Venezuela puts seven states, including Caracas, in virus quarantine
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered on Sunday a "collective quarantine" in seven states, including the capital Caracas, from Monday to stem the spread of the new coronavirus pandemic.
All activities in the seven states are to be suspended from 5:00 am on Monday, except food distribution, health services, transport and security, Maduro said in a television address to his crisis-devastated nation where the economy had already collapsed long before the pandemic struck.
"It's not a collective vacation, no. It's a collective quarantine that deserves great social discipline, great self-control," said Maduro, adding that it meant people should stay "at home."
Caracas alone is home to six million people.
This latest measure to combat the global pandemic comes after Maduro previously banned flights to and from Europe, Colombia, Panama and the Dominican Republic, as well as a suspending school and university classes, and sports events.
Venezuela reported seven new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, taking its total to 17.
Maduro said the quarantine was "the only way, there's no other option."
The socialist leader has said his response was inspired by that of China, one of Venezuela's main commercial allies.
China put tens of millions of people under lockdown to help contain the spread of the virus, which has affected more than 80,000 Chinese and killed more than 3,000.
"The only way to contain the channels of transmission is to enter in a... drastic phase of collective quarantine throughout the country," said Maduro.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
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
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
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
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
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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