Global cases trend upwards as Italy rolls out lockdowns
ROME: New coronavirus cases rose worldwide for a third straight week even though the death toll from Covid-19 continued a steady drop. Countries from India to Italy are seeing a resurgence, and hotspots are emerging in places like Papua New Guinea that had seemingly escaped the pandemic last year.
Half of Italy’s regions have gone into the strictest form of lockdown in a bid to curb the latest spike in coronavirus infections that have brought Covid-19 hospital admissions beyond manageable thresholds.
Schools and retail shops were shuttered on Monday in nine regions and the autonomous province of Trento, with restaurants open only for take-out. The “red zones” were imposed up and down the peninsula, from Lombardy in the north to Puglia in the south, with the Lazio region around the capital Rome in between.
The rest of the country was placed under a lesser “orange” level lockdown, while lucky Sardinia remained “white” thanks to its ability to control new clusters of the virus traced to the variant first identified in Britain.
Hong Kong sent hundreds of people, including a playgroup of infants, into quarantine and locked down more residential areas as it tried to contain a m outbreak that began in a gym last week. The number of confirmed cases linked to the outbreak has spiked to 109 since the first infection was reported on March 10.
It also expanded its vaccination campaign to young adults aged 30 years old and above after the vast majority of people in its priority groups shied away from taking a shot.
A Sydney hotel quarantine worker tested positive, ending the city’s run of 55 days without a case of local transmission.
Austria’s health minister said he’s observing “the start of a third wave” in the country.
Germany’s seven-day incidence rate rose to 82.9 per 100,000 people on Monday, the highest in almost six weeks, according to the country’s RKI health institute.
The rate’s continued rise comes as the Robert Koch Institute is predicting a steep increase in new cases starting this week. In a report on Friday, it warned that cases linked to virus variants would reach 350 per 100,000 residents in the week after Easter.