FACTBOX - The latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

A patient is wheeled out of Cobble Hill Health Center by emergency medical workers in the Brooklyn borough of New York. File picture: John Minchillo/AP

A patient is wheeled out of Cobble Hill Health Center by emergency medical workers in the Brooklyn borough of New York. File picture: John Minchillo/AP

Published Jul 14, 2020

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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

     

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

US 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 US health agency.

* Drugmakers partnered with the US 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 US 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

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