WUHAN, WHERE COVID WAS FIRST DETECTED, UNDER LOCKDOWN AGAIN
Delta variant sparks urgent measures as China also suspends flights and trains
BEIJING: China suspended flights and trains, cancelled professional basketball league games and announced mass coronavirus testing in Wuhan on Tuesday as widening outbreaks of the Delta variant reached the city where the disease was first detected in late 2019.
While the total number of cases is still in the hundreds, they are far more widespread than anything China has dealt with since the initial outbreak that devastated Wuhan in early 2020 and over time spread to the rest of the country and the world.
BEIJING: China suspended flights and trains, cancelled professional basketball league games and announced mass coronavirus testing in Wuhan on Tuesday as widening outbreaks of the Delta variant reached the city where the coronavirus disease was first detected in 2019.
While the total number of Covid-19 cases is still in the hundreds, they are far more widespread than anything China has dealt with since the initial outbreak that devastated Wuhan in early 2020 and over time spread to the rest of the country and the world.
Most previous outbreaks didn’t spread far beyond a city or province. This time, cases have been confirmed in more than 35 cities in 17 of China’s 33 provinces and regions.
The cities of Nanjing and Yangzhou have cancelled all domestic flights, and Beijing has halted long-distance trains from 23 stations. The Chinese Basketball Association said that matches of its men’s professional league would be suspended because of the virus.
Wuhan, a provincial capital of 11 million people in central China, is the latest city to undergo citywide testing. Three cases were confirmed there on Monday, its first non-imported cases in more than a year.
They were among 90 new cases confirmed nationwide the previous day, the national health commission said on Tuesday. Of those, 61 were locally spread ones and 29 among people who had recently arrived from abroad.
Most of the local cases are still in Jiangsu province, where an outbreak started at the airport in Nanjing, the provincial capital, and has spread to other parts of he province and beyond. Authorities reported 45 new cases, five in Nanjing and 40 in the city of Yangzhou, 105km away, where a second round of mass testing was underway.
Five other provinces and the cities of Beijing and Shanghai reported new local cases in the single digits. In Shanghai, the nation’s largest city, a driver working at one of its two main airports tested positive. Beijing has reported a total of five cases in recent days.
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Greece is also ready to start administering third doses for vulnerable groups, the elderly or for those with compromised immune systems starting in September once the vaccination commission gives the green light, health minister Vasilis Kikilias said on Tuesday.
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The creation of the reserve assets - known as special drawing rights - is the first since the $250 billion issued just after global financial crisis in 2009.
US, European Union hit vaccination milestones Half of the population of the European Union has been fully vaccinated, according to an AFP tally on Tuesday from official sources.
Nearly 224 million people across the 27 member states have been inoculated, with Spain leading the pack of larger countries with 58.3% of its population vaccinated, followed by Italy (54.4%), France (52.9%) and Germany (52.2%).
In the US, 70% of adults have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, a key milestone in the fight against the pandemic that the country, however, hit nearly a month later than President Joe Biden had hoped.
US Senator Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, said he tested positive for Covid-19 despite being vaccinated, becoming at least the third member of Congress to recently report an infection.