Six Trump staffers test positive as cases rise worldwide
Six Trump staffers tested positive for coronavirus as crowds ignored health warnings and gathered to hear the US president speak on Saturday at his first rally since March, while cases and deaths rose in several Latin American countries.
The figures were particularly alarming in Chile, where the death toll nearly doubled to more than 7,000 under a revised tallying method, and passed 20,000 in Mexico.
Europe meanwhile chalked up more than 2.5 million cases. Although the spread has slowed, Europe is still the worst-affected continent.
Almost half of its cases have been registered in Russia, Britain, Spain and Italy, according to an AFP tally on Saturday.
The continent is easing its way out of strict lockdowns that have caused crippling economic damage, even as the WHO warns against giving in to isolation fatigue.
The virus has now killed more than 461,000 people and infected 8.7 million worldwide.
A vaccine remains months off at best despite several trials, and scientists are still learning more about the virus, its symptoms and the extent to which it may have spread before being identified.
As people gathered at an arena in the US city of Tulsa for the Trump rally, it emerged that six of the Tulsa advance team there had tested positive for coronavirus and been quarantined.
Critics, including Tulsa city officials, had already expressed concern that the event – at a venue with a capacity of 20,000 – violated guidelines issued by the US health authorities.
The US remains the country worst hit by the pandemic, having recorded 119,460 deaths from more than 240,000 registered cases.
The world’s largest economy is taking a beating in a year when Trump seeks re-election.
Chile nearly doubled its coronavirus death toll Saturday to more than 7,144 under a new tallying method that includes probable fatalities from COVID-19, the health ministry announced.
The announcement of the new counting system was meant to end weeks of controversy over the death toll numbers being released by the government.
After investigative news organization CIPER revealed that Chile was supplying the higher figures to the World Health Organization (WHO), health minister Jaime Manalich resigned last week.
The new health minister, Enrique Paris, insisted that the government never meant to deceive.
Chile’s latest figures came a day after Brazil followed the US past the 1 million case mark; and Mexico announced it was delaying plans to reopen the economy until the number of infections had dropped further.
“The world is in a new and dangerous phase,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Friday.
“Many people are understandably fed up with being at home… but the virus is still spreading fast.”
Photo taken on March 23, 2020 shows the venue of an online meeting on COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control among representatives from China and Latin American and Caribbean countries in San Salvador, El Salvador.(Photo by Alexander Pena/Xinhua)
