PARIS – The head of France’s national health service says Paris and Marseille are zones of risk declared for the coronavirus if authorities observe a sharp increase in infections.
Jerome Salomon, speaking on French radio, warned “the situation is getting worse week by week” in the country. He says that virus clusters come together every day after family reunions, big parties and other gatherings during summer vacation.
A government decision issued Friday allows authorities to impose stricter measures in the Paris and Marseille areas.
Salomon says there are “more and more people testing positive, more and more people arriving in hospitals … we need to respond before new deaths count.”
The National Health Agency reported 2,669 new infections on Thursday, putting France’s infection rate per 100,000 people above 30.
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HERE IS THAT YOU STILL KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS BREAKING:
– North Korea let lockdown in Kaesong lift, says virus situation is stable
– Bolivia The political crisis threatens hospitals and patients
– New Zealand expands lockdown in their largest city as new outbreak grows
– Spain is not even two months after beating the first wave to get another stage for coronavirus infections
– False claims and conspiracy theories have tried to control the pandemic from the beginning. The bad information can pose a particular threat to communities of people of color who already have worse health outcomes.
– Indonesia’ the only vaccine production company has injected the first volunteers with the Chinese firm Sinovac’s vaccine candidate in so-called phase 3 clinical trials.
– Follow the pandemic coverage of AP at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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HERE IS WHAT HAPPENS:
LONDON – Britain has secured 90 million doses of two vaccines designed to combat COVID-19.
The agreements with Novavax, an American biotech company, and Janssen, a Belgian company owned by Johnson & Johnson, mean that the UK has now been granted the rights to 340 million doses of six different experimental vaccines, as the government tries to place its bets on products to be insured are still being tested to see if they are safe and effective.
Kate Bingham, chair of the Fax Task Force, told ITV that there was no guarantee that any of the faxes would work, “because there have been no vaccines against one human coronavirus.
“What we are doing is that we have selected six of the most promising faxes across four different fax types and we hope one of these will work.”
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Denmark has added Belgium and Malta to its list of European countries where non-essential travel is not recommended, as the Scandinavian country has seen a warming of cases of coronavirus.
The reason for the Scandinavian country to do this is that both nations have seen more than 30 cases of coronavirus per 100,000 inhabitants. Danish health officials say the figure is 32.5 for Belgium and 31.5 for Malta.
From Friday midnight, people traveling from Belgium or Malta will have to quarantine themselves on return.
Denmark has previously mentioned Spain, Andorra, Bulgaria, Luxembourg and Romania as countries where non-essential travel is not recommended.
Danes also do not recommend travel to countries outside Europe, with the exception of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Georgia, Japan, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay.
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BERLIN – German authorities in the western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg have set up a new coronavirus test station at a rest stop for highways near the French border, after noting a sharp increase in cases in the neighboring country.
The dpa news agency reported Friday that the center began testing travelers at the Neuenburg-Ost rest stop, across the border from the French city of Chalampe. Travelers from designated risk areas should be checked on return to Germany, and the center will also test all others who wish to be checked.
France reported more than 10,000 newly confirmed cases in the past week.
Baden-Wuerttemberg already has test centers at airports in Stuttgart, Friedrichshafen and Baden-Baden, as well as the headquarters of Stuttgart.
The rest center of Neuenburg is the first such station outside Bavaria, which has been testing since the end of July. They have generated so much interest that Bavarian officials have reported a backlog of cases, with about 44,000 people still unaware of their results, including more than 900 who tested positive for COVID-19.
Baden-Wuerttemberg says it expects people to be informed of their tests within four days.
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SYDNEY – A man in his 20s has become the youngest person to die from coronavirus in Australia.
He was among 14 new deaths and 372 new infections reported by Victoria State health officials Friday in an outbreak in central Melbourne, the second largest city.
And Prime Minister Scott Morrison said 188 elderly people had died last week when the virus ripped through nursing homes in Melbourne. Officials say about 70% of 375 deaths in Australia have been in elderly care facilities.
Morrison said Australians had high expectations of the services and standards at nursing homes and other facilities such as hospitals and schools.
He says, “On the days that the system fails, on the days that expectations are not met, I deeply regret that, that I am, of course.”
He said the land moved heaven and earth to defeat the virus and it would eventually win.
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NEW DELHI – The death toll from Indian coronavirus follows Britain to become the fourth-highest in the world with another one-day record increase in cases Friday.
According to the Ministry of Public Health, India reported 1,007 deaths in the past 24 hours. The total rose to 48,040 dead, behind the United States, Brazil and Mexico.
Confirmed cases from India reached 2,461,190 with a one-day spike of 64,553 in the past 24 hours. More than 70% of people infected in India have recovered.
The daily increase of newly reported infections in the first week of July was about 15,000, but jumped to more than 50,000 in the first week of August. The ministry cited its testing efforts, with more than 800,000 tests in one day, and cumulative tests took to more than 26 million.
Health experts say it should be higher, given India’s population of 1.4 billion.
Two-month security in India late nationally in late March kept infections low. But it is required and is now largely enforced in high-risk areas. The new cases spiked after India reopened shops and manufacturing and allowed hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to return to their homes from coronavirus-infected regions.
Subways, schools and cinemas remain closed.
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SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea reports 103 new cases of coronavirus. It is one of the largest daily jumps in the country in months, and officials are worried that infections will get out of control in the capital Seoul and other major cities as Koreans increasingly venture out into the public eye.
The figures released by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday brought the national caseload to 14,873 cases, including 305 deaths.
Eighty-three of the new cases were in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, where authorities have struggled to stop transfers. Infections were also reported in other major cities such as Busan, Gwangju and Ulsan.
Friday’s jump was driven by local transmissions, which health authorities said it could worsen due to the increase in travelers during the summer holiday season.
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FRESNO, California – A private school in California has been ordered to close after classrooms reopened in violation of a state health ordinance aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.
Fresno County on Thursday issued a health order against Immanuel Schools in Reedley. The K-12 school was told to close its classes until the county is removed from a state monitoring list for two weeks.
The school has about 600 students and it was able to follow students in classes Thursday without masks or social distance. The school’s trustees and superintendent say they believe students’ development will suffer if they cannot be taught on campus.
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BEIJING – China has reported eight more cases of locally transmitted coronavirus infections, all in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where the country’s last major outbreak largely took place.
Officials said Friday that 22 other new cases were brought from outside the country by Chinese travelers returning. China has reported a total of 4,634 deaths from COVID-19 among 84,786 cases.
Hong Kong reported 69 newly confirmed cases and three deaths in the past 24 hours. The semi-autonomous Chinese city has mandatory wearing masks in all public institutions, indoor confinement and introduced other social distancing measures to bring down transmissions which are now 4,312 with 66 dead.
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MEXICO CITY – Mexico has passed the half-million mark in confirmed cases of coronavirus.
The Department of Health reported 7,371 newly confirmed cases Thursday, bringing the country’s total for the pandemic to 505,751. The department reported 627 more confirmed deaths from COVID-19, giving Mexico a total of 55,293.
Experts agree that due to Mexico’s extremely low test rates, these numbers are undercounts and that the actual figures may be two to three times higher. With only about 1.15 million tests conducted to date in a country of nearly 130 million people, less than 1% of Mexicans have been tested.
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AUSTIN, Texas – For the first time in six weeks, Texas reports fewer than 7,000 hospital coronavirus patients.
That encouraging sign Thursday was clouded by questions about testing as students return to school and college football teams pushing ahead with play this fall. Testing has been discontinued in Texas, a trend seen in the U.S. as health experts ensure that patients without symptoms do not bother because of long lines and waiting days to get results.
Numbers of Texas health officials this week provide a vivid picture of how many tests have failed. At one point this week, the infection rate in Texas was as high as 24%, only to suddenly fall to 16% on Thursday.
Officials have not provided explanations about the wild swing in infection rates.
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SACRAMENTO, California – California will restart Sept. 2 with eviction and advancement, raising fears of a wave of coronavirus pandemic attacks unless the governor and state legislature agree on a proposal to extend protections.
The California Judicial Council on Thursday voted 19-1 to end the temporary rules blocking such proceedings that have been going on since April 6th.
Since the pandemic began in March, more than 9.7 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in California. A U.S. Census poll shows more than 1.7 million tenants in the state could not pay their bills on time.
Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye of California has refrained from leaving the rules in place much longer, saying it is the job of the Judiciary Department to interpret the laws, and not make them.
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LONDON – Britain will demand that all people coming from France be isolated for 14 days – an announcement that throws the plans of tens of thousands of holidaymakers into chaos.
The government said last Thursday that France would be removed from the list of peoples exempt from quarantine requirements due to an increasing number of coronavirus infections, which increased by 66% last week. The Netherlands, Malta, Monaco and the Caribbean islands of Aruba and Turks & Caicos were also added to the quarantine list.
France is one of the top holiday destinations for British travelers, who now have until 4pm on Saturday to come home if they want to spend two weeks in isolation.
The number of new infections in Britain is also increasing.
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