Australian states yesterday tightened borders and restricted pub visits, while Walt Disney prepared to close its Hong Kong theme park and Japan stepped up tracing as a jump in COVID-19 cases across Asia fanned fears of a second wave of infections.
Many parts of Asia, the region first hit by the novel coronavirus that emerged in central China late last year, are finding cause to pause the reopening of their economies, some after winning praise for their initial responses to the outbreak.
Australia largely avoided the high numbers of cases and casualties seen in other countries with swift and strict measures, but a spike in community-transmitted cases in Victoria State and a rise in new cases in New South Wales has worried authorities.
Photo: EPA-EFE
South Australia canceled plans to reopen its border to New South Wales on Monday next week, while Queensland introduced a mandatory two-week quarantine for people who have visited two areas in Sydney’s western suburbs.
New South Wales, which has seen several dozen cases linked to the outbreak in Victoria, said pubs would be limited to 300 people, responding to an outbreak centered at a large hotel in southwestern Sydney.
The number of coronavirus infections around the world hit 13 million on Monday, according to a Reuters tally, climbing by 1 million in just five days.
The pandemic has killed more than half a million people in six-and-a-half months.
The WHO warned that the pandemic would worsen if countries failed to adhere to strict precautions.
“Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing on Monday.
Hong Kong, which experienced remarkably few cases in the first wave of the pandemic, imposed strict social distancing measures from midnight yesterday, the most stringent yet in the territory.
Hong Kong recorded 52 new cases on Monday, including 41 that were locally transmitted, health authorities said.
Walt Disney said it is temporarily closing its Hong Kong Disneyland theme park from today.
China, which has contained a cluster in Beijing in the past few weeks, eased border restrictions between Macau and the neighboring province of Guangdong.
In Tokyo, health officials were trying to locate more than 800 members of a theater audience after 20 people, including cast members of a recent performance, tested positive for the coronavirus.
Japan, which has not seen an explosive outbreak, is pushing ahead with its easing of restrictions, with plans to reopen a runway at one of its biggest airports, even as infections persist in big cities, rural areas and on US military bases.
India’s tech capital, Bengaluru, yesterday began a new, week-long lockdown after a surge in cases following the easing of restrictions.
From about 1,000 cases on June 19, when the city was believed to have escaped the worst thanks to contact tracing, it has gone up to nearly 20,000.
Health experts have said that the movement of people following the lifting of a nationwide lockdown last month has led to Bengaluru falling back.
Other cities, including Pune and Aurangabad, have reimposed curbs in the past few days.
The Philippines this week recorded the biggest daily rise in coronavirus deaths in Southeast Asia and part of Manila would return to lockdown, affecting 250,000 residents.
A Philippine presidential spokesman said that restrictions in other parts of the capital were unlikely to be relaxed.
In Indonesia, the governor of Jakarta is reported to be considering tightening some of the relatively mild restrictions in place after a spike in cases in the capital.
Even Thailand, which has had no locally transmitted cases reported for six weeks, has stepped up border security over concern about a second wave of infections after the arrests of thousands of illegal migrants in the past month.
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