Health News at Your Fingertips

Tokyo has confirmed 206 new cases of coronavirus, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The total marks the fourth straight day of more than 200 cases, as the Japanese capital faces a resurgence in the number of coronavirus cases after the government lifted a state of emergency.

• Japanese officials say they weren’t told until after repeated requests that more than 60 US marines based on the island of Okinawa have been diagnosed with Covid-19.
• Mexico’s Health Ministry on Saturday reported 6,094 new confirmed coronavirus infections and 539 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 295,268 cases and 34,730 deaths.
• The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 248 to 198,804.
• Hong Kong confirmed another 61 new cases on Saturday, amid a third resurgence for the city which held off a devastating outbreak in the early months. Head of Hong Kong University’s school of medicine, Dr Gabriel Leung, told local media today that the reproductive number of the virus has risen to nearly four, making it “Hong Kong’s first sustained local outbreak”.
• Australia has confirmed 279 new cases, of which 273 are in Victoria, including 145 cases linked to North Melbourne and Flemington public housing towers.
• In NSW returning Australians will be charged for the cost of their mandatory hotel quarantine, starting at $3,000 for one person, and in Victoria students in the stage three lockdown areas, from prep to year 10, are going back to remote learning.
• In Australia a vaccine developed by the University of Queensland is ready to be tested on humans.
• The USpresident, Donald Trump, has appeared in public wearing a mask for the first time during a visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, after previously refusing to wear one and ridiculing some who did.
• Brazil, the world’s second-worst coronavirus hotspot after the United States, recorded 1,071 new deaths from the outbreak on Saturday, taking the total official death toll to 71,469.

That’s it from me for the day, I’ll hand over the blog to my colleagues in London.

Reuters: Thai researchers plan to begin human trials of a potential vaccine for the new coronavirus in November and are preparing 10,000 doses, a senior official said on Sunday, aiming for a vaccine that could be ready for use by late next year.

Following favourable results in trials on primates, the next step is to manufacture doses for human trials, said Kiat Ruxrungtham, director of the Bangkok*s Chulalongkorn University vaccine development program.

Thailand’s first facility should complete production in October and send the products to a second facility, which should finish by November, he said. Originally the earliest target was September, but Kiat said not enough vaccine can be ready by then.

Facilities in San Diego and Vancouver will produce 10,000 doses for the trials for 5,000 people. The first group, aged 18 to 60, will receive different doses of the vaccine, he said.

The trials will not accept volunteers “until we receive approval from the Thai Food and Drug Administration and an ethics committee,” Kiat said.

Thai company BioNet-Asia is preparing its facilities for large-scale manufacturing if the trials prove successful, he said.

“If everything goes according to plan, the vaccine will be ready for Thailand in the third or fourth quarter next year,” Kiat said.

More details here on that developing issue in Okinawa.

The governor of Okinawa island in Japan has demanded that a United States military commander take tougher prevention measures and have more transparency after officials were told more than 60 marines at two bases have been infected with the coronavirus over the past few days.

On Sunday Okinawan officials reported 61 cases, 38 of them at marine corps air station Futenma, which is at the center of a relocation dispute, and another 23 at Camp Hansen since 7 July.

US military officials have told them the two bases have been put into lockdown.

The disclosure of the exact figures came only after repeated requests.

India’s most famous film star Amitabh Bachchan, and his son Abhishek, are in stable condition after testing positive for the coronavirus, a hospital official and government health authorities said on Sunday.

The 77-year-old legendary actor said in a tweet on Saturday night that he had tested positive for the highly infectious virus.

Within minutes, his actor son Abhishek Bachchan, 44, tweeted that he had also tested positive.

Both were moved to the Nanavati Hospital in Mumbai despite showing only mild symptoms and the father-son duo appealed to their millions of fans to stay calm.

On Sunday, an official at Nanavati and government health officials in Mumbai said both the father and son were in stable condition. Reports were awaited on the condition of Amitabh Bachchan’s wife Jaya and Abhishek’s wife Aishwarya, both also highly regarded actors.

Reuters: The cascading effects of coronavirus restrictions are hampering efforts to cope with seasonal outbreaks of dengue, an incurable, mosquito-borne disease that is also known as breakbone fever” for its severely painful symptoms.

Southeast Asian countries like Singapore and Indonesia have dealt with concurrent outbreaks of dengue and coronavirus this year. In Brazil, where there are over 1.6 million Covid-19 infections, at least 1.1 million cases of dengue have been reported, with nearly 400 deaths, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

2019 was the worst year on record for dengue, and cases are likely to rise soon with the start of seasonal rains in Latin American countries like Cuba, Chile and Costa Rica, as well as the South Asian countries of India and Pakistan.

Dengue typically isn’t fatal, but severe cases may require hospitalisation.

Prevention efforts targeted at destroying mosquito-breeding sites, like removing trash or old tires and other objects containing standing water, are still the best ways to curb the spread of the disease. But coronavirus-era lockdowns and other restrictions have meant that these efforts have been reduced or stopped altogether in many countries.

After just over a month of eased restrictions, Melbourne is facing its second round of stage three lockdowns. After the first round, Melburnians are feeling older, more tired and perhaps a bit wiser.

From shaving to survivor to whirlwind romances, these are some of the stay-home behaviours they are planning on changing this time.

Hong Kong health authorities have confirmed a record high number of locally-transmitted cases, about 50 of which can’t be traced to a previous infection.

Head of Hong Kong University’s school of medicine, Dr Gabriel Leung, told local media today that the reproductive number of the virus has risen to nearly four. This means every infected person could now be expected to pass it on to almost four others.

“Given the high baseline rate and [that] there is no sign of abatement of this trajectory and that real-time reproductive number of three to four, I think that we have now, or we have already entered Hong Kong’s first sustained local outbreak”, Leung said.

Some of the Australian statistics, shared by Coatsworth just now:

• The number of cases confirmed in the 24 hours to noon is 279, of which 273 are in Victoria.
• There have been five cases diagnosed in New South Wales, two of those individuals were in hotel quarantine and had acquired their infection overseas.
• Three are local cases, who are household contacts of one of the people who contracted Covid-19 in south-west Sydney.
• 7,728 people have recovered from Covid-19 and in terms of current hospitalisation, 67 people are hospitalised and 17 of those are in intensive care units.
• “It is critically important that if you were [at the Crossroads pub in Casula, NSW] during 3 July and 10 July, that you get yourself tested… including freight drivers, because that is a particular venue that is also frequented by people who do transnational freight driving.”
• The New South Wales Health Department has recommended an increase in personal protective equipment for the hospitals in both local health districts around Casula.