Virus wreaks economic havoc as global cases top 17 million
WASHINGTON, United States — The scale of economic devastation from the pandemic was laid bare on Thursday as Western economies recorded historic slumps, just as resurgent caseloads forced many countries into agonising new trade-offs between health and financial stability.
Six months after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency, the novel coronavirus has infected more than 17 million people across the globe.
The WHO warned Thursday that young people are "not invincible" and were helping to drive resurgences in many places that had largely curbed the disease.
"Spikes of cases in some countries are being driven in part by younger people letting down their guard during the northern hemisphere summer," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
COVID-19 has killed more than 667,000 people, and is forcing governments into a persistent balancing act between saving lives and preventing economic devastation.
Nowhere is that challenge more evident than the world's hardest-hit nation -- also the world's biggest economy -- with the United States posting a second-quarter loss of 9.5 percent compared with the same period a year ago, the worst figure on record.
If that trajectory carried through the entire year, its economy would collapse by nearly a third (32.9 percent), the data showed.
Historic contractions were also recorded in Germany (10.1 percent), Belgium (12.2 percent), Austria (10.7 percent) and Mexico (17 percent).
Across the globe, companies were also taking a hit with Volkswagen, oil producer Shell, UK bank Lloyds and Japanese consumer electronics giant Panasonic all reporting huge losses.
With travel down to a trickle, aerospace giant Airbus said it burned through more than 12 billion euros in cash in the first half of the year, with a net loss of 1.9 billion euros ($1.4 billion) and plans to cut production by 40 percent.
Global daily cases are now approaching the 300,000 mark, with the curve showing no sign of flattening -- it took just 100 hours for one million new cases to be recorded.
The US surpassed 150,000 deaths, while the second-worst-hit country Brazil reached 90,000.
In Japan, Tokyo's governor called for restaurants, bars and karaoke parlours to shut earlier as the Japanese capital reported a record number of new infections.
"The current situation is more serious than before," said Yuriko Koike. "There were several clusters in Tokyo.... We have no time to waste."
Several French and Dutch cities, including tourist favourites Biarritz and Amsterdam, also announced new face mask requirements.
Sweden, whose controversial softer approach to curbing coronavirus has received worldwide attention, said it would encourage people to keep working from home into next year where possible, as the country passed 80,000 recorded cases.
Island resurgences
Two island countries that were early poster boys for containing the virus offered warnings against complacency on Thursday.
In Australia, there were 723 positive tests in the southeastern state of Victoria alone, well beyond the previous nationwide record of 549 cases set on Monday.
And Iceland recorded its first hospitalisation since mid-May, as well as 31 new cases, forcing the government to reimpose social distancing and masks, and limit the size of gatherings to 100.
Hong Kong, which was also initially lauded for its coronavirus response, is struggling to balance fears of a third wave among its 7.5 million residents, which authorities fear could cripple the healthcare system, against anger at new restrictions.
Just a day after restaurants were banned from serving customers indoors, the decision was reversed following a torrent of online criticism over images of mostly blue-collar workers forced to eat on pavements and in parks -- and even inside public toilets to escape a torrential downpour.
South Africa faces a similar dilemma and pushed back its nighttime curfew by an hour to 10 pm to help the devastated restaurant sector, despite a recent surge in cases.
Ivory Coast however bucked the trend, announcing that bars, nightclubs and cinemas would reopen on Friday.
EU travel list
US travellers remain barred from the EU after the latest fortnightly update to its list of safe countries. Algeria was removed after a spike in cases.
The EU's safe list currently consists of Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay -- and would also include China if Beijing reciprocated.
Several European countries have slapped restrictions on travel to and from Spain.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, fresh from announcing quarantine for travellers returning from Spain, suggested the rest of Europe could be facing a second wave -- despite his own country's dismal figures.
France's health minister has hit back on saying that was categorically not the case in his country. However the number of patients in intensive care in France rose on Thursday for the first time since early April.
Spain, one of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic, repeated again on Thursday that it was not experiencing a second wave. Madrid has criticised Britain's blanket quarantine, which includes islands without significant outbreaks. — 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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