15,299 269,811 45

people tested positive yesterday

total number of cases

deaths

among countries, with more than 66,000 cases. The figures don’t necessarily account for delays in reporting cases, and are believed to far underestimate actual totals.

Countries in Eastern Europe were among those facing rising waves of new infections, leading to riots in Serbia, mandatory face masks in Croatia and travel bans or quarantines imposed by Hungary.

“We see worrisome signs about an increase in the number of cases in the neighbouring countries, Europe and the whole world,” said Gergely Gulyas, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff.

“Now, we have to protect our own security and prevent the virus from being brought in from abroad.”

Hungarian authorities said they have sorted countries into three categories — red, yellow and green — based on their rates of new coronavirus infections, and will impose restrictions, including entry bans and mandatory quarantines, depending on which country people are arriving from.

Serbia, where health authorities are warning that hospitals are almost full due to the latest surge, reported 287 new infections yesterday, although there have been increasing doubts about the figures.

Officially, the country has more than 18,000 confirmed infections and 382 deaths since March. Yesterday’s report of 11 coronavirus deaths was the country’s second-highest daily death toll.

Serbian police clashed with antigovernment protesters for four nights last week, demonstrations that forced the Serbian president to withdraw plans to reintroduce a coronavirus lockdown. Many of the increasing infections have been blamed on crowded soccer matches, tennis events and nightclubs.

In Bulgaria, authorities reintroduced restrictions lifted a few weeks ago because of a new surge in cases.

Albania also has seen a significant increase in infections since mid-May, when it eased lockdown measures. The Balkan nation reported 93 new cases, over twice as many as the highest daily figures in March and April, and the health ministry called the situation at the main infectious disease hospital “grave”.

Croatia, whose island-dotted Adriatic Sea coast is a major tourist destination, is making wearing masks mandatory in stores beginning today.

Yet the numbers of infections in Eastern Europe pale in comparison to daily coronavirus reports from India, South Africa and Brazil, whose virusdenying president has tested positive.

India, which has the most cases after the United States and Brazil, saw a record surge of 28,637 cases reported in the past 24 hours.

Authorities also announced a weeklong lockdown beginning tomorrow in the key southern technology hub of Bangalore.

South Africa has reported more than 10,000 new daily cases for several days in a row, including 13,497 new infections on Sunday. Johannesburg’s densely populated Soweto township is one of the virus hot spots. With more than 264,000 cases and 3971 deaths, South Africa accounts for more than 40 per cent of coronavirus cases in Africa.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country would return to a ban of alcohol sales to reduce the volume of trauma patients so that hospitals have more beds to treat Covid-19.

The country is also reinstating a night curfew to reduce traffic accidents and has made it mandatory for all residents to wear face masks in public.

A misaligned missile battery, miscommunication between troops and their commanders and a decision to fire without authorisation all led to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shooting down a Ukrainian jetliner in January, killing all 176 people on board, a new report says. The report released by Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation comes months after the January 8 crash near Tehran. Authorities initially denied responsibility, only changing course days later after Western nations presented evidence that Iran had shot down the plane.

Kosovo’s president Hashim Thaci said yesterday he was going to The Hague to prove to prosecutors investigating war crimes allegedly committed during and after a 1998-99 armed conflict in Kosovo between ethnic Albanian separatists and Serbia that he had broken no international laws during the war. Thaci, a Kosovo Liberation Army commander, was mentioned in an indictment together with former Kosovo assembly speaker Kadri Veseli. Both have denied responsibility for war crimes.

Protesters ransacked a building belonging to President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s political party yesterday, underscoring the tensions that remain in Mali, even after the president met one of their top demands. Hours earlier, the president dissolved the constitutional court that had endorsed disputed legislative election results, as demanded by the opposition movement, and was willing to consider redoing contested legislative elections.