California is distributing 5,000 body bags mostly to the hard-hit Los Angeles and San Diego areas and has 60 refrigerated trailers standing by as makeshift morgues in anticipation of a surge of coronavirus deaths.
The precautions come from hospitalizations that now are double the summertime peak seen earlier in the pandemic, and which threaten to soon overwhelm the state’s already taxed hospital system.
Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said Tuesday that the number of average daily deaths has quadrupled from a month ago. The surge is forcing an urgent scramble for more staff and space, a crush that might not abate for two months despite the arrival of the first doses of vaccines this week.
The number of average daily deaths now stands at 163, while positive cases have surged to more than 32,500 each day. Of those new cases, an anticipated 12% will wind up in the hospital and 12% of those hospitalized will crowd already stretched intensive care units:
The rightwing thinktank LibertyWorks has launched a federal court challenge to Australia’s travel ban, arguing that the health minister, Greg Hunt, has no power to stop citizens from leaving the country.
The case is the first major challenge to Australia’s strict external border restrictions, which were introduced in March to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
The national cabinet agreed to a ban on Australians leaving Australia, subject to limited exceptions, in an attempt to limit the number of citizens exposed to coronavirus overseas seeking to return home:
New Zealand’s response to the virus has been among the most successful in the world, together with actions taken by China, Taiwan and Thailand early on in the pandemic.
The country of 5 million has counted just 25 deaths and managed to stamp out the spread of Covid-19, allowing people to return to workplaces, schools and packed sports stadiums without restrictions.
AP has spoken to New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
When the virus began hitting Europe early in the year, Ardern said, the only two options countries were considering were herd immunity or flattening the curve. She opted for the latter.
“Originally, that’s where we started, because there just simply wasn’t really much of a view that elimination was possibleâ€.
But her thinking quickly changed.
“I remember my chief science adviser bringing me a graph that showed me what flattening the curve would look like for New Zealand. And where our hospital and health capacity was. And the curve wasn’t sitting under that line. So we knew that flattening the curve wasn’t sufficient for us.â€
New Zealand this year pulled off a moonshot that remains the envy of almost every other nation: It eliminated the coronavirus. But the goal was driven as much by fear as it was ambition, Prime Minister Ardern revealed Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press. She said the target grew from an early realisation the nation’s health system simply couldn’t cope with a big outbreak. Photograph: Sam James/AP
A strong response to the coronavirus pandemic, surging exports and healthy public spending have helped Vietnam buck a global recession in 2020 and fast-track its recovery, with analysts predicting it will likely enjoy one of the highest growth rates in the world, AFP reports.
But the pain is not over for some sectors with containment measures and border disruptions hammering the country’s tourism industry, and leaving the once-booming aviation sector limping.
While many countries have suffered from high infection and mortality rates, Vietnam has recorded fewer than 1,500 coronavirus cases and 35 deaths thanks to mass quarantines, expansive contact-tracing and strict controls on movement, allowing factories to largely stay open and people to swiftly get back to work.
A strong response to the coronavirus pandemic, a surge in exports and healthy public spending has helped Vietnam buck a global downward economic trend in 2020 and fast track its recovery. Photograph: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images
While many Western countries were imploring citizens to stay home mid-year, Vietnamese people were able to flock to scenic beaches as the government tried to give the domestic tourism industry a much-needed shot in the arm.
There were grave fears for Vietnam’s export-reliant economy as demand for clothing, footwear and smartphones slumped in some of its biggest markets including the European Union, Japan and South Korea.
Shipments to China grew more than 15% on-year in the first nine months, according to the Vietnam General Customs Administration.
Demand for many of the items made in Vietnam – such as home electronics, office furniture, computers and televisions – soared during the pandemic as people were forced to stay home during lockdowns.
That has meant that while it will fall short of its target of 6.8 percent growth this year, the economy is expected to expand 2.4%, which the International Monetary Fund said would be among the best in the world.
The Fund has forecast a global contraction of 4.4%.
A World Health Organization research mission to China is expected to arrive in Wuhan next month to investigate how the novel coronavirus jumped from animals to humans, and whether it emerged earlier or in a different place than originally thought.
Fabian Leendertz, a biologist at Germany’s Robert Koch Institute and a member of the WHO’s 10-person mission team, told the Associated Press they will be working with Chinese scientists for four to five weeks.
Most scientists think the virus Sars-Cov-2 began in animals in China, most likely bats, before jumping to humans. Cases were first discovered in the city of Wuhan in late December 2019, linked to a seafood market. More than 73.4 million people have since been diagnosed with the virus, and 1.63 million have died:
For many Spaniards looking to make a similar move to the countryside during the pandemic, a lack of good internet access often stands in the way, AFP reports.
Just over one in four Spaniards – some 13 million people – do not have decent internet access, according to Spanish trade union UGT.
This digital divide is the legacy of years of a lack of investment in Spain’s depopulated interior, which has been emptied out by the flight of young people to cities since the 1950s in search of better job opportunities. Some parts of Spain have just two people per square kilometre – the same density as in Siberia.
The problem is not unique to Spain.
Two thirds of school-age children worldwide have no internet at home, according to a UN report published earlier this month, even as pandemic-induced school closures have made online access vital to getting educated.
The Spanish government has promised an ambitious European Union-funded programme to provide “adequate†internet connectivity to 100 percent of Spain’s population by 2025 as part of its efforts to revive the countryside.
Spain, one of the main beneficiaries of the EU’s 750-billion-euro ($912-billion) coronavirus recovery package, has a “historic opportunity†to “re-populate interior regions†which have long been neglected, said Gema Roman of consultancy firm Atrevia.
To attract more people to the countryside, the government must build more schools and hospitals in rural areas and encourage companies to use a mix of telework and working from the office, she added.
India recorded 26,355 new coronavirus cases, data from the health ministry showed on Wednesday, making it the third straight day that daily infections in the country have stayed below 30,000.
India has recorded 9.93 million infections so far, the second highest in the world after the United States, but daily numbers have dipped steadily since hitting a peak of around 97,000 in mid-September.
Indian office workers queue at a bus stop in Mumbai. Photograph: Divyakant Solanki/EPA
The average number of Covid-19 deaths reported each day in India has been decreasing for 10 days straight, according to a Reuters tally. On Wednesday, the health ministry said deaths rose by 360, with the total fatalities now at 144,069.
Queues of ambulances have formed outside several hospitals in Northern Ireland as pressure continued to mount on the region’s health service.
The scenes unfolded as first minister, Arlene Foster, participated in a call with other UK political leaders to review the planned relaxation of restrictions on household gatherings over Christmas.
No decisions were taken, with Stormont ministers set to convene to discuss the situation on Thursday amid intensifying calls from medics to rethink the relaxations and introduce fresh measures to curb the spread of the virus:
