South Korean students forced online as global virus crisis deepens
SEOUL, South Korea — Millions of South Korean students were ordered back to online classes Tuesday and Mexico launched a nationwide televised schooling programme, highlighting the deepening crisis for children as the coronavirus pandemic drags into a ninth month.
The school closures were part of new measures in many parts of the to halt the disease that has killed more than 813,000 people and infected over 23 million, according to an AFP tally.
The latest high-profile case was sprint legend Usain Bolt, who was in quarantine Monday after undergoing a test for the virus that Jamaican media reported had come back positive.
The retired 100 and 200 metres world-record holder said on Twitter that he was "trying to be responsible" by going into isolation, but he did not confirm the result.
He is one of a growing number of sports personalities to have fallen victim as the virus touches all corners of society.
In the education sector, the United Nations estimates at least 60 percent of the global student population has been impacted by school closures across more than 140 countries.
All schools and kindergartens in the greater Seoul region were told on Tuesday to return to online learning as authorities battled multiple coronavirus clusters.
Another 280 infections were reported on Tuesday, taking South Korea's total to almost 18,000.
"The alarming emergence of mass infections since August is turning up as infections of our students and staff members," Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae told reporters.
'Taking their toll'
In Mexico, around 30 million children began a new school year on Monday with lessons via television in a nationwide experiment in distance learning.
The government has teamed up with four private television stations to broadcast classes across the Latin American country, which has recorded more than 60,000 deaths from the virus.
Face-to-face lessons have already been suspended since March. The government said it chose TV because it reached 94 percent of the country, compared with between 70 and 80 percent for the internet.
"I'm worried about how good the (lessons) can be through television," said one father, Alfredo Urdiain, whose 11-year-old son Emiliano is taking part.
The social isolation many children are experiencing has also prompted mental health concerns.
"These extraordinary measures of physical and social isolation are taking their toll," said Emmanuel Sarmiento, general director of the Juan N. Navarro Children's Psychiatric Hospital in Mexico City.
Anxiety about the pandemic was fuelled Tuesday by an announcement from researchers in Hong Kong that they had identified what they said was the first confirmed case of COVID-19 reinfection, raising questions about the durability of immunity.
The patient, a 33-year-old man living in Hong Kong, tested positive in March but after two negative tests was found to be positive again in August.
Microbiologist Kelvin Kai-Wang To, lead author of the study, told AFP: "COVID-19 patients should not assume after they recover that they won't get infected again."
However experts were uncertain about the significance of the announcement, with some researchers saying the case could be extremely rare.
'So lucky'
Months of lockdowns to stem the spread of the virus have taken a huge toll on the global economy, with millions losing their jobs and business shutting their doors.
On Tuesday Australian airline Qantas said it would cut almost 2,500 more jobs on top of 6,000 already announced, just days after the firm posted a huge annual loss.
Airlines have been clobbered by a collapse in tourism as nations keep their borders closed.
On Tuesday the Indonesian holiday island of Bali said foreign tourists would not be allowed to visit for the rest of 2020, scrapping a previous plan to open up from next month.
But the pandemic has not spelled disaster for all holidaymakers.
One pair of Japanese honeymooners stranded in Cape Verde by the pandemic have been named unlikely ambassadors for the tropical paradise's Olympic team at next year's Tokyo Games.
Rikiya and Ayumi Kataoka found themselves marooned in Cape Verde when the country's airport shut down.
They have since struck a partnership with authorities to make videos promoting the country.
"I don't think I will be so lucky to be given these great jobs again," Rikiya said. — AFP bureaus
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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