The US on Thursday reported a daily record of COVID-19 deaths and Brazil’s toll passed the bleak milestone of 200,000, while China yesterday sealed off two cities, as new surges of COVID-19 dimmed hopes for respite from the pandemic any time soon.
Sharp rises in cases around the world have led authorities to impose a slew of new lockdowns and other restrictions, even as dozens of countries roll out the first stages of the vaccination campaigns hailed as the light at the end of the tunnel.
China has imposed lockdowns to tackle outbreaks in Hebei Province, while Tokyo began a month-long state of emergency yesterday, calling on businesses to stop serving alcohol by 7pm and residents to stay home after 8pm.
Photo: Reuters
Hebei has seen 127 new COVID-19 cases, plus an additional 183 asymptomatic infections, in the past week, authorities said.
The vast majority were in Shijiazhuang, while nine confirmed cases were in the neighboring city of Xingtai.
Residents were banned from leaving unless absolutely necessary, Hebei authorities announced yesterday.
Canada and Lebanon have ordered nighttime curfews, while the WHO warned that European nations need to ramp up efforts to deal with a new, more contagious strain of the virus that first emerged in the UK.
The plight of countries struggling to control the virus matters beyond their borders, said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
“The fact is that no one is safe until we are all safe,” it said. “The nature of this virus means that the world can only be as strong as the weakest health system.”
The global outbreak shows no signs of abating, with nearly 1.9 million people known to have died worldwide and 87 million confirmed cases.
The numbers continued to pile up at an alarming rate in the US, the country with the world’s highest death toll, at more than 360,000.
The US registered a record 3,998 deaths over 24 hours, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Brazil, the country with the second-highest toll, reported its second-highest number of daily deaths — 1,524 — on its way to passing the mark of 200,000 people killed by the virus.
The situation stands to get a worse before it gets better, warned Paulo Lotufo, an epidemiologist at the University of Sao Paulo.
“I don’t even know how we’re going to get through January,” he said.
“A lot of health workers are exhausted. People have had to deal with a huge amount of suffering,” he added.
In the Amazon rainforest city of Manaus, the health system is again being pushed to the brink, echoing haunting scenes last April of mass graves and corpses piled in refrigerator trucks.
As the authorities again deployed refrigerator trucks, a court ordered the state government to shut nonessential businesses for 15 days.
VIGILANCE: While two of the cases are family members of a nurse, there is no sign of community spread and the source of infection is identifiable, the CECC said The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported four new domestic COVID-19 cases associated with a cluster infection at a Taoyuan hospital. Since the first case was identified on Tuesday last week, five healthcare workers — two doctors and three nurses — at the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Taoyuan General Hospital have tested positive for the virus. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that two of the four new cases are the husband and daughter of a nurse (case No. 863) who had earlier been confirmed to have COVID-19. The husband (case No. 864)
INCURSION: After 13 PLA aircraft flew into Taiwan’s ADIZ, the US Department of State said that China should rather ‘engage in meaningful dialogue’ with Taiwan US President Joe Biden’s administration on Saturday urged China to stop placing military pressure on Taiwan, while calling on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to engage in peaceful dialogue. The statement by the US Department of State was issued after 13 Chinese military aircraft flew into Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Saturday, the highest number observed in a single day this year, the Ministry of National Defense said. The air force scrambled fighter jets to monitor the Chinese aircraft, issuing radio warnings and mobilizing air defense assets until the planes left the ADIZ. The US “notes
‘INCREASED VIGILANCE’: A source of infection has not yet been found for the latest two cases in a hospital cluster, which should serve as a warning, Chen Shih-chung said A total of 2,991 people associated with a COVID-19 cluster infection at Taoyuan General Hospital have been put under home isolation, after an emergency expanded isolation order was issued on Sunday evening, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. Fifteen people have so far tested positive in the cluster infection. The first case in the cluster (case No. 838) was reported on Jan. 12 — a doctor who treated an infected patient who had returned from the US. Contact tracing for the first 13 cases found connections to case No. 838, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who
CHANGE OF GUARD: Hsiao Bi-khim’s attendance at Joe Biden’s inauguration will come as a boost to those in Taiwan who feared that the new US administration would be less friendly than that of Donald Trump to the nation Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) is to attend US President Joe Biden’s swearing-in ceremony at the US Capitol after she was invited by the US Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, a news release issued by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in the US said last night. The news came as a surprise as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been reticent about the matter, while Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members had accused the Democratic Progressive Party administration of hedging its bets on the Republican Party. Asked about when Hsiao received the invitation, the ministry did not
RSS