5, April 2020

Coronavirus deaths rise above 65,000 worldwide as registered cases surpass 1.2 million ⁰

More than 1,206,480 declared cases have been registered in 190 countries and territories since the epidemic first emerged in China in December. Of these cases, at least 233,300 are now considered recovered.

The tallies, using data collected by AFP offices from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

Many countries are only testing cases that require hospitalisation.

Italy, which recorded its first coronavirus death at the end of February, has 15,362 fatalities, with 124,632 infections and 20,996 people recovered.

Spain recorded 12,418 fatalities and 130,759 infections, followed by the United States with 8,503 deaths and 312,245 cases — the highest in the world.

France has reported 7,560 deaths and 89,953 infections, followed by Britain (4,313 deaths and 41,903 cases).

China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 3,329 deaths and 81,669 cases, with 76,964 recoveries.

Europe has listed 642,330 cases and 47,093 deaths to date, the US and Canada together have 326,117 cases with 8,747 deaths, Asia 117,571 cases and 4,172 deaths, the Middle East 74,670 cases and 3,779 deaths, Latin America and the Caribbean 30,539 cases with 1,052 deaths, Africa 8,578 cases with 388 deaths and Oceania 6,675 cases with 41 deaths.

Source: AFP

5, April 2020

Queen Elizabeth calls for ‘self-discipline’ in coronavirus fight ⁰

Queen Elizabeth told the British people on Sunday that they would overcome the coronavirus outbreak if they stayed resolute in the face of lockdown and self-isolation, invoking the spirit of World War Two in an extremely rare broadcast to the nation.

In what was only the fifth televised address of her 68-year reign, Elizabeth called upon Britons to show the resolve of their forbears and demonstrate they were as strong as generations of the past.

“Together we are tackling this disease, and I want to reassure you that if we remain united and resolute, then we will overcome it,” the 93-year-old monarch said in the address from her Windsor Castle home where she is staying with her husband Prince Philip, 98.

“While we have faced challenges before, this one is different. This time we join with all nations across the globe in a common endeavour, using the great advances of science and our instinctive compassion to heal. We will succeed – and that success will belong to every one of us.”

The broadcast came hours after officials said the death toll in Britain from the virus had risen by 621 in the last 24 hours to 4,934 with high fatalities still expected in the next week.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is among those in self-isolation after testing positive for COVID-19, and the queen’s own son and heir Prince Charles, 71, has recovered after suffering mild symptoms of the virus.

Like many countries in Europe, Britain is in a state of virtual lockdown, with people told to stay at home unless it was essential to go out. Health minister Matt Hancock said even stricter rules might be imposed if the current rules to curb the spread of the virus were flouted.

World War Two Spirit

Elizabeth thanked those who were staying at home, thereby helping to spare others from suffering the grief already felt by some families.

She also paid tribute to health care staff for their selfless work and commended the “heart-warming” stories of people across the Commonwealth, of which she is head, and beyond for delivering food and medicines to those who needed them.

Sunday’s address was extremely rare as the queen usually only speaks to the nation in her annual televised Christmas Day message.

In order to ensure any risk to the elderly monarch herself was mitigated, it was filmed in a big room to ensure a safe distance between her and the cameraman, who wore gloves and a mask and was the only other person present.

Elizabeth said the situation reminded her of her first ever broadcast in 1940, when she and her late sister Margaret spoke from Windsor to children who had been evacuated from their homes to escape bombing raids by Nazi German aircraft.

She said that in the future people could take pride in how they too had dealt with such a challenge and disruption to their lives.

“Those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any,” she said. “That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterise this country. The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and our future.”

She even invoked the words of the famous song “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn from World War Two which became a symbol of hope for Britons during the conflict.

“We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return,” she said. “We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.”

(REUTERS)

5, April 2020

France reports 357 new coronavirus hospital deaths in 24-hour period ⁰

France on Sunday reported 357 coronavirus deaths in hospital in 24 hours, a lower tally than in each of the previous two days, bringing the country’s total death toll to 8,078.

The total death tally included 5,889 patients who died in hospital, and 2,189 people in old age homes and other medical facilities, a government statement said.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

5, April 2020

The Present Continuous Tense of Palm Sunday ⁰

Ste Anne’s Parish, Salem MA, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston

Palm Sunday Catechesis: (April 5, 2020)

The Present Continuous Tense of Palm Sunday:

“Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord” (Mark 11:9)

Dear Holy People of God,

Today, we celebrate the liturgy of Palm Sunday, in which we enter in a sacramental sense, Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem.

1. In the Gospels of Mathew, Mark and Luke, more pointedly in Luke, Jesus’ entire ministry is one, long preparation for this journey to Jerusalem, so much so that Jerusalem, the City of David, appears as the interpretive principle of the ministry of Jesus: Jesus lives for the vision of Jerusalem, a vision that embodies the universalization of the Yahweh’s promise through Israel to the nations of the world: “And many peoples and great nations will come to seek the LORD Sabaoth in Jerusalem and to entreat the favour of the Lord” (Zechariah 8:22). Hence, the journey to Jerusalem, in the light of the inner development of Israel’s faith, marks an eschaton moment in which the particularity of Israel’s calling as a nation by God (Genesis 12), is accorded a definitive and an irrevocable openness to the nations.

2. With this journey, Israel’s Passover becomes the Passover of the nations, and only in this sense can the Christian enter into the spiritual heritage of Israel’s faith: the Passover, celebrated in Jerusalem, in the particularity of Israel, becomes the Eucharist, in the universality of the nations, so much so that the words of the Psalmist find their concrete fulfillment: “From the rising of the sun to its setting praised be the name of the Lord!” (Psalm 113:3).

3. On the other hand, the Gospel of John presents not one (like the Gospels of Mathew, Mark and Luke), but three Passover Feasts, namely, the cleansing of the temple (John 2:13-25), the multiplication of the loaves (John 6:4), and finally, the Passover of the death and resurrection of Jesus (John 12:1, 13:1). For the write of the gospel of John, Jesus is the Passover Lamb who, as the Lamb of God, takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29).

4. There are therefore, two versions of the journey to Jerusalem in the four gospels: the gospels of Mathew, Mark and Luke embody one layer of meaning in which the public ministry of Jesus is a single ascent to the mountain city of Jerusalem, and, on the other hand, the version of the Gospel of John, in which there is a back and forth from Jerusalem, and in the final analysis, Jesus becomes the Sacrificial Lamb for the world.

Given this biblical context, let us examine more closely, the text that, in my opinion, stands out from today’s liturgy of the word:

5. The text is from the cry of the crowds that followed Jesus: “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord” (Mark 11:9). As Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI points out in a very significant text, “People had heard of the prophet from Nazareth, but he did not appear to have any importance for Jerusalem, and the people there did not know him. The crowd that paid homage to Jesus at the gateway to the city was not the same crown that later demanded his crucifixion” (Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Vol. II, p. 8).

6. Dear Holy People of God, very early on, Christian liturgy saw in the proclamation of the Palm Sunday crowds, the entry into the abiding presence of the Lord who comes. Palm Sunday led the early Church to quite organically, place this proclamation just before the Rite of Consecration, in the text of the Holy, Holy, Holy Lord: the triple Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, holy, holy, holy, is a reminder of the Trinitarian God: the first “Holy” is to the Father, the second “Holy” is to the Son, and the third “Holy” is to the Spirit (Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate).

7. I do not think that the decision of the early Church to chant the “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, (…) Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord, Hosanna to the Son of David (…),” just before the Rite of Consecration, – as we still do today at every Holy Mass, was an exercise in serendipity. I think the Hosanna chant showed a conscious profession that in what they were about to encounter in the form of Bread and Wine, in the Eucharist species, the Son of David, just as he rode into Jerusalem, truly comes into the Jerusalem of the Church of the here and now.

8. In this sense, therefore, Palm Sunday takes on a new meaning, thanks to the sacramental sense of the Christian liturgy. Palm Sunday is not something of the past. In the liturgy, Palm Sunday comes alive. The Lord comes into the assembly gathered around his Name. The Eucharistic liturgy is therefore, the locus, the place wherein Palm Sunday happens. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” the Church’s faith proclaims before the Rite of Consecration.

9. The Liturgy of the Church is therefore, the sure guarantee of the timelessness and present-continuousness of Palm Sunday. Only in that chant of the Church’s faith, do we find the enduring meaning and efficacy of Palm Sunday. And if such is the state of things, it therefore is the case that Palm Sunday can only come alive and be sensible when the individual is united or allows the self to enter into the believing community. In other words, it is possible to have a nirvana-experience of Palm Sunday.

10. And isn’t this a source of hope and encouragement for us today, when, frightened so much by the pandemic of COVID 19, we might feel alone, perhaps abandoned, frightened and anxious about the present and the future? Palm Sunday, as a gateway into the communio of the reality of the Church, offers us the comfort that the Lord is coming, a coming that is not just something of the future, talk less of the past, but a coming that is, in its most profound level, a thing of the present, a present that brings the past with it and opens up to the future, thereby ensuring a present-continuous sense of purpose and meaning, for with the Lord, present in our midst, the believer knows that he or she has a future, for where the Lord is, life overcomes death, light overcomes darkness, love overcomes loneliness and the fear of the unknown. And because the Lord is coming to us, the believer can face tomorrow and today! Amen!

11. May the Lord bless you and keep you! May the Lord let his light shine upon you! May the Lord be close to you and fill you with his peace!

Fr Maurice Agbaw-Ebai

5, April 2020

Queen Elizabeth will ask Britain to show resolve against coronavirus in rare address ⁰

Queen Elizabeth will call on Britons to show the same resolve as their forebears and take on the challenge and disruption caused by the coronavirus outbreak with good-humoured resolve when she makes an extremely rare address to rally the nation on Sunday.

In what will only be her fifth special televised message to the country during her 68 years on the throne, the queen will also thank healthcare workers on the front line and recognise the pain already suffered by some families.

“I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge. And those who come after us will say that the Britons of this generation were as strong as any,” the 93-year-old monarch will say, according to extracts released by Buckingham Palace.

“That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterise this country.”

On Saturday, the government said the death toll of those who had tested positive for the virus rose by 708 in 24 hours to 4,313, with a 5-year-old among the dead, along with at least 40 who had no known previous health conditions.

Health officials have cautioned that high fatalities were expected for at least another week or two even if people complied with strict isolation measures.

Like many countries in Europe, Britain is in a state of virtual lockdown, with pubs, restaurants and nearly all shops closed, and social gatherings banned.

Britons have been told to stay at home unless it is absolutely essential to venture out to try to stop the spread of the epidemic. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is still in self-isolation, and a number of senior ministers have been among those who have tested positive for the virus.

‘As strong as any’

“I am speaking to you at what I know is an increasingly challenging time,” Elizabeth will say in what has been framed as a deeply personal message.

“A time of disruption in the life of our country: a disruption that has brought grief to some, financial difficulties to many, and enormous changes to the daily lives of us all.”

Sunday’s address, which will be aired at 1900 GMT, was recorded at Windsor Castle where the monarch is staying with her husband Prince Philip, 98.

In order to ensure any risk to the queen herself was mitigated, it was filmed in a big room to ensure a safe distance between her and the cameraman, who was wearing personal protective equipment and was the only other person present.

Earlier this week, Elizabeth’s son and heir Prince Charles, 71, came out of self-isolation himself after seven days following a positive test.

The queen usually only broadcasts to the nation with her annual televised Christmas Day message and this special address will be only the fifth she has made.

The last was in 2012 following celebrations to mark her 60th year as queen. That came a decade after the preceding broadcast which followed the death of her mother, the Queen Mother, in 2002 when she thanked Britons for their messages of condolence.

She also gave an address at the start of the Gulf War in 1991, and most famously, delivered a sombre live broadcast after the death of her daughter-in-law Princess Diana in a Paris car crash in 1997 amid a national outpouring of grief and criticism of the royal family’s response.

(REUTERS)

5, April 2020

Angolans defy coronavirus lockdown saying ‘Better die of this disease than starve’ ⁰

It is a cry from the heart and the stomach that is reverberating across African towns and cities reeling under lockdowns and curfews to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

“How can anyone stay home without anything to eat?” asked Garcia Landu, a motorcycle taxi driver in the bustling Angolan seaside capital of Luanda.

He ventured out to try and earn a living, defying the government-ordered anti-coronavirus restrictions.

“We have responsibilities towards our families. We have to go out and get food,” said Landu, sporting a helmet in the national red-and-black colours.

It’s “better to die of this disease or a gunshot than to starve to death,” he said. “To starve to death, I will never, ever accept that. I can’t”.

Days after the government declared a state of emergency and imposed restrictions on March 26, crowds continue to mass at markets, in front of shops or by water points in Luanda.

Under the restrictions, President Joao Lourenco has banned travel, meetings and public activities as the country reported 10 infections with two deaths.

“The situation demands… sacrifices from all citizens, whose rights and professional and social life will have to be restricted,” Lourenco said in a televised speech last week.

– ‘I have nothing at home’ –

But not to the point of depriving people of water, retorted Quechinha Paulina, a widow who has no running water in the heavily-populated Cazenga municipal district in the capital of the oil-rich country.

So she is forced to buy from private water bowsers. She placed an order and still awaits delivery.

“It’s been two weeks and it hasn’t come,” she said. “So today I got up at 3am to buy (elsewhere).

“I have nothing at home. I have children,” she said, complaining that nearly a week into the new month, she hasn’t received her social grant payment yet.

Despite the lockdown, many view earning money, finding food and fetching water as legitimate reasons to leave home.

Announcing a slew of measures to help keep people at home, the government also promised to distribute water in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Telephone operators have joined in by offering free call minutes to avoid queues of people buying airtime recharge vouchers at their outlets.

But all that has failed to empty the streets of Luanda.

On the eve of the state of emergency, the police chief, Paulo de Almeida, vowed to hammer home the message about the seriousness of the virus.

“But we will not tolerate disobedience,” he warned. “It’s a question of everyone’s health.”

–‘People are stubborn’ –

On Friday, Interior Minister Eugenio Laborinho reported that 1,209 people had been detained in just days, more than 1,000 of them for having entered Angola after the borders were shut on March 27, and 189 for violating the state of emergency.

“The police are not on the ground to please (people) or to distribute chocolates,” Laborinho told journalists. “People are stubborn anyway, they know they have to stay home”.

The lockdown order has largely gone unnoticed in the daily grind and hustle on the capital’s streets.

“The disease is dangerous, we see that. Everyone sees that, everyone knows,” said Domingos Joao, a taxi driver.

“But (by) staying at home, we won’t achieve anything. That is why we are in the streets, working with (and obeying) the rules, as you see.

“Before passengers climb in, they are disinfected first,” he said showing a bottle of hand sanitiser.

Out doing his shopping, teacher Geraldo Dala, is fearful that “if COVID-19 starts spreading here, that will be it! Thousands will be infected”.

But he justified his and others being out on the streets because “people have to go out for bread or a kilo of rice”.

“The state of emergency will not be respected as long as people depend on street hawking to feed their families,” said veteran journalist Rafael Marques.

Marques, who is usually critical of the government, agrees the emergency steps “were taken for the good of the people”.

Source: AFP

5, April 2020

War looms as Biya and Obiang of Malabo feud over border wall ⁰

The Francophone dominated government in Yaoundé has launched an unprecedented attack against the regime in Equatorial Guinea for starting the construction of a six kilometers road inside Cameroonian territory.

Two senior Cameroon government ministers in charge of security issues recently travelled to the borders with Equatorial Guinea to assess the situation and hundreds of Cameroonian soldiers have been deployed to the area.

Joseph Beti Assomo, the Minister Delegate in charge of Defense and Paul Atanga Nji, Minister of Territorial Administration met with officials from Malabo on the disputed territory and are expected to report to President Biya who has not been seen ever since the outbreak of COVID-19.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that the Equatorial Guinea government does not intend to stop the construction work currently going on which includes a huge wall that will separate the two countries.

Sources in Yaoundé say the Biya regime wants to play the diplomatic card and are considering referring the matter to the African Union.

By Rita Akana

5, April 2020

Coronavirus pandemic ‘amplifying’ poverty in UK ⁰

The coronavirus pandemic is increasing poverty in Britain, where levels are already high after a decade of austerity triggered by the global financial crisis, according to experts.

Official data shows that more than 14 million people in the UK are classed as living in poverty, or nearly one-quarter of the population.

Some 4.2 million children are poor, or around 30 percent of the total, government figures show.

The situation is worsening with Britons losing jobs en masse as the UK experiences lockdown.

“The risk of poverty is particularly high for workers in sectors like hospitality and retail where people are more likely to be on low wages and in insecure work,” said Dave Innes, head of economics at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an organisation for social change.

Over the past fortnight, almost one million adults in the UK have applied for Universal Credit, the government’s main form of state aid.

That is nearly 10 times the level in an average two-week period.

– ‘Education poverty’ –

“If families who were earning decent wages before the pandemic move on to the Universal Credit, they will very suddenly find themselves living in poverty,” said Louisa McGeehan, a director at Child Poverty Action Group UK.

As for families who were already classed as living in poverty prior to the outbreak — and whose children are stuck at home owing to schools being shut — the demands of online education add to the problem, she said.

McGeehan noted that “a lot of schools are putting lessons on the Internet for children to do at home.

“If those children are in households who don’t have Internet or don’t have a computer, they are not able to do that learning.”

McGeehan told AFP: “We have a nation where a child poverty crisis has been amplified by the impact of coronavirus.”

But unlike the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis when the government slashed public spending, COVID-19 has sparked huge state stimulus, including a boost to Universal Credit.

An adult receiving the benefit who is aged over 25 will receive £1,000 ($1,239, 1,137 euros) extra per year.

However an increase in the monthly amount to £400 remains far below the level of £600 considered sufficient for a single-person household to avoid “poverty” in the UK.

“Economically we know there is very likely to be a big recession and it’s difficult to recover quickly from a big recession,” said Innes.

“We know that recessions tend to hit people in poverty — or in risk of poverty — hardest,” he told AFP.

Meanwhile foodbanks, which help feed the most vulnerable people including the homeless, are seeing fewer donations amid fallout from the coronavirus.

The Trussell Trust, which has a national network of 1,200 food banks, said it faced an “unprecedented challenge”.

The government is however still providing children who ordinarily received free school meals with lunches.

“In my own school, we provide packed lunch that kids can come and pick up,” said teacher Amanda Martin, who is also president of the National Education Union.

But she added: “In the short term, there is a real worry that some of these people that would be in school, that would be warm and safe and being fed, aren’t.”

Source: AFP

5, April 2020

COVID-19: Biya faces rising criticism over his public absence ⁰

The coronavirus pandemic could narrow one gaping inequality in Africa, where some heads of state and other elite jet off to Europe or Asia for health care unavailable in their nations. As countries including their own impose dramatic travel restrictions, they might have to take their chances at home.

For years, leaders from Benin to Zimbabwe have received medical care abroad while their own poorly funded health systems limp from crisis to crisis. Several presidents, including ones from Nigeria, Malawi and Zambia, have died overseas.

The practice is so notorious that a South African health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, a few years ago scolded, “We are the only continent that has its leaders seeking medical services outside the continent, outside our territory. We must be ashamed.”

Now a wave of global travel restrictions threatens to block that option for a cadre of aging African leaders. More than 30 of Africa’s 57 international airports have closed or severely limited flights, the U.S. State Department says. At times, flight trackers have shown the continent’s skies nearly empty.

Perhaps “COVID-19 is an opportunity for our leaders to reexamine their priorities,” said Livingstone Sewanyana of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, which has long urged African countries to increase health care spending.

But that plea has not led to action, even as the continent wrestles with major crises including deadly outbreaks of Ebola and the scourges of malaria and HIV.

Spending on health care in Africa is roughly 5% of gross domestic product, about half the global average. That’s despite a pledge by African Union members in 2001 to spend much more. Money is sometimes diverted to security or simply pilfered, and shortages are common.

Ethiopia had just three hospital beds per 10,000 people in 2015, according to World Health Organization data, compared to two dozen or more in the U.S. and Europe. Central African Republic has just three ventilators in the entire country. In Zimbabwe, doctors have reported doing bare-handed surgeries for lack of gloves.

Health experts warn that many countries will be overwhelmed if the coronavirus spreads, and it is already uncomfortably close. Several ministers in Burkina Faso have been infected, as has a top aide to Nigeria’s president. An aide to Congo’s leader died. For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms.

“If you test positive in a country, you should seek care in that country,” the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. John Nkengasong, told reporters Thursday. “It’s not a death sentence.”

In Nigeria, some worried their president might be among the victims. Long skittish about President Muhammadu Buhari’s absences from public view, including weeks in London for treatment for unspecified health problems, they took to Twitter to ask why he hadn’t addressed the nation as virus cases rose.

Buhari’s office dismissed speculation about his whereabouts as unfounded rumor. When he did emerge Sunday night, he announced that all private jet flights were suspended. International airports were already closed.

An even more frequent overseas traveler, Cameroon’s 87-year-old leader, President Paul Biya, faces rising criticism over his public absence since the virus spread to his country. Cases in Cameroon leapt Friday to over 500, the second most in the sub-Saharan region after South Africa.

While travel restrictions have grounded the merely wealthy, political analyst Alex Rusero said a determined African leader probably could still find a way to go abroad for care.

“They are scared of death so much they will do everything within their disposal, even if it’s a private jet to a private hospital in a foreign land,” said Rusero, who is based in Zimbabwe, whose late President Robert Mugabe often sought treatment in Asia.

Perhaps nowhere is the situation bleaker than in Zimbabwe, where the health system has collapsed. Even before the pandemic, patients’ families were often asked to provide essentials like gloves and clean water. Doctors reported using bread bags to collect patients’ urine.

Zimbabwe’s vice president, Constantino Chiwenga, departed last month for unrelated medical treatment in China, as the outbreak eased in that country. Zimbabwe closed its borders days later after its first virus death.

Chiwenga has since returned — to lead the country’s coronavirus task force.

But some in a new generation of African leaders have been eager to show sensitivity to virus-prevention measures.

The president of Botswana, Mokgweetsi Masisi, initially defied his country’s restrictions on travel by government employees to visit neighboring Namibia for its leader’s inauguration. But he entered self-quarantine and now reminds others to stay home, calling it “literally a matter of life and death.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced he had tested negative, just ahead of a three-week lockdown in Africa’s most developed country. Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina has as well.

Other leaders, including Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, have tweeted images of themselves working via videoconference as countries encourage people to keep their distance.

While African leaders are more tied to home than ever, their access to medical care is still far better than most of their citizens’.

In Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, medical student Franck Bienvenu Zida was self-isolating and worried after having contact with someone who tested positive.

The 26-year-old feared infecting people where he lives, but his efforts to get tested were going nowhere. In three days of calling an emergency number to request a test, he could not get through.

Source: AFP

4, April 2020

UK: Keir Starmer replaces Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader ⁰

Britain’s main opposition Labour Party named Keir Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions who opposed the country’s exit from the European Union, as its leader on Saturday.

Starmer, who has tried to carry the socialist supporters of outgoing leader Jeremy Corbyn while also keeping more centrist Labour members on board, beat Rebecca Long-Bailey, an ally of Corbyn, and Lisa Nandy in the contest.

He won with 56.2% of the vote by party members and supporters.

“It’s the honour and privilege of my life to be elected as leader of the Labour Party. It comes at a moment like no other in our lifetime,” he said in a pre-recorded statement, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Under my leadership we will engage constructively with the government, not opposition for opposition’s sake. Not scoring party political points or making impossible demands. But with the courage to support where that’s the right thing to do.

“But we will test the arguments that are put forward. We will shine a torch on critical issues and where we see mistakes or faltering government or things not happening as quickly as they should, we’ll challenge that and call that out.”

The leadership contest, under way since Corbyn led Labour to a crushing defeat in the December election, has been overshadowed by the coronavirus outbreak, which all but silenced the three candidates’ campaigns.

(REUTERS)