Coronavirus digest: Olympics chief confident on spectators

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach said Monday he was "very, very confident" there would be spectators at next year's pandemic-postponed Tokyo Summer Olympics.

Bach spoke to reporters after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Tokyo and praised the countermeasures that are being prepared by Games organizers and government officials.

The positive results of a late-stage vaccine trial gave the Games a boost as Tokyo 2020 officials called the development a "relief."

The Japanese capital also successfully staged a four-nation gymnastics competition earlier this month, the first international sporting event in the country since the onset of the pandemic.

Europe

German federal and state leaders have decided to postpone until November 25 a decision on further restrictions to curb a second coronavirus wave. The country has been in a state of impartial lockdown since the start of November.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had pushed for tougher measures, including mandatory mask-wearing in schools, smaller class sizes and stricter limits on social contact, but said Monday the majority of state leaders didn't agree with further restrictions.

"The current restrictions have not reversed the trend yet, but we have broken the dynamics of new infections," she told a news conference.

"The contact restrictions are the formula for success," she said. "We need more of this. We need to restrict contacts further to reach our goals."

Read more: Coronavirus: Merkel, German states consider tougher restrictions

Germany breached the 800,000 figure for the total number of infections after the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) confirmed 10,824 people had tested positive for the coronavirus in its daily update.

Meanwhile, the German travel industry is struggling due to the crisis. "The companies in the travel industry are reporting revenue losses of more than 80%, which corresponds to €28 billion for 2020," Norbert Fiebig, president of the DRV group of German travel agencies, told the newspaper Handelsblatt. He described the financial situation for the industry as "extremely tense," sometimes leading to insolvencies.

Swedish authorities have imposed a nationwide limit of eight people for all gatherings to contain the coronavirus spread. The measure will take effect November 24 and will last for four weeks.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven on Monday urged citizens to cancel travel plans and stay at home to curb a record number of coronavirus infections in recent weeks.

Sweden had opted for a different – and controversial – approach to handling the pandemic by keeping large sections of society open.

Read more: Sweden rejects WHO coronavirus risk warning

Lofven appealed to Swedes to "do your duty" and "take responsibility to stop the spread" of COVID-19.

Home Affairs Minister Mikael Damberg warned that too many people were acting as "if the danger is over."

France on Monday reported 9,406 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, a figure sharply down from Sunday's 27,228 and the all-time high of 86,852 reached on November 7.

The number of people hospitalized for the new coronavirus, however, was up by 416 to reach a new all-time high of 33,497. COVID-19 deaths increased by 506, to 45,054.

France has the world's fourth-highest tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases, at 1,991,233.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is self-isolating after he was in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus, a spokesman said.

"He will carry on working from Downing Street, including on leading the government's response to the coronavirus," said the Downing Street spokesman.

Johnson was hospitalized with the virus in the spring, spending time in intensive care. But the spokesman said, "the PM is well and does not have any symptoms of COVID-19."

Human rights group Amnesty International alleges that Belgium "abandoned" thousands of elderly people who died in nursing homes during the coronavirus, calling what they considered inadequacies in care "human rights violations."

The European country is one of the hardest-hit on the continent, with more than 500,000 cases and 14,000 deaths in a population of 11.5 million people. During the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, 61.3% of the coronavirus-related deaths occurred in nursing homes.

Amnesty International said the ill were not transferred to hospitals to receive proper treatment. On top of that, systemic testing of care home employees did not begin until August, with just one test per month. While care homes were crushed by the virus, hospitals never reached the 2,000-bed capacity at its intensive care units. 

Asia

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made his first public appearance in nearly a month to discuss "the issue of further tightening the state emergency anti-epidemic system" with his politburo, according to North Korean state news agency KCNA.

South Korean news agency Yonhap said it was his first time in public since an October 22 visit to a cemetery in the South Pyongyang Province. After South Korean online paper Daily NK reported Kim Jong Un underwent heart surgery in April, there was extra attention paid to his health.  

South Korea recorded more than 200 new cases for the third consecutive day on Monday. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said there have been eight straight days with at least 100 new cases in the country. The 223 new cases as of Sunday midnight was the highest number of cases in one day since September.

Over 85% of the new cases were locally transmitted. More than two-thirds of domestic infections were reported in the capital, Seoul.

"We are at a critical crossroads where we might have to readjust distancing," Health Minister Park Neung-hoo said at a meeting. "The COVID-19 spread is posing a grave crisis."

The Japanese economy, already in coronavirus-enduced recession, bounced back into the black in the third quarter, figures showed on Monday. GDP rose by a better-than-expected 5% for July-September compared to April-June, as the country began recovering from a record contraction.

Private consumption also rose 4.7% quarter-on-quarter after a 8.1% drop in the April-to-June period, according to the Cabinet Office. However, the nation's average household spending was 10.2% lower in September compared to the previous September.

Americas

The restrictions come as Johns Hopkins University reported 1 million new cases in the US in less than one week. The country crossed the 10 million case mark on Monday, November 9, and hit 11 million on Sunday evening local time. There have been nearly a quarter of a million deaths from the virus in the country. Both the number of confirmed cases and deaths are the highest in absolute terms in the world.

Meanwhile, Texas surpassed 20,000 confirmed COVID-19 fatalities on Monday, as the virus continues to surge in the US.

The Texas tally is the second-highest death count in the US, trailing only New York, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University.

So far, Texas authorities have given no indication of forthcoming restrictions to contain the coronavirus spread. Republican governor, Greg Abbott, says new therapeutics and vaccines are expected to become available soon.

In Philadelphia, authorities have decided to ban indoor gatherings altogether and the nearby state of New Jersey will strictly limit their size.

Philadelphia, the country's sixth-largest city, has urged residents to stay at home, "prohibiting indoor gatherings of any size in any location, public or private," health commissioner Thomas Farley said at a news conference on Monday.

"We need to keep this virus from jumping from one household to another," Farley said, adding that if "exponential" growth of COVID-19 cases continues, hospitals will soon become overwhelmed and more than 1,000 people could die in the city over the next six weeks.

Oceania

The Australian state of South Australia reported 14 new coronavirus cases on Monday. The state had ended a spell of months logging no new infections locally with three new cases on Sunday; a worker at a quarantine hotel is suspected of passing the illness on to family.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the new infections were "a reminder, even after a lockdown, even after all this time, the virus hasn't gone anywhere."

Several other Australian states will now require visitors from South Australia to submit to mandatory tests and a 14-day period of isolation on arrival.

kbd, jsi, shs/msh (AFP, AP, dpa, Retuers)