US President Donald Trump will announce a new round of pandemic aid to farmers of about $13bn at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Thursday night, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters. Wisconsin, whose dairy and farming sector has been hard hit by both the White House’s trade policies and the Covid-19 pandemic, is a battleground state in the presidential race. Trump’s upset victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin in 2016 was by less than 1% of the vote - and marked the first time the state had voted for a Republican in a presidential election since 1984. Trump was expected to speak at a rally in Mosinee, a rural Wisconsin town, at 9 p.m. EDT on Thursday. His trip to Wisconsin - nicknamed America’s Dairyland for its milk and cheese industries - is on the same day state officials reported 2,034 new Covid-19 cases, a record one-day increase. A rapid test for coronavirus made by DnaNudge that was said by ministers to be part of a grand plan to deliver millions of tests in England, works well in hospitals but will not scale up to help the government’s “Moonshot” plan any time soon, experts say. On 3 August, the government announced that “millions of new rapid coronavirus tests will be rolled out across NHS hospitals, care homes and labs from next week”. It had bought 5.8 million 90-minute tests from DnaNudge, an Imperial College London spinout company: We’ll be blogging US president Donald Trump’s speech in Wisconsin at 9pm ET as well as Joe Biden’s town hall, which is happening at the same time. That’s in about an hour, for non-US readers. In the meantime: Wuhan re-opens for international flights The Chinese city of Wuhan, ground zero for the coronavirus outbreak, is re-opening for international flights, ending an eight-month moratorium. China stopped international flights in March as Covid-19 swept the world, but has now largely brought the disease under control at home through travel restrictions, testing and lockdowns. Heavily criticised US CDC testing guidelines were not written by CDC – reports The New York Times has just launched a huge scoop: the recommendation made last month by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention that it was not necessary to test people who did not have Covid-19 symptoms was not in fact written by CDC scientists, and was posted to the CDC website despite “serious objections”. The US health department rewrote guidance “and then ‘dropped’ it into the CDC’s public website, flouting the agency’s strict scientific review process,” Apoorva Mandavilli reports. A former health director spoken to by the Times said, “The idea that someone at [Health and Human Services] would write guidelines and have it posted under the CDC banner is absolutely chilling.” It is always good to hear from you – and particularly, perhaps, when we reach a sombre milestone like this. Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com. These are the ten worst-affected countries worldwide in terms of the total number of cases – while the populations of countries do mean that infection rates don’t follow this order, it is worth remembering that we are talking about a total number of people who could face life-long effects, as well as, when infections lead to death, a total number of people who have died. In terms of the global population, nearly four people per 1,000 worldwide are infected, which is roughly one in every 250 people on the planet – that has happened in just nine months. The US, which leads the world in terms of cases and deaths, is on the brink of 200,000 lives lost. US: 6,669,322 India: 5,118,253 Brazil: 4,419,083 Russia: 1,081,152 Peru: 744,400 Colombia: 736,377 Mexico: 680,931 South Africa: 655,572 Spain: 625,651 Argentina: 589,012 Here is what the number of cases reported each day looks like over the course of the pandemic (although I think that one very tall spike may be an error – Johns Hopkins appears to have added a 48hour case total for India on a single day): Global coronavirus cases pass 30m The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has passed a staggering 30m, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, with 30,003,378 currently confirmed. 943,203 people have lost their lives over the course of the pandemic so far. The US leads in infections and deaths, with 6,664,021 cases, or more than a fifth of the total. Summary Hello and welcome to today’s live coronavirus coverage. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next few hours. As always, it would be great to hear from you: get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com. There are nearly 30m coronavirus infections worldwide, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, which relies on official government data. The current total is 29,994,772. So far, there have been 942,989 coronavirus-related deaths worldwide. France sees new 24-hour record. France registered 10,593 new confirmed coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, setting a new daily record and pushing the cumulative number to 415,481, the health ministry reported on Thursday. The previous high was 10,561 new cases in a day, recorded on 12 September. The sharp increase is a result of a higher infection rate but also of a massive increase in testing, Reuters reports. The pandemic could soon be out of control in Canada, the country’s top medical officer has said, following a worrying surge in new infections. Facebook said it would no longer show health groups in its recommendations to ensure users get health information from authoritative sources. It said the move reflected its view that such sources of information were “crucial”. In the US, New York City once again delayed the return of most of the million-plus students in its public schools. The mayor, Bill de Blasio, said most elementary school students would do remote-only learning until 29 September. Wuhan, ground zero for the coronavirus outbreak, has reopened for international flights, ending an eight-month moratorium since the disease first emerged. China stopped international flights in March as global alarm increased about the spread of Covid-19, but has now largely brought the disease under control. The World Health Organization warned of “alarming rates of transmission” of Covid-19 across Europe and cautioned countries against shortening quarantine periods. The body said the number of coronavirus cases in September “should serve as a wake-up call for all of us”.