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World

France closes Louvre as virus cases mount in Europe

Caroline Taix, Juliette Collen - Agence France-Presse
France closes Louvre as virus cases mount in Europe
People queue at the Pyramide du louvre entrance on February 28, 2020 in Paris.
AFP / Stephane De Sakutin

PARIS, France — France's famed Louvre museum closed Sunday as coronavirus cases mounted across Europe and beyond, with the global death toll nearing 3,000 and Italy reporting a near doubling of cases in 48 hours.

The virus has now infected more than 88,000 people and spread to more than 60 countries around the world, well beyond the epicentre in China where it first emerged late last year.

It has rattled global markets and prompted unprecedented measures from governments scrambling to contain the outbreak, which the World Health Organization has warned could become a pandemic. 

The United States and Australia marked grim milestones over the weekend with their first coronavirus fatalities, while China reported 573 new infections Sunday, the highest figure in a week after a dip.

Infections nearly doubled in the last 48 hours in Italy, Europe's hardest hit country, the head of the country's civil protection body said Sunday.

Since the start of the epidemic, 1,694 people have tested postive for COVID-19, Angelo Borrelli told a press briefing. As of Friday, the figure was 888.

While the numbers in China are still far lower than the huge daily increases reported during the first two weeks of February, COVID-19 has spread rapidly across borders, with South Korea, Italy and Iran emerging as hotspots.

The Louvre, the world's most visited museum, was shuttered Sunday after staff refused to open the museum over coronavirus fears. 

Some tourists turning up Sunday afternoon complained they had booked their tickets that same morning with no warning of the closure.

France, which has 130 confirmed cases and two deaths from COVID-19, said it would ban gatherings of 5,000 people or more, closing schools and cancelling religious services in some of the hardest-hit zones. Sunday's half-marathon in Paris was cancelled.

Two confirmed cases in France on Sunday were children, aged one and five, and their 27-year-old mother in the eastern city of Strasbourg. No children under 10 years old are reported to have died from the virus.

In recent days, the epidemic has spread to sub-Saharan Africa, while Armenia and the Czech Republic reported their first cases on Sunday, and cases in Germany doubled. 

Qatar, Ecuador, Luxembourg and Ireland all confirmed their first cases on Saturday as the virus continued its global march beyond China's borders. 

Markets tumble

Fears are mounting that the disease could hammer the global economy.

Stock markets in the oil-rich Gulf states plunged Sunday after global bourses were battered last week, diving to their lowest levels since the 2008 financial crisis.

China's economy has also been hit as factories have shut and millions of people stayed home after the government imposed lockdown measures across entire swathes of the country. 

Italy said Sunday it would deliver 3.6 billion euros ($4 million) in emergency aid to sectors affected by the virus. 

The outbreak also forced the postponement of five matches in Italy's top-flight Serie A football league, including the heavyweight clash between champions Juventus and Inter Milan.

The season-opening Qatar MotoGP, scheduled for March 8, was cancelled, organisers said.

Pence defends US response to virus

Australia reported the first death on its soil — a 78-year-old man evacuated from the coronavirus-stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan.

On Saturday, the US also announced its first coronavirus death, though US President Donald Trump insisted the country was prepared and called for calm.

On Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence defended the US administration from criticism that it had been slow to react to the threat of the virus, crediting Trump with having acted quickly to quarantine Americans brought back from China and Japan.

Officials also announced a possible outbreak in a Washington state nursing home, where a health worker and a resident in her 70s were both confirmed sick with the virus.

Other residents and staff were "ill with respiratory symptoms or hospitalised with pneumonia of unknown cause", the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

The death and two confirmed Washington cases all involved patients who had not travelled overseas or come in contact with anyone known to be ill, indicating that the virus was spreading in the US.

"We will see more cases," Health Secretary Alex Azar said at the White House. "But it's important to remember, for the vast majority of individuals who contract the novel coronavirus, they will experience mild to moderate symptoms."

Risk factors

China on Sunday reported 573 new infections, the highest figure in a week after a dip. All but three of them were in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital.

Despite the increase, China said its response to the epidemic "continues to be good" though risks remained. 

"The next step is to focus on the risks brought by the resumption of work and the increasing number of foreign cases," said Mi Feng, spokesman at the National Health Commission.

In nearby South Korea, the epidemic is centred in its fourth-largest city, Daegu, whose streets have been largely deserted for days, apart from long queues at the few shops with masks for sale.

The total in South Korea is expected to rise further as authorities screen more than 210,000 members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive entity often accused of being a cult that is linked to around half of the country's cases.

Iran, one of the worst affected countries in the world, said Sunday it had 978 infections and 54 deaths. 

Several countries banned travel to and from Iran as its cases quickly mounted over the past week. 

The WHO on Sunday urged all countries to prepare for caring for patients severely sickened by the deadly new coronavirus by stocking up on ventilators. — with AFP bureaux

2019-NCOV

COVID-19

FRANCE

LOUVRE

NOVEL CORONAVIRUS

As It Happens
LATEST UPDATE: October 1, 2023 - 2:35pm

Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.

October 1, 2023 - 2:35pm

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.

Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.

The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP

August 18, 2023 - 4:25pm

The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown. 

The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday. 

So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP

August 11, 2023 - 7:07pm

The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".

The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.

In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP

June 24, 2023 - 11:50am

The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.

In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.

Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP 

June 15, 2023 - 5:42pm

Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.

The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".

But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.

In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.

He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".

Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP

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