Rana Ali Zohaib
Earlier when the pandemic was just beginning, the idea that the virus spread more during colder months was seen as an optimistic sign by scientists and epidemiologists. However, now with summer across the northern hemisphere, perhaps the virus slowing down over the next couple of months might not be as helpful as it seemed.
In the longer view looking ahead to fall and winter, too, and then to 2021 this pattern of infectivity could make the virus even more destructive than we thought. If sunlight and humidity do indeed slow its spread, they won’t knock it out completely in the next few months, and that means we should expect a rebound down the line.
What’s more, epidemiologists suggest this down-and-up won’t cancel out and be a wash: In fact, the exponential bounce back in the winter would likely overshadow any slight deceleration that happened in June, July, and August. That would be very, very bad.
The World Health Organization registered the largest single-day spike in Covid-19 cases globally Sunday, with more than 1.83 lakh new cases. Meanwhile, the virus has devastated Mexico’s largest market and investors have been moving to the dark corners of debt markets to cope with the economic fallout of the pandemic.
The World Health Organization has reported the largest single-day spike as the world recorded more than 1, 83, 000 infections of Covid-19 Sunday, The US, Brazil, and India account for the bulk of these cases.
Brazil recorded 54,711 new cases Sunday and the country’s death toll crossed 50,000. The Latin American country now has nearly 1.1 million cases. Meanwhile, the US and India recorded 35,617 and 15,400 new cases respectively.
Protests in Minneapolis did not lead to another outbreak of the virus. The killing of African-American George Floyd by a White policeman of the Minneapolis Police sparked widespread protests across the country against systemic racism. Experts had feared that protests in the US city of Minneapolis may lead to a spike in the number of coronavirus infections, but early tests indicate otherwise.
The testing program in the Twin Cities (Minnesota and St. Paul) has been particularly well-embraced, making it a sort of testbed for the rest of the nation, where protests began later. Now, early data from Minnesota’s efforts suggest such fears may have been overblown. In the vast, unplanned experiment of unleashing tens of thousands of previously isolated people into a few city blocks, that’s good news, But perhaps even more significant is how this preliminary testing data is starting to reshape scientists’ understanding of how the novel pathogen behaves, with important implications for states’ plans to reopen.
France shows the virus can be kept in check after unlocking. France began gradually lifting its lockdown on 11 May, and the number of daily infections has also continued to fall in the country, indicating that it is possible to keep the virus in check even without the lockdown. This comes after France was one of the worst-hit countries in Europe along with Italy, Germany, and Spain.
With social distancing measures still in place and the wearing of face masks made compulsory on public transport, new cases have lately stood at about 450 per day, from a peak of 7,500. Since easing the lockdown, the weekly number of Covid-19 patients sent to the hospital has more than halved. France is to allow all businesses to resume and all children to return to school from Monday (22-06-2020).
According to the report in the Washington Post looks at how the pandemic spread through and devastated Mexico’s largest market Central de Abasto. “Protecting the Central’s workers was never going to be easy. The market supplies 80 percent of the capital’s food; some 300,000 buyers and delivery personnel visit each day. It couldn’t shut down. Further complicating matters, it’s highly fragmented. The market management employs only about 1,000 of the 90,000 personnel mostly janitors and administrative staff. The rest work for the entrepreneurs who own or lease the 7,418 stalls.
Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi has signed a mass-production contract of “a proposed coronavirus test that provides faster results without requiring special equipment or technicians.
The test was developed by Nihon University professor Masayasu Kuwahara and his team. If it proves effective, Shionogi will seek approval from Japan’s health ministry, hoping to commercialize the test this fall. When Japan eases travel restrictions this summer, it will require every international arrival to take a polymerase chain reaction test. But PCR diagnostic tests can take three to five hours for results, and they require specialized equipment and staff. The government seeks a faster alternative that can be conducted in larger volumes to prevent travel bottlenecks.
In Cambodia, a large part of the rural citizenry have very little in way of government facilities and its ability to fight the pandemic, and many of them have turned to religion as a result. Cambodia has among the lowest number of cases of the coronavirus in Southeast Asia. But there are uncorroborated reports of rampant coronavirus-related deaths in the countryside, and there’s a distinct sense that the government has done far too little to prevent the spread of the virus.
This came after Cambodia kept flights with China open long after its neighbors had shut down travel with it. The government’s response has also been insufficient.
Although Cambodia is a majority-Theravada Buddhist nation, there is a broad range of diversity among minority belief systems, including elements of animism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. Each has a unique interpretation of the novel coronavirus’s genesis, why the pandemic came into being, and the toll it will take on the world—reflecting not only fears about the pandemic, but also other worries in turbulent times.
