Sydney, Australia/London, UK
Reuters
Nations in Asia imposed new restrictions on Monday, while an abrupt British quarantine on travellers from Spain threw Europe’s summer reopening into disarray, as the world confronted the prospect of a second wave of COVID-19 infections.
In the United States, still dealing with its first wave as infection rates have climbed since June, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, became the most senior official to test positive. The White House said Trump had not interacted with him in days and was not at risk.
Passengers wearing protective face masks wait for the arrival of a train amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, at a train station in Tokyo, Japan, on 9th June. PICTURE: Reuters/Issei Kato/File photo.
Surges were reported in several countries that previously appeared to have the virus under control.
Australia recorded a record daily rise. Vietnam was forcing tens of thousands of tourists to evacuate the central city of Danang. Mainland China, where the virus first emerged late last year, confirmed the most locally transmitted cases since early March.
Hong Kong banned gatherings of more than two people, closed restaurant dining and made face masks mandatory in public.
A surge of new infections in Spain, another early epicentre of the pandemic, prompted Britain on Saturday to order all travellers from there to quarantine for two weeks, undoing months of preparation for Europe’s reopening to tourism.
TRAVEL BANS CANNOT BE INDEFINITE, COUNTRIES MUST FIGHT VIRUS AT HOME – WHO
Bans on international travel cannot stay in place indefinitely, and countries are going to have to do more to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus within their borders, the World Health Organization said on Monday.
A surge of infections has prompted countries to reimpose some travel restrictions in recent days, with Britain throwing the reopening of Europe’s tourism industry into disarray by ordering a quarantine on travellers returning from Spain.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference amid the COVID-19 outbreak, caused by the novel coronavirus, at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on 3rd July. PICTURE: Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via Reuters/File photo.
Only with strict adherence to health measures, from wearing masks to avoiding crowds, would the world manage to beat the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at a virtual news briefing.
“Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they are not, cases go up,” he said, praising Canada, China, Germany and South Korea for controlling outbreaks.
WHO emergencies programme head Mike Ryan said it was impossible for countries to keep borders shut for the foreseeable future.
“[I]t is going to be almost impossible for individual countries to keep their borders shut for the foreseeable future. Economies have to open up, people have to work, trade has to resume,” he said.
“What is clear is pressure on the virus pushes the numbers down. Release that pressure and cases creep back up.”
Ryan praised Japan and Australia for having had “good success in containing the disease” but said that it was to be expected that the virus would resurge in areas with active transmission if restrictions are lifted and mobility increased.
“And that is what has essentially occurred in many countries is that in nightclubs, other situations, dormitories, other environments in which people are close together can act as amplification points for the disease and then it can spread back into the community. We need to be hyper-alert on those.”
Measures must be consistent and kept in place long enough to ensure their effectiveness and public acceptance, Ryan said, adding that governments investigating clusters should be praised not criticised.
“What we need to worry about is situations where the problems aren’t being surfaced, where the problems are being glossed over, where everything looks good.”
Ryan said Spain’s current situation was nowhere near as bad as it had been at the pandemic’s peak there, and he expected clusters to be brought under control, though it would take days or weeks to discern the disease’s future pattern.
“The more we understand the disease, the more we have a microscope on the virus, the more precise we can be in surgically removing it from our communities,” he added.
– STEPHANIE NEBEHAY, MICHAEL SHIELDS and EMMA FARGE, Reuters
On Monday, the Foreign Office dealt Madrid a new blow by extending its advice against non-essential travel to mainland Spain to include the Balearic and Canary Islands.
The World Health Organization said travel restrictions were not a long-term answer. It said proven strategies such as social distancing and face covering must be employed to halt the virus spread.
“It is going to be almost impossible for individual countries to keep their borders shut for the foreseeable future. Economies have to open up, people have to work, trade has to resume,” WHO emergencies programme director Mike Ryan said.
Officials in some European and Asian countries where the virus is spreading again said new outbreaks can be contained with local measures rather than nationwide shutdowns.
Britain’s quarantine was a big mistake, Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday.
The rebound in infections is focused in two regions, while “in the rest of the territories, the incidence is much lower, even than that of the United Kingdom,” he said.
Spain’s hotels on Monday offered to pay for foreign tourists to take coronavirus tests. Last year, Britons made up over a fifth of foreign visitors to Spain, which relies heavily on tourism.
Airlines and travel businesses that managed to survive the first wave now worry that an aborted reopening could be fatal.
Europe’s biggest airline, Ryanair, cut its annual passenger target by a quarter on Monday and warned a second wave of COVID-19 infections could lower that further.
Europe has yet to lift bans on travellers from several countries, including the United States, where premature reopenings have led to record numbers of infections and deaths in many states.
A pandemic-shortened North American baseball season, launched last week in empty stadiums, suddenly appeared in jeopardy after 12 players and two coaches on the Miami Marlins tested positive while on the road in Philadelphia. Monday’s games were postponed in both cities.
Nearly 200 federal healthcare workers have been deployed to California’s Central Valley agricultural breadbasket, where hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases as new infections soar, Governor Gavin Newsom said.
Florida in particular has been hard hit this month, with 10,000 new cases a day becoming the norm across the state. Hospitals have called in extra staff as workers become sick.
“In 10 years of medicine I never had to put another nurse on life support. I never had to worry about my co-workers dying,” said Kevin Cho Tipton, a critical care nurse practitioner who works at one of Miami’s largest public hospitals. “It’s been emotionally very challenging, physically very challenging.”
US Senate Republicans on Monday announced their version of a $US1 trillion coronavirus aid package hammered out with the White House, paving the way for negotiations with Democrats before expanded unemployment benefits for millions expire this week. The plan calls for direct payments to eligible Americans of $US1,200 each and some additional unemployment benefits.
In China, which managed to squelch local transmission through firm lockdowns after the virus first emerged in the central city of Wuhan, a new surge has been driven by infections in the far western region of Xinjiang.
Australian authorities, who have imposed a six-week lockdown in parts of the southeastern state of Victoria, said it could last longer after the country reported its highest daily increase in infections.
In Japan, the government said it would urge business leaders to ramp up anti-virus measures such as staggered shifts, and aimed to see telecommuting rates return to levels achieved during an earlier state of emergency.
Vietnam was evacuating 80,000 people, mostly local Vietnamese, from the tourism hotspot of Danang after three residents tested positive at the weekend. Until Saturday, Vietnam had reported no community infections since April.
