Nations slow reopening as resurgent coronavirus stalks globe
WASHINGTON, United States — Coronavirus infections were surging across the globe on Wednesday, forcing several countries to put the brakes on reopening or imposing new restrictions on their weary populations.
The number of COVID-19 cases worldwide topped 13.4 million and more than 579,000 deaths have been reported since the virus emerged late last year in China.
With the situation predicted to worsen in the United States, Walmart, the world's largest retailer, said it would require customers to wear masks at all its stores to help stop the virus spreading.
Venezuela, four days after announcing a loosening of restrictions, became the latest country to reimpose localized lockdown measures, including a "radical quarantine" in the capital Caracas, while Bolivia's La Paz department said it would undergo a four-day total quarantine.
Latin America topped 150,000 deaths Wednesday, becoming the world's second hardest-hit region after Europe, where a total of 203,793 people have died.
Brazil accounted for roughly half of Latin America's deaths, with more than 1,200 new fatalities recorded Wednesday bringing the total toll since the outbreak began there to 75,366.
In Ireland, Prime Minister Micheal Martin delayed the end of the lockdown because of a surge in new cases.
Ireland had been set to enter the fourth and final stage of relaxing restrictions on Monday, which would have allowed pubs that do not serve food to reopen.
The current restrictions will remain in place until August 10 and the government will also mandate the wearing of facemasks in shops.
Tens of thousands of cases are being reported every day in the United States, which has the world's highest death toll at more than 136,000, and officials are scrambling to roll back reopenings meant to revive economies.
'Let's stop this nonsense'
The latest research models show the number of US deaths projected to rise to over 150,000 by next month.
"When you look at the numbers, obviously, we've got to do better," said Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert.
"We've got to almost reset this and say, 'Okay, let's stop this nonsense," Fauci told The Atlantic.
In the US state of Oklahoma, the Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, said he had tested positive for COVID-19.
Stitt, 47, who has often declined to wear a mask at meetings and attended an indoors campaign rally by President Donald Trump in the western state last month, said it was unlikely he contracted the virus there.
The use of facemasks to slow the spread of the virus has become a political flashpoint in the US, where Trump had resisted wearing one until recently and at times mocked the trend.
Walmart said it will require shoppers at its more than 5,300 stores to wear masks starting on July 20, joining a growing group of US businesses in mandating the protection as coronavirus cases have spiked.
"While we're certainly not the first business to require face coverings, we know this is a simple step everyone can take for their safety and the safety of others in our facilities," Walmart's US chief operating officer Dacona Smith said.
Vaccine candidate trials
Amid the grim forecasts, American biotech firm Moderna said it would start the final stage of human trials for its vaccine candidate on July 27, after promising results from earlier testing.
Moderna is considered to be in a leading position in the global race to find a vaccine, and while its study should run until October 2022, preliminary results should be available long before then.
In the Asia-Pacific region, where several countries had been somewhat successful in fighting the pandemic, there was fresh evidence of the deadly threat still posed by the virus.
Hong Kong's bars, gyms, and beauty salons closed again Wednesday and a ban on gatherings of more than four people came into force as the city battled a fresh outbreak after months of success against COVID-19.
Most of the city's residents voluntarily adopted facemasks as a barrier against the virus when it was first detected in mainland China, but the Hong Kong government now requires passengers on public transport to wear them or risk a US$650 fine.
There was alarm in Japan too, where Tokyo's governor warned that the capital was on its highest virus alert level after a spike in infections.
That came after the Indian state of Bihar, with a population of around 125 million, announced a 15-day virus lockdown starting Thursday.
'Please stop'
Authorities in Australia, meanwhile, pleaded Wednesday with the public to heed social distancing guidelines, with roughly five million people in Melbourne in lockdown since last week in a bid to contain a new outbreak.
"A particular concern for us is the ongoing parties and gatherings," said Rick Nugent, acting assistant commissioner of Victoria state. "Please stop."
Face masks will also become compulsory in England's shops and supermarkets from next week, while in South Africa, where the number of cases topped 300,000, a nationwide curfew was reimposed.
Disneyland Paris, Europe's biggest private tourist attraction, reopened its gates, but also with limited access, a ban on hugging the famous characters and no princess makeovers. — AFP
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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