THIRD WAVE BITES
LONDON: Terrifying new outbreaks of COVID-19 are causing alarm all over the world, as Asian case numbers explode, much of Europe is under attack from the fastspreading English variant — and China has put a city of 11 million into total lockdown.
Elsewhere, Canada and Lebanon ordered night-time curfews, and countries from South Africa to Mexico registered record daily deaths.
The World Health Organisation has warned that European nations need to ramp up efforts to deal with the new variant of the virus that first emerged in England and is spreading much more quickly than other strains.
“This is an alarming situation,” said WHO Europe chief Hans Kluge.
The global outbreak shows no signs of abating, with more than 1.8 million people known to have died worldwide so far from a staggering 86 million confirmed cases.
Japan’s outbreak has not been as severe as those in Europe and the US, but the government announced a month-long state of emergency in the capital region, with new rules targeting restaurants and bars.
The minister in charge of Japan’s pandemic response warned that Tokyo’s medical system was “stretched thin”, a major worry for a city gearing up to host the Olympic Games later this year.
Transport services were cut off to a city of 11 million people near Beijing as local officials were reprimanded for an outbreak that pushed the number of new infections in China to the highest singleday tally since July.
A recent outbreak in northern Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, has led to cases spiking and prompted mass testing, school closures and the suspension of travel links to the province.
The vast majority of inbound and outbound flights to the city of Shijiazhuang have been cancelled, and no trains are allowed to leave Shijiazhuang station.
Major roads leading the city, about 300km south of Beijing, have been closed and intercity buses halted.
All over the world, experts see mass vaccinations as the best route back to normality, but the first rollouts have coincided with alarming rises in deaths and caseloads.
Spain’s total number of infections surged past 2 million as cases jumped after the Christmas holidays, with another 42,360 COVID cases in the past 48 hours.
France said it had confirmed two clusters of the mutant British coronavirus strain — one in a care home in the western French region of Brittany, and the other in a southern Paris suburb.
Quebec, Canada’s hardesthit province, toughened its restrictions with a night-time curfew. It was the first such order in the country for more than a century.
Britain began its third hard lockdown, despite being praised for a relatively rapid rollout of jabs. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing a more acute crisis than his European neighbours, with London’s hospitals set to be overwhelmed within two weeks.
In a rare piece of good news, the Chinese-developed vaccine, CoronaVac, showed at least 78 per cent effectiveness in final-stage clinical trials in Brazil.
Approvals are being sought as soon as possible.