China has recorded the biggest surge in daily Covid-19 cases since April, as Australia recorded its worst ever daily infection tally, centred on an outbreak in the city of Melbourne.
China’s 61 new cases were propelled by clusters in three separate regions that have sparked fears of a fresh wave. Forty-one cases (nearly 70%) were in the north-western Xinjiang region, according to the National Health Commission, where a sudden outbreak in the regional capital of Urumqi occurred in mid-July.
Liaoning province in the north-east had 14 cases and neighbouring Jilin had two. Both provinces border North Korea. It’s the first time there has been a case in Jilin since late May.
On Sunday a second wave of mass testing was launched in Urumqi to detect residents who had previously tested false negative, according to the state-run Global Times. It followed a mass testing effort earlier this month, in which some 65% of residents have been tested so far, according to a local press conference on Friday.
Experts still have not confirmed the origin of the recent Xinjiang cluster, which has infected 178 people to date. The fresh infections in Jilin were announced just days after President Xi Jinping concluded a tour of the province last week.
In Australia, the premier of the state of Victoria pleaded with citizens not to go to work if they had even the mildest symptoms, after 532 new cases helped set a daily record for the country. Of the six new deaths recorded in the state, five were in aged care facilities.
Melbourne and the adjacent Mitchell Shire are nearly halfway through a six-week lockdown, but premier Daniel Andrews flagged further restrictions could be introduced. The state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, warned of further deaths to come in aged care homes, where there are hundreds of cases across multiple homes.
“The residents in these facilities will be people’s parents, grandparents, great grandparents and they are at significant risk of dying. That’s an inescapable fact in these settings,” Sutton said, adding that the mortality in aged care outbreaks was “extremely high”.
The neighbouring state of New South Wales, Australia’s most populous, reported 17 new cases on Monday, eight of which were returned travellers in quarantine.
India has recorded 50,000 new daily cases of Covid-19 for the first time, according to a Times of India tally of state totals. It said it capped the end of the country’s deadliest week of the pandemic. The paper also reported that total cases had grown by 28% to 1.4 million and the death toll had jumped by 19%. In July alone, the capital, Delhi, added 2 million new cases.
The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, urged citizens to be “extra vigilant” in his monthly radio address on Sunday: “We have to bear in mind that corona is as fatal today as it was in the beginning – that’s why we have to be fully cautious.”
On Monday, Modi is to launch three new “high throughput” Covid-19 testing facilities – in Noida on the eastern outskirts of Delhi, in Mumbai and Kolkata – to increase testing capacity.
The US has recorded five thousand deaths from Covid-19 in five days, as cases surge in southern and western states. Across the country there are 4.2 million infections and the death toll is nearing 150,000.
Talks continued in Washington over what to put into the next coronavirus stimulus package. With the presidential election 100 days away, an Associated Press-NORC poll on Sunday showed just 32% of Americans approved of President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic, while just 38% said the economy was in good shape.
In other coronavirus developments:
-
Global infections stand at just under 16.2 million, with nearly 650,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins figures.
-
Vietnam plans to evacuate 80,000 tourists from the central city of Danang after an outbreak there, a government statement said.
-
Japan’s economy minister says the government will urge businesses to aim for 70% telecommuting and enhance other social distancing measures amid a rise in cases among workers, some infected during after-work socialising, Reuters reports.
-
Cases in Papua New Guinea have nearly doubled in a weekend, with the emerging pandemic threatening to overwhelm the country’s already-fragile healthcare system.
-
New Zealand has reported zero cases of Covid-19 for the third day in a row.
-
Mexico’s Health Ministry on Sunday reported 5,480 new confirmed cases and 306 additional fatalities, bringing its total to 390,516 cases and 43,680 deaths.
source https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/27/global-report-china-reports-biggest-covid-19-surge-in-months-as-australia-sets-new-infections-record
0 تعليقات