HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s government on Monday morning ended an unprecedented lockdown after testing thousands of residents living in an area that had reported an increasing number of coronavirus cases, authorities said.
The lockdown, which was implemented in the early hours of Saturday, covered 16 buildings in Kowloon’s Yau Tsim Mong district, known as a working-class neighborhood with many subdivided apartment units. During the lockdown, residents were not allowed to leave their premises until they had tested negative for the coronavirus.
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The district has been at the center of a worsening coronavirus outbreak, with over 160 cases reported over the first three weeks in January. Higher concentrations of the COVID-19 virus were also found in sewage samples, prompting fears that the virus could be transmitted via poorly installed plumbing systems in subdivided units that lack ventilation.
The government said in a statement early Monday that about 7,000 people were tested for the coronavirus during the lockdown, with 13 positive infections found.
“The Government hopes this temporary inconvenience will completely cut the local transmission chains in the district and ease residents’ worries and fear, so that they will regain confidence in resuming social and business activities in the area, and return to a normal life,” authorities said in the statement.
Health minister Sophia Chan said Sunday that the government would not rule out similar restrictions in the future if there is such a need.
As of Sunday, Hong Kong has reported 10,086 cases of the coronavirus, with 169 deaths recorded.
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THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:
— Two in five Americans live where COVID strains hospital ICUs
— Pandemic stress puts medical workers at high risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse
— UK ramps up vaccination program, gives first shot to 6 million, but health secretary says nation is “long, long, long way” from easing its lockdown
— A year after virus lockdown, Wuhan dissident is more isolated than ever
— Dutch police clash with lockdown protesters in two cities
_ The entire University of Michigan athletic department is pausing after several positive tests for the new COVID-19 variant that transmits at a higher rate.
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Follow all of AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
SYDNEY — Australia’s medical regulator has approved use of its first coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for inoculations to begin next month. The Therapeutic Goods Administration on Monday gave provisional approval for people aged 16 and over to use the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. The regulator said priority would be given to groups that include aged-care residents and workers, frontline healthcare workers, and quarantine workers. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison welcomed the development. He said Australia was among the first countries to complete a comprehensive and thorough process to formally approve a vaccine rather than just grant an emergency approval. Australia is aiming to complete inoculations by October. The nation of 26 million people has reported fewer than 30,000 virus cases and a little over 900 deaths.
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MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday about obtaining doses of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, his foreign affairs secretary said Sunday.
Marcelo Ebrard said via Twitter the two leaders would speak Monday morning about the bilateral relationship and supplying doses of the vaccine.
The vaccine has not been approved for use in Mexico, but the government is desperate to fill supply gaps left by shortages of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Mexico has given more than 618,000 vaccine doses.
A week ago, López Obrador said that his government had agreed with a U.N. proposal to delay shipments of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine to countries like Mexico that had existing purchase agreements, in order to get more doses to poorer countries quicker.
Mexico has registered nearly 150,000 COVID-19 deaths and more than 1.7 million infections. Hospitals in the capital have been near capacity for weeks as a surge of cases followed the holiday season.
Earlier this month, Mexico’s assistant health secretary Hugo López-Gatell, visited Argentina in part to learn about its review of the Sputnik V vaccine. Argentina started using the vaccine in late December.
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OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma State Department of Health on Sunday reported 48 additional deaths due to COVID-19 and 2,941 more cases of the new coronavirus.
There have been 373,090 total virus cases and a death toll of 3,279 since the pandemic began, according to the health department.
Oklahoma had the fourth highest rate of new cases per capita in the United States at 1,148.19 per 100,000 population according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The rolling average of deaths in the state has increased from 30.14 to 39.86 per day during the past two weeks.
State health officials rising death rates are likely to continue for a week or more, despite a decline in the number of new cases, because it can take several weeks to confirm a death was caused by COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
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WASHINGTON -- Dr. Deborah Birx says when she was coordinator of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, she had to grapple with COVID-19 deniers in the White House and that someone gave the president “parallel” streams of data that conflicted with hers.
Defending her tenure, Birx told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that she was at times censored by the Trump administration but denied ever withholding information.
Birx said she would see Trump “presenting graphs that I never made” and that “someone out there or someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president.”
She added that in the White House, “There were people who definitely believed that this was a hoax.”
Birx did not identify the COVID-19 deniers and said she did not know who was presenting the parallel data to Trump, but said she realizes now that Trump coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas was providing some of it.
Birx said in December that she would retire but was willing to first help President Joe Biden’s team with its coronavirus response as needed. More than 25 million people have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 418,000 people have died in the U.S. since the pandemic began.
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ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey on Sunday passed 25,000 Covid-19-related deaths since the start of the outbreak in March, the health ministry said.
A daily toll of 140 fatalities saw the total figure rise to 25,073. Turkey has recorded more than 2.4 million infections since the first case was recorded on March 11 last year.
The government reintroduced restrictions at the start of December, including weekday evening curfews and weekend lockdowns, to stem a second wave of infections.
Restaurants and cafes have been restricted to take-away services, weddings and funerals are limited to 30 people and the over-65s and under-20s are banned from using public transport.
The number of daily cases has fallen to around 6,000 in recent days from a high of more than 33,000 in December.
Turkey began its vaccination program on Jan. 14, initially focusing on health workers and the elderly. More than 1.2 million people had been given the first dose of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine as of Saturday night, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.
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JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Israel will be closing its international airport to nearly flights as the government races to bring a raging coronavirus outbreak under control.
The entry of highly contagious variants of the coronavirus, coupled with poor enforcement of safety rules in ultra-Orthodox communities, has contributed to one of the world’s highest rates of infections. It also has threatened to undercut Israel’s highly successful campaign to vaccinate its population against the virus.
Late Sunday, the Israeli Cabinet approved what Netanyahu said would be a tight closure on incoming and outgoing air traffic. The government said it would make exceptions for a small number of humanitarian cases, such as funerals and medical patients, and cargo flights.
“We are closing the skies hermetically, except for really rare exceptions, to prevent the entry of virus mutations, and also to ensure that we progress quickly with our vaccination campaign,” Netanyahu said.
The order is to begin early Tuesday and remain in effect until Jan. 31. Netanyahu’s office said the order still required parliamentary legislation to be finalized.
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LA PAZ, Bolivia — Former President Evo Morales was released from a hospital on Sunday after almost two weeks of treatment for COVID-19 at a moment the disease has rebounded in Bolivia.
Morales told a news conference that he felt “very good, I feel recovered“ as he left the private clinic in the city of Cochabamba.
Hospital director Gastón Cornejo recommended that Morales remain in repose, without visitors, for two more weeks.
The 61-year-old Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, left the country from 2006 to 2019, when he went into exile after protests over his reelection. He returned home in November after his party won presidential and legislative elections, ousting the interim government that had replaced him.
Bolivia has reported about 200,000 cases of the new coronavirus and almost 10,000 deaths.
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WASHINGTON -- Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that President Joe Biden’s goal of administering 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days actually means about 67 million Americans should be protected from COVID-19 during that time.
Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, said the president’s goal refers to 100 million shots, not people. Current vaccines require two shots.
Fauci maintained that goal could be difficult to meet even though the U.S. recently has been able to administer shots to about a million people a day. He explained that it will be harder to reach people once shots are given outside hospital and nursing home settings.
Fauci also told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he supports a national commission to understand some of the problems in coordinating a COVID-19 response on the state and local level because states shouldn’t just be told, “You’re on your own.”
Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, called the 100 million shots in 100 days “a very bold and ambitious goal.” He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it won’t stop the administration from aiming higher if doable.
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NEW YORK -- The United States has surpassed 25 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began. The new milestone, reported Sunday by Johns Hopkins University, is a grim reminder of the coronavirus’ wide reach in the U.S., which has seen far more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country in the world.
The U.S. accounts for roughly one of every four cases reported worldwide and one of every five deaths. India has recorded the second most cases, with about 10.7 million.
The number of new cases in the U.S. has shown signs of slowing recently, with an average of 176,000 reported daily in the past week, down from 244,000 in early January. The country’s first case of the infection was diagnosed almost exactly a year ago.