New virus fears worldwide

Beijing 

China reported its highest daily number of new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in months yesterday, triggering fears of a second wave of infections as more European countries prepare to reopen their borders, reports AFP. The shock resurgence in domestic infections has rattled China, where the disease emerged late last year but had largely been tamed through severe restrictions on movement that were later emulated across the globe.

It also gives a bleak insight into the difficulties the world will face in conquering COVID-19, coming as many European countries prepare to welcome visitors from elsewhere on the continent from today. Adding to the concern, Italy is fighting new outbreaks of its own, Iran and India have reported worrying increases in deaths and infections, and the pandemic is gathering pace in Latin America.

Beijing has carried out mass testing after 36 of China’s 57 new cases on Sunday were linked to a wholesale food market in the capital. The city has raced to quash the new outbreak, issuing travel warnings, closing the market, deploying paramilitary police, and putting nearby housing estates under lockdown.

More than 10,000 people have already been tested in the area, with another eight cases diagnosed yesterday. The Middle East’s hardest-hit country Iran reported its own grim uptick, recording more than 100 new virus deaths in a single day for the first time in two months.

And there have been two new outbreaks in Rome, with 109 infections including five deaths diagnosed at a hospital and 15 cases detected at a building inhabited by squatters. More than 430,000 people worldwide have died from the respiratory illness, nearly halfway through a year in which countless lives have been upended and the global economy ravaged.

The pandemic is now spreading most rapidly in Latin America, threatening healthcare systems and sparking political turmoil. Brazil now has the second-highest number of virus deaths after the US. More than 1,000 new infections are being recorded every day in India’s capital, exposing a dire shortage of hospital beds.

Hospitals in neighbouring Pakistan are also turning patients away, with the government warning the country’s cases could peak at more than a million by the end of next month. The crisis has also led to immunisation programmes being suspended, and polio has been detected in areas of Afghanistan previously declared free of the life-threatening disease.