Britain lowers coronavirus threat level
Reopenings blamed for fresh spikes in infections in several countries
BERLIN— Britain lowered its coronavirus threat level one notch Friday, becoming the latest country to claim it’s getting a national outbreak under control.
The U.K.’s Joint Biosecurity Centre recommended moving the COVID-19 risk in the country from the second-highest level, 4 — meaning transmission is high or rising exponentially — to level 3, where an epidemic is in general circulation.
Health officials say there’s been a steady decrease in cases across the U.K., but localized outbreaks are still likely. Britain has Europe’s highest pandemic death toll, with more than 42,000 virus-related deaths and over 300,000 confirmed cases.
Lowering the alert level was “a big moment for the country, and a real testament to the British people’s determination to beat this virus,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.
Meanwhile, Germany on Friday reported the country’s highest daily increase in virus cases in a month after managing to contain its outbreak better than comparable large European countries.
The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control centre, listed 770 new confirmed cases, taking the country’s total to 188,534.
A flurry of positive tests this week from an outbreak at a slaughterhouse in the western region of Guetersloh contributed the biggest daily increase since May 20. The German government has stuck to its course of gradually reopening the country while seeking to clamp down swiftly on localized outbreaks.
A free app launched Tuesday to help trace people who may have been exposed to the virus has already been downloaded 9.6 million times in Germany, which has a population of 83 million.
Japan released a similar app Friday, also using technology developed by Apple and Google. Officials say data will only be recorded and stored in individual users’ phones and deleted after14 days to protect their privacy.
“We hope a widespread use of this app will lead to prevention of infections,” Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said.
Singaporeans were able to wine and dine at restaurants, work out at the gym and socialize with up to five people at a time as of Friday, after the citystate removed most of its pandemic lockdown restrictions.
“It was a long-awaited experience,” said Thomas Tan, a 34year-old customer service officer eating in an outdoor market. “It’s good to be able to eat outside with friends, but there still must be social distancing.”
After at first appearing to have been a model for containing the virus, the country of 5.8 million has one of the highest infection rates in Asia with 41,473 cases, mostly linked to foreign workers’ dorms. Authorities say such cases have declined, with no new large clusters and a stable number of other cases despite a partial economic reopening two weeks ago.
The reopening of stores and other public places has been blamed for touching off fresh spikes in infections in a number of countries, raising questions about how to tread the line between keeping economic and social life going while avoiding unnecessary deaths.
China declared a fresh outbreak in Beijing under control after confirming 25 new cases among some 360,000 people tested.
That was up by just four from a day earlier.
A Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention official said the number of cases was expected to fall soon in an outbreak centred on Beijing’s main wholesale market. So far, Beijing has confirmed 183 new cases over the past week.
The 25 new cases reported Friday in Beijing were among 32 countrywide in China, four of them in Chinese who had returned from overseas.
Such outbreaks are inevitable, Wu Zunyou of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention told a news conference. But he stressed that prevention measures should not slacken.
Beijing suspended classes and put opening-up plans for everything from sports events to art exhibitions on hold. Bus travel to other regions was suspended to prevent the spread of the outbreak.
The pandemic is waxing and waning in many places, with numbers of cases soaring in Indonesia and India, Brazil and Mexico but appearing to be under control or contained in Thailand, Japan, Vietnam and New Zealand.
India recorded 13,586 newly confirmed cases on Friday, raising its total to 380,532. Still, shops, malls, factories and places of worship have been allowed to reopen while schools and cinemas remain shuttered.
Infections surged in rural areas after hundreds of thousands of migrant workers left cities after losing jobs in a lockdown announced in late March. Such precautions are now restricted to high-risk “containment” zones.
In South Korea, outbreaks have inspired second-guessing on whether officials were too quick to ease social distancing guidelines in April after a first wave of infections waned.