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US briefing: British PM in intensive care, while US Covid-19 deaths exceed 10,000

<span>Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters</span>
Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters

Good morning, I’m Molly Blackall with today’s key stories.

British PM moved to intensive care unit

The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has spent the night in intensive care after being admitted to hospital with coronavirus symptoms on Sunday. He was moved to the unit at 7pm (GMT) as a precaution, Downing Street said. It is understood that he has remained conscious and received oxygen through a non-invasive mask overnight. A minister confirmed on Tuesday morning that he was not on a ventilator. The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, will assume the position of de facto deputy prime minister in Johnson’s absence.

Downing Street has been accused of underplaying the seriousness of Johnson’s condition, after it was revealed that a hospital bed may have been prepared for him at a London hospital as early as Thursday morning, and was on standby to receive him.

  • Donald Trump has said he asked US pharmaceutical companies working on experimental coronavirus drugs to offer their help to Johnson’s doctors.

  • Follow live updates on our global coronavirus blog.

New York could turn parks into burial grounds as US death toll hits 10,000

People follow social distancing rules on a sunny day in Central Park, New York.
People follow social distancing rules on a sunny day in Central Park, New York. Photograph: Eduardo Muñoz/Reuters

A New York City official has revealed that temporary burial grounds could be built in the city’s parks, as the death toll in the US continued to rise. Mark Levine, a council member, tweeted that the city would soon start “temporary interment”, which would involve digging trenches for 10 caskets in a line, and warned it would be “tough for NYers to take”. The announcement came as the country’s death toll climbed to 10,993, according to Johns Hopkins University.

  • The Trump administration has reached a deal with 3M to import 166m masks from China, and allow the manufacturer to continue exporting US-made masks. The deal breaks a deadlock in which Trump blocked almost 3m masks headed for Ontario, Canada, causing concern that the province would run out of medical supplies imminently.

  • A US Navy official has apologised for describing Brett Crozier, the captain ousted after raising concerns about coronavirus on board his ship, as “too naive or too stupid” to be in command. Thomas Modly apologised for the comments, which surfaced in an audio recording of a speech to Crozier’s crew and have led to calls from Congress and former officers for him to resign.

  • Follow state-by-state developments with our US coronavirus map.

Wisconsin supreme court orders in-person voting to continue

The supreme court in Wisconsin has ordered in-person voting to continue on Tuesday, hours after the state’s governor scrapped it over coronavirus concerns. The governor, Tony Evers, had postponed in-person voting until 9 June, but in a 4-2 verdict the supreme court allowed it to go ahead, arguing that Evers did not have the powers to move the election. As the primary progresses, Guardian analysis has found that black and student populations in Wisconsin are at highest risk of voter purges.

And in other news…

  • WhatsApp is to impose new regulations on message forwarding in an attempt to limit the dissemination of fake news. If a user receives a frequently forwarded message, they will be allowed to send it on to only one chat at a time, as WhatsApp tries to slow the spread of viral messages, such as the theory that coronavirus is linked to 5G.

  • The Australian cardinal will be freed from prison after a high court in Brisbane quashed his conviction. George Pell was the financial controller of the Vatican, and is the most senior Catholic in the world to have been found guilty of historical child sexual abuse. You can read a full timeline of his legal battle here.

  • The body of the granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy has been found by police five days after her canoe apparently capsized in Maryland. Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, the daughter of former lieutenant governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, had been canoeing with her eight-year-old son when strong winds hit. He is yet to be found.

  • Nineteen women are taking a Dutch monastery and its Catholic order to court over allegations that they were subject to forced labour and abuse by nuns between 1951 and 1979. The women, now in their 70s and 80s, say they were made to work against their will, for free, for the benefit of organisations including the Dutch royal house.

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People walk by a Doctors Without Borders HIV testing mobile clinic in Ngudwini, on the outskirts of Eshowe in South Africa, in 2014.
People walk by a Doctors Without Borders HIV testing mobile clinic in Ngudwini, on the outskirts of Eshowe in South Africa, in 2014. Photograph: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images

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If this path continues, people newly freed from jails could find themselves returning to the increasingly occupied communities from where they were arrested, only to be replaced by new waves of arrestees vulnerable to contracting Covid-19 in jail.

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