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 UK tries to avoid national lockdown
Britain will do everything it can to avoid ordering a second
national lockdown because it believes it will do more harm than good
to the country, a minister said on Thursday.
As France and Germany ordered new national closures, British Housing
Minister Robert Jenrick said the British government's clear policy
was to use the tough local restrictions that were recently imposed
on swathes of northern England.
After a lull in the summer, the virus started to spread again in
September and an Imperial College study published on Thursday showed
cases doubling every nine days, with nearly 100,000 people infected
in England each day.
Merkel lashes out at populists
Populists who argue the coronavirus is harmless are dangerous and
irresponsible, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday,
defending a circuit-break lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of
the virus.
"We are in a dramatic situation at the start of the cold season. It
affects us all, without exception," Merkel told the Bundestag lower
house of parliament, adding new restrictions to reduce social
contact were "necessary and proportionate".
She said populists who question the seriousness of the crisis were
putting lives at risk.
Poland's total cases top 300,000
Poland reported another daily record of coronavirus infections and
deaths on Thursday with new 20,156 cases and 301 deaths related to
COVID-19.
The health ministry said the total number of confirmed coronavirus
infections had tripled in less than a month, exceeding 300,000.
Government officials have warned infections could rise fast due to
massive protests sweeping Poland following a Constitutional Court
ruling last Thursday that has introduced a near total ban on
abortions.
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Hospitals in Wisconsin, Texas under strain
UW Health University Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, has been rushing to convert
available space into units for COVID-19 patients, as the state's medical
facilities struggle to keep pace with new infections.
As part of the effort, the medical centre opened a new intensive care unit this
week ahead of schedule, and it is quickly filling with coronavirus patients.
"Today we have more patients than we've had ever before," said Dr. Jeff Pothof,
an emergency medicine physician at UW Health. "It's putting a strain on our
capacity. Our biggest concern is ICU staffing."
Breathalyser gives results in seconds
A company in Singapore has developed a breathalyser test for the new coronavirus
which it says will enable people to know whether they are infected in under a
minute.
Breathonix, a startup firm from the National University of Singapore, says its
test achieved more than 90% accuracy in a pilot clinical trial of 180 people in
the city state and hopes to get regulatory approval early next year.
Countries worldwide are looking to develop alternative tests to the Polymerase
Chain Reaction (PCR) nasal swab, which is invasive and in short supply in some
places where demand has outstripped manufacturers' production capacity.
(Compiled by Linda Noakes; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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