COVID-19 Global Report: China Detects Highest Daily Case
- Partial quarantine remains in Beijing
- European countries opening borders
China detected its highest number of daily coronavirus cases in months on Sunday, locking down parts of Beijing in a warning of the difficulties of avoiding a resurgence of the pandemic in the Asian nation.
This is coming on the heels of Europe preparing to open more borders and loosen restrictions this week within the region.
A wholesale food market in the Chinese capital, where traces of the virus were detected, was closed at the weekend.
Also, nearby housing estates were also placed under quarantine after authorities detected 36 new coronavirus cases in the city and another 19 across the country.
The discovery sparked fears of a possible second wave of a virus that was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December but which appeared to be declining in the country by March as most of the world entered lockdowns.
With many countries loosening restrictions, the Chinese flareup illustrated the difficulty in keeping the virus suppressed.
“The meat sellers have had to close. This disease is really scary,” a fruit and vegetable trader told Agence France-Presse at another central Beijing market.
“As long as you wear a face mask, it should be fine,” said a shopper, Song Weiming. “Anyway, I have to buy food, right?”
According to latest reports, the total number of coronavirus cases around the world passed 7.8 million on Sunday, with more than 430,000 recorded deaths.
Infections were still rising in Latin America, just as Afghanistan warned it was running out of testing capacity, and cases rebounded in Israel a few weeks after it started relaxing its quarantine.
Also, France detected fewer than 30 cases for the fourth day in a row as the virus appeared to continue ebbing across Europe.
Importantly, EU Member states continued opening borders to each other, with Spain the next to welcome visitors from across the continent starting on Monday.
The EU has recommended that states fully reopen their borders from 15 June but some, such as Poland and Greece, have already done so.
The Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, travelled to picturesque Santorini island on Saturday to open his country’s tourism season. “Greece is ready to welcome tourists this summer by putting safety and health as our number one priority,” he said in English.
Russia, the third-worst affected country with more than 500,000 confirmed cases, was emerging from its first wave “with minimal losses”, the president, Vladimir Putin, said on Sunday. He drew a comparison between his country’s performance and the US.
Russia has recorded nearly 7,000 deaths, a figure that some have questioned, while the US has the worst outbreak in the world with more than 2m cases and 115,000 recorded deaths.
“I can’t imagine someone in the [Russian] government or regions saying we are not going to do what the government or president say,” Putin said, in reference to disputes between the US President, Donald Trump, and US state governors over how to handle the pandemic.
“It seems to me that the problem [in the US] is that group, in this case party interests, are put above those of society’s as a whole, above the interests of the people.” – The Guardian with agency reports
