TOKYO: Countries in Asia stepped up their fight against the coronavirus on Thursday to suppress a contagion they had previously tamed, as warnings grew in Europe over a new fast-spreading variant.
Japan declared a state of emergency in Tokyo as the capital region clocked a 24-hour record of almost 2,500 infections, while China imposed emergency measures to tackle an outbreak in the northern city of Shijiazhuang.
The restrictions follow a slew of new lockdowns and other restrictions announced in Europe this week and Canada ordering its first curfew of the pandemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Thursday that European nations needed to ramp up efforts to deal with a new variant of the virus that had emerged in England and was spreading more quickly than other strains.
“This is an alarming situation,” said WHO Europe chief Hans Kluge, calling on everyone to follow rules on social distancing, mask wearing and staying at home. The global outbreak shows no signs of abating, with more than 1.8 million people known to have died worldwide from 86 million confirmed cases.
The pandemic crushed economic growth last year and France’s finance minister warned on Thursday that the worst was still to come.
Japan’s outbreak has not been as severe as those in Europe and the US, but the government was forced to announce a month-long crackdown in the capital region on Thursday with new rules targeting restaurants and bars. Businesses are being asked to stop serving alcohol by 7 pm and to close an hour later, while residents have been requested to avoid going out after 8 pm.
The minister in charge of Japan’s pandemic response warned that Tokyo’s medical system was “stretched thin”, a major worry for a city gearing up to host the Olympic Games in the summer.
Experts see mass vaccinations as the best route back to normality, but the first rollouts have coincided with alarming spikes in deaths and caseloads across many parts of the world.
Global deaths soared beyond 15,700 on Wednesday — a record daily figure — before falling back to just over 14,600 on Thursday, with the virus raging across Europe and the Americas.
The US is regularly registering more than 3,000 deaths a day, with Mexico and Brazil not far behind.
The EU on Wednesday cleared the Moderna vaccine for use in the 27-nation bloc, following the approval last month of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab.
Several European governments have been criticised for slow rollouts, France managing just a few hundred in a week and the Netherlands taking 10 days to begin its campaign. Lebanon entered another partial lockdown on Thursday and Portugal extended existing restrictions, after both countries registered record daily infections on Wednesday and ministers warned of health systems creaking under the strain.
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