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 South Korea virus surge threatens 'medical collapse'
South Korean President Moon Jae-in called on Monday for expanded
testing and more thorough tracing as the country struggles to
control its latest and largest wave of infections.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 615 new
cases as of midnight Sunday, capping a month of triple-digit daily
increases that have led to 8,311 confirmed patients in quarantine,
the most ever.
"This crisis is the most critical yet," KDCA deputy director Na
Seong-woong told a briefing, warning that the outbreak could lead to
a "medical collapse" if the numbers aren't contained.
COVID clusters break out in Japan's coldest city
The emergence of Japan's coldest city as a COVID-19 hotspot has
raised fears among health experts that it could be a sign of what
the rest of the nation may face as winter sets in and more people
stay indoors, raising airborne transmission risks.
The city of Asahikawa, about 140km (87 miles) north of Sapporo on
the northern island of Hokkaido, is reeling from infection clusters
at two hospitals and a care home. By Sunday, the number of cases
recorded on the island was more than 10,000, and Asahikawa had
accounted for 16% of the 256 deaths.
Giuliani tests positive
President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani has tested positive
for COVID-19, Trump said on Sunday, prompting one state legislature
to close for a week after Giuliani visited to try to persuade
lawmakers to help reverse Trump's election defeat.
The 76-year-old former New York mayor is the latest of a number of
people close to the White House to test positive, including Trump
himself.
Giuliani tweeted his thanks to "friends and followers" on Sunday
evening for their concern. "I'm getting great care and feeling good.
Recovering quickly and keeping up with everything," he wrote on
Twitter.
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Worries over vaccine scepticism
A sizeable minority of people believe conspiracy theories about the coronavirus
and COVID-19 vaccines, experts have warned.
Britain begins its vaccine programme this week and others are likely to follow
soon, so governments are seeking to reassure people of vaccines' safety and
efficacy in order to get a critical mass to take them.
"What we're finding is, in the wake of the pandemic, that conspiracy beliefs may
have gone mainstream, that they're no longer confined to the fringes," Daniel
Freeman, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Oxford University, told Reuters.
"Around a quarter (of Britain's population) are entertaining such thoughts.
Another quarter are consistently thinking in terms of conspiracy beliefs, and
around one in 10 people seem to have a very high rate of endorsement of
conspiracy beliefs."
Melbourne welcomes first international flight in 5 months
Australia's second-largest city welcomed its first international passenger
flight in five months on Monday, an arrival that will test the state of
Victoria's revamped hotel quarantine system.
Australia has since March closed its borders to non-citizens, but airports
serving Melbourne, Victoria's capital, stopped accepting any arrivals in late
June after an outbreak of COVID-19 that begun at two hotels where arrivals were
quarantining.
More than 20,000 infections were recorded in Victoria when hotel staff
contracted the virus from people returning from overseas.
(Compiled by Linda Noakes, editing by Ed Osmond)
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