UK lowers coronavirus threat level; localized outbreaks remain likely
But Germany logs highest number of daily cases in weeks
BERLIN — Britain lowered its coronavirus threat level one notch Friday, becoming the latest country to claim it’s getting a national outbreak under control.
The U.K.’s Joint Biosecurity Center recommended moving the COVID-19 risk in the country from the second-highest level, 4 — meaning transmission is high or rising exponentially — to level 3, signaling an epidemic in general circulation.
Health officials say there’s been a steady decrease in cases across the U.K. but localized outbreaks are still likely. Britain has Europe’s highest pandemic death toll with more than 42,500 virus-related deaths and over 303,000 confirmed cases.
Lowering the alert level was “a big moment for the country, and a real testament to the British people’s determination to beat this virus,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.
Meanwhile, Germany on Friday reported the country’s highest daily increase in virus cases in a month after managing to contain its outbreak better than comparable large European nations.
The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control center, listed 770 new confirmed cases, pushing the country’s total past 190,000.
A flurry of positive tests this week from an outbreak at a slaughterhouse in the western region of Guetersloh contributed the biggest daily increase since May 20.
The German government has stuck to its course of gradually reopening the country while seeking to clamp down swiftly on localized outbreaks..
A free app launched Tuesday to help trace people who may have been exposed to the virus has already been downloaded 9.6 million times in Germany, which has a population of 83 million.
Japan released a similar app Friday, also using technology developed by Apple and Google. Officials say data will only be recorded and stored in individual users’ phones and deleted after 14 days to protect their privacy.
Singaporeans were able to wine and dine at restaurants, work out at the gym and socialize with up to five people at a time as of Friday, after the city-state removed most of its pandemic lockdown restrictions.
After at first appearing to have been a model for containing the virus, the country of only 5.8 million has one of the highest infection rates in Asia with 41,615 cases, mostly linked to foreign workers’ dorms. Authorities say such cases have declined, with no new large clusters and a stable number of other cases despite a partial economic reopening two weeks ago.
China declared a fresh outbreak in Beijing under control after confirming 25 new cases among some 360,000 people tested. That was up by just four from a day earlier.
A Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention official said the number of cases was expected to fall soon in outbreak centered on Beijing’s main wholesale market. So far, Beijing has confirmed 183 new cases over the past week.
The 25 new cases reported Friday in Beijing were among 32 nationwide in China, four of them in Chinese who had returned from overseas.
Such outbreaks are inevitable, Wu Zunyou of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention told a news conference. But he stressed that prevention measures should not slacken.
Beijing suspended classes and put opening-up plans for everything from sports events to art exhibitions on hold. Bus travel to other regions was suspended to prevent the spread of the outbreak.
The pandemic is waxing and waning in many places, with numbers of cases soaring in Indonesia and India, Brazil and Mexico but appearing to be under control or contained in Thailand, Japan, Vietnam and New Zealand.
India recorded 13,586 newly confirmed cases on Friday, raising its total to 380,532. Still, shops, malls, factories and places of worship have been allowed to reopen while schools and cinemas remain shuttered.
Infections surged in rural areas after hundreds of thousands of migrant workers left cities after losing jobs in a lockdown announced in late March. Such precautions are now restricted to high-risk “containment” zones.
In South Korea, outbreaks have inspired second-guessing on whether officials were too quick to ease social distancing guidelines in April after a first wave of infections waned. Officials reported 49 cases of COVID-19 on Friday as the virus continues to spread in the densely populated capital area of Seoul, where half of its 51 million people live. About 30 to 50 new cases have been confirmed per day since late May.
The new coronavirus has infected almost 8.6 million people worldwide and killed more than 457,000, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The actual number is thought to be much higher because many cases are asymptomatic or go untested.
In the United States, which has reported the most confirmed cases at more than 2.2 million, states have pushed ahead with emerging from full or partial pandemic shutdowns despite surges in new cases in many places, including Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and California.
New cases skyrocketed Thursday in Oklahoma by 450, double the record-setting number reported two days earlier. Tulsa County, where President Donald Trump had a rally Saturday at an indoor arena, remained the state’s leading hot spot with 120 new cases for a total of 1,825. Phoenix adopted a measure requiring the use of face masks as Arizona hits an all-time high of new coronavirus cases.