(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:
India’s peak still weeks away
India’s coronavirus infections crossed 200,000, official figures showed on Wednesday, and a peak could still be weeks away in the world’s second-most populous country, where the economy has begun re-opening after a lockdown imposed in March.
“We are very far away for the peak,” said Dr Nivedita Gupta, of the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research. Government officials have previously said it could be later this month, or even July, before cases start to fall off.
Six other nations, including the United States, Britain and Brazil, have higher caseloads, and India’s mortality rate has been comparatively low. But infections are rising as it ends a lockdown of its 1.3 billion people.
Asymptomatic but not infectious
After testing 9.9 million of 11 million people in a vast testing campaign that began on May 14, the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak began, has found no new cases of people suffering from the disease and 300 asymptomatic carriers of the virus.
China does not count people who are infected with the virus but do not show symptoms of the disease as confirmed cases.
Officials told reporters that the asymptomatic carriers had been found not to be infectious; masks, toothbrushes, phones, door handles and elevator buttons that they touched had no traces of the virus.
Sea, sand and social distancing
A cluster of Caribbean islands are reopening this month for international tourism, hoping to burnish their reputations as oases of tranquillity after containing their coronavirus outbreaks and implementing strict new public health protocols.
The Caribbean is the most tourism-dependent region in the world. The move is a pilot test for other regions planning to restart tourism after pandemic-induced lockdowns.
Antigua and Barbuda, the U.S. Virgin Islands and St. Lucia are the first to reopen this week. Jamaica and Aruba are set to follow later in the month, with July target dates for the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.
Sweden ‘could have done better’
Sweden should have done more to combat the coronavirus, the epidemiologist behind a national strategy that avoided the strict lockdowns seen in many other countries said on Wednesday.
Anders Tegnell’s comments followed mounting criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis and a policy that has relied largely on voluntary action, social distancing and common-sense hygiene advice but has failed to prevent the virus spreading.
Sweden has a lower COVID-19 mortality rate than European countries such as Britain, Spain and Italy that enforced stringent lockdowns.
(Compiled by Karishma Singh and Nick Tattersall; Editing by Alex Richardson)
