While in the United States, Democrats must forget the traditional atmosphere of political high masses for a virtual pre-election convention, the coronavirus epidemic is raising second-wave fears in Europe and saturating hospitals in Lebanon.
In France, where the Ministry of Labor is to announce Tuesday that it plans to introduce “the compulsory wearing of a mask” in companies, the number of hospital admissions because of the Covid-19 continued to rise on Monday.
Increase in cases in France
French hospitals have admitted 234 new patients in the last 24 hours Monday afternoon, against 173 on Friday, the day of the last daily update. 30,429 people have died in France since the start of the epidemic.
In Italy, the authorities, who want to ensure the start of the school year in mid-September and prevent the contamination of young people, ordered the closure of nightclubs and all nightlife venues on Sunday.
Wearing a mask was also imposed in public places frequented from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. and Monday evening in Rome, a number of police officers instructed tourists, through messages broadcast by loudspeaker, to don a mask.
The first country in Europe to be hit by the epidemic, the peninsula has so far recorded 254,000 cases of Covid-19 and more than 35,000 deaths, but remains relatively untouched by the second wave.
In Malta, where cases have doubled compared to March and April, discos, night bars, concert halls and sports clubs will also have to close until further notice. As for Spain, it has tightened its restrictions, extending the closure of nightclubs and the ban on smoking in the streets, to new regions.
More than 770,000 dead
The Covid-19 pandemic has killed more than 770,000 people worldwide since its appearance in China at the end of December, according to a report established by AFP on Monday.
In the United States, Democrats have started to rally to nominate their presidential candidate Joe Biden. Epidemic forces, the convention, which lasts until Thursday, takes place entirely online.
President Donald Trump responded by confirming that he would formally accept the Republican Party nomination next week, “live, from the White House,” an option that shakes up protocol and raises criticism.
With more than 170,453 dead and 5.4 million recorded cases, the United States is the hardest-hit nation, ahead of Brazil, Mexico and India. In the south of the country, a large university, Chapel Hill in North Carolina, announced Monday the transition to virtual courses to its some 20,000 students after the appearance of dozens of positive cases the week of the start of the school year.
In Liban, two weeks after the huge explosion that devastated Beirut, a new daily record of contaminations was reached with 456 new patients and the hospitals of the capital are almost saturated.
“On the edge of the abyss”
“We are on the brink, we do not have the luxury to take our time,” the resigning Minister of Health Hamad Hassan warned on Monday, pleading for a new two-week confinement to curb the spread of the epidemic.
The government had decreed an interim containment after a rebound in the number of cases at the start of the summer, but it was canceled with the devastating explosion that left at least 177 dead and 6,500 injured. “Our ability to control behavior in the face of the virus is more limited,” admitted the minister.
Elsewhere too, compliance with precautionary measures is starting to falter and sometimes results in rejections. In Rio, Brazil, the second most affected country in the world with more than 108,536 dead, the mayor had to give up his idea of establishing a reservation of space to go to the beach.
“It is allowed to bathe, to buy something to nibble, but after you return home”, explained the mayor who admitted, after an outcry, that his reservation system would not work.
Anti-containment protest in Argentina
In Buenos Aires, thousands of Argentines demonstrated, as well as in other cities of the country, against the confinement imposed by the government until August 30 in the capital. The number of new contaminations there has exceeded 5,000 per day for the past seven days.
In Bolivia, residents of a district of La Paz protested Monday against the municipality’s plan to build a cemetery that can accommodate some 1,800 people who have died of Covid-19.
In Saint Petersburg, Russia, around 30 dancers from the Mariinsky Theater have been infected with the new coronavirus, forcing the establishment to postpone performances. Russia had 927,745 coronavirus cases and 15,740 dead on Monday, according to official figures.
On the medical front, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, the president of Mexico, the third most affected country with 56,757 deaths, said he was ready to receive the vaccine against the Covid-19 “Sputnik V”, developed by Russia and viewed with skepticism by the international scientific community.
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