Australian states tightened borders and
restricted pub visits on Tuesday, while Disney prepared to close
its Hong Kong theme park and Japan stepped up tracing as a jump
in novel coronavirus cases across Asia fanned fears of a second
wave of infections.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
EUROPE
* Britain faces a potentially more deadly second wave of
Covid-19 in the coming winter that could kill up to 120 000
people over nine months in a worst-case scenario, health experts
said.
* Spain's Catalonia approved a decree giving it legal
backing to place restrictions on the city of Lleida and its
surroundings, defying a judge's earlier ruling that such an
order was unlawful.
AMERICAS
* California's governor clamped new restrictions on
businesses as cases and hospitalizations soared, and the state's
two largest school districts, in Los Angeles and San Diego, said
children would be made to stay home in August.
* Canada and the United States are set to extend a ban on
non-essential travel, although a final decision has not been
taken, two sources familiar with the matter said.
* The number of deaths from the coronavirus in Latin America
has exceeded the figure for North America for the first time
since the start of the pandemic, a Reuters count showed.
* More than 880 employees of private contractors running
US immigration detention centres have tested positive for the
novel coronavirus, according to a Congressional testimony given
by company executives.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Hong Kong will impose strict new social distancing
measures from midnight Tuesday, the most stringent in the Asian
financial hub since the coronavirus broke out.
* Kazakhstan will extend its second lockdown by two weeks
until the end of July, and will once again offer financial aid
to those who have lost their source of income.
* The Philippines reported Southeast Asia's biggest daily
jump in Covid-19 deaths and warned of more fatalities ahead.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* Bahrain will add $470 million in emergency spending to its
2020 state budget.
* A Lebanese waste management company is quarantining some
133 Syrian workers who tested positive, as Lebanon recorded a
new daily high for infections.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech SE said
two of their experimental coronavirus vaccines received "fast
track" designation from the US health agency.
* Drugmakers partnered with the US government are on track
to begin actively manufacturing a vaccine for Covid-19 by the
end of the summer, a senior administration official said.
* Quest Diagnostics Inc said the turnaround for
Covid-19 tests it is conducting in the US has lengthened, with
non-prioritised patients waiting a week or more on average for
their results.
ECONOMIC FALLOUT
* Singapore's economy suffered a record contraction in the
second quarter, tipping it into recession and putting the
trade-reliant city-state on course for its worst ever slump this
year.
* Private investment firms that manage the fortunes of
wealthy individuals and their kin were approved for millions of
dollars in taxpayer-funded relief loans designed to help small
businesses weather the coronavirus lockdown, according to a
review of recently released government data.
* China's exports unexpectedly rose in June as overseas
economies reopened after lockdowns, while imports grew for the
first time this year.