Coronavirus latest: Fresh cluster prompts partial Beijing lockdown

June 13, 2020

Brazil surpasses the UK to become country with the second-highest death toll in the world
Fauci says slight COVID-19 spikes may get out of control as US reopens
The European Union is preparing to re-open most borders by Monday
Across the world, there are more than 7.6 million coronavirus cases and over 425,000 deaths

All times in GMT/UTC

04:33 Eleven residential estates in south Beijing have been locked down due to a fresh cluster of coronavirus cases linked to a nearby meat market, the AFP news agency cited local officials as saying.

Seven cases have so far been linked to Xinfadi meat market, six of them confirmed on Saturday, officials said.

Xinfadi, which has 4,000 tenants, was ordered shut to be disinfected after workers tested positive and the virus was found in the environment, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The chairman of the wholesale market told state-run Beijing News that the virus was detected on chopping boards used to handle imported salmon.

Nine nearby schools and kindergartens have also been closed.

The fresh cases are the first locally transmitted infections in the Chinese capital in more than 50 days.

The novel coronavirus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December and is believed to have jumped from an animal to humans at a market that sold wildlife.

03:13 Germany reported 348 new cases of coronavirus infections and 18 deaths within 24 hours, according to the latest figures from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). The total number of confirmed cases in the country is now at 186,022 with 8,781 deaths.

The number of reproductions, or R-value, continued to remain under the critical mark of 1.0 at 0.87. This means that an infected person infects less than one other person on average.

02:14 Poland on Saturday reopened borders with all its European Union neighbor countries.

While controls on its border with Lithuania were relaxed on Friday, the borders to Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia reopened at midnight.

The entry requirements for people from non-EU countries have also been relaxed.

Polish authorities had closed entry for foreigners within the EU in mid-March.

Flights to EU countries are slated to resume from June 16.

00:58 US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned that “blips” of increasing COVID-19 hospitalizations being reported by some states in the country could spiral out of control if concrete contact tracing measures are not put in place.

Texas — which has spearheaded efforts for states to reopen — and North Carolina saw their highest hospitalization rates since the beginning of the pandemic.

While authorities in these states have pointed towards low coronavirus death rates, Fauci said that increased hospitalizations was a worrying trend.

Speaking to CNN, he added that it was also a sign that “maybe we need to slow down a little” on reopenings.

00:00 Catch up on Friday’s coronavirus updates here.

In reporting on the coronavirus pandemic, unless otherwise specified, DW uses figures provided by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Coronavirus Resource Center in the United States. JHU updates figures in real-time, collating data from world health organizations, state and national governments, and other public official sources, all of whom have their own systems for compiling information.

Germany’s national statistics are compiled by its public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). These figures depend on data transmission from state and local levels and are updated around once a day, which can lead to deviation from JHU.

dvv/stb (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)

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