Posted on 07/31/21
| News Source: i24
Biden says new restrictive measures to follow as Sydney sees military help maintain lockdown
Mushrooming outbreaks of the Delta variant prompted China and Australia to impose stricter Covid-19 curbs on Saturday, as the World Health Organization (WHO) urged the world to contain the mutation before it turns into something deadlier and draws out the pandemic.
In the United States, President Joe Biden said on Friday that new restrictive measures will "in all probability" soon be introduced.
China's most serious surge of coronavirus infections in months spread to two more areas Saturday -- Fujian province and the megacity of Chongqing -- in an outbreak that now spans 14 provinces.
"The main strain circulating at present is the Delta variant... which poses an even greater challenge to virus prevention and control work," said Mi Feng, spokesman for China's National Health Commission.
The nation where the disease first emerged has rushed to prevent the highly transmissible strain from taking root by putting more than one million people under lockdown and reinstituting mass testing campaigns.
Worldwide, coronavirus infections are once again on the upswing, with the World Health Organization announcing an 80 percent average increase over the past four weeks in five of the health agency's six regions, a jump largely fueled by the Delta variant.
In Australia, the military will help enforce a lockdown in Sydney after the city of six million posted a record daily rise in morbidity on Thursday and state authorities said the outbreak was likely to get worse.