Worry over new surges
COVID-19: COUNTRIES AROUND GLOBE IMPOSE STRICT NEW LOCKDOWNS ‘The nature of this virus means the world can only be as strong as the weakest health system.’
The United States reported a daily record of Covid-19 deaths and Brazil’s toll passed the bleak milestone of 200 000 on Thursday as new surges of the coronavirus dimmed hopes for respite from the pandemic anytime soon.
Sharp rises in cases around the world have led authorities to impose a slew of new lockdowns and other restrictions, even as dozens of countries roll out the first stages of the vaccination campaigns hailed as the light at the end of the tunnel.
China has imposed emergency measures to tackle an outbreak in the northern city of Shijiazhuang, while Tokyo began a month-long state of emergency yesterday, calling on businesses in the Japanese capital to stop serving alcohol by 7pm and residents to stay home after 8pm.
Canada and Lebanon have ordered night-time curfews, while the World Health Organisation warned that European nations need to ramp up efforts to deal with a new, more contagious strain of the virus that first emerged in England.
The plight of countries struggling to control the virus matters beyond their borders, said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
“The fact is that no one is safe until we are all safe,” it said.
“The nature of this virus means that the world can only be as strong as the weakest health system.”
The global outbreak shows no signs of abating, with nearly 1.9 million people known to have died worldwide and 87 million confirmed cases.
The numbers continued to pile up at an alarming rate in the US, the country with the world’s highest death toll, at more than 360 000.
The US registered a record 3 998 deaths over the past 24 hours, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Brazil, with the second-highest toll, meanwhile reported its second-highest number of daily deaths – 1 524 – on its way to passing the mark of 200 000 people killed by the virus.
The situation stands to get a lot worse in Brazil before it gets better, warned Paulo Lotufo, an epidemiologist at the University of Sao Paulo.
“I don’t even know how we’re going to get through January,” he said. “A lot of health workers are exhausted.”
Brazil is now seeing uncomfortable reminders of the pandemic’s worst days.
In the Amazon rainforest city of Manaus, the health system is again being pushed to the brink, echoing haunting scenes last April of mass graves and corpses piled in refrigerator trucks.
A court ordered the state government to shut nonessential businesses for 15 days.
California has also deployed 166 refrigerated trailers to be used as temporary morgues by overwhelmed hospitals.
The pandemic crushed economic growth last year and France’s finance minister warned that the worst was still to come.
“There will be more bankruptcies in 2021 than in 2020,” said Bruno Le Maire.
The minister in charge of Japan’s pandemic response, meanwhile, warned that Tokyo’s medical system was “stretched thin”, a major worry for a city gearing up to host the Olympic Games in the summer.
In China, authorities have moved swiftly to contain a new cluster of cases in Shijiazhuang, in northern Hebei province, closing schools, cutting travel links and implementing mass testing.
France said it had confirmed 10 cases of the mutant British coronavirus strain – a worrying development which means the more infectious strain could already be circulating more widely in the country. –