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by Patrick BAERT BEIJING, China (AFP) — Chinese workers raise their fists beside a red communist flag in a painting displayed at a Beijing museum, one of nearly 200 works put together for a propaganda exhibition that hails, not the Maoist past, but the “heroic deeds” of frontline medics fighting the coronavirus. Since the discovery of the deadly contagion in Wuhan at the end of last year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — More than 20 million coronavirus cases have been now been registered across the world, over half in the Americas, according to an AFP tally of official sources at 2215 GMT on Monday. At least 20,002,577 cases and 733,842 deaths have now been reported. More than four out of 10 coronavirus cases have been in the United States and Brazil, the two most affected countries in the world. While the US has […]
MADRID, Spanish (AFP) — Spanish actor Antonio Banderas announced on his 60th birthday Monday that he was in quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus but was feeling “relatively well”. “I am forced to celebrate my 60th birthday in quarantine after having tested positive for the COVID-19 disease,” Banderas, known for roles in such films as “The Mask of Zorro” and “Philadelphia”, said in a statement posted on social media which was accompanied with a […]
by Denholm BARNETSON with AFP bureaus PARIS, France (AFP) — Face masks became compulsory in tourist hotspots in Paris on Monday amid warnings of a resurgence of coronavirus cases, as infections in the world’s worst-hit country the United States topped five million. The requirement came as France along with much of Western Europe sweltered in a heatwave, with temperatures soaring above 35 degrees Celsius (95 F). The blistering heat sent crowds flocking to beaches at […]
WELLINGTON, United States (AFP) — New Zealand marked 100 days on Sunday with no recorded cases of the coronavirus in the community but health officials warned there was no room for complacency. There are still 23 active cases but all were detected at the border when entering the country and are being held in managed isolation facilities. “Achieving 100 days without community transmission is a significant milestone, however, as we all know, we can’t afford […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The United States has registered over five million cases in the coronavirus pandemic, Johns Hopkins University’s real-time tally showed Sunday, as well as over 162,000 deaths as the country struggles to control the disease. The US tally reached 5,000,603 cases on Sunday morning and 162,441 deaths — both totals by far the highest of any country in the world. Polls have showed a large majority of voters unhappy with President […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Lebanon recorded 255 coronavirus cases Thursday — its highest single-day infection tally — after a monstrous blast upended a planned lockdown and sent thousands streaming into overflowing hospitals, already struggling to cope. The health ministry figures were reported by the state-run National News Agency, which also announced two new deaths. They bring the total number of COVID-19 infections in Lebanon to 4,604, including 70 deaths since the outbreak first began in […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Spain’s health ministry on Thursday denied that the country is facing a second wave of COVID-19 infections, despite a spike in cases of the virus in recent days. According to the Spanish government’s own figures, over the past seven days there have been 19,405 new coronavirus cases registered, an average of 2,772 per day. A week earlier the rate was an average 1,913 cases per day and the week before that […]
JOHNANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP) — The number of COVID-19 cases in Africa has risen to over one million, with more than half registered in South Africa, according to an AFP count late Thursday. The continent’s worst-hit nation has registered 538,184 infections, including over 8,000 new cases on Thursday, and 9,604 deaths. Egypt has recorded around 95,000 COVID-19 cases while the figure in Nigeria is 45,000. South Africa’s infection figures are the fifth-highest after the […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — People who are infected with the coronavirus carry similar levels of the pathogen in their nose, throat and lungs whether they have symptoms or not, a new study from South Korea showed Thursday. The paper, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, is an important biological line of evidence in support of the idea that asymptomatic carriers can spread COVID-19. Until now, experts have relied on inferring asymptomatic spread when people contract […]
MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — Australia’s second-largest city entered the country’s toughest lockdown yet on Thursday, sparking a fresh wave of anxiety and confusion over ever-tougher regulations. Melbourne’s streets were visibly quieter as non-essential businesses were forced to shutter under new coronavirus rules expected to be in place for six weeks. A second lockdown for the state capital of Victoria began in early July but additional regulations came into force overnight, requiring hundreds of thousands more […]
HELSINKI, Finland (AFP) — The spread of the novel coronavirus is accelerating in Finland, health officials said Thursday, with new containment measures to be unveiled next week. According to new estimates, the reproduction rate of the virus has now risen above 1, to between 1.1 and 1.4, the health ministry’s strategic director Liisa-Maria Voipio-Pulkki told a press conference in the capital Helsinki. “The situation is extremely delicate,” Voipio-Pulkki said, adding that “some sort of second […]
