Many countries that are trying hard to contain the outbreak of the new Coronavirus have intensified measures of isolation and imposing the wearing of masks, while the World Health Organization hopes to turn the page of the epidemic “in less than two years.”
And after the matter was only a recommendation, putting masks on shared transportation in Denmark has become mandatory from Saturday at a time when the Kingdom is facing an increase in the number of cases of the disease and in the number of local foci.
In France, where more than 4,500 new cases of Covid-19 were recorded during the last twenty-four hours, wearing masks has also become mandatory in a part of central Lyon, after it was imposed in some areas of Paris and Nice.
According to the local authorities, this measure, which includes the most crowded streets, is supposed to allow to avoid the spread of the virus due to the return of vacationers from their holidays and to fight the epidemic as the date of return to school approaches.
The residents of Lyon may receive this measure with reservation and criticism, as is the case for residents of Toulouse, where wearing masks is mandatory starting from Friday. “Why not put (masks) on to animals since they can transmit the virus? It’s a big joke. It’s just big business,” said Bernard Brockes, a trader in Toulouse.
Where will they put the patients? :
In South Korea, which has so far succeeded in containing the virus, the authorities announced Saturday that, starting from Sunday, they will expand the scope of tightening restrictions imposed in the Seoul region to include all lands, after the country recorded more than 300 new cases of the disease for two consecutive days.
In Germany, the authorities announced that the number of new daily infections with the emerging coronavirus had exceeded the two thousand thresholds during the last twenty-four hours, a level unprecedented since the end of April. The German Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases recorded 2034 new infections, which raises the total number of injuries since the start of the epidemic, to 232 thousand and 82, in addition to seven new deaths, bringing the death toll in the country to 9267.
In Madrid, residents were called to isolate in the regions most affected by the virus, at a time when the number of recorded infections in Spain rose more than eight thousand within 24 hours.
Similar measures are being taken in England, where isolation measures are tightened in several areas in the northwest of the country as Birmingham, the second-most populous city in the country has been placed under surveillance.
Since midnight, residents of Oldham and Blackburn, as well as many parts of the Bendel region, where nearly half a million people live, have been unable to meet people from outside their area.
In Tunisia, on Friday, the authorities re-imposed a curfew between 5 in the afternoon and 5 in the morning for a week in the city of Hamma in the southeast of the country, which is witnessing a high number of injuries.
On Friday, Lebanon entered a new phase of general closure that lasts for two weeks, at a time when it is facing record numbers of injuries, and hospitals full of Covid-19 patients and those injured in the August 4 bombing should be dealt with.
Roxanne Moukarzel, a 55-year-old housewife, thinks that “locking down the country is economically harmful” for institutions that strive to keep their doors open, but at the same time she considers that “the low rate of sale remains better than getting sick and entering hospitals” that are already overcrowded.
“There is no place in the hospitals,” she says. “If people are injured, where will they put them?”
More than 790 thousand deaths:
The challenge seems great at a time when the epidemic that appeared in China last December resumed its outbreak following summer holidays, family meetings, and celebrations after indications of its decline appeared in the spring.
In total, the epidemic has killed at least 793 thousand people in the world and infected more than 22 million and 734 thousand and 900 people in 196 countries and regions, according to a census prepared by Agence France-Presse.
The United States is still the country most affected by the virus, according to the latest toll announced by Johns Hopkins University, the number of infections in the country on Friday reached five million and 618 thousand and the number of deaths 175,245. 47031 injuries and 1,067 additional deaths were recorded within 24 hours.
It is followed by Brazil, where the number of deaths reached 112,304, then Mexico (59106), India (54849), and Britain (41,403). Latin America and the Caribbean counted 252,233 deaths, while Europe recorded 212,235 deaths.
“”We hope to end this pandemic in less than two years,” the director of the World Health Organization’s head Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told reporters in Geneva.
He added that by “making use of the available tools to the maximum and hoping to obtain additional tools such as vaccines, I believe that we can end the pandemic in less time than it took the 1918 flu”, referring to the Spanish flu pandemic that caused the death of about 50 million people in 1918, and in 1920.
In early August, the organization’s emergency committee spoke of a “long-term” pandemic, expecting that its “effects will remain for decades to come.”
In fact, the disease continues to spread. The first death from the virus was recorded in the areas controlled by the fighting factions in northwestern Syria, which raises fears of an outbreak of the epidemic in an area crowded with displaced persons.
On the other hand, the situation in Brazil is stable, according to the World Health Organization, which indicates a “clear tendency to decline (the number of injuries) in many areas” in the country, but it appeared cautious in the medium term. The latest toll indicates the death of 113,358 people (+1054), and three million and 532,330 confirmed cases (+30355).
