Tracking wristbands plan after 57,000 defy quarantine

THE pandemic has now infected more than

1.7 million people worldwide, with an estimated 100,000 deaths recorded.

South Korea: The country has announced plans to strap tracking wristbands on people who defy quarantine orders.

Officials said stricter controls are required because some of the 57,000 people who are under orders to stay at home have slipped out by leaving behind smartphones with tracking apps.

Plans for broader use of wristbands were scaled back after objections by human rights and legal activists.

Authorities reported 32 additional cases of the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, a continued downward trend in new infections in the country.

The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said the additional cases took the country’s total to 10,512.

It said 7,368 patients have recovered and been released from quarantine, while 13,788 are having tests to determine if they have contracted the virus. The centre said South Korea’s death toll from the coronavirus increased by three to 214.

Australia: Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy has said the country is “in a good place” in its fight against the virus as the death toll rose by three to 59.

Mr Murphy said there is “no place in the world I would rather be than Australia at the moment”.

Australia has 6,289 confirmed cases.

Mr Murphy said people in the community are still transmitting the virus so it is necessary to “keep our pressure on and make sure we don’t end up like countries in the world that you have all seen on the news”.

He said the country was “in a good place... but we have to maintain that good place”.

Israel: The government has approved a tight quarantine of several areas of Jerusalem, including the historic Old City, in a bid to slow the spread of the virus in the city’s most susceptible areas.

A ministerial committee approved the shutting down of movement in and out of several predominantly ultra-orthodox areas of the city.

There have been more than 100 deaths in Israel,

The health ministry has documented over 10,000 cases of coronavirus and roughly one- fifth of all cases are in Jerusalem,

The measure faced resistance from ultraorthodox ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government who rejected singling out their constituency.

Japan: The country’s healthcare facilities are being stretched thin amid a surge in virus patients.

Workers’ groups the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine and the Japanese Society for Emergency Medicine issued a joint statement warning about a “collapse of emergency medicine” that may lead to the collapse of medicine overall.

The statement said many hospitals were turning away people brought by ambulance, including those suffering strokes, heart attacks and external injuries. Some who were turned away later turned out to have the coronavirus.

Masks and surgical gowns were running short, the statement said.

Japan has nearly 7,000 virus cases and about 100 deaths. The government has declared a state of emergency, asking people to stay at home.