Brazil and Mexico on Wednesday reported record daily coronavirus death tolls as governments in Latin America battled to fortify defenses against the accelerating pandemic with fresh lockdown orders and curfews.
European nations are emerging from months of devastation with some borders reopening, but South and Central America have become the new hotspots in a crisis that has claimed at least 386,400 lives worldwide.
Mexico announced 1,092 deaths in a day for the first time, while Brazil reported a record 1,349 deaths and announced that a vast section of Bahia state had been placed under curfew.
Photo: AFP
Mexico’s figure was more than double the previous one-day record and was an embarrassment for officials, who have consistently predicted that cases were about to start leveling off.
Officials rushed to say many of the new confirmed deaths had occurred days or even weeks ago and were being announced now because of delays in processing tests or other reasons, but such delays have presumably been constantly reflected in every previous daily tally and Mexican Assistant Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell did not cite any specific clearing of testing backlogs.
There was more cause for concern in Chile, where the government said it was extending a three-week shutdown of the capital, Santiago, after a new record for daily deaths.
In more evidence of the scale of the crisis in Latin America, the journalists’ union in Peru said at least 20 reporters had died from the coronavirus.
The outbreak in Peru has been so intense that oxygen tanks needed in hospitals have become scarce, with many lining up to buy them for their loved ones.
“We haven’t found oxygen yet,” Lady Savalla said in Lima. “I’m worried about my mom more than anything else, because she’s going to need a lot of oxygen and the hospital doesn’t have enough.”
Experts have warned that travel restrictions would be needed around the world in some form until a vaccine is found — and efforts to develop one are gathering pace.
Britain was set to host a major meeting yesterday, with more than 50 countries as well as powerful individuals such as Bill Gates taking part, to raise money for Gavi, the global vaccine alliance.
Gavi and its partners are to launch a financing drive to purchase potential COVID-19 vaccines, scale up their production and support delivery to developing nations.
Meanwhile, the WHO on Wednesday said that it would resume trials of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment after doubts were cast on the study that prompted the suspension over safety fears.
However, a separate study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday suggested taking the drug shortly after exposure to the coronavirus does not help prevent infection in a statistically meaningful way.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
RSS