Virus rallies as countries open their borders, businesses

BEIRUT — An unforeseen summer surge of coronavirus cases in countries that had seemingly quelled their outbreaks is helping to drive the unrelenting growth of the global pandemic, undercutting predictions that a “second wave” would not occur until the fall.

Japan, Israel, Lebanon and Hong Kong are among dozens of places reporting record numbers of new cases in recent days, many weeks after they had crushed the curve of infections, reopened their economies and moved on.

And in some countries that had brought numbers down, notably in Europe, the reopening of borders, bars and nightclubs is being blamed for a small but noticeable increase in cases.

In Belgium and Spain, the number of daily infections has surpassed levels not seen since early May, prompting authorities to reimpose some recently lifted restrictions.

“I’m afraid you are starting to see in some places the signs of a second wave of the pandemic,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday, referring to Europe, as he sought to justify reimposing quarantine measures on travelers from Spain. Britain also is seeing more cases.

The United States, Brazil and India are still fueling the bulk of the pandemic’s growth, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the new cases reported globally over the past week. Many other countries, including in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, have not yet reached a peak in infections, officials at the World Health Organization say.

Most places experiencing new waves of coronavirus cases still lag far behind the United States, Brazil and some other parts of the world in per capita rates of infection. Japan, for instance, has only around 230 infections per 1 million people, compared with more than 13,000 infections per 1 million people in the United States.

But since the beginning of July, the number of new cases in Japan has climbed by more than 60 percent, a growth rate equivalent to the United States’, alarming a country that had trumpeted the “Japanese model” for containing the virus.

“We now have got an epicenter developing within Japan. Unless we stop it with a full force as a nation, I worry that we might go the same way as New York or Milan,” said Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the University of Tokyo who is leading a research project on the virus.

In Australia and some other places such as Hong Kong and Israel, all of which had appeared to defeat the virus, infections are growing twice as quickly as in the United States, or even faster, suggesting there is no end in sight to the virus’s spread. A million new infections are now being reported every four days worldwide, pushing the total to well over 16 million cases.