Alarm over outbreaks as india hits 1 million cases
FRESH outbreaks of coronavirus, even in places as far flung as China’s western Xinjiang region, are prompting worldwide moves to guard against the pandemic as the number of confirmed cases globally approaches 14 million.
India said it had surpassed one million cases yesterday, third only to the United States and Brazil, with nearly 25,000 deaths.
That followed Brazil’s announcement it has passed two million cases and 76,000 deaths – 1,000 fatalities a day, on average, since late May on a gruesome plateau yet to fall.
India’s milestone drove home concerns over the country’s readiness to deal with an inevitable surge that could overwhelm hospitals and test the country’s feeble health care system.
It comes at a time when several Indian states are imposing focused lockdowns to stem the outbreak amid frantic efforts by local governments to protect the economy.
So far, three states – Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu – have accounted for more than half of total cases.
But in India’s vast countryside, which is much less prepared and with weaker health care, the pandemic is clearly growing.
Nearly a dozen states have imposed restrictions on “containment zones” – areas that can be as small as a few houses or a street.
India’s response to the virus was initially sluggish and then it bought time by locking down its entire population of 1.4 billion people when Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a nationwide lockdown for three weeks on March 24.
The nationwide lockdown, then extended for five more weeks, came at an enormous economic cost amid an unprecedented humanitarian crisis when millions of impoverished migrant workers were forced to return to the countryside due to job losses and hunger.
Elsewhere, China reported nine imported cases yesterday.
Health officials in Xinjiang reported six confirmed cases of local transmission and said another 11 people tested positive but were asymptomatic – China does not include asymptomatic cases in its totals.
The Muslim-majority region is so far from Beijing that residents operate by their own, unofficial timezone and had until now been little affected by outbreaks elsewhere that appear to have been brought under control.
Health officials said all the cases emerged from among people who had earlier been placed under isolation and close monitoring in the regional capital, Urumqi.
Another 135 people are being monitored in isolation in the city of 3.5 million.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, largescale restrictions in its capital are set to continue as new Covid-19 cases rise, with cinemas and other indoor entertainment spaces to remain closed.
As of Thursday, 15,636 cases with 713 deaths had been recorded in the capital, Jakarta.
The city imposed sweeping social restrictions on April 10 but relaxed some of them two months later.
Indonesia as a whole has reported nearly 82,000 coronavirus cases and more than 3,800 deaths.
South Africa now has the world’s sixth highest reported caseload with 324,221, accounting for more than half the total confirmed in Africa.
Many are clustered in South Africa’s densely populated Gauteng province, home of Johannesburg and a quarter of the country’s population.
In South Korea, officials said they might be making headway in capping outbreaks that have expanded from the capital, Seoul.
Its Centres for Disease Control and Prevention still reported 60 newly confirmed infections, including 39 linked to people arriving from abroad.
But a senior Health Ministry official, Yoon Tae-ho, told reporters imported cases are less of a concern than local ones because they will be caught in a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all people arriving from abroad.
All are to be tested within three days.
More than 13.7 million infections have been confirmed worldwide and nearly 590,000 have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
The actual numbers are likely higher for various reasons, including limited testing.
Two-week quarantines are becoming the norm and many governments have been rolling back reopenings and tightening restrictions to try to stave off further waves of new cases.
Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, announced increased pandemic restrictions on Friday after detecting eight new Covid19 cases in a cluster that began in a Sydney pub and was traced to a visitor from Melbourne.
Around 42 cases have since been linked to that cluster.
Authorities had hoped fresh controls might bring the infection count to a plateau, as Melbourne reported a record 428 new Covid-19 cases yesterday.
Coronavirus has also been surging in hot spots around the US, with record numbers of confirmed infections and deaths in the south and west.
Texas reported 10,000 new cases for the third straight day and 129 additional deaths.
A third of its more than 3,400 total Covid-19 fatalities came in the first two weeks of July alone.
Florida reached another ominous record, with 156 virus deaths and a 13,965 new cases.