Coronavirus Pandemic: Australia suffers deadliest day

Australia has suffered its deadliest day from the coronavirus since the pandemic began, with authorities reporting ten fatalities yesterday and a rise in new infections despite an intensive lockdown effort.

The country's Covid-19 death toll rose to 155 and the southeastern state of Victoria reported more than 450 new infections in the last 24 hours.

A clearly concerned Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said ten people aged between their 40s and 80s had died, of which seven deaths were linked to outbreaks in aged care facilities.

It is the worst loss of life from the virus in Australia since the disease first emerged, according to a tally compiled by AFP.

Australia has dodged the worst ravages of the pandemic so far, logging just 14,000 cases in total -- fewer than many harder-hit countries see in one day.

But a second wave of infections is testing the nation's much-lauded response to the contagion.

The number of new cases has remained stubbornly high in recent days despite five million people in greater Melbourne spending the last two weeks in lockdown.

Still, 459 fresh cases were reported in Victoria yesterday -- up from 357 on Saturday. Around a dozen more were recorded in other parts of Australia.

Meanwhile, Europe has reported around three million infections -- despite being largely open for summer holidays within the continent.

However in a snap decision, Britain's government said passengers arriving from Spain will have to self-isolate for two weeks, after a surge in cases in the Mediterranean country, with health officials pointing to nightlife as a possible culprit.

The move, effective from yesterday, has reportedly caught out its Transport Minister Grant Shapps who is holidaying there.

It marked another hit to Spain's tourism industry, which is desperately seeking a rebound after lockdowns and border closures pushed around 13 percent of bars, hotels and restaurants to permanently close.

It mirrors the fiscal pain wrought around the world by the pandemic, particularly in precarious economies where livelihoods are fast crumbling.

COVID-19 HEALTH INSURANCE

In India, for instance, millions of migrant workers who fled cities when Covid-19 hit say they are too scared to return.

Asia's third largest economy has reported more than 1.3 million virus cases and is the third worst hit country behind the US and Brazil.

"We are trying our best to bring back migrant workers, even going to the extent of giving them air tickets, Covid-19 health insurance ... (and) weekly checkups by doctors," real estate developer Rajesh Prajapati said.

"But it has not reaped any positive signs yet."

Pakistan has seen an 80-percent drop in coronavirus deaths but risks a spike in new cases after the upcoming Eid festival, a government health official said yesterday.

According to government data, Pakistan saw daily virus deaths peak at about 150 in June. On Saturday, only 24 new fatalities were reported over the previous day.

North Korea declared its first suspected coronavirus case yesterday, becoming one of the last countries to do so as the number of people infected worldwide passed 16 million.

The isolated, impoverished state had until now insisted it had not detected a single Covid-19 case -- even as the pandemic swept the planet, overwhelming health systems and trashing the global economy.

At least 645,000 people around the world have succumbed to the respiratory disease, with North Korean arch-rival the United States the worst-hit country by far.

"The vicious virus could be said to have entered the country," leader Kim Jong Un said, according to the official KCNA news agency.

Authorities locked down the city of Kaesong, near the frontier with South Korea, as state media said a defector who left for the South three years ago had returned and was suspected to be infected with the coronavirus.

Vietnam suspended its domestic football leagues yesterday until further notice following news of the first locally transmitted case of coronavirus in nearly 100 days.

After more than three months with no local cases, a 57-year-old retired Vietnamese man in the central city of Danang tested positive for the virus.

NO FIREWORKS

Around a quarter of the world's 16 million confirmed cases are in the United States, which recorded more than 68,000 new infections in the past 24 hours.

After a drop in transmission rates in late spring, the country has seen a virus surge -- particularly in California, Florida and Texas, which is also bracing for the first Atlantic hurricane of the year.

Daily US fatalities have exceeded 1,000 for the past four days, rapidly increasing the country's death toll to more than 146,000.

"I'm still concerned that America doesn't take it as seriously as the rest of the world," said British golf star Lee Westwood, voicing his hesitation to travel there despite a new quarantine exemption for professional golfers.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, which also count for a quarter of total cases, governments are not planning a return to normality any time soon.