Coronavirus positive: Good news round up - Exercise at the Eiffel

People visit the Eiffel Tower in Paris on its reopening to the public following the coronavirus disease. - Charles Platiau
People visit the Eiffel Tower in Paris on its reopening to the public following the coronavirus disease. - Charles Platiau

Good news from France as the Eiffel Tower reopened in another symbolic moment in the fight against coronavirus.

Tourists and Parisians ready for a workout gathered on Thursday as the iron monument reopened following its longest closure since the Second World War.

The Eiffel Tower usually receives about seven million visitors per year, some three-quarters from abroad, with tighter limits on numbers expected for the foreseeable.

There will be more exercise involved than during a normal visit as the lifts remain shut - meaning anyone who enters the tower would have to manually scale all 674 of the monument's stairs.

The top of the tower will reopen on July 15, although with eight person allowed in the lifts at one time, rather than the usual 45.

The first 'air bridges' are to be unveiled this weekend, with a series of short-haul destinations on offer which include France, Italy and Spain in a bid to save summer holidays and 're-fire' tourism in the UK and across the Mediterranean.

A larger second set of countries is also expected to be unveiled within a week, including Denmark, Norway, Finland and Holland along with "low-risk" Caribbean islands which have been identified by Public Health England as being safe for travel.

And an art gallery in Florence has become a surprise social media hit by mixing Renaissance masterpieces with modern music and dance on the popular video-sharing application TikTok.

As museums around the world shut their doors during the pandemic, the Uffizi Gallery shed its digitally dusty image to woo a new, younger clientele by launching irreverent, off-the-wall clips of some of its most famous works moving to the beat.

The account has now racked up 23,000 followers since setting up on April 28, and started by featuring Botticelli’s famed Spring which depicts a blond Venus among other mythological figures.

Here’s the rest of today’s good news:

  • A series of socially distanced drive-in concerts will take place between July and September at 12 different locations throughout the country. Gary Numan, the Kaiser Chiefs, and Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley will be among the acts performing to around 300 cars at each show, backed by quality-concert sound, in what will be the first event of its kind in the UK.

  • It has now been 73 days without any local infections in Taiwan, where there has been a total of 446 cases throughout the last few months. The country has been praised for its quick response to coronavirus, and only closed schools for an additional ten days before reopening swathes of society with hygiene and social distancing measures in place.

  • Thailand is looking to ease restrictions on foreign travel after marking a fourth week without any domestic transmission of coronavirus cases. Business executives, skilled workers and foreigners who live in Thailand will be the first to benefit from the new changes, with the proposed easing to be put to the Thai government's task force on Friday.

  • Mink farms in the Netherlands will be closed by the end of the year and farmers are to be paid compensation after several outbreaks of coronavirus had led to thousands of animals being culled. Mink farming is now in the process of being banned by lawmakers, in a move that has been described as "common sense" following animal-to-human transmission of the virus.

  • A worker in Washington who was furloughed from her job at a menswear store has used her $1,200 stimulus cheque to make more than 1,200 portions of lasagne for those in need. Michelle Brenner, 45, has used her grandmother's recipe to help feed people in her community, ranging from parents struggling without pay during the pandemic to medical staff and first responders.

TODAY’S MOODBOARD

Three pleasant things to put in your head

1.

Belgium welcomes the safe return of wolf cubs to the wild

2.

Some cloud based creativity from a Dublin-based artist

3.

  • Do you have some good news to share? What's made you happier in the past 24 hours? Have you seen a pleasing picture? Please send it all our way, either by commenting below or emailing coronapositive@telegraph.co.uk