|
 Awaiting decisions in NZ and Australia
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is due to announce on
Friday whether strict lockdown measures will be extended. Opinion is
divided on whether she should repeat that strategy, given its huge
economic cost and mounting global evidence that the virus cannot be
permanently suppressed.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins said genome testing suggested the new
virus outbreak had originated in Britain or Australia, but officials
were investigating how the family in Auckland contracted it.
It was a waiting game over in Australia as well as public enquiry
findings into how passengers infected with the novel coronavirus
were allowed to disembark the Carnival Corp-owned Ruby Princess
cruise ship in Sydney in March, triggering a major outbreak, are set
to be released.
Hitches to deciding on U.S. coronavirus aid
President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was blocking Democrats'
effort to include funds for the U.S. Postal Service and election
infrastructure in a new coronavirus relief bill, a bid to block more
Americans from voting by mail during the pandemic.
"The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in
voting," Trump told Fox Business Network, saying Democrats want to
give the post office $25 billion. "If we don't make the deal, that
means they can't have the money, that means they can't have
universal mail-in voting."
Trump later told a news briefing that if a deal was reached that
included postal funding, he would not veto it.
Reciprocal quarantines across the Channel
Britain's decision to impose a 14-day quarantine on all arrivals
from France will lead to a reciprocal measure, French junior
minister for European affairs Clément Beaune said late on Thursday.
[to top of second column] |
Britain will quarantine all arrivals from France from Saturday because
coronavirus infection rates there are too high, transport minister Grant Shapps
said.
The reimposition of stringent quarantine conditions is in contrast to earlier in
the year when the British government was criticised for being too slow to lock
down at the beginning of the pandemic when many cases are thought to have
arrived from holidaymakers returning from Italy.
Frozen food virus conclusion
The World Health Organization has played down the risk of the virus entering the
food chain after two cities in China found traces of it in cargoes of imported
frozen food.
Viruses can survive up to two years at temperatures of minus 20 Celsius, but
scientists and officials say there is no strong evidence the coronavirus can
spread via frozen food.
Coronaviruses cannot multiply in food – they need a live animal or human host to
multiply and survive. Since the new coronavirus cannot replicate on the surface
of food or packaging, it can only become gradually weaker outside a living cell,
said Jin Dong-Yan, virology professor at the University of Hong Kong.
Infection from contact with a frozen virus through imported food "is still not
to be considered a major route of infection and still not an event that should
substantially affect policy at the public health levels", said Eyal Leshem,
director of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba
Medical Center in Israel.
(Compiled by Karishma Singh; Editing by Robert Birsel)
[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |
