MEXICO CITY: Mexico is poised to overtake Britain as the country with the third-highest coronavirus death toll as the pandemic reaches new milestones in Latin America and threatens to disrupt efforts to reopen the economy. The unwanted record will place Mexico behind Brazil, Latin America’s largest and most populous nation, […]
Healthcare
WASHINGTON: Florida, one of the US coronavirus hotspots, reported another record increase in COVID-19 deaths on Friday (Jul 31) as the country’s top infectious disease expert dodged partisan bickering at a congressional hearing about a national strategy to fight the pandemic. The state health department said Florida registered 257 fatalities, […]
PARIS: Intense heat spread across much of France on Friday (Jul 31) ahead of a heavy holiday travel weekend, prompting officials to warn of wildfire risks in exceptionally dry and windy conditions. Around one-third of the country’s 101 departments were on high alert, with Paris forecast to reach 40 degrees […]
CAPE TOWN: The first of thousands of South African-designed ventilators rolled off a Cape Town assembly line on Friday (Jul 31), responding to requests from hospitals needing them for severe COVID-19 cases but unable to get them on global markets, officials said. Poorly resourced hospitals across Africa, which is nearing […]
JOHANNESBURG: When coronavirus patients started arriving at South Africa’s government-run Thelle Mogoerane Hospital, workers scrambled to set up isolation wards to treat them. They can’t keep up. Video filmed inside the hospital and seen by Reuters shows patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, being treated in […]
BERLIN: Germany will force people returning from three Spanish regions, including Catalonia, home to Barcelona, to go into quarantine or take a coronavirus test, in the latest blow to Europe’s travel industry after months of lockdown. With virus numbers ticking up in Germany, fears have grown that tourists returning from […]
LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that a recent uptick in infections was a “warning light” which means he has to hit the brakes on the easing of lockdown as he postponed the re-opening of close-contact services for at least two weeks. “I’ve said throughout the pandemic that there […]
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Trump visits Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies’ Innovation Center in Morrrisville, North Carolina WASHINGTON: As scientists and pharmaceutical companies work at breakneck speed to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, public health officials and senior US lawmakers are sounding alarms about the Trump administration’s lack of […]
SINGAPORE: Initial investigations show that is “unlikely” that a traveller from New Zealand who had transited in Singapore en route to South Korea was infected with COVID-19 during his stopover, Singapore authorities said on Friday (Jul 31). The Ministry of Health (MOH) and Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) said: […]
MANILA: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday (Jul 31) extended COVID-19 restrictions in the capital of Manila until mid-August and said the country would be given priority by China if supplies of a vaccine became available. The Philippines this month recorded Southeast Asia’s biggest daily jump in coronavirus deaths and […]