Cases top 18mn, curfew in Melbourne
GENEVA: Covid-19 cases topped 18 million on Sunday, as the World Health Organization warned the pandemic would be lengthy and could lead to “response fatigue”.
A strict curfew began in Melbourne as Australia’s Victoria state struggled with mounting cases , while infections in South Africa, the hardest-hit in African continent, topped half a million.
Melbourne, the second-biggest city in Australia, banned people from moving more than five kilometres from home as the virus is infecting hundreds daily. Declaring a “state of disaster”, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said Melbourne would move to Stage 4 restrictions until September 13 given “unacceptably high” levels of community transmission.
The harshest rules in Australia to date will see city residents face a curfew from 8 pm to 5 am for the next six weeks. Only those carrying out essential work, or seeking or providing care, will be allowed out.
Six months after the UN health agency declared a global emergency, the novel coronavirus has killed more than 680,000 people.
Even as South Africa accounted for more than half of diagnosed infections in Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the fatality rate is lower than the global average. Health authorities had been expecting a surge in cases after the gradual loosening of a strict lockdown that was imposed at the end of March.
An emergency WHO committee reviewing the pandemic “highlighted the anticipated lengthy duration of the outbreak, noting the importance of sustained community, national, regional, and global response efforts”.
“WHO continues to assess the global risk level of Covid-19 to be very high,” it said in its latest statement. The agency also said the effects of the pandemic “will be felt for decades to come”.
Mexico overtook Britain to become the third hardest hit country in virus deaths - after Brazil and the US- with more than 46,600 fatal cases. Although many
Latin American countries have begun relaxing stay-at-home measures, the virus is still spreading quickly across much of the region, which has now recorded more than four million cases and almost 200,000 deaths. Half of them are in Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro said he believes “nearly everyone” will catch the virus eventually, after himself recovering from it.
The US, the hardest-hit country in the world, has now tallied more than 4.6 million cases and 154,319 deaths.
The outlook was bleak in Asia as well, where India and the Philippines reported record increases in new daily infections.
The pandemic has spurred a race for a vaccine with several
Chinese companies at the forefront, while Russia has set a target date of September to roll out its own medicine.
Seven Chinese health officials were due to arrive in Hong Kong on Sunday, the first members of a 60-person team that will carry out widespread testing for Covid-19 in the territory as it races to halt a third wave of illness. China’s National Health Commission on Saturday announced their scheduled arrival. Some local residents fear China may use this as an excuse to collect DNA samples for surveillance purposes.
Iran, battling the Middle East’s deadliest outbreak, on Sunday also reported its highest singleday infection count in nearly a month. Health ministry said 2,685 more people had tested positive in the past 24 hours.
SCIENTISTS STUDY CASES IN MINKS IN EUROPE
outbreaks at mink farms in Spain and the Netherlands have scientists digging into how the animals got infected and if they can spread it to people.
Authorities have killed more than 1 million minks at breeding farms in both countries as a precaution. The outbreaks among the minks on the farms in the Netherlands and Spain likely started with infected workers, although officials aren’t certain. But it also is “plausible” that some workers later caught the virus back from the minks.