(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:
Early August “decisive” for Vietnam
Vietnam is in the midst of a “decisive” fight against the coronavirus, the prime minister said, with the focus on the central city of Danang where infections have appeared in four factories.
Authorities are battling several new clusters of infection linked to the city, a tourism hotspot, after going more than three months without detecting any domestic transmission.
State of emergency, curfew in Melbourne
Australia’s second-biggest city, Melbourne, entered its first day of tougher restrictions to contain the spread of a resurgent coronavirus on Monday.
Authorities have declared a state of emergency across the surrounding state of Victoria and imposed a nightly curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. for six weeks in the city.
Supermarkets will remain open along with restaurant takeaway and delivery services, but some other businesses will be asked to shut. Schools will move to remote learning from Wednesday.
Virus hits India’s government
India’s interior minister and the chiefs of two big states have been hospitalized with COVID-19 as the country’s daily cases topped 50,000 for a fifth straight day.
India reported 52,972 new infections in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 1.8 million – the third highest in the world after the United States and Brazil.
With 771 new deaths, the COVID-19 disease has now killed 38,135 people in India, including a minister in the state of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday.
“All hands on deck” for treatment trial
Rival drugmakers AbbVie, Amgen and Takeda Pharmaceuticals said they have begun testing patients in a trial to see if some of their products can be re-purposed to help in the fight against COVID-19.
The COVID-19 pandemic is an “all hands on deck moment,” David Reese, Amgen’s research and development chief told Reuters. “We wanted a trial to be able to quickly sift through multiple agents and prioritize.”
The first part of the study will test whether Amgen’s psoriasis drug Otezla, Takeda’s anti-inflammatory Firazyr and AbbVie’s cenicriviroc, which has been tried in patients with HIV, will help with the overactive, and potentially damaging, immune response sometimes seen in patients with severe COVID-19.
Singapore tries tags to enforce quarantine
Singapore will make some incoming travellers wear an electronic monitoring device to make sure they comply with quarantines as the city-state gradually reopens its borders.
From Aug. 11, travellers from a group of countries will have to activate the device, which uses GPS and Bluetooth signals, upon reaching their home and will receive notifications which they must acknowledge.
Any attempt to leave home or tamper with the device will trigger an alert.
(Compiled by Linda Noakes; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
