Euro 2020 final was a 'superspreader event’

The Euro 2020 final was a "superspreader event" due to the level of COVID-19 infection in and around London's Wembley Stadium, according to government figures released Friday.

About 2,300 people "were likely to have been infectious at the time of the event," Public Health England found.

The data for the July 11 event showed a further 3,404 people in and around the stadium were potentially infected after the event and may have contracted the virus there.

While fans were required to take a coronavirus test to be allowed entry to Wembley, the system relied on them reporting whether the test was negative.

The British government had been criticized for allowing around 67,000 spectators into the stadium at the height of a fresh wave of infections, dominated by the highly contagious delta variant. 

Here is a roundup of other coronavirus news from around the world:

Asia-Pacific

Shanghai has placed hundreds of people in quarantine after infections were detected in cargo workers at its airport, the municipal government said on Saturday.

About 120 people believed to have been in close contact with five infected workers at Pudong Airport have been quarantined to halt a fresh COVID-19 outbreak in the city.

Vietnam will deploy army personnel to Ho Chi Minh City to help with logistics as the city of 10 million people asks residents to "stay put" for two weeks starting from Monday, a report on the government website said Friday.

Troops will help deliver food and aid to households amid a worsening surge of infections in the country.

Australian police clashed with hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters in Melbourne and Sydney on Saturday as officials reported the country's highest-ever single-day rise in COVID-19 cases.

The majority of the 894 cases reported across Australia in the past 24 hours were in Sydney, which is the epicenter of the Delta variant-fueled outbreak.

Sydney has been in lockdown for more than two months now. It has failed to contain an outbreak that has spread across domestic borders.

New Zealand reported 21 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, 18 of which were in Auckland, the country's largest city, and three in the capital, Wellington.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warned that the cases will rise in the coming days and called on people to adhere to the lockdown rules. "One of the things that we've learned from New South Wales is that the virus can continue to spread during the lockdown," she said. 

Americas

Cuba's drug regulators on Friday granted emergency approval for a second homegrown vaccine allowing its full inclusion in the country's inoculation program.

The Soberana 2 vaccine boasts an efficacy rate of 91.2%, according to state-run biopharmaceutical corporation BioCubaFarma. The vaccine has already been used to vaccinate some health workers and ordinary citizens in areas with high rates of transmission as part of early intervention studies.

The Food and Drug Administration in the United States aims to grant full approval to the BioNTech-Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on Monday, The New York Times reported.

Regulators were aiming to complete the process by Friday but were still working through "a substantial amount of paperwork and negotiation with the company," the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Toronto's health care network that operates several hospitals said it would sack any staff members who are not fully vaccinated by the end of October.

The University Health Network said employees who are not vaccinated by October 8 will be placed on unpaid leave for two weeks. If their vaccination status did not change by the end of the month, their employment would be terminated.

Europe

Germany reported 8,092 new cases and 17 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to data from The Robert Koch Institute. The total number of infections now stands at 3,861,147 while total fatalities are 91,973.

The agency for disease control and prevention earlier said Germany has "clearly" begun the fourth wave of coronavirus infections. 

adi/sms (AP, Reuters, AFP)