LONDON — Britain’s government is scrapping its existing coronavirus tracing smartphone app and switching to a model based on technology supplied by Apple and Google, the BBC reports.

The government’s app is being trialled on the Isle of Wight, and was expected to be rolled out in the rest of the country later. But the program, previously hailed as a fundamental pillar of the U.K. response to the pandemic, has been delayed.

On Wednesday, the official responsible for the app said it may not be ready until the winter and that it is not the “priority” at the moment.

The data gathered by the Apple-Google design is expected to be less centralized but it is said to have less privacy concerns than the government version.

The government was to brief reporters later Thursday about the next stage of development in the contact tracing app.

___

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

— Europe sees a rash of new local outbreaks including hundreds of infections at a German meatpacking plant

— China says infections are waning, including at Beijing market

— Is it safe to stay in hotels as reopenings get underway?

— Study ties blood type to COVID-19 risk; O may help, A hurt

— Spain to inject $4.7 billion aid package into its beleagured tourism industry.

— Vice President Mike Pence says the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic is “a cause for celebration,” but a new poll finds more than half of Americans calling it fair or poor. The Gallup and West Health survey out Thursday shows that 57% of U.S. adults rate the national response to COVID-19 as fair or poor, particularly because America has the world’s most expensive health care.

— As work on potential coronavirus vaccines intensifies, rich countries are placing advance orders for the inevitably limited supply to guarantee their citizens are immunized first. That is leaving significant questions about how long it will take developing countries to get any vaccines.

___

Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

___

HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

LISBON, Portugal — More COVID-19 flare-ups are keeping authorities busy in Portugal, where officials reported 417 new cases and one death Thursday.

Though the country’s overall number of hospitalizations has remained stable, fresh outbreaks in recent days have occurred at nursing homes and a major hospital, where officials have reported a total of more than 100 new infections and enacted emergency procedures.

Meanwhile, authorities say tracking, testing and surveillance systems are in place at hot spots in satellite towns around Lisbon and in the southern Algarve region, where around 40 new cases are linked to an illegal weekend party in the city of Lagos.

The Directorate for Health said 325 of the new cases announced Thursday were detected at communities in the Lisbon metropolitan area.

Portugal has recently been reporting on average more than 300 new cases each day. The country has officially recorded just over 38,000 cases and 1,524 deaths.

—-

ZAGREB, Croatia — After Montenegro and Slovenia, Croatia is also reporting a spike in new coronavirus infections following the reopening of its borders.

Croatian health authorities said Thursday that 11 new cases have been recorded in the past 24 hours after weeks of very low results. In the northern Istria peninsula, a resurgence came after two months of no cases at all.

Authorities say most of the new cases have been imported. Croatia has reopened for visitors in hopes of salvaging its crucial summer tourism season along the Adriatic Sea coast.

Officials urged the citizens to respect protective anti-virus measures like social distancing and wearing masks. Croatia has had nearly 2,300 cases and 107 virus-related deaths.

___

BEIJING — A Chinese public health expert says an outbreak of the coronavirus in Beijing is under control and the number of new cases should drop in the coming days.

Wu Zunyou from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention told a news conference Thursday that such outbreaks are inevitable but that this one was larger than expected because it happened in a major market.

Authorities have confirmed 158 cases in Beijing in the past week. Most if not all have been linked to the city’s largest wholesale food market, where thousands of people work. Wu said workers in the seafood section were infected first and in greater numbers than those in the meat and vegetable sections.

Tests for the coronavirus in food imports, conducted across the country following the market outbreak, were all negative, a customs administration notice said.

A city transport spokesman said at the news conference that bus service between Beijing and other provinces would be suspended starting Friday to try to prevent the outbreak’s spread.

ATHENS, Greece — Greece’s government has announced a new system of fines and penalties for businesses that are found to be violating regulations imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

Under details published Thursday in the government gazette, fines for violations will range from 1,000 euros to 50,000 euros ($1,125 to $56,240). For bars and restaurants, offending businesses will be shut down for 15 days for the first violation, 30 days for the second violation and 60 days for the third if all three violations occur within three months.

Other retail businesses face similar penalties.

Regulations include limits on the number of people allowed into a business depending on its physical size, distances to be maintained between tables at cafes, bars, restaurants and outdoor movie theaters, and mandatory masks to be work by staff handling fresh food.

Greece imposed a lockdown early in its outbreak, a move credited with keeping overall numbers of deaths and seriously ill people low.

___

PRAGUE — A Czech car industry group says the car production in the country fell by 52.9% year-on-year in May as the industry’s crisis continues amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Czech Automotive Industry Association says the industry began slightly recovering in May after it was down by 88.5 % in April but remains under pressure due to a lack of demand.

The new car registration was down by 44.4% in May, it says.

Overall, a total of 399,681 cars were made in the country in the first five months of the year, down by 35.7% compared with the same period last year.

“The whole industry is now at a crossroad,” said Zdenek Petzl, the association’s executive director. “It’s key for the state to invest into its future prosperity as some other neighboring countries have done and support by that the economy’s recovery and employment.”

The Czech economy relies heavily on the car industry. Germany’s Volkswagen, South Korea’s Hyundai and Japan-France’s Toytota/PSA all have major plants in the country.

___

TOKYO — Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday that Japan is discussing possible resumption of mutual visits with four countries — Thailand, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand — where the coronavirus infections have been largely taken under control.

Japan has imposed entry bans from more than 110 countries to keep out the infections. Japan is trying to gradually resume business trips and tourism starting with the four countries as exceptions. Visits are expected to restart with ample precautions, including virus tests, Abe said, though he did not give further details such as timing.

Abe said Japan is also lifting domestic travel restrictions, allowing residents to travel outside of their own prefectures. Domestic tourism will gradually restart, and events of up to 1,000 people can also resume, Abe said.

Business restrictions for host and hostess clubs and other night entertainment deemed high risk of infections can also reopen under disease prevention guidelines worked out jointly by the health ministry and operators.

.—-

LONDON — The chief scientist at the World Health Organization says the agency hopes there will be about 2 billion doses of a vaccine against COVID-19 by the end of next year that would be reserved for “priority populations.”

Dr. Soumya Swaminathan told a press briefing: “It’s a big if because we don’t have any vaccine that’s proven.”

She said that because of the numerous vaccine candidates currently being tested, WHO hoped at least some might prove ready for use next year.

Swaminathan said that WHO recommends immunizing people at risk first, including the elderly and those with underlying conditions like diabetes or respiratory disease, as well as key workers.

But Swaminathan noted that there was still no strategy regarding any possible global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. “WHO will propose these solutions,” she said. “Countries need to agree and come to a consensus. That’s the only way this can work.”

Numerous developed countries including Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany and the U.S. have already struck deals with pharmaceuticals to secure vaccine supplies for their citizens first.

WHO and partners have called for drugmakers to suspend their patent rights on any effective COVID-19 vaccine and for billions of dollars to buy vaccines for developing countries.

___

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia — Slovenia has seen a spike in new coronavirus cases following the reopening of the country’s borders.

Health authorities said Thursday eight new cases have been confirmed in the past 24 hours, including three foreign citizens.

Slovenia had very few or no case for nearly a month before numbers started to rise gradually in the past days. The STA news agency says most have been imported cases.

Slovenia has reported around 1,500 cases while 109 people have died.

___

LONDON — The World Health Organization’s top scientist says it’s now been definitively proven that the cheap malaria drug hydroxychloroquine — the drug favoured by President Donald Trump — doesn’t work in stopping deaths among people hospitalized with the new coronavirus.

But Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said there could still be a role for the drug in preventing people from catching COVID-19 in the first place and noted that clinical trials testing hydroxychloroquine’s role in this are ongoing.

Swaminathan said in a press briefing on Thursday that there is still a gap in determining whether hydroxychloroquine has a role at all in prevention or minimizing the severity of the illness in early infection or even in preventing it.

She says: “We don’t know that as yet. And we need to complete those large trials and get the data,” she said, referring to several other trials not being conducted by WHO.

The U.N. health agency announced this week that it is suspending the hydroxychloroquine arm of its own trial testing various experimental therapies for COVID-19, referring to previous results from a large U.K. trial and a separate analysis of evidence on the drug. The other drugs being tested by WHO, including treatments used in the past for Ebola and AIDS, are still being pursued.

___

HONG KONG — Hong Kong Disneyland has officially reopened after a major drop in coronavirus cases in the Chinese territory.

Advance reservations will be required and only limited attendance will be allowed at the park, one of the pillars of Hong Kong’s crucial tourism industry.

Social distancing measures including avoiding mixing together different families are being implemented in lines, at restaurants, on rides and at shops, while cleaning and disinfecting will be increased.

Visitors will have their temperatures checked at the entrance and be required to wear masks at all times inside the park, except when eating and drinking.

Hong Kong, a city of 7.5 million, has recorded just 1,120 cases and four deaths from COVID-19, but the impact on the financial hub’s economy that relies heavily on international travel and visitors from China has been severe.

Most visitors from outside the territory are still barred from entering and Disneyland said anyone who has traveled outside Hong Kong within the previous two weeks will be asked to rescheduled their visit.

___

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh’s coronavirus cases crossed 100,000 on Thursday as the country reported another 3,803 confirmed infections and 38 more deaths.

The death toll from the virus reached 1,343 and the total number of infections stood at 102,292.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a meeting with top bureaucrats and advisers Thursday reviewed the situation and discussed steps to fight COVID-19 in the South Asian nation, including the continuing procurement of medical supplies.

___

JOHANNESBURG — African nations next week will hold a high-level conference on coronavirus vaccines to “position ourselves to not be left behind” in access, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief says.

John Nkengasong says the World Health Organization director-general will attend the discussion that also will focus on “how we can manufacture a vaccine ourselves.”

He said countries including Senegal, Egypt and South Africa already have vaccine manufacturing capabilities.

Concern has been high among Africa’s 54 nations about access to testing and medical supplies amid intense global competition.

Africa’s virus cases are now above 260,000, with South Africa representing about 30% of infections.

More than 3.7 million tests for the virus have been conducted in Africa, where the WHO has said the pandemic is “accelerating” on the continent of 1.3 billion people. Ten African nations account for about 80% of testing, while the rest are “still struggling,” Nkengasong said.

___

PRAGUE — The Czech Republic is set to almost fully abandon its most visible tool of fighting the coronavirus pandemic — face masks.

Health Minister Adam Vojtech says that starting July 1, wearing masks on public transport and indoors such as in stores, theaters and cinemas is no longer mandatory.

Vojtech says masks will remain mandatory only in regions with local clusters and outbreaks. Those places will be determined later in June.

Currently, they include the capital of Prague and two eastern regions.

The country has registered several dozen new COVID-19 cases daily for a month while a total of 333 people have died.

___

MOSCOW — The ex-president of Kazakhstan is infected with the new coronavirus.

His spokespeople say Nursultan Nazarbayev, 79, tested positive for the virus and remains in isolation. “There are no reasons for concern,” the statement said.

Nazarbayev, who had ruled Kazakhstan since its independence in 1991, stepped down last year but continues to wield considerable influence as chair of the country’s Security Council and leader of the ruling party Nur Otan.

Kazakhstan has reported 15,877 confirmed cases of the virus and 97 deaths among its population of 18 million. The ex-Soviet nation lifted the state of emergency declared on March 16, but various lockdown restrictions remain in place in different regions of the vast country.

___

PODGORICA, Montenegro — Montenegro is reporting a resurgence of the coronavirus in the small Balkan country that had no infections for weeks.

Montenegrin health authorities said late Wednesday they have registered seven new cases after two more were confirmed earlier this week.

A country of some 620,000 people, Montenegro imposed strict lockdown measures during the outbreak. Montenegro recently started reopening, hoping to attract tourists to the Adriatic coast.

___

ISTANBUL — Turkish authorities have made the wearing of masks mandatory in three major cities to curb the spread of COVID-19 following an uptick in cases since the country allowed many businesses to reopen.

The governors of Istanbul, Ankara and Bursa announced the mask rule late Wednesday in line with a recommendation by the country’s scientific advisory council. Masks are obligatory in 47 out of 81 provinces. The statements said masks must be worn in all public spaces.

Turkey is seeing an upward trend in the daily number of infections after the government authorized cafes, restaurants, gyms, parks, beaches and museums to reopen, lifted inter-city travel restrictions and eased stay-at-home orders for the elderly and young at the start of June.

Turkey has reported 182,727 confirmed cases and 4,861 deaths from COVID-19 since March.

___

ATHENS, Greece — Greek civil protection authorities have imposed a seven-day complete lockdown on a community in northeastern Greece, after a spike in coronavirus cases there over the past week.

Residents of the Echinos community in the province of Xanthi are forbidden from leaving the area, and are under a 24-hour curfew. They can leave their homes only to buy food or medication, and must wear a mask.

Only vehicles resupplying food stores and pharmacies are allowed into Echinos, while all other retail businesses have been shut.

The community has been the source of a localized outbreak before too. Authorities said the area had registered 73 new coronavirus cases and four deaths over the past week. Health officials are intensifying testing in the area.

Greece had imposed a lockdown early and has managed to maintain deaths and serious illness from the coronavirus at low levels. On Wednesday, the country announced 55 new cases, the highest daily number for weeks The vast majority were in Xanthi.

Greece has had a total of 187 deaths and just over 3,200 confirmed cases in the country of nearly 11 million people.