New York starts reopening as WHO says virus 'worsening' worldwide
NEW YORK, United States — New York City — the epicenter of America's coronavirus outbreak — began partially reopening its shattered economy Monday after almost three months of lockdown, as the World Health Organization warned the health crisis was "worsening" worldwide.
Some 400,000 New Yorkers were allowed to return to work as retailers began offering limited in-store and curbside pickup, with construction and manufacturing also permitted to resume operations.
"It's good to be back," said Michael Ostergren, manager of the Shakespeare and Co bookshop on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where a trickle of customers arrived shortly after the doors reopened.
"Everybody wants to be out of the house. We're just picking up where we left off in March," he added.
As New York entered phase one of its reopening and some of Europe's hardest-hit nations lurched back to a new kind of normal, the WHO reported a record number of new cases globally.
Director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 136,000 cases had been reported in the past 24 hours, "the most in a single day so far," with the majority of them in the Americas and South Asia.
"Although the situation in Europe is improving, globally it is worsening," he told reporters.
COVID-19 caused more than 21,000 confirmed and probable deaths in New York after America's most populous city quickly became ground zero of the US epidemic in late March.
Mayor Bill de Blasio hailed the first easing of restrictions but warned residents that they must continue to social distance and wash their hands regularly.
"This is a triumphant moment for New Yorkers who fought back against this disease," he told CNN.
"Come back to work, but remember to stick to those smart rules that got us this far."
But the reopening effort was stymied by large numbers of high-end stores remaining boarded up following widespread looting during anti-racism protests a week ago.
The start of the economic reboot came a day after de Blasio lifted a controversial week-long curfew he had imposed over the looting.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has urged the thousands of protesters who demonstrated the police killing in Minneapolis of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, to get tested for COVID-19, fearing they may trigger a surge in infections.
US recession
One shop that did open in Midtown Manhattan was The Container Store, a home storage outlet.
Sixty-one-year-old K.B Barton left with three bags of items that he had first ordered online.
"It's livelier today in Manhattan. I see a lot more people in the streets. I am happier but not everyone wears a mask," he told AFP.
In the borough of Queens, rush hour subway trains into Manhattan were slightly busier than in recent weeks, but still nowhere near pre-coronavirus numbers.
Seventy-year-old Brandy Bligen said he was looking forward to dining outside, which will be included in phase two of the reopening alongside barbershops, and expected in a fortnight if cases don't surge.
"Being confined is enough to drive you crazy," he told AFP at the Roosevelt Avenue-Jackson Heights station.
New York's bars will be allowed to open in phase three, but movie theaters and museums have to wait until phase four, likely in late July and with reduced capacity.
COVID-19 deaths have passed 404,000 worldwide, with more than seven million infections, since the disease emerged in China late last year before sweeping the globe, subjecting billions to some form of lockdown and paralyzing economies.
Governments around the world are cautiously peeling back those restrictions to resuscitate their economies while trying to avoid a resurgence of infections.
In Belgium, pubs and eateries flung their doors open, but with social distancing measures in force, while Ireland opened shops and allowed gatherings of six people and limited travel.
British quarantine
Moscow said Monday it would ease border restrictions and lift lockdown measures in the Russian capital from Tuesday.
New Zealand meanwhile buoyed hopes for the rest of the world as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared that her country had beaten the virus, though strict border controls remain.
But Britain, embarking on a more cautious reopening, imposed a two-week quarantine for anyone coming into the country, British nationals included -- sparking legal action by airlines.
The quarantine came as it recorded its lowest daily death toll in more than two months, with 55 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
Across the Atlantic, figures showed the US economy entered a recession in February, ending 128 months of expansion.
And the World Bank said the pandemic has caused the broadest collapse of the global economy since 1870, despite unprecedented government support.
In Latin America, countries geared up for the worst as the outbreak escalated, with Brazil, Mexico and Peru particularly hard hit.
Brazil has the world's third-highest death toll at more than 36,000, but President Jair Bolsonaro continues to play down the impact of the virus and has urged regional officials to lift lockdown measures.
Fears in Asia that the virus may not be under control persist, with the death toll and infection rate climbing sharply in India, even as the government lifted some curbs Monday after a 10-week lockdown. — 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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