Melbourne sees drop in cases

Official says lockdown restrictions working, urges vigilance

SYDNEY — The coronavirus outbreak centered in Australia’s second-largest city showed a decline in new infections Thursday, but the state’s leader urged continued vigilance.

Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said there were 278 new infections and eight new deaths, down from around 700 daily at the peak of the outbreak.

Andrews said the lower numbers indicate the lockdown restrictions in Melbourne are working but urged people to stay the course.

“We would just caution against any Victorian thinking that we aren’t in the midst of a real marathon,” he said. “This is an endurance race, and we need to stay the course on this.”

Meanwhile, neighboring New South Wales state, which includes Australia’s largest city, Sydney, recorded 12 new cases and one death.

In other developments in the Asia-pacific region:

■ South Korea reported 56 new cases of the coronavirus as new infection clusters continued to pop up across major cities. The figures announced by South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brought the caseload to 14,770, including 305 deaths. Forty-three of the new cases were reported in the Seoul area, while two came from Busan.

■ The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has imposed its first nationwide lockdown because of a virus infection in a returning traveler who had been released from quarantine. The government issued a stay-at-home order for its approximately 750,000 people. It said the lockdown would be enforced from five to 21 days “to identify and isolate all positive cases, immediately breaking the chain of transmission.”

■ New local cases in China fell into the single digits, while Hong Kong saw another rise in hospitalizations and deaths. The National Health Commission said Thursday eight new cases were registered in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. Another 11 were Chinese returning from overseas. Hong Kong reported 62 new cases, up from 33 the day before, along with an additional five deaths.

New Zealand’s first known community outbreak in more than three months grew to 17 cases on Thursday and is expected to increase. Health officials are working to trace where the virus came from, and a lockdown imposed in Auckland could be extended beyond an initial three days. Before the cluster was detected this week, no case of local transmission had been reported in New Zealand in 102 days. All of its other cases were travelers quarantined after arriving from abroad.