March 24. “We’re gonna get through this.” In late March when Holcomb was issuing a stay-at-home order and seeking to encourage a sense of community for the tough days ahead, he channeled a figure he knew would resonate with his basketball-obsessed state: Coach Norman Dale. In Indiana the coach from the popular 1986 movie “Hoosiers” needs no introduction. Played by Gene Hackman, Dale led a small-town high school team to the 1952 state title in an against-the-odds tale of collective achievement.

Russia’s coronavirus cases overtook Italian and British infections to become the third highest in the world after a record daily rise hours before President Vladimir Putin was due to review the country’s lockdown regime. More than half of all cases and deaths are in Moscow, the epicenter of Russia’s outbreak. On Monday, it reported an overnight increase of 6,169 new cases, bringing its official total to 115,909.

Thailand began the year with a ban on single-use plastic bags that Bangkok office worker Nicha Singhanoi hoped would cut back the waste that puts her country among the world’s top five choking the oceans with plastic. Then the coronavirus pandemic forced school closures and authorities told people to stay home, and far from falling, Bangkok’s plastic waste has soared 62% in volume in April, as more people opt for food and goods to be delivered to homes.

“I really have (to) tell people, we’re still here. If we weren’t then it would be tragic...We’ll do our best to keep going,” said 45-year old Kristen Choong, who runs the Ji Ji Noodle House with her aging mother. Choong had accepted her family’s decades-old noodle stall in Singapore would likely fold when she retires. Now, battling a 90% drop in business due to the coronavirus pandemic, she is constantly having to reassure customers that the stall will survive the next few months.

Follow the money

For central banks, hope for precision fades amid pandemic uncertainty

Central bankers who have spent a generation researching how their words influence the economy and honing the craft of “forward guidance” are effectively tongue-tied by a health crisis that has no clear destination yet to guide households and investors toward.

6 min read

As U.S. meat workers fall sick and supplies dwindle, exports to China soar

President Donald Trump ordered meat processing plants to stay open to protect the nation’s food supply even as workers got sick and died. Yet the plants have increasingly been exporting to China while U.S. consumers face shortages, Reuters analysis of data showed.

7 min read