The Covid-19 pandemic is approaching the symbolic figure of one million deaths, nine months after its outbreak, with a resurgence of contamination in New York or Rangoon but a lull in Melbourne.
The nighttime curfew in Melbourne, Australia’s second city, will be lifted on Monday, nearly two months after being imposed. Only 16 new cases of contamination and two deaths were recorded Sunday in the state and the number of active cases fell below 400 for the first time since June 30.
Melbourne’s 5 million people will now be able to leave their homes at any time to work, play sports or go shopping. But they will have to stay within a radius of five kilometers around their home, under penalty of a fine of nearly 5,000 Australian dollars (3,000 euros).
“No one has the right to spoil what the people of Victoria have done, and potentially spread the disease“said Daniel Andrews, Prime Minister of the State of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital.
On the other hand, New York State, the former epicenter of the epidemic in the United States, recorded, for the first time since June 5, more than 1,000 cases of contamination in one day.
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However, the situation is much better than in the spring, at the height of the crisis. On Wednesday, restaurants in New York City, which were already serving outdoors, will be able to reopen their rooms at 25% of their capacity.
Yangon, the economic capital and largest city in Burma, is facing an outbreak of infections that has doctors feared thousands of new cases in the coming days.
The Covid-19 has already killed nearly a million people and plunged the economy into a deep recession.
Thus, over the first nine months of the year, Tunisia lost 60% of its tourism revenue, which is essential for the country’s finances.
In Brussels, bars and cafes will have to close their doors at 11:00 p.m. from Monday and the tifosi are frustrated: for the moment, the Italian stadiums must not accommodate more than a thousand supporters.
These strict precautionary measures are causing discontent and protests in some countries, such as in London where ten people were arrested and four police officers injured on Saturday during a demonstration that brought together thousands of opponents of the restrictions.
Vaccine race
The World Health Organization now fears that the pandemic will ultimately kill two million people if the world does not mobilize strongly, and calls are increasing for a fair share of future vaccines.
The vaccine race is on and each country wants to ensure that its population can have sufficient doses. The United States, Europe and Japan have already reserved more than half of the doses that would be available initially.
At the UN Annual General Meeting, Latin America and Australia called for free access to future vaccines.
India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, will use its resources in the fight against the pandemic “to help all mankind“, his Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised on Saturday.
In total in the world, there have been 993,438 deaths since the end of December, according to a report established by AFP on Saturday at 11:00 GMT.
More than 32.6 million cases of infection have been officially diagnosed, including at least 22.3 million now considered cured.
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The United States is the most affected country in terms of death tolls and cases, with 204,486 deaths. Next come Brazil with 141,406 dead, India with 93,379 dead, Mexico with 75,844 dead and the United Kingdom with 41,936 dead.
In Spain, the Madrid region is preparing to extend the restrictions in force to new areas. From Monday, 167,000 additional residents – a little over a million people – will only be able to leave their neighborhood to go to work, go to the doctor or take their children to school.
In the UK, nearly half of Wales will be subject to local lockdown: from 6 p.m. Sunday it will be banned from entering or leaving the cities of Cardiff and Swansea without professional or school reason.
In France, a group of doctors called for the implementation “from this weekend” of “drastic measures” to avoid “a second wave much more difficult for hospitals and intensive care units to manage than the first“.
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