China, Australia ramp up Covid curbs as Delta variant spreads

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China and Australia ramped up Covid-19 curbs Saturday as Delta variant cases surged and tens of thousands rallied in France against restrictions designed to stop the pandemic.

The Delta variant, which was first identified in India, is forcing governments to reimpose tough measures, while other nations are reconsidering plans to open their economies.

“Delta is a warning: it’s a warning that the virus is evolving but it is also a call to action that we need to move now before more dangerous variants emerge,” the World Health Organization’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told journalists.

China has put more than one million people under lockdown and reinstituted mass testing campaigns.

In Australia, where only about 14 percent of the population has been vaccinated, the third-largest city of Brisbane and other parts of Queensland entered a snap lockdown Saturday after six new cases were detected.

– ‘Crippling the economy’ –

“This government is… crippling the economy and also destroying our country’s democracy,” Karmun Loh, taking part in a protest in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, told AFP.

More than 200,000 people protested across France Saturday for a third straight week, with angry confrontations.

“Macron resign”, demonstrators shouted in the southern city of Marseille, referring to President Emmanuel Macron.

The French authorities meanwhile have reimposed restrictions in some of its overseas territories, where cases are surging, most recently in Martinique, La Reunion and French Polynesia.

“Police stopped us at many checkpoints and the ferry was packed,” said factory worker Mohammad Masum, 25, who left his village before dawn and walked more than 30 kilometres to get to the ferry port.

In Africa, official figures put the daily death toll at 1,000 a day on average over the last seven days: 17 percent up on the previous week and the highest recorded since the pandemic began.

Rwanda however ordered the lifting of a lockdown on the capital Kigali and eight other districts even though Covid cases are still on the rise with the new measures running from August 1-15.

‘The war has changed’

President Joe Biden this week urged Congress to extend the 11-month-old moratorium, after a recent Supreme Court ruling meant the White House could not do so.

The latest analysis from the US Centers for Disease Control found that fully immunised people with so-called breakthrough infections of the Delta variant can spread the disease as easily as unvaccinated people. – AFP

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