Coronavirus live news: Brazil sees record deaths; Japan may stage Olympics without overseas spectators

Greece to allow tourists with Covid vaccines, antibodies or negative tests; Palestinian ICUs at capacity

• Greece hopes to open to tourists from 14 May
• ‘A once-in-a-generation event’: lessons from a year of lockdown in Europe
• Corruption claims and slow vaccine rollout damage Germany’s CDU party
• Vaccines and stimulus plans will aid global growth, says OECD
• See all our coronavirus coverage

12.20am GMT

The pandemic has a habit of bringing hidden social crises into the open. Now it reveals the precarious position of local government, the provider of vital services from care homes to public health and bin collection, which has helped keep the show on the road in the UK’s biggest national emergency since the second world war.

The National Audit Office (NAO) account of the near implosion of England’s local councils during Covid is sobering: only by the government’s swift, if grudging, injection of billions of pounds of emergency cash into council coffers over recent months did ministers avert what the auditors call “system-wide financial failure”.

Related: Covid has exposed dire position of England’s local councils

12.09am GMT

Brazil registered 1,972 new Covid deaths in a single day on Tuesday, a national record, according to the Health Ministry.

The country had 70,764 new cases of coronavirus, reaching a total of 11.12 million infections. Brazil had 168,370 coronavirus deaths.

Rio de Janeiro-based research institute Fiocruz said in a report on Tuesday that more than 80% of intensive care unit (ICU) beds are occupied in the capitals of 25 of Brazil’s 27 states. In 15 of Brazil’s largest cities, 90% of ICU beds occupied.

The institute said a growing number of cities risk a collapse of their health systems.

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