China virus cluster grows as European borders reopen
BEIJING, China — China reported dozens of new coronavirus cases for the second consecutive day on Monday as a growing cluster of infections stoked fears of a second wave, while more borders were opened in Europe ahead of the summer holiday season.
Streams of people queued in a stadium as mass testing was carried out in Beijing, the capital of the country where the disease emerged late last year.
The pandemic is gathering pace in Latin America, and Iran and India have reported worrying increases in deaths and infections — adding to concern over challenges the world will face in the long fight against COVID-19.
But for the moment news has been better in Europe, which has mostly seen caseloads fall steadily in recent weeks.
Many countries are further lifting painful lockdowns that have saved lives, but have also devastated economies and wearied confined populations.
"Very few people have been infected... it's why I've chosen to travel to Santorini. Next week I'm going to Crete," Max Han, a young Chinese tourist, told AFP on the Greek island as he admired the sunset.
Greece is already allowing travellers from nations deemed low-risk, and on Monday it opened its borders to EU countries -- as did Germany, Belgium, France, with Austria to follow the next day.
China was the first country to implement extreme restrictions on movement early this year, forcing local transmission down to near-zero as the crisis walloped the rest of the world.
But on Monday Chinese health officials reported there have now been 75 cases of the respiratory illness in Beijing where the fresh cluster has been linked to a wholesale food market.
More than 10,000 people there have already been tested, including workers at the Xinfadi market, local residents and anyone who visited it in recent weeks.
Officials have said they plan to test 46,000 people who live in the area, and a strict lockdown was extended across 21 neighbourhoods in the capital.
'Micro-outbreaks'
More than 430,000 people worldwide have died from COVID-19, nearly halfway through a year in which countless lives have been upended and the global economy ravaged by the crisis.
The United States — by far the hardest-hit country with more than 115,700 recorded fatalities — on Monday reported its lowest 24-hour death toll since its infection rate peaked in mid-April.
President Donald Trump's administration has noted that some states have seen new flare-ups, but insists there will be no shutdown of the economy if a second full-blown wave arises.
The Middle East's worst-hit country, Iran, reported its own 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."
Despite fears over fresh clusters, many countries are making moves towards semi-normality.
Egypt is set to welcome tourists to beach resorts in July, and Peru's Machu Picchu will also reopen next month, although it will sharply reduce the number of daily visitors.
And the English Premier League finally makes its long-awaited return this week following a three-month virus suspension.
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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