Europe sees cases rising
PARIS — France’s coronavirus infection rate crept higher Saturday and Spain cracked down on nightlife, but Germany was confident enough to send a cruise ship out to sea with 1,200 passengers for a weekend test of how the cruise industry can begin to resume.
French health authorities said the closely-watched “R” gauge is now up to 1.3, suggesting that infected people are contaminating 1.3 people on average. That means the virus still has enough victims to keep on going instead of petering out.
France’s daily new infections are also rising — up to 1,130 on Friday. Health authorities warned that the country is going backward in its battle against the pandemic, which has already killed at least 30,195 people in the country and that infection indicators now resemble those seen in May, when France was coming out of its strict two-month lockdown.
“We have thus erased much of the progress that we’d achieved in the first weeks of lockdown-easing,” health authorities said, adding that the French appear to be letting down their guard during their summer vacations and those testing positive are making less of an effort to self-isolate.
They appealed for a return to “collective discipline,” asking people to work from home and get tested if they have any suspicions of infection.
In Spain, Catalonia became the latest region to crack down on nightlife, trying to tamp down on new infection clusters. The northeast region home to Barcelona ordered all nightclubs to close for 15 days and put a midnight curfew on bars in the greater Barcelona area and other towns around Lleida that have become contagion hot zones.
Spain has reported over 900 new daily infections for the last two days as authorities warn that the country that lost over 28,000 lives before getting its outbreak under control could face a second major outbreak.
Despite the concerns, some European countries kept up their gradual reopenings Saturday.
Swimming pools and gyms in England were back in business as public health officials extolled the benefits of exercise in fighting COVID-19. Britain announced a fresh attack on obesity as part of the move, hoping that a fitter nation might be able to minimize the impact of future waves of the virus.
A German cruise ship set sail for the first time since the industry was shut down. “Mein Schiff 2” sailed from the port of Hamburg toward Norway on Friday night, and passengers will spend the weekend at sea with no land stops before returning to Germany on Monday. The ship had only 1,200 people on board compared with its normal 2,900 capacity.
In other parts of the world, the pandemic appeared to have the upper hand.
India, which has the world’s third-highest infections behind the United States and Brazil, reported its death toll rose by 740 to 30,601. It saw a surge of more than 49,000 new cases, raising its total to over 1.2 million.
South Africa, Africa’s hardest-hit country, reported more than 13,000 new cases, raising its total to over 408,000.
Worldwide, more than 15.7 million infections and over 640,000 deaths have been reported, according to data compiled from government announcements by Johns Hopkins University.