Israel to reimpose virus lockdown as European cases mount
JERUSALEM, Undefined — Israel said Sunday it will reimpose a national lockdown after coronavirus cases soared, while European nations grappled with mounting infections against a backdrop of protests against restrictions aimed at reining in the pandemic.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the three-week lockdown, which will hold people to within 500 metres (yards) of their homes, will start on Friday and could be extended.
The plan prompted the resignation of ultra-Orthodox Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman, who said the measures would prevent Jews from attending synagogue over the upcoming Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur holidays.
According to an AFP tally, Israel is second only to Bahrain for the world's highest coronavirus infection rate by population.
Britain, France, Austria and the Czech Republic were among European countries reporting surges, with new cases in the UK reaching more than 3,000 in 24 hours for the second day in a row on Saturday.
After a spate of local lockdowns this month, new government restrictions come into force across England on Monday, limiting social gatherings to no more than six people.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the country was already facing "the beginning of the second wave" as new daily infections climbed towards 1,000.
Kurz said the government would further restrict events and extend the areas where mask-wearing is mandatory to include all shops and public buildings.
The Czech Republic meanwhile registered 1,541 new cases on Saturday, posting a record growth for the third day in a row.
"If the epidemic keeps growing in this explosive way, we will get to the very limit of our hospital capacity," epidemiologist Roman Prymula told Czech Television on Sunday.
France reported 10,000 new infections on Saturday, close to the peak of the first wave in April, however the number fell to 7,183 on Sunday.
Worldwide, 921,387 people have died of the virus from among 28.8 million cases.
'Aggressive' lockdown protest
However some countries were relaxing their anti-coronavirus restrictions.
In South Korea, authorities in Seoul said they would ease some infection control measures introduced in recent weeks after a spike in cases in the capital region, home to half the country's 52 million population.
Coffee shops, restaurants and bakeries will return to normal service while gyms and private crammer schools can reopen.
The country largely overcame an early Covid-19 surge with extensive tracing and testing, but it has seen triple-digit daily new cases since mid-August after weeks with numbers in the 30s and 40s.
And Saudi Arabia announced it would partially lift its suspension of international flights from September 15, six months after travel curbs were imposed.
Meanwhile, police arrested dozens of participants in an illegal anti-lockdown demonstration in the southern Australian city Melbourne on Sunday that drew around 250 people.
The protest -- the city's second in as many days -- saw the crowd defy stay-at-home orders to gather at the central Queen Victoria market, where they were met by a heavy police presence.
"Many protesters were aggressive and threatened violence towards officers," the Melbourne police said.
The Australia protest followed a number of demonstrations in Germany and Poland on Saturday at which thousands protested against anti-coronavirus measures.
Meanwhile Democratic US presidential candidate Joe Biden slammed incumbent Donald Trump as "reckless" for holding a packed rally Saturday in Reno, Nevada, where many attendees did not wear masks.
The Republican president is under pressure as the US toll continues to rise, nearing 6.5 million cases on Saturday with more than 193,000 deaths -- by far the most in either measure in the world.
In Latin America, which this week passed the milestone of eight million virus cases, the continent's worst-hit country Brazil charted more than 131,000 deaths from Covid-19 as of Saturday, the second-highest in the world behind the US.
Vaccine trials resume
In Britain, regulators gave pharma company AstraZeneca and Oxford University the all-clear for clinical trials to resume on one of the most advanced experimental Covid-19 vaccines.
Researchers had "voluntarily paused" their vaccine trial after a UK volunteer developed an unexplained illness.
Even during the pause, AstraZeneca said it remained hopeful that the vaccine could still be available "by the end of this year, early next year".
Any fashionistas hoping that New York Fashion Week would provide a distraction from the virus may be in for disappointment, as the event will open with almost no live audiences and few big names.
Regular heavy-hitters Michael Kors, Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren will not attend the event, which will last only three days.
But organisers hope the shows can help support American design houses of all sizes, with many of them teetering on the brink.
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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