A million infected in just 100 hours Cable shows US was worried about Wuhan virus lab
Global Covid-19 cases climb to 14mn, deaths top 600,000; G20 finance ministers discuss recovery
GENEVA/ BEIJING/ LONDON: Global coronavirus infections passed 14 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, marking the first time there has been a surge of a million cases in under 100 hours.
The first case was reported in China in early January and it took three months to reach 1 million cases. It has taken just four days to climb to 14 million Covid-19 cases from 13 million recorded on July 13.
The number of cases globally is around triple that of severe influenza illnesses recorded annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The pandemic has now killed at least 600,000 people in almost seven months, edging towards the upper range of yearly influenza deaths reported worldwide. The first death was reported on
January 10 in Wuhan, China before infections and fatalities then surged in Europe and later in the US.
In China, Xinjiang reported 16 new domestically transmitted cases for Friday, health authorities said on Saturday as the country readies to battle a new front against the outbreak in the remote northwestern region.
The jump in cases followed one new case, and eight more asymptomatic ones. All the cases have been reported from the regional capital Urumqi, and at least 269 people in the city have been put under medical observation.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is moving to cancel the next two-week sitting of parliament because of the recent spread of the virus.
Parliament has been scheduled to meet on August 4-13 and then sit again for a two-week session starting August 24.
Morrison said on Saturday that he has written to the parliamentary speaker asking for a cancellation, but the request is considered only a formality.
SAUDI HOSTS G20 TALKS ON RECOVERY, DEBT
G20 finance ministers and central bankers held talks on Saturday aimed at spurring global economic recovery from a recession amid calls to widen debt relief for crisis-hit poor countries.
The virtual talks, hosted by Saudi Arabia, come as the surging pandemic continues to batter the global economy and campaigners warn of a looming debt crisis across poverty-wracked developing nations.
The ministers and bankers seek to “discuss the global economic outlook and coordinate collective action for a robust economic recovery,” G20 organisers in Riyadh said in a statement.
WASHINGTON: The United States has released an internal diplomatic cable that had triggered speculation among officials of the Trump administration that the Covid-19 outbreak might have started because of an accident at a virology lab in Wuhan.
Officials of the US embassy in China, who wrote this cable in January 2018 after a visit to the Wuhan facility, had raised concerns in the state department cable about “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory”.
Though the lab in Wuhan could study Sars-like coronaviruses extracted from bats, it needed the permission of designated authority to research strains that could infect humans, officials wrote in the cable, whose release was secured by The Washington Post this week through a lawsuit.
The cable, however, did not prove if the new coronavirus indeed came from the Wuhan facility. “I don’t see any evidence to support the idea that this was released deliberately or inadvertently,” Ian Lipkin, the director of Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity, told The Washington Post after being being made aware of the content of the cable. “You can’t just say someone is guilty of accidentally releasing a virus. You have to prove it.”
In recent days, the Trump administration hasn’t pushed the Wuhan lab origin theory much, but it has continued to blame China for the pandemic. Both US President Donald Trump and secretary of state Mike Pompeo have called the pathogen “Chinese virus” and “Wuhan virus”.
Covid-19 infections, meantime, are soaring in the United States, with nearly 78,000 new cases reported in the last 24 hours and 843 new deaths. Texas, Florida, Arizona and other southern states are the worst hit. ICUS are running to full capacity in some of the worst affected counties, and, in a repeat of the grim situation in New York some weeks ago, refrigerated trucks are being used to store bodies because of overwhelmed morgues.
Americans debated mask mandates and the reopening of schools as the country’s top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci and Trump yet again sparred, this time over the need to use masks.
While Fauci urged political leaders to “be as forceful as possible in getting your citizenry to wear masks”, Trump said he didn’t believe in issuing a nationwide mask mandate.