India approved half a million coronavirus infections, as experts advised the government to prioritize reducing mortality rather than containing the spread of Covid-19, while in the U.S., the growing infections led to two of the largest states to retrieve the coronavirus controls.
Texas became the first state to revive the blocking measures, as new daily infections rose to nearly 6,000 and a senior official warned that hospitals were at risk of being overwhelmed in the near future. “We opened too fast,” Lina Hidalgo, a Harris County judge who includes Houston, said at a press conference on Friday.
Florida, which also had record infection rates, banned the sale of alcohol in bars, and at least one county in the state said it would close the beaches over the weekend of July 4.
Globally, coronavirus cases are increasing to 10 million, with nearly half a million deaths. Brazil and the United States have the largest outbreaks, with each other accounting for more than a third of the global toll.
The fourth-largest outbreak is in India, where health authorities reported 17,000 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday, taking the country’s total infections to more than 500,000, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
In Delhi, hotels, wedding halls, an ashram and railway carriages are being reused for coronavirus care, as overcrowded hospitals have been forced to reject patients.
So far, India has recorded more than 15,000 deaths from Covid-19, a lower rate than in many Western countries. Health experts urge the government to prioritize keeping mortality low as the infection spreads.
“Our focus should be on preventing deaths and not really getting bogged down by the numbers. The numbers are going to increase, “said Dr. Manoj Murhekar, a member of India’s leading coronavirus task force and director of the National Institute of Epidemiology.
As these countries battle their first wave, several countries that have largely suppressed the virus are trying to contain new regional outbreaks, from Beijing to Germany, and prevent them from becoming the second major wave of infections.
Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Saturday that the pandemic was far from over and said everyone had a “joint responsibility” to keep the virus under control. The country has re-blocked a western region of approximately 500,000 people after hundreds of workers at a meat processing plant tested positive.
“Germany has overcome the crisis well so far, but that does not mean that we are protected, that the risk has been avoided,” he said. “That is not the case, as these regional outbreaks demonstrate.”
China also reported an increase in new Covid-19 cases, the day after health authorities said they expected an outbreak in Beijing to be under control soon. There were 17 new cases in the capital, where several neighborhoods have been closed and a negative Covid test is required to travel to other parts of the country.
As infections increase, Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche says it cannot meet the demand for molecular tests to identify active Covid-19 infections.
“Demand exceeds our production,” President Christoph Franz told the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. The decision about where the tests were sent depended, among other things, on infection rates and the availability of diagnostic equipment.
Friday Brazil It registered 46,860 new infections, its third consecutive day when that total exceeded 40,000.
The new figures came amid warnings that the spread through smaller cities in the interior of Brazil risked a return of infections in major cities, dubbed a “boomerang effect,” as lack of treatment A specialized doctor forced patients to go to larger urban centers.
The Brazilian government has reached an agreement with the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to produce a promising coronavirus vaccine, one of several tests currently being carried out worldwide.
It will begin manufacturing more than 30 million doses starting in December, allowing you to quickly start inoculations next year if the vaccine is shown to be effective; In total, the $ 127 million deal covers 100 million vaccines, for a country of 210 million people.
The United States also reported its highest daily number of infections, with more than 40,000 cases. In the first briefing by the coronavirus task force since April, which was not held at the White House and had no presidential presence, it showed that current infection rates exceeded the peak in April and May.
European Union countries failed to settle on a final “safe list” of countries whose residents could travel to the bloc starting in July on Friday, and the United States, Brazil and Russia appeared to be excluded. The ambassadors of the 27 EU members have met since Friday afternoon to establish criteria to grant quarantine-free access starting next Wednesday.
A redesigned text of 10-20 countries was sent to the ambassadors, but many said they had to consult with their governments first, diplomats said. The list did not include the United States, Brazil or Russia, a diplomat said. Discussions continued overnight, with EU countries expected to give informal responses by Saturday night, people familiar with the matter said.
There is broad agreement that the block should only be open to those with a similar or better epidemiological situation, but there are questions about how to assess the management of the epidemic in a country and the reliability of the data.
In other coronavirus developments:
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Global infections it stood at 9,859,738, with deaths close to 500,000.
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A federal judge in New York It has prevented the state from enforcing coronavirus restrictions that limit indoor religious gatherings to 25% of capacity when other types of gatherings are limited to 50%.
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Another United States federal judge ordered the release of children detained with their parents in the United States immigration jails and denounced the prolonged detention of families by the Trump administration during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Victorian state government in Australia He is seeking legal advice to see if he can compel travelers returning from abroad to undergo a coronavirus test, after a plethora of cases in recent days in the city of Melbourne.
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the Argentinian The government said Friday night that it would reintroduce strict quarantine measures in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area. The measures would last 17 days and would begin on July 1.
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