New curbs in Dublin as French cases and deaths jump again – as it happened

This blog is now closed. Our coverage continues on today’s coronavirus blog here.

The Victorian government has released its daily update. The number of new cases in the past 24 hours was 21. That’s a drop of more than half on yesterday’s figure, which was 45 new cases.

There were seven deaths in the past 24 hours.

The rolling 14-day average is 39.3 new cases for Melbourne and 1.9 cases for regional Victoria.

While we wait for today’s numbers out of Victoria, you can check out this series of snapshots taken from the 77-days of media briefings the premier, Daniel Andrews, has held since July.

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18 Sept 202018.27 EDT

Lisa Cox

Back in Australia, three people who tested positive for Covid-19 in a cluster in the Melbourne suburb of Casey have been hospitalised. There are 34 cases in the cluster, with authorities saying the households breached Melbourne’s lockdown restrictions.

As contact tracers work to contain the outbreak, anti-lockdown protesters are preparing to defy restrictions.

Premier Daniel Andrews has urged anti-lockdown protesters not to gather following reports of more planned protests in the city on Saturday.

Travel caps on international arrivals to Australia will be eased slightly, with New South Wales preparing to allow an additional 500 returned travellers into hotel quarantine per week. Thousands of Australians are stranded overseas due to the caps.

NSW will take an extra 500 arrivals from 27 September. Queensland and Western Australia will start with 200 each from that date, before increasing to up to 500 arrivals on 4 and 11 October respectively.

The death toll in Brazil has risen to 135,793, compared to 134,935 yesterday.

The country has recorded 4,495,183 cases of coronavirus, up from 4,455,386 yesterday.

Joe Biden began his speech in Minnesota by talking about the importance of union jobs, but the Democratic nominee quickly pivoted to criticising Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden said if Trump had acted earlier to mitigate the spread of the virus, tens of thousands of Americans would not be dead and would instead be “sitting at the dinner table tonight”.

During his press conference, the president was asked if he believes he knows better than the experts in his administration, after Trump contradicted the directors of the CDC and the FBI this week.

“Yeah, in many cases, I do,” Trump replied.

The UK government has published its adult social care winter action plan, alongside a letter from care minister Helen Whately which warned “now is the time to act”.

In the letter to the heads of local authorities, care home providers and public health and adult social care directors, Whately said: “This year, we have all shared or recognised the pain of losing family members, friends and colleagues to coronavirus and its complications.

“I am determined to do all that I can to protect everyone receiving and providing care this winter. Nationally, locally and at the front line, we must intensify our efforts to support, protect and equip everyone in the system.

“With the prevalence of coronavirus rising in the population and in social care, now is the time to act.”

Whately added she hoped care homes would be Covid-free by this time next year.

“This time next year, it would be wonderful to achieve our objective of Covid-free care homes, resilient communities and a health and care workforce still able to give their very best.”

A match scheduled to kick off Colombia’s football league has been postponed after seven players and six of the coaching staff of one of the teams tested positive for coronavirus.

Players and coaching staff from football club Tolima, which leads the Colombian league with 16 points from eight matches, tested positive for the virus. The team had already arrived in Medellin to compete against rival team Nacional at the Atanasio Girardot stadium on Friday night.

“This is not the best way to start the league,” the president of Colombia’s football association (DIMAYOR), Fernando Jaramillo, said in a virtual press conference.

While those players and members of the technical team who tested positive did not travel to Medellin, the Ministry of Health raised concerns other players and people from Tolima could have been infected, despite testing negative for coronavirus.

“We knew this could happen but despite this, we are going to move forward,” Jaramillo said. “The priority is the health of everyone who is involved in the league, which is why we decided to postpone this match.”

The Colombian soccer championship, which was suspended in March, will be played behind closed doors and without fans present, in a bid to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Almost 744,000 have been infected with the novel coronavirus in the Andean country, while more than 23,000 have died.

Other matches planned for this weekend will continue as planned, Jaramillo said.

Saturday’s front page of the UK edition of The Guardian.

Tomorrow’s i front page.

Saturday’s Times front page.

A selection of some of the UK newspapers now, starting with the Telegraph.