Source::AP
SEOUL
AP
South Korean officials are considering reducing working hours of restaurants and cafes as the country counted its 15th straight day of triple-digit jumps in coronavirus infections.
The 371 new cases reported by the South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Friday brought the national caseload to 19,077, including 316 deaths. The country has added more than 4,300 to its caseload over the past 15 days, prompting concerns about overwhelming hospitals.
KCDC said 286 of the new cases came from the Seoul metropolitan area, bumping the region’s caseload to 7,200 and overtaking the southeastern city of Daegu, the epicenter of a massive outbreak in late February and March that was stabilized by April.
Health workers have found it more difficult to contain the recent transmissions centered around the more populated capital area, where clusters have been tied to churches, restaurants and schools.
While government has recently banned large gatherings and shut down nightspots and churches nationwide, there are calls for elevating social distancing measures to the highest level. It would prohibit gatherings of more than 10 and advise private companies to have employees work from home.
But Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said during a virus meeting Friday that the government wasn’t ready to implement Level 3 restrictions yet, citing concerns about hurting the economy that policymakers say will likely shrink for the first time in 22 years. Chung said officials will instead explore other ways to improve distancing.
28, Aug 2020 | nepaltraveller.com
PARIS
AP
The virus is actively circulating in about 20 percent of France’s regions and masks will now be required for everyone in Paris starting Friday — but the government is determined to reopen schools next week, get workers back on the job and kick off the Tour de France cycling race on Saturday.
Showing a map of the country’s new “red zones,” French Prime Minister Jean Castex on Thursday urged local authorities to impose new restrictions to slow infections and prevent another economically devastating national lockdown.
“The epidemic is gaining ground, and now we must intervene,” Castex said. France “must do everything to avoid a new confinement.”
He acknowledged that the rising cases this summer — attributed mostly to people going on vacation with family and friends — came earlier than authorities expected.
France is now seeing more than 50 positive tests per 100,000 people in Paris, Marseille and other areas. The government announced Thursday that 21 of 101 administrative regions, or departments, are now in the “red zone” where the virus is actively circulating, and where local authorities can impose stricter rules on gatherings and movements.
Castex asked Paris authorities to start requiring mask use everywhere, instead of in just select neighborhoods. Marseille already mandates masks. Hours later, Paris police headquarters ordered that masks be worn by all pedestrians outdoors starting at 8 am Friday. Cyclists and those using other open-air transport are included, but not people in cars.
Government ministers insisted that the once-renowned French hospital system is better prepared to handle new COVID-19 cases than it was when the virus raced across the country in March and April, saturating intensive care units. France has reported more than 30,500 deaths related to the virus, the third-highest toll in Europe after Britain and Italy, but experts say all confirmed figures understate the true toll of the pandemic due to limited testing and other factors.
France was registering only a few hundred new infections a day in May and June but the number started picking up in July as the country ramped up testing. Daily cases surged past 6,000 on Thursday for the first time since May.
The government’s message Thursday was mixed — while expressing alarm about growing cases, Castex insisted that “living with the virus” is the new national mantra and he wants people to resume work in September as broadly as possible.
To protect vulnerable populations, the prime minister urged people not to hold family parties and said “grandpa and grandma” shouldn’t pick up their grandchildren from school.
Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said there’s no reason to dial back plans to send France’s 12.9 million students back to class next week or to reopen cafeterias. “All children should return to school,” he said.
