China reported its highest daily number of new coronavirus cases in recently, triggering fears of a second wave of infections as more European countries prepare to reopen their borders. The shock of 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. This new cluster has been linked to Xinfadi market in south Beijing.
This should be a of global cause for worry and should give a bleak insight into the difficulties the world will face in conquering COVID-19, as many European countries prepare to welcome visitors from elsewhere on the continent with view reopening of boarders. 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 recently 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.
Iran, the Middle East’s hardest-hit country 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.
World Health Organization deputy director Ranieri Guerra has warned that the virus hasn’t lost its infectiousness hence the world shouldn’t let down guards yet. 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 United States, and the Chilean health minister resigned on the weekend amid a furor over the country’s true number of fatalities. In the US, more than a dozen states including populous Texas and Florida have in recent days reported their highest-ever daily case totals.
The rise comes as huge anti-racism protests rage across America and the world, with thousands stretching a human chain across Berlin recently while keeping a safe distance.
More than 1,000 new infections are being recorded every day in India’s capital, exposing a dire shortage of hospital beds. Hospitals in neighboring 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.
