More than 550 elderly care residents and staff have been infected with coronavirus in the Australian state of Victoria, as authorities dismiss calls for all those who test positive to be transferred to hospital.
Victoria recorded its deadliest day of the pandemic on Sunday, with seven of its 10 deaths linked to outbreaks at aged care facilities. The deaths take the state’s toll from the virus to 71 and the national figure to 155.
There are currently 560 active COVID-19 cases linked to residents and staff of at least 40 homes across the state, including 82 cases at Estia Health in Ardeer and 78 at St Basil’s Homes for the Aged in Fawkner.
The crisis prompted the federal and state governments to set up a response centre to coordinate efforts to curb the virus spread on Saturday.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth said all agencies needed to work together to bring things under control as quickly as possible.
“This is a challenge that we all need to work together to meet quickly for the safety of those who are vulnerable and dependent on care within aged care facilities in Victoria,” he told reporters in Canberra on Sunday.
Dr Coatsworth dismissed calls by community groups and aged care providers to transfer all COVID-19-positive residents to hospital.
He said decisions needed to be made on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the resident’s medical needs and clinical advice.
“Every single outbreak is different in regards to COVID-19. It affects different facilities in different sorts of ways when we’re talking about aged care,” he said.
Updated
at 3.22am EDT
North Korea declares emergency in town over suspected Covid-19 case
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared an emergency and a lockdown in a border town after a person suspected of having Covid-19 illegally crossed the border from South Korea.
State media confirmed it would be the first case to be officially acknowledged by North Korean authorities.
An emergency politburo meeting was convened in response to what Kim called a “critical situation in which the vicious virus could be said to have entered the country”, the North’s KCNA state news reported.
A person who defected to South Korea three years ago returned across the fortified border that divides the two Koreas to the town of Kaesong this month with coronavirus symptoms, the disease caused by the virus, according to KCNA.
“An emergency event happened in Kaesong City where a runaway who went to the south three years ago, a person who is suspected to have been infected with the vicious virus returned on July 19 after illegally crossing the demarcation line,” KCNA said.
KCNA did not say if the person had been tested, but said an “uncertain result was made from several medical check-ups of the secretion of that person’s upper respiratory organ and blood”, prompting officials to quarantine the person and investigate anyone he may have been in contact with.
I’m Amy Walker, taking over the global coronavirus blog for the next few hours.
Updated
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It has been a startling week for those following Britain’s response to the pandemic. Roundly derided for the lateness of its lockdown and its bungled testing programmes, the UK was the unexpected recipient of a sudden bout of lavish praise for its scientists’ efforts to combat the d isease.
“The Brits are on course to save the world,” wrote leading US economist Tyler Cowen in Bloomberg Opinion, while the journal Science quoted leading international scientists who have heaped praise on British researchers’ anti-Covid work.
And the prime target for these plaudits has been the UK’s Recovery trial, a drug-testing programme that has involved input from more than 3,000 doctors and nurses working with 12,000 Covid-19 patients in 176 hospitals across the nation – from the Western Isles to Truro and from Derry to King’s Lynn.
These trials were carried out in intensive care units crammed with the seriously ill, patients whose numbers were boosted to high levels because of the UK’s late pandemic lockdown. The results have nevertheless changed Covid-19 clinical practice across the planet:
‘It’s a ghost town’: tourism crisis hits British cities from Edinburgh to Bath
Like other British cities which usually attract high numbers of international tourists throughout the summer, Edinburgh is quiet, and businesses are suffering. August’s festival had already been cancelled when news came last week that December’s Hogmanay party will not go ahead as usual.
The city attracted 2.2 million overnight visits by overseas tourists in 2019, making it second only to London as a destination for travellers to the UK. But coronavirus has created an unprecedented tourism crisis:
Texas hospital forced to set up ‘death panel’ as Covid-19 cases surge
A surge in coronavirus cases in rural Texas has forced one hospital to set up “death panels” to decide which patients it can save and which ones will be sent home to die.
Doctors at Starr County Memorial Hospital, the only hospital in Starr County, have been issued with critical care guidelines to decide which Covid-19 patients it will treat and which ones will be sent home because they are likely to die. The committee is being formed to alleviate the hospital’s limited medical resources so doctors can focus on patients with higher survival rates:
21 workers at ArcelorMittal steel plant in Mexico die from Covid-19
Twenty-one workers at a steel plant owned by ArcelorMittal in the Mexican port city of Lazaro Cardenas have died from Covid-19, the steelworkers’ trade union said Saturday.
Reuters reports that the dead include employees, contractors and suppliers to the plant, said Carlos Solorio, secretary general of the local branch of the national mining and metallurgical workers’ union.
“Everyone was working for the company,” Solorio told Reuters. Nine of the deceased were union members, he added.
ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer, was not immediately available for comment on the report of the deaths, which were initially made public in a video posted on social media by the union’s president, Senator Napoleon Gomez.
Solorio said the 21 deaths had occurred since April, and that the workers likely contracted the virus outside the plant, given the strict sanitary protocols adopted by the firm. The plant employs more than 7,000 people, according to the union.
ArcelorMittal has said it has made substantial donations to help tackle the virus in Lazaro Cardenas, a major port on the Pacific coast.
With over 385,000 confirmed cases and nearly 43,500 deaths as of Saturday, Mexico has the world’s fourth-highest death toll from coronavirus. Lazaro Cardenas has registered 2,651 cases and 139 deaths to date, official data showed.
Global coronavirus cases pass 16m
There are now more than 16 million known coronavirus cases worldwide, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, and 644,528 recorded deaths.
There are currently 16,046,986 confirmed cases.
Here are the ten countries with the highest numbers of cases:
- US: 4,178,021
- Brazil: 2,394,513
- India: 1,385,635
- Russia: 805,332
- South Africa: 434,200
- Mexico: 385,036
- Peru: 375,961
- Chile: 343,592
- United Kingdom: 300,270
- Iran: 288,839
On Saturday the World Health Organisation warned that cases have been growing at around 1m per week for the last few weeks.
Looking at the Johns Hopkins tracker, this looks set to change, as the last three days have seen more than 280,000 cases confirmed worldwide per day – if Covid-19 continues to grow at this rate, cases will increase by 2 million per week:
