Covid Pandemic: Russia posts record daily death toll

Russia yesterday reported its highest daily coronavirus death toll since the start of the pandemic, as rising cases in parts of world fuelled by the Delta variant continued to cause havoc.

A Russian government tally reported 808 fatalities over the past 24 hours -- the first time Russia has crossed the 800-mark for daily virus deaths -- and 21,932 new infections.

Russia, the fourth worst-hit country in the world in terms of cases, according to an AFP tally, has been swept with an unrelenting third wave since mid-June that has been driven by the Delta variant.

Authorities have faced a vaccine-sceptic population, with a poll by the independent Levada Centre this week showing that 55 percent of Russians do not plan on getting a jab.

The coronavirus pandemic has killed at least 4,323,957 people worldwide since the virus first emerged in late 2019, according to an AFP compilation of official data.

The US is the worst-affected country with 618,479 deaths, followed by Brazil with 565,748, India with 429,669, Mexico with 246,203 and Peru with 197,146.

In China, authorities have suspended operations at a terminal in the world's third busiest cargo port after a worker was infected with the coronavirus.

The closure of a key terminal at the Ningbo-Zhoushan port on the east coast, which handled almost 1.2 billion tons in 2020, reflects China's determination to squash its worst coronavirus outbreak in months no matter the economic costs.

The worker at the port's Meishan terminal tested positive for coronavirus Wednesday, Ningbo city officials said.

The company "immediately stopped production work and closed the port area," as soon as the infection was detected, Jiang Yipeng, the CEO of Meidong Container Terminal, which operates the Meishan zone, said.

The worker had been fully vaccinated and it remains unclear how he became infected.

Almost 2,000 front-line workers at Ningbo-Zhoushan port have been placed under "closed management" -- effectively unable to leave the port -- as a result of the infection, Chinese media reported.

The latest closure threatens further disruption to the stretched global shipping network, which worsened after a typhoon hit China's east coast last month.

China reported 81 new cases Thursday, of which 38 were local transmissions. Domestic transmissions surpassed 100 on Tuesday -- the first time since January.

Officials have said many of those infected had already been vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Australia's capital Canberra is ordered into a seven-day lockdown after a single case is detected in the city that has largely avoided virus restrictions.

About 400,000 people in the nation's political hub will be under stay-at-home orders from 5:00 pm local time, joining millions more already under lockdown in Australia's southeast.

After months of pursuing a "Covid zero" strategy, Australia is struggling to contain multiple outbreaks of the highly transmissible Delta variant.

More than 10 million people in the country's biggest cities, Melbourne and Sydney, are currently in lockdown as authorities try to bring case numbers down.

Much of western New South Wales state was also placed under lockdown late Wednesday, amid concerns for a sizeable Indigenous population feared more vulnerable to coronavirus.

The nation has recorded more than 37,500 cases of Covid-19 and 946 related deaths to date in a population of 25 million.

In US, health authorities have urged pregnant women to get the vaccine, arguing that the data shows there is no increase in the risk of miscarriage.

Meanwhile, New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern yesterday said that strict border controls would remain this year but she hoped to cautiously reopen to the rest of the world in 2022 while maintaining the country's virus-free status.

She said the changes would be "careful and deliberate" to avoid allowing variants such as the highly contagious Delta strain into New Zealand, where there is no local transmission and domestic life is close to normal.

"Rushing could see us in the situation many other countries are finding themselves in," she said, citing an outbreak of the Delta variant in neighbouring Australia that has forced its two largest cities into renewed lockdown.