Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Sun Belt states are emerging as broad hot spot
Globally, WHO warns of ‘new and dangerous phase’
Arizona and Florida reported their biggest increases in new covid-19 cases since the pandemic began, more signs that the outbreak is worsening in U.S. Sun Belt states. The head of the World Health Organization warned of “a new and dangerous phase.”
Separately, GlaxoSmithKline PLC’s covid-19 vaccine partnership with Clover Biopharmaceuticals started tests on humans.
The global coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, with a record 150,000 cases reported Thursday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday.
Almost half of the new cases came from the Americas, where the outbreak continues to rage, Tedros said during the WHO’s daily briefing. The agency called on countries and residents to remain vigilant, maintain social-distancing efforts, cover coughs, stay home if sick and wear masks in public.
All countries must commit to finding new infections, testing close contacts and isolating those who are sick, he said.
“The world is in a new and dangerous phase,” Tedros said. “Many people are understandably fed up with being at home. Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and economies. But the virus is still spreading fast. It is still deadly and most people are still susceptible.”
Meanwhile, Britain low
ered its coronavirus threat level one notch Friday to Level 3, becoming the latest country to claim it’s getting a national outbreak under control. And China’s capital shouldn’t loosen restrictions even though it probably saw a peak in cases, top virus expert Wu Zunyou said.
The U.K.’s Joint Biosecurity Center recommended moving the covid-19 risk in the country from the second-highest level, 4 — meaning transmission is high or rising exponentially — to level 3, where an epidemic is in general circulation.
Health officials say there’s been a steady decrease in cases across the U.K. but localized outbreaks are still likely. Britain has Europe’s highest pandemic death toll with more than 42,000 virus-related deaths and over 300,000 confirmed cases.
Lowering the alert level was “a big moment for the country, and a real testament to the British people’s determination to beat this virus,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.
As of Friday, the new coronavirus has infected more than 8.6 million people worldwide and killed more than 458,000, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
EXPERTS ALARMED BY U.S.
In the United States, which has reported the most confirmed cases at more than 2.2 million and 119,000 deaths, states have pushed ahead with emerging from full or partial pandemic shutdowns despite surges in new cases in many places, including Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and California.
Health experts in countries with falling case numbers are watching with a growing sense of alarm and disbelief, with many wondering why virus-stricken U.S. states continue to reopen.
“It really does feel like the U.S. has given up,” said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand — a country that has confirmed only three new cases over the past three weeks and where citizens have now largely returned to their routines.
“I can’t imagine what it must be like having to go to work knowing it’s unsafe,” Wiles said of the U.S.-wide economic reopening. “It’s hard to see how this ends. There are just going to be more and more people infected, and more and more deaths. It’s heartbreaking.”
A headline on the website of Germany’s public broadcaster read: “Has the U.S. given up its fight against coronavirus?” Switzerland’s conservative Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper concluded, “U.S. increasingly accepts rising covid-19 numbers.”
“The only thing one can say with certainty: There’s nothing surprising about this development,” a journalist wrote in the paper, referring to crowded U.S. beaches and pools during Memorial Day weekend in May.
TRUMP RALLY IN SPOTLIGHT
450, double the record-setting number reported two days earlier. Tulsa County, where President Donald Trump plans a rally today at an indoor arena, remained the state’s leading hot spot with 120 new cases for a total of 1,825.
The new wave comes amid demonstrations to protest police killings of black citizens and ahead of weekend Juneteenth celebrations marking the end of slavery in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the president maintains that the country will not shut down a second time, although a surge in cases has convinced governors in some states, including Arizona, to walk back their opposition to mandatory face coverings in public.
Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma said he will wear a mask while attending Trump’s re-election rally in Tulsa, although organizers aren’t requiring attendees to cover their faces with masks that will be distributed at the event.
“I’ll be wearing a mask most of the time. I’ll have it off some of the time,” Lankford said Friday on CBS This Morning. “I assume that I’m going to have it on a lot of the time.”
Lankford compared the rally to “protests, like other events, like shopping, like malls that are open,” and people who are at high risk should make sure “they are taking care of themselves.”
Meanwhile, American Airlines Group Inc. removed a passenger who refused to wear a face covering and banned him from taking flights in the future, after U.S. carriers pledged to boost enforcement of mask use. The man, Brandon Straka, won’t be allowed to fly on the airline until face coverings are no longer required, the company said.
Straka, a conservative activist with about 400,000 followers on Twitter, posted a video saying he had been kicked off the flight for not wearing a mask and accused American’s employees of intimidating him.
GERMANY, OTHERS SEE SPIKES
Meanwhile, Germany on Friday reported the country’s highest daily increase in virus cases in a month after managing to contain its outbreak better than comparable large European nations.
The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control center, listed 770 new confirmed cases, taking the country’s total to more than 190,000.
A flurry of positive tests this week from an outbreak at a slaughterhouse in the western region of Guetersloh contributed the biggest daily increase since May 20.
The German government has stuck to its course of gradually reopening the country while seeking to clamp down swiftly on localized outbreaks.
A free app launched Tuesday to help trace people who may have been exposed to the virus has already been downloaded 9.6 million times in Germany, which has a population of 83 million.
Japan released a similar app Friday, also using technology developed by Apple and Google. Officials say data will be recorded and stored only in individual users’ phones and deleted after 14 days to protect their privacy.
“We hope a widespread use of this app will lead to prevention of infections,” Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said.
Tokyo found 35 cases of coronavirus Friday, 11 of which are associated with nightlife districts, NTV reported, citing an unidentified person. Tokyo has effectively lifted all its restrictions on business, allowing bars and restaurants to open all night. The so-called “Tokyo Alert” system that was introduced to urge its residents to raise vigilance against the virus was terminated Friday.
Japan agreed with Vietnam to work toward a staged easing of travel restrictions between the two countries.
Virus cases surged in Latin America, with Mexico seeing a daily record of new infections and Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro saying he would “radicalize” lockdown measures in Caracas.
Singaporeans were able to wine and dine at restaurants, work out at the gym and socialize with up to five people at a time as of Friday, after the city-state removed most of its restrictions.
After at first appearing to have been a model for containing the virus, the country of only 5.8 million has one of the highest infection rates in Asia with more than 41,000 cases, mostly linked to foreign workers’ dorms. Authorities say such cases have declined, with no new large clusters and a stable number of other cases despite a partial reopening two weeks ago.
CHINA TAMPS DOWN OUTBREAK
The reopening of stores and other public places has been blamed for touching off fresh spikes in infections in a
number of countries, raising questions for governments about how to tread the line between keeping economic and social life going while avoiding unnecessary deaths.
China declared a fresh outbreak in Beijing under control after confirming 25 new cases among some 360,000 people tested. That was up by just four from a day earlier.
A Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention official said the number of cases was expected to fall soon in an outbreak centered on Beijing’s main wholesale market. So far Beijing has confirmed 183 new cases over the past week.
The 25 new cases reported Friday in Beijing were among 32 nationwide in China, four of them in people who had returned from overseas.
Such outbreaks are inevitable, Wu Zunyou of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said at a news conference. But he stressed that prevention measures should not slacken.
China agreed with the World Health Organization that there is “very little” risk for the coronavirus to be transmitted by food, Song Yueqian, a customs administration official, said at a briefing. Samples taken from food imports this month all tested negative.
Beijing suspended classes and put opening-up plans for everything from sports events to art exhibitions on hold. Bus travel to other regions was suspended.
China reported more than 84,000 cases as of Friday, with more than 4,600 deaths.
S. KOREA, KENYA SEE SPIKES
In South Korea, outbreaks have inspired second-guessing on whether officials were too quick to ease social distancing guidelines in April after a first wave of infections waned. Officials reported 49 cases of covid-19 on Friday as the virus continues to spread in the densely populated capital area of Seoul, where half of its 51 million people live.
About 30 to 50 new cases have been confirmed per day since late May. There have been more than 12,000 cases reported in South Korea as of Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University, with just 280 deaths.
The aid group Doctors without Borders said Friday that at least 10 cases of covid-19 were confirmed at one of the world’s largest refugee camps, the sprawling Dadaab complex in Kenya.
Humanitarian organizations have warned that the virus could have devastating impacts on crowded refugee camps, especially as travel restrictions have made the delivery of aid increasingly difficult.
At the Kakuma camp in Kenya, which recorded its first case this month, Congolese refugee Aisha Regina said that if the virus spreads there, “then all of us will perish. There is no space where one can stay away from the other.”
Information for this article was contributed by Jill Lawless, Frank Jordans, Royston Chan and Elaine Kurtenbach of The Associated Press; by Rick Noack of The Washington Post; and by Bloomberg News.