Alarm Over New Virus Outbreaks As India Cases Pass 1 Million
Last edited Fri Jul 17, 2020, 09:17 AM - Edit history (1)
Source: Associated Press
(2 hrs ago). By Elaine Kurtenbach and Nomaan Merchan
MITO, Japan (AP) — New coronavirus outbreaks, even in places as far flung as China’s western Xinjiang region, are prompting worldwide moves to guard against the pandemic, as the number of confirmed cases globally approaches 14 million.
India on Friday said it had surpassed 1 million cases, third only to the United States and Brazil, with more than 25,000 deaths. That followed Brazil’s announcement Thursday evening that the country had passed 2 million confirmed cases and 76,000 deaths — 1,000 fatalities a day, on average, since late May on a gruesome plateau that has yet to tilt downward.
India’s grim milestone drove home concerns over the country’s readiness to deal with an inevitable surge that could overwhelm hospitals and test the country’s feeble health care system. In the technology hub of Bangalore, the government ordered a weeklong lockdown that began Tuesday evening after the cases surged exponentially.
Local governments are frantically trying to quash outbreaks and keep their economies running as the pandemic spreads in the vast countryside...
Read more: https://apnews.com/c3c7481ac03f9a2f30179359802a8296
“The acceleration in cases remains the main challenge for India in the coming days,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, adding that a vast majority of cases were still being missed.
In China nine imported cases were reported on Friday. Health officials in Xinjiang also reported six confirmed cases of local transmission. Another 11 people there tested positive but were asymptomatic; China does not include asymptomatic cases in its caseload totals. The Muslim-majority region is so far from Beijing that residents operate by their own, unofficial time zone and had until now been little affected by outbreaks elsewhere that appear to have been brought under control.
> More than 13.7 million infections have been confirmed worldwide and nearly 590,000 have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are likely higher for various reasons, including limited testing.
Two-week quarantines are becoming the norm, and many governments have been rolling back reopenings and tightening restrictions to try to stave off further waves of new cases...
*Reporting on Asia, Australia, Africa and more at the Link.
__________________
- DW, "Man arrested in Bangladesh over fake coronavirus test certificates. A hospital owner was arrested while trying to flee to India. He owns two medical facilities in Dhaka, where he issued around 6,300 fake test reports. https://www.dw.com/en/bangladesh-coronavirus-fake-test-reports/a-54208850
Police in Dhaka, Bangladesh have arrested a man for issuing fake coronavirus test reports. The man, who owned two hospitals, was arrested as he was trying to flee the country. After a nine-day manhunt, security officials finally arrested the man, who was allegedly issuing certificates telling people they were free of the virus without even testing them.
"He was arrested from the bank of a border river as he was trying to flee to India. He was wearing a burqa," Rapid Action Battalion spokesman Colonel Ashique Billah told AFP.
