BANGKOK / HANOI / ULAN BATOR / TOKYO / JERUSALEM / SUVA / PHNOM PENH / JAKARTA / TEHRAN / ISLAMABAD / MUMBAI / WELLINGTON / DUBAI / MANILA / COLOMBO / KUALA LUMPUR – Tokyo is experiencing a record surge in COVID-19 cases during the Olympic Games as the more infectious Delta variant rips through Japan, though contagion among those linked to the event appears to be relatively contained so far.
To date, organizers have announced 276 positive cases among people connected to the Olympics, including 24 athletes out of the more than 11,000 who are expected to participate. Of over 400,000 tests conducted so far on athletes and stakeholders, the positivity rate has been only 0.02 percent, organizers said on Monday.
“There is a separation between the athletes and the various stakeholders, and the general population,” Mark Adams, International Olympic Committee spokesperson, told reporters Monday. “You can’t reduce the risk to zero, but we have with the playbooks pretty well covered the ability to reduce that risk as far as we can.”
The so-called playbooks set out COVID-19-prevention measures and rules for each Olympics participant including athletes, officials and media.
Breaking down the category of people with positive test results, the largest numbers are among Tokyo 2020 contractors — third-party personnel who are contracted to the games to provide various services – and games-concerned people, who include those affiliated with the IOC, National Olympic Committees and Olympic Broadcasting Services. There have been a cumulative 144 and 83 cases in those categories, respectively.
While athletes in the Olympic Village are required to test daily, requirements are less strict for volunteers who have less contact with athletes. The rules are also harsher for those flying in from overseas, compared to Japanese residents.
The Olympics-related numbers contrast with the surge in the broader Tokyo area, where daily COVID-19 case counts jumped to a record 4,058 cases on Saturday. Another 2,195 new cases were found on Monday.
Last week, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga expanded the state of emergency to areas surrounding Tokyo and extended it to the end of August, in a bid to contain the latest wave of infections ahead of general elections that must be called by the fall.
The virus positivity rate has also been surging for tests being conducted in the capital, nearly quadrupling from July 1. While far more of those being infected are younger people, following the country’s drive to get the elderly vaccinated first, the number of those in serious condition has also been rising. In July, the number of people hospitalized roughly doubled to over 3,000 by the end of the month.
The general view shows empty streets in central Brisbane early on August 1, 2021, after Australia's third-largest city Brisbane and other parts of Queensland state entered a snap COVID-19 lockdown late on July 31. (PATRICK HAMILTON / AFP)
Australia
Australian officials on Monday extended a snap three-day lockdown in the city of Brisbane and some neighboring regions while hundreds of army personnel began patrolling Sydney to help enforce COVID-19 lockdown rules.
Sydney, Australia's largest city, is into its sixth week of a lockdown as it struggles with a spike in infections that added nearly 3,500 cases since the first one was detected in a limousine driver who transported overseas airline crew.
Officials in New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital, have implored residents to stay home to prevent more surges and brought in the military to help police enforce compliance after some defied lockdown rules.
Some 300 army personnel, who will be unarmed and under police command, will go door to door to ensure people who have tested positive are isolating at their homes.
Cambodia
Cambodia on Monday confirmed a daily record of 560 COVID-19 infections including 169 imported cases, pushing the national total caseload to 78,474 so far, the Ministry of Health (MoH) said in a statement.
Twenty-two more fatalities had been registered, bringing the overall death toll to 1,442, the ministry said, adding that 763 other patients had recovered, taking the total number of recoveries to 71,517.
MoH's secretary of state and spokeswoman Or Vandine called for greater participation from individuals to stem the spread of COVID-19 and its variants.
Separately, Three Cambodian dogs had been successfully trained to sniff out COVID-19, Director General of the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC) Heng Ratana said on Monday.
The dogs had been trained with scent samples, known as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), of 48 COVID-19 patients from the technical team of the University of Health Sciences, and all of the samples had been examined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and cell culture techniques to ensure safety, he said.
"CMAC and the University of Health Sciences have worked together for research and development of COVID-19 detection dogs, and in this initial stage, we're glad to inform that three CMAC's detection dogs are able to detect VOC of 48 COVID-19 patients and another seven dogs are making remarkable progress," Ratana wrote on his Facebook page.
The trained dogs could sniff and detect scent samples within 10 to 15 seconds only, he said, adding that the use of COVID-19 detection dogs is effective for large crowds such as airports, international border checkpoints, stadiums and so on.
Fiji
Fiji's Permanent Secretary for Health James Fong on Monday confirmed 13 new COVID-19 deaths from July 29 to Aug 1 and 1,100 new daily infections.
The death toll due to COVID-19 has reached 254 in the island nation, and the seven-day rolling average of deaths per day is seven.
Shopkeepers wearing face masks as a precaution against the coronavirus wait for customer outside their shop in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir on Aug 1, 2021. (MUKHTAR KHAN / AP)
India
The forecaster who accurately predicted India’s COVID-19 peak earlier this year said the country is likely to see a rise in infections building into a new, though smaller, wave.
The new surge may peak in October, with less than 100,000 cases a day in a best-case scenario, according to estimates by researchers led by Mathukumalli Vidyasagar and Manindra Agrawal at Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad and Kanpur respectively.
India reported 40,134 new cases of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, a government statement said on Monday.
Deaths rose by 422 in the same period, according to the federal health ministry.
Indonesia
Indonesia's devastating second coronavirus wave, which saw the Southeast Asian country become the epicentre of Asia's COVID-19 outbreak, has peaked, its health minister said Monday.
Driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant, Indonesia has over the past month been faced with an exponential surge in coronavirus cases that has overwhelmed hospitals and seen COVID-19 deaths soar to record levels.
"We can already see that the peak has been exceeded, especially in areas in Java," health minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin told an online news conference, referring to Indonesia's most populated island.
"Improvements are starting to appear," he added.
But while daily cases numbers have started to decline, averaging 33,800 per day last week, the positivity rate remains high and there are fears that the Delta variant could still ravage regions beyond Java, particularly in remote areas with ill-equipped healthcare services.
Indonesia aims to start gradually reopening its economy in September, a senior minister said on Monday, as the government announced an extension of curbs on movement until next week in some parts of the Southeast Asian archipelago.
"We must remain alert and continue to take measures to control the cases," President Joko Widodo said in a statement.
Luhut Pandjaitan, a minister overseeing containment measures, said authorities were aiming for more reopening of economic activity in September.
"The reopening of economic activities will depend on vaccination", improved testing, tracing and treatment, Luhut said.
The number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia rose by 22,404 within one day to 3,462,800, with the death toll adding by 1,568 to 97,291, the Health Ministry said on Monday.
During the past 24 hours, 32,807 recovered patients were discharged from hospitals, raising the total number of recoveries from the pandemic in the Southeast Asian country to 2,842,345, according to the ministry.
ALSO READ: Cambodia to mix jabs as booster shots to fight COVID-19
Iran
Iran reported 37,189 new COVID-19 cases over the last 24 hours, the country’s highest case count since the start of the pandemic.
The death toll rose by 411 overnight, the highest since April 28, bringing the country’s coronavirus fatalities to 91,407, with more than 3.9 million infections.
A man receives a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine at the outpatient clinics of the Cardiovascular Centre at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, Israel, on July 12, 2021. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)
Israel
Half of the infections in Israel now are among the fully vaccinated, and public health officials are beginning to see signs of more serious disease among them, said Sharon Alroy-Preis, the nation’s Director of Public Health Services.
She said that infections for people vaccinated in January are double those vaccinated in March, an apparent decrease in effectiveness over time that has led Israel to begin booster shots. She said infections were particularly problematic for people 60 and older.
“It’s not just the fact that we’re seeing more disease, but they’re getting to severe and critical conditions,” she said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Japan
Joining Tokyo and Okinawa, the four prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Osaka entered into a COVID-19 state of emergency in Japan on Monday due to a recent spike in COVID-19 cases.
The state of emergency for the three prefectures near Tokyo, namely Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama, and the prefecture of Osaka, would last until Aug 31. Meanwhile, the emergency period in Tokyo and Okinawa was also extended to Aug 31 from the originally planned Aug 22.
The Japanese government is planning to roll out standards for easing restrictions with the progress of vaccination of the population. However, the end of the epidemic seems yet to come in Japan.
Under the state of emergency, establishments serving alcohol or offering karaoke services are asked to suspend their business, and those not serving liquor are requested to close at 8 pm local time. The government would offer monetary compensation for compliance.
Outside of the six prefectures, a quasi-state of emergency is implemented in parts of five prefectures, namely Hokkaido, Ishikawa, Kyoto, Hyogo, and Fukuoka from Monday to the end of August. The quasi-state of emergency is less restrictive on business activity than the state of emergency.
A Tokyo fire brigade staff member (right) administers a dose of the coronavirus vaccine at Aoyama University in Tokyo on Aug 2, 2021. (PHOTO / AFP)
Separately, Pfizer is in talks with Japanese authorities to start a trial of its orally taken COVID-19 drug in the nation, Nikkei reported, without attribution.
Pfizer Inc said in March that it has begun human safety testing of a new pill to treat the coronavirus that could be used at the first sign of illness.
The Japanese government is considering urging those fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to receive a third booster shot next year as concerns emerge over variants that are more contagious than previous ones, Nikkei reported without attribution. The minister in charge of vaccine rollout, Taro Kono, said in a television program aired Sunday that a third dose would be recommended next year, according to the Yomiuri newspaper.
Japan reported 8,393 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, nearly double the figure confirmed the same day in the previous week, as infections continued to surge in and around Tokyo where the Olympics are being held, local media reported Monday.
Tokyo, after reporting over 3,000 cases for five consecutive days, on Monday confirmed 2,195 cases, and the surrounding prefectures, Kanagawa, Chiba, and Saitama, logged 1,686, 787, and 762 cases respectively.
People in their 20s and 30s accounted for the majority of Monday's infections in Tokyo, with 773 and 520 respectively.
Malaysia
Malaysia recorded a fresh high of 219 single-day death toll from COVID-19 on Monday, bringing the total deaths to 9,403, according to the Health Ministry.
Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a press statement that another 15,764 new COVID-19 infections were reported, of which six are imported and 15,758 are local transmissions, bringing the national total to 1,146,186.
A total of 11,767 more patients have been released after recovery, bringing the total cured and discharged to 937,732, or 81.8 percent of all cases.
Of the remaining 199,051 active cases, 1,063 cases are being held in intensive care units and 532 of those are in need of assisted breathing.
Mongolia
Mongolia reported 1,063 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, bringing its national tally to 166,210, the country's health ministry said Monday.
A total of 5,221 samples were tested across the country in the past day.
This handout picture taken and released on July 17, 2021 by APEC New Zealand shows New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaking at a press conference after the APEC Informal Leaders' Retreat at the Majestic Centre in Wellington. (JEFF TOLLAN / APEC NEW ZEALAND / AFP)
New Zealand
New Zealand will open up one-way quarantine-free travel for seasonal workers from Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu to address labour shortages in the horticulture industry, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday.
The quarantine-free arrangement is expected to start from September, Ardern said at a news conference. It will only be available to workers who qualify under the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme, which allows the horticulture sector to recruit labour from overseas for seasonal work when there are not enough New Zealand workers.
The scheme was suspended after the country shut its borders last year due to COVID-19.
"COVID has closed borders and New Zealand like many others experienced workforce shortages," Ardern said.
"We know our agriculture sector is experiencing challenges," she said.
Ardern is expected to reveal more details next week about how the country will gradually reopen its borders.
Pakistan
Pakistan on Sunday reported 4,858 new COVID-19 cases, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) said on Monday.
The NCOC said that the country's number of overall confirmed cases had risen to 1,039,695, including 943,020 recoveries.
The number of active cases has risen to 73,213 who are under treatment across the country, including 3,441 patients in critical condition.
According to the NCOC, the pandemic killed 40 people on Sunday, bringing the overall death toll to 23,462.
Army health officials inoculate people with a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 in Colombo, Sri Lanka on Aug 1, 2021. (ISHARA S. KODIKARA / AFP)
Sri Lanka
The World Health Organization (WHO) in Sri Lanka said that COVID-19 cases were rising globally including in Sri Lanka as the country had noted a rise in infected patients in recent weeks, local media reported Monday.
The WHO in Sri Lanka, in an official tweet, said this increase in patients globally and in the country was driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant, increased social mixing and mobility, inconsistent Public Health and Social Measures (PHSM), and inequitable vaccination.
"Hard-won gains are in jeopardy and health systems are being overwhelmed," the WHO in Sri Lanka said.
Sri Lanka has in recent weeks recorded a high rise in patients with an average of over 2,000 COVID-19 patients being detected per day.
Last week, Deputy Director-General of Health Services Hemantha Herath said that the Delta variant, which was initially reported in capital Colombo, had now spread to all districts of the country.
Health officials said that due to the sudden rise in patients, hospitals across the country were filled and the need for oxygen had risen considerably.
Thailand
Thailand’s COVID-19 death toll surpassed 5,000 on Monday when the country reported 178 fatalities amid a relentless surge of infections fueled by the more contagious delta variant. The Southeast Asian nation reported 17,970 new infections on Monday, taking the cumulative cases to 633,284.
The spike in infections and hospitalizations has overwhelmed the public health system in a country where only 5.6 percent of the population have been fully inoculated. There are currently more than 200,000 active cases, with 4,768 patients in critical condition.
Thailand is set to expand its quasi-lockdown measures to its regions that are hardest-hit by the coronavirus pandemic and home to about 40 percent of the population.
Separately, Thailand has set a target to reach a vaccination rate of over 50 percent in August, as the country battles its worst outbreak fueled by the highly contagious delta variant.
The Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) announced on Monday that it planned to vaccinate 80 percent of residents in capital Bangkok, 70 percent in other provinces deemed as "dark red zone," the most affected area, and 50 percent in the remaining provinces by the end of this month.
As of Sunday, Thailand has administered over 17.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines nationwide, with nearly 20 percent of its total population received the first jab.
A volunteer medical worker administers a dose of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine to a tricycle driver during a vaccination drive for economic frontliners, organized by the vice president's office and city government, in Manila on July 20, 2021. (TED ALJIBE / AFP)
The Philippines
The Philippines will extend a night curfew in the capital, Manila, amid a tightening of curbs in the Southeast Asian country to combat a potential surge in cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19, a government official said on Monday.
Metropolitan Manila, already subject to an six hour curfew from 10:00 pm (1400 GMT), will bring forward that curfew by two hours to 8:00 pm (1200 GMT), said Benjamin Abalos, chair of the region's governing body:
"We are only asking for two weeks. This will stop the virus for the meantime. What's important is our hospitals don't get full," Abalos told a briefing.
Authorities have deployed police personnel to quarantine checkpoints in Metropolitan Manila, where inbound and outbound travel will be restricted.
The region, home to more than 13 million people, will be placed under strict lockdown from Aug. 6 to 20, Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said on Friday.
The Philippines will also get more than three million Moderna shots donated by the US and 415,000 AstraZeneca doses this week, Roque said.
In the central province of Cebu, the number of cases has overwhelmed healthcare facilities. Two of Cebu City's 15 hospitals were at "critical levels," city councillor David Tumulak told local media.
The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported on Monday 8,167 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 1,605,762.
The death toll climbed to 28,093 after 77 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH added.
People walk along Istiklal Street, the main shopping street in Istanbul on July 27, 2021. (MUCAHID YAPICI / AP)
Turkey
Turkey on Sunday registered 20,890 new COVID-19 cases, raising its tally of infections to 5,747,935, according to its Health Ministry.
The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 96 to 51,428, while 5,539 more people recovered in the last 24 hours.
A total of 251,224 tests were conducted over the past day, it said.
Turkey has started the mass vaccination against COVID-19 on Jan. 14 after the authorities approved the emergency use of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.
READ MORE: Singapore braces for a leap of faith in its COVID-19 strategy
UAE
The United Arab Emirates will start providing China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine to children aged 3-17, the UAE government said on Twitter on Monday.
It cited the health ministry as saying the decision comes after clinical trials and extensive evaluations, without providing any details. Authorities said in June the trial would monitor the immune response of 900 children.
The Gulf Arab state, which has among the world's highest immunisation rates, was already providing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged 12-15.
The health ministry said on Sunday that 78.95 percent of the UAE population of roughly 9 million had received one vaccine dose while 70.57 percent had been fully vaccinated.
A healthcare worker administers a shot of China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine at the Guru Nanak Darbar Gurudwara (Sikh temple), in Dubai on Feb 28, 2021. (KARIM SAHIB / AFP)
The UAE, the region's tourism and trade hub, registered 1,519 new coronavirus infections on Sunday to take its total to 682,377 cases and 1,951 deaths. It does not provide a breakdown for each of its seven emirates.
It led Phase III clinical trials of the vaccine produced by China's state-owned drugmaker Sinopharm and has started manufacturing it under a joint venture between Sinopharm and Abu Dhabi-based technology company Group 42.
Vietnam
Vietnam recorded 7,455 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, including 7,445 locally transmitted and 10 imported, according to the country's Ministry of Health.
The new infections brought the total tally to 161,761 with 1,695 deaths, the ministry said.