The Corona epidemic has infected more than two hundred million people around the world, while the infection rate is rising again, especially in Asia and Australia.

On Thursday, the Australian authorities announced general closure measures for the sixth time in Melbourne, the country’s second city, at a time when Sydney recorded a record infection rate. The authorities are doing everything they can to avoid the worst-case scenario with the rapid spread of the delta mutant.

With the state of Victoria (southeast) and its capital, Melbourne, entering the general closure phase, starting at 20:00 (10.00 GMT), more than half of Australia’s population of 25 million people are confined to their homes again.

In Thailand, where the delta is rampant, mortuary centers overcrowded with bodies as a result of the virus resort to renting refrigerated containers to deposit the bodies in them, while the forensic teams are on the verge of collapse.

“The physical and moral burden is very heavy (…), some of our staff are passing out,” said the employee at the mortuary of Thammasat University Hospital in northern Bangkok. We are on the verge of exhausting our capabilities.”

On Thursday, the authorities recorded about 21,000 injuries, at a record rate since the outbreak of the epidemic, and 160 deaths, most of them in Bangkok.

In Japan, Tokyo Thursday recorded a record infection rate (more than 5,042), and the authorities intend to expand the closure measures to eight additional prefectures, in a move that comes three days before the end of the Olympic Games.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Thursday that “the infection is spreading at a rate that we did not know before.”

Daily injuries crossed the threshold of twenty thousand in Malaysia on Thursday, at a record rate, and approaching the threshold of ten thousand deaths.

The rate of new infections in the world since the beginning of June has increased by 68%, from 360,000 to 600,000. This is due in particular to the rapid outbreaks of the mutant delta-infection.

In parallel, the number of deaths recorded daily (currently 9350), but at a slower pace, has increased by 20% since the beginning of July, after it had fallen to 7800 deaths per day.

In all, the epidemic has killed more than 4,257,424 people since the virus was first detected in December 2019. The World Health Organization expects the actual number to be two or three times higher.

Washington opens its borders and Beijing closes it

The United States, which closed its borders to most foreigners with the outbreak of the Corona virus, plans to start allowing all immigrants who have received the Covid vaccine to enter its territory, a White House official said Wednesday.

He said that Washington is developing “a phased approach that will mean, over time, that foreign travelers to the United States from all countries, with limited exceptions, must have received the vaccine in full,” without specifying a time frame for implementation.

This plan represents an initial but important development in the approach taken by the United States to combat the Covid pandemic, especially since Washington had announced on July 26 that it would maintain restrictions on foreign arrivals, ignoring European pressures in this field.

On Thursday, France announced a mechanism that entitles tourists who have received vaccinations outside the European Union to obtain a health permit (a test that proves that they are not infected, or a certificate of vaccination or recovery), to enter places of entertainment and culture, to include soon other places, including restaurants, transportation and hospitals.

On the other hand, China announced the tightening of travel restrictions for its citizens abroad, while the country faces a new outbreak of the epidemic.

On Wednesday, the White House rejected the World Health Organization’s call to freeze the distribution of booster doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, saying that the United States “does not need” to choose between distributing booster doses or sending donations to poor countries.

“It’s a wrong alternative,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, commenting on the WHO request. And she added, “We believe that we can do both (…) We do not need to choose” between providing third doses to the Americans, and this has not been officially decided yet in any case, and helping poor countries.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that his government is preparing to organize a boosted vaccination campaign in September for “the most vulnerable and advanced in age”.

missing balance

Faced with the gulf separating rich countries, where vaccines are abundant, and poor countries that have been able to vaccinate only a small percentage of their population, the World Health Organization has called for a freeze in the distribution of booster doses of vaccines in an effort to achieve a balance, albeit limited.

“We need to quickly reverse the situation and move from directing the majority of vaccines to rich countries, to directing the majority of them to poor countries,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference on Wednesday in Geneva, stressing that the freeze should continue “until the end of September at least.” .

The organization has been denouncing for months that vaccines do not reach countries equally. Of the four billion doses given around the world, 80 percent went to high- and middle-income countries, while less than 50 percent of the world’s population lives there.

AP