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What you need to know about the coronavirus today

The race for a vaccine
Scientists at Imperial College London will start the first clinical trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine this week with funding from the British government and philanthropic donors. About 300 healthy volunteers will receive two doses of the vaccine to test whether it is safe in people and whether it produces an effective immune response.

In Singapore, scientists testing a vaccine from U.S. firm Arcturus Therapeutics plan to start human trials in August after promising initial responses in mice. AstraZeneca’s potential coronavirus vaccine is likely to provide protection against contracting COVID-19 for about a year, the company’s chief executive said on Tuesday.

More than 100 potential vaccines are in development around the world.

Travel curbs in China
Beijing banned high-risk people, such as close contacts of confirmed cases, from leaving the Chinese capital and halted all outbound taxi and car-hailing services as well as some long-distance bus routes to stop the spread of a fresh outbreak.

The financial hub of Shanghai demanded some travelers from Beijing be quarantined for two weeks, as 27 new COVID-19 cases took Beijing’s current outbreak to 106 since Thursday. The stakes are high for Shanghai, which has been invited to host two Formula One races this season. U.S. airlines are also poised to resume flights there.

Russia rolls back restrictions
Residents of Moscow were able to return to museums and summer terraces on Tuesday for the first time in more than two months as the Russian capital rolled back more coronavirus curbs despite continuing to record over 1,000 new daily infections. Museums, libraries and zoos in the city of nearly 13 million are reopening their doors, albeit with continued limits on the number of visitors at any one time.

Kremlin critics have accused authorities of lifting restrictions too fast to pave the way for a nationwide vote on reforms that would allow President Vladimir Putin to run again for president twice after 2024 when his current term ends.

Making masks compulsory for plane travel
Major U.S. airlines may prevent anyone not wearing a mask during the novel coronavirus pandemic from boarding and provide the coverings to passengers who have none. Once onboard, however, flight attendants have had little power over passengers who remove the face covering.

Each carrier will decide the appropriate consequences for passengers who fail to comply, up to and including being put on that airline’s no-fly list, the industry’s main lobby group said on Monday. Carriers with the stricter policy include Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines, Airlines for America said in a statement.

Hollywood back in business
Universal Studios expects to resume production in early July on “Jurassic World: Dominion” as Hollywood begins to emerge from a three-month coronavirus shutdown. The movie will be shot at Pinewood Studios in England under stringent protocols for the cast and crew.

Filming on James Cameron’s “Avatar” sequel for 20th Century Studios resumed in New Zealand on Monday. Movie studios got the green light last week to restart production in the Los Angeles area but are expected to need several more weeks for a mass return to work. The 2021 Oscars ceremony was moved to April from February on Monday because of the pandemic.

Interactive graphic tracking global spread of the coronavirus. Here's a look atrising U.S. cases.

Breakingviews - Corona Capital: Jobs, Tata, Cinema, Stimulus.
Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe.

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

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Emerging from lockdown

The number of Italian families living in absolute poverty decreased in 2019 after four straight years of growth, though there is still a significant problem in the underdeveloped south, data showed on Tuesday.

About 4.6 million people, or 7.7% of the population, live in absolute poverty, defined as those unable to buy goods and services essential to avoid grave forms of social exclusion, according to data from national statistics bureau ISTAT.

The number of people seeking emergency shelter to escape human trafficking surged in the month following U.S. lockdown orders implemented to slow the spread of coronavirus, a leading anti-trafficking group said on Monday. The economic and social turmoil of the pandemic created conditions conducive to people falling victim to trafficking, the group, Polaris, said.

Carolina, a Brazilian mother, hasn’t heard anything from her jailed son since March when authorities banned prison visits due to the coronavirus outbreak and she is scared. As COVID-19 deaths rise in Brazil’s violent and overcrowded jails, activists have called for tens of thousands of prisoners to be released to stop the disease taking a heavy toll on inmates, most of whom are young black men like Carolina’s son.

COVID Science

Virus mutation makes it more efficient at entering cells
A genetic mutation in the new coronavirus that significantly increases its ability to infect cells may explain why outbreaks in Northern Italy and New York were larger than ones seen earlier in the pandemic. Scientists at Scripps Research in Florida say the mutated virus was seen infrequently in March, but by April accounted for some 65% of cases submitted from around the world to the GenBank database run by the National Institutes of Health.

Diseased lungs more receptive to coronavirus infection
New data helps explain why people with respiratory conditions appear to be more vulnerable to coronavirus infections. The virus breaks into cells via a receptor protein on the cell surface called ACE2. People with conditions like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonary hypertension, and smokers have more of the ACE2 receptors on their lung cells than healthy people do, researchers found.

Insight: Hat in hand - U.S. scientists scramble to support their COVID immunity research

It wasn’t easy to build a COVID-19 antibody test during Illinois’ statewide lockdown.

In April, when a key enzyme couldn’t be delivered to his shuttered laboratory, Northwestern University researcher Thomas McDade hunted for the package across the empty campus near Chicago, finally locating it at a loading dock. To verify the test’s accuracy, the biological anthropologist and his colleague, pharmacologist Alexis Demonbreun, asked friends and family if they’d be willing to spot them some blood. McDade took a sample from his wife over their kitchen table.