Virus pushes US hospitals to the brink, India hits record new cases
WASHINGTON, United States — Officials at the epicenter of the worsening coronavirus crisis in the United States warned Sunday their hospitals were in danger of being overwhelmed by the upsurge, as India registered a record number of new cases.
The US has struggled to respond to the devastation wrought by the virus, with its national death toll rising to near 130,000 out of 2.8 million confirmed cases, and many states hit by increasing infections after lockdowns were eased.
Hospital beds are full in parts of Texas, while calls for fresh stay-at-home orders are growing. Some mayors say their cities reopened too early, as President Donald Trump tries to downplay the disease that has gripped much of the country.
India faces similar challenges as it clocked a record daily number of cases across a vast nation where medical facilities are uneven and many COVID-19 infections are likely to be undiagnosed.
In signs of progress, Formula One returned on Sunday with the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix held behind closed doors, while the Louvre museum in Paris will reopen on Monday after a 16-week virus shutdown.
The pandemic has killed at least 531,789 people worldwide since it surfaced in China late last year, according to an AFP tally on Sunday based on official sources.
More than 11 million people have been infected in 196 countries and territories.
After the United States, Brazil is the hardest-hit country with 64,265 deaths, followed by Britain, Italy and Mexico.
The US' annual July 4 holiday weekend was overshadowed by growing evidence that its fractured response has exacted a heavy price across the south and west, after previous hotspots such as New York emerged from the worst of the virus.
"Our hospitals here in Harris County, Houston, and 33 other cities... they're into surge capacities. So their operational beds are taken up," said Lina Hidalgo, chief executive of Harris County, which includes Houston, Texas.
"Restaurants are still open. Indoor events can take place no matter the size," she told the ABC TV channel. "What we need right now is to do what works, which is a stay-home order."
'Way too early'
Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, Texas, also expressed concern that the healthcare system could buckle as the disease spreads rapidly.
"If we don't change the trajectory, then I am within two weeks of having our hospitals overrun. And in our ICUs, I could be 10 days away from that," he told CNN.
Phoenix city mayor Kate Gallego said, "We opened way too early in Arizona" state. She suggested that a new stay-at-home order should be issued.
One high-profile victim of the global shutdown — the Taj Mahal — will remain closed, it was announced Sunday as India reported 25,000 cases and 613 deaths in 24 hours — the biggest daily spike since the first case was detected in late January.
In the capital New Delhi, medical staff started treating patients at a spiritual center converted into an isolation facility and hospital with 10,000 beds, many made of cardboard and chemically coated to make them waterproof.
Critics allege India is conducting very few tests, leaving the true scale of the pandemic unknown.
Military medics
In South Africa, dozens of military medics were deployed on Sunday after a surge in infections in East Cape province.
Like India, South Africa imposed some of the strictest stay-at-home measures in the world in late March in a bid to limit the spread of COVID-19, but the number of infections is rising daily as the lockdown rules are gradually eased.
Iran announced 163 new deaths, the country's highest official one-day toll since the outbreak began, while Morocco discovered an outbreak in a fish-canning factory, with 300,000 inhabitants placed under lockdown.
England's pubs reopened after a three-month hiatus on Saturday, with police concluding that the thousands of people thronging the streets of London's Soho nightlife district made it clear "that drunk people can't/won't socially distance."
But Health Secretary Matt Hancock insisted that "very largely people have acted responsibly," as Britain's infection numbers continue to fall.
In Spain, two separate outbreaks saw 200,000 people put under lockdown in the northeastern Catalonia region and another 70,000 in the northwestern Galicia region.
Spaniards have emerged from one of the world's toughest lockdowns in which people were confined to their homes unless they could provide the police with a valid excuse.
In Lebanon, a philharmonic orchestra performed to spectator-free Roman ruins on Sunday as the Baalbek International Festival was downsized to a single concert.
A Canadian military plane headed to Latvia for a NATO mission was forced to turn around for fear that troops on board had been exposed to the virus before takeoff at a military base in Ontario where someone tested positive.
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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