Health News at Your Fingertips

Mainland China reported 25 new Covid-19 cases on 29 October, down from 47 a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said on Friday.

Of the new cases, 24 were imported infections originating from overseas. The National Health Commission said in a statement that one local infection was reported in the eastern province of Shandong.

The commission also reported 53 new asymptomatic cases, up from 16 a day earlier. China does not count symptomless patients as confirmed Covid-19 cases.

Total confirmed Covid-19 cases to date in mainland China now stand at 85,940. The death toll remains at 4,634.

The World Health Organization in Europe on Thursday said nationwide lockdowns should be treated as a “last-resort option” even as it noted that the continent was back at the pandemic’s “epicentre”, AFP reports.

While widespread shutdowns of society would “cut community transmission and give the health system much needed space to recoup and scale up”, they also came at a huge cost, the WHO’s regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said in a statement delivered to an emergency meeting of European health ministers.

As more and more European countries are adopting drastic measures to curb the spread, Kluge also said that a strong response did not have to mean the strict lockdowns seen in the spring.

Downsides to national lockdowns included poor mental health, increases in domestic violence and damage to the economy, he warned.

“Given these realities, we consider national lockdowns a last-resort option because they bypass the still-existing possibility to engage everyone in basic and effective measures.”

With cases spiralling upwards, the regional director also concluded that testing could no longer be ramped up “at scale”.

“We need to assess where to focus our resources. Adapting testing and tracing so that they are used in a targeted way for maximum impact.”

“Europe is at the epicentre of this pandemic once again,” Kluge said, pointing out that mortality rates and hospitalisations were also rising.

As defined by WHO, Europe includes 53 countries, including Russia and countries in Central Asia. The organisation said the region had passed the “10-million-case milestone” on Thursday.

23 October was the first time over the course of the pandemic that the world added half a million coronavirus cases in a single day, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. That total, a record at the time, was 506,713.

In the week since then, we have globally reported more than 500,000 cases in 24 hours two more times, with 525,164 on 26 october and the latest case data again breaking the record, with over 530,581 in a single day.

The staggering infections totals come as the US adds close to 80,000 cases each day (the latest case total is expected to be a record-breaking 80,000 – we will have confirmation of this shortly) and Europe passes 10m cases overall – just under a quarter of the global total.

The United States is set to pass 9m cases alone in the next 24 hours.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coronavirus coverage.

My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be with you for the next few hours.

The world has again seen a record global case rise, with more than 530,000 infections reported in a single day.

Meanwhile rhe EU’s healthcare systems are at risk of being overwhelmed by the number of coronavirus cases unless authorities act quickly, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said.

“The spread of the virus will overwhelm our healthcare systems if we do not act urgently,” she said after a video conference of EU leaders to coordinate the EU’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

She said the Commission made available €220m to finance the transfer of Covid-19 patients across EU countries to avoid healthcare systems in the most affected countries not being able to cope.

At the meeting leaders agreed to better coordinate efforts to battle the virus as infections in Europe exceeded 10 million, making the continent again the centre of the pandemic.

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

• EU to fund transfer of Covid-19 patients across borders to prevent hospital collapse. The EU will finance the transfer of patients across borders within the bloc to prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed as Covid-19 infections and hospitalisations rise across the continent. “The spread of the virus will overwhelm our healthcare systems if we do not act urgently,” said Ursula von der Leyen, head of the EU Commission.
• Spain hit a new record in daily cases, recording another 23,580 infections. It brought the nation’s tally to 1,136,503, health ministry data showed. The government voted in favour of a six-month extension of the state of emergency, which allows Spain’s 17 regional governments to limit mobility, impose curfews and shut their borders with other regions.
• France will restrict outdoor movement and make working from home mandatory under new lockdown rules, coming into effect at midnight. People will only be able to leave their own homes for certain essential purposes, as the country tries to put the brakes on a Covid-19 outbreak that the president Emmanuel Macron said risked accelerating out of control. More details here.
• West Yorkshire in England will move into tier 3 restrictions from 12.01 on Monday. The ‘very high’ restrictions – the strictest level in England – will see indoor social mixing banned and the closure of pubs and bars unless they can operate as a restaurant. More details here.
• Greece will impose regional lockdowns on its second-largest city of Thessaloniki and two other regions from Friday after a rise in cases of Covid-19, the government said.
• Italy registered a record of 26,831 new Covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours, its highest daily increase in coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Under new restrictions bars and restaurants must stop serving customers at 6pm while cinemas, theatres, swimming pools and gyms must close completely.
• Sweden registered 2,820 new coronavirus cases, the highest since the start of the pandemic and the third record number in a matter of days. Hospitals are feeling the strain, with the number of patients with Covid-19 in need of care in the region having risen about 60% over the past week after a near 80% surge in recorded infections.