Last updated: 14/07/2020 09:17
Australian states tightened borders and restricted pub visits on Tuesday, while Disney prepared to close its Hong Kong theme park and Japan stepped up tracing as a jump in novel coronavirus cases across Asia fanned fears of a second wave of infections.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
* For an interactive graphic tracking the global spread, click here.
EUROPE
* Britain faces a potentially more deadly second wave of COVID-19 in the coming winter that could kill up to 120,000 people over nine months in a worst-case scenario, health experts said.
* Spain’s Catalonia approved a decree giving it legal backing to place restrictions on the city of Lleida and its surroundings, defying a judge’s earlier ruling that such an order was unlawful.
AMERICAS
* California’s governor clamped new restrictions on businesses as cases and hospitalizations soared, and the state’s two largest school districts, in Los Angeles and San Diego, said children would be made to stay home in August.
* Canada and the United States are set to extend a ban on non-essential travel, although a final decision has not been taken, two sources familiar with the matter said.
* The number of deaths from the coronavirus in Latin America has exceeded the figure for North America for the first time since the start of the pandemic, a Reuters count showed.
* More than 880 employees of private contractors running U.S. immigration detention centres have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to a Congressional testimony given by company executives.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Hong Kong will impose strict new social distancing measures from midnight Tuesday, the most stringent in the Asian financial hub since the coronavirus broke out.
* Kazakhstan will extend its second lockdown by two weeks until the end of July, and will once again offer financial aid to those who have lost their source of income.
* The Philippines reported Southeast Asia’s biggest daily jump in COVID-19 deaths and warned of more fatalities ahead.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* Bahrain will add $470 million in emergency spending to its 2020 state budget.
* A Lebanese waste management company is quarantining some 133 Syrian workers who tested positive, as Lebanon recorded a new daily high for infections.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech SE said two of their experimental coronavirus vaccines received “fast track” designation from the U.S. health agency.
* Drugmakers partnered with the U.S. government are on track to begin actively manufacturing a vaccine for COVID-19 by the end of the summer, a senior administration official said.
* Quest Diagnostics Inc said the turnaround for COVID-19 tests it is conducting in the U.S. has lengthened, with non-prioritised patients waiting a week or more on average for their results.
ECONOMIC FALLOUT
* Singapore’s economy suffered a record contraction in the second quarter, tipping it into recession and putting the trade-reliant city-state on course for its worst ever slump this year.
* Private investment firms that manage the fortunes of wealthy individuals and their kin were approved for millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded relief loans designed to help small businesses weather the coronavirus lockdown, according to a review of recently released government data.
* China’s exports unexpectedly rose in June as overseas economies reopened after lockdowns, while imports grew for the first time this year.
(Reuters)
Pictured: A bus conductor checks the temperature of a passenger before getting inside the bus as restrictions on public transportation are eased by the government following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Kathmandu, Nepal July 14, 2020. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar
