Rise in infections shows need for vigilance as world reopens
European countries reopened borders yesterday after a three-month coronavirus shutdown, although international visitors are still being kept away and there was uncertainty over whether many Europeans will quickly embrace travel outside their home countries.
Reopening continued in Mexico and Brazil despite cases climbing in the two largest nations in Latin America. In the United States, VicePresident Mike Pence encouraged governors to highlight the “good news” around efforts to fight the virus despite several states reporting a rise in infections.
The need for constant vigilance came into sharp focus as China, where Covid-19 first emerged in December, rushed to contain an outbreak in the capital of Beijing.
The head of the World Health Organisation said more than 100,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus have been reported globally each day in the past two weeks, and countries that have curbed transmissions “must stay alert to the possibility of resurgence”.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that it took more than two months to reach 100,000 reported cases, now a daily norm. Each day, nearly three-fourths of the new cases come from 10 countries — mostly in South Asia and the Americas, he said.
Pence said in a private call with governors that except for a few places, the US is seeing strong drops in virus-related hospitalisation and mortality rates.
In audio of the call obtained by the Associated Press, Pence urged governors to make it clear to residents that “there’s a lot of really, really good news”.
White House officials have played down the severity of the virus surge in places like Arizona and Texas.
Yesterday, the nation’s secondmost-populated state set a one-day high in hospitalisations of coronavirus patients for the seventh time in eight days. Arizona’s hospitals were at about 82 per cent capacity.
Meanwhile, Germany and France dropped border checks nearly two weeks after Italy opened its frontiers.
The European Union’s 27 nations and other European states aren’t expected to start reopening to visitors from outside the continent until at least the beginning of July and possibly later.
In Beijing, where an outbreak was traced to a market that supplies much of the city’s meat and vegetables, thousands lined up for tests.
Authorities confirmed 106 cases since Saturday in what looks to be the largest outbreak since China largely stopped its spread at home more than two months ago.