Fears of virus second wave as China battles fresh outbreak
BEIJING, China — China reported its highest daily number of new coronavirus cases in months on Sunday, triggering fears of a second wave of infections as more European countries prepare to reopen their borders.
The shock resurgence in domestic infections has rattled China, where the disease emerged late last year but had largely been tamed through severe restrictions on movement that were later emulated across the globe.
It also gives a bleak insight into the difficulties the world will face in conquering COVID-19, coming as many European countries prepare to welcome visitors from elsewhere on the continent starting Monday.
Adding to the concern, Italy is fighting new outbreaks of its own, Iran and India have reported worrying increases in deaths and infections and the pandemic is gathering pace in Latin America.
Beijing has carried out mass testing after 36 of China's 57 new cases on Sunday were linked to a wholesale food market in the capital.
The city has raced to quash the new outbreak, issuing travel warnings, closing the market, deploying paramilitary police and putting nearby housing estates under lockdown.
More than 10,000 people have already been tested in the area, with another eight cases diagnosed on Sunday.
"I went to Xinfadi market, so I want to confirm that I am not infected," a 32-year-old woman surnamed Guo said as she queued at a stadium for a test.
'It isn't weakening'
The Middle East's hardest-hit country, Iran, reported its own grim uptick on Sunday, recording more than 100 new virus deaths in a single day for the first time in two months.
And there have been two new outbreaks in Rome, with 109 infections including five deaths diagnosed at a hospital and 15 cases detected at a building inhabited by squatters.
"It means the virus hasn't lost its infectiousness, it isn't weakening... we shouldn't let down our guard," World Health Organization deputy director Ranieri Guerra told Italian journalists.
"Such micro-outbreaks were inevitable, but they are limited in time and space. And today we have the tools to intercept them and confine them."
More than 430,000 people worldwide have died from the respiratory illness, nearly halfway through a year in which countless lives have been upended and the global economy ravaged.
The pandemic is now spreading most rapidly in Latin America, threatening healthcare systems and sparking political turmoil.
Brazil now has the second-highest number of virus deaths after the United States, and the Chilean health minister resigned on the weekend amid a furor over the country's true number of fatalities.
In the US, more than a dozen states — including populous Texas and Florida — have in recent days reported their highest-ever daily case totals.
The rise comes as huge anti-racism protests rage across America and the world, with thousands stretching a human chain across Berlin on Sunday -- while keeping a safe distance.
'They don't care'
Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that Russia had been more successful at handling the coronavirus than the US.
"We are exiting the coronavirus situation steadily with minimal losses, God willing," he said in a televised interview. "In the States it isn't happening that way."
More than 1,000 new infections are being recorded every day in India's capital, exposing a dire shortage of hospital beds.
"They don't care whether we live or die," said Kashish Jain, whose father died from coronavirus in the back of an ambulance as his family raced around Delhi, pleading with hospitals to take him.
Hospitals in neighboring Pakistan are also turning patients away, with the government warning the country's cases could peak at more than a million by the end of next month.
The crisis has also led to immunization programs being suspended, and polio has been detected in areas of Afghanistan previously declared free of the life-threatening disease.
The news has been better in Europe, which has mostly seen caseloads steadily fall in recent months.
Germany, Belgium, France and Greece will open their borders to EU countries from Monday, with Austria to follow the next day.
Spain said it will reopen its borders to EU countries — except for Portugal — on June 21.
In a speech Sunday, President Emmanuel Macron said that France had marked its first victory in the fight against the pandemic, although he warned the battle is not over.
From Monday, France will go into a "green zone" of a lower state of alert starting Monday, meaning cafes and restaurants can open in full, instead of just the terraces.
In another joyful return to semi-normality, football superstar Lionel Messi took to the pitch again in Spain as Barcelona resumed their La Liga title challenge and mauled Real Mallorca 4-0 in an empty stadium on Saturday. — with AFP bureaus
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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