Millions worldwide back in virus confinement, but hope on US vaccine
WASHINGTON, United States — Millions of people went into new lockdowns Tuesday as novel coronavirus cases surged, but in one sign of hope, a US firm said it would soon start final-stage human trials for a possible COVID-19 vaccine.
Massachusetts-based Moderna will begin the trials later this month after promising early results.
With countries and cities across the globe reimposing restrictions in the face of new outbreaks of the disease, infections in India have continued to soar.
The country of 1.3 billion people had been easing its lockdown to lessen the economic impact — particularly on vast numbers of poor Indians who lost their jobs.
Almost 24,000 Indian deaths have now been recorded, according to health ministry figures that many experts say underplay the severity of the situation.
Bangalore, home to more than 13 million people, has emerged as a new global hotspot.
Firms in the city's lifeblood IT sector handling the back-office operations of dozens of global corporations can continue operating, but with only half the staff allowed on premises.
Transport is banned except for emergencies, and only shops selling essential items are allowed to open.
"I do not want to take chances... I am stocking up for two weeks," said Mangala, a housewife, as she joined a long queue to buy provisions.
In the United States, the announcement of possible progress towards a vaccine came as results were published from the first stage of Moderna's vaccine trial, which showed the first 45 participants all developed antibodies to the virus.
Moderna is considered to be in a leading position in the race to find a vaccine against the coronavirus, which has infected more than 13.2 million people and killed 570,000.
The last-stage trials are scheduled to run through October 2022, with researchers expecting preliminary results well before then.
No return to 'normal'
But "there will be no return to the 'old normal' for the foreseeable future," World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday, warning that without governments adopting a comprehensive strategy, the situation would get "worse and worse and worse."
In England, face masks will become compulsory in shops and supermarkets from next week, the health secretary said Tuesday in a U-turn on previous policy.
Face masks have been mandatory on public transport across the country since June 15, and Scotland has already made the coverings compulsory for shoppers.
After overseeing drastically downscaled Bastille Day celebrations in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron also said he would like to make masks mandatory in enclosed public spaces.
"We have indications that (the outbreak) is accelerating a bit," he said.
Macron's comments come as doctors have warned of a potential second wave of infections, which could again overwhelm hospitals and require new lockdowns that could further hammer the economy.
But Disneyland Paris will begin a "phased reopening" on Wednesday, with visitor numbers limited via a new online reservation system to ensure social distancing.
In the United States on Tuesday, the hard-hit state of Florida posted a record number of deaths for a 24-hour period at 132.
Nationwide, more than 63,262 new infections and 850 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours.
California has drastically rolled back its reopening plans and ordered all indoor restaurants, bars and cinemas to close again as cases soared across America's richest and most populous state.
Churches — as well as gyms, shopping malls, hair salons and non-essential offices — must also shut indoor operations in half of the Golden State's worst-hit and most densely populated counties, including Los Angeles.
Alarm bells
The bruising economic impact of the pandemic was stark in Singapore, where the economy shrank more than 40 percent in the second quarter, plunging the Southeast Asian financial and trading hub into recession for the first time in a decade.
"It's the worst-ever quarterly figure in Singapore's 55-year history," CIMB Private Banking regional economist Song Seng Wun told AFP on Tuesday.
The worse-than-expected figures will ring alarm bells for other economies reliant on trade.
Britain also saw its economy shrink by nearly a fifth in the three months to May compared with the previous quarter as the lockdown crippled activity.
Since the start of July, nearly 2.5 million new infections have been registered across the globe, with the number of cases doubling over the past six weeks, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Latin America on Monday recorded the world's second-highest regional death toll, declaring a total of 144,758 fatalities to pass the 144,023 recorded in the United States and Canada.
It now stands second only to Europe.
South Africa has reimposed a nationwide curfew to prevent a "coronavirus storm" from ravaging the continent's hardest-hit nation, where new infections have topped 12,000 a day.
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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