SEOUL: The number of new virus cases in China dropped to its lowest level in six weeks on Monday (March 2) and hundreds of patients at the outbreak’s epicentre were being released, while a grimmer reality set in elsewhere, with swelling infection numbers and growing dread that no area could fend off the illness.
Clusters of infections in South Korea, Italy and Iran continued to expand and Covid-19 was raising distress and reshaping routines around Europe and across the Atlantic in the United States.Schools emptied across Japan, mobile hospitals were planned in Iran, and the Mona Lisa, accustomed to droves of staring tourists, hung in a vacant room of the shuttered Louvre in Paris.
The country reported 202 new cases of the virus, it’s lowest daily count since Jan. 21, and the stricken heart of the health crisis, Wuhan, said 2,570 patients were released. At the largest of 16 temporary hospitals that were hastily built in Wuhan in response to the outbreak, worries over the availability of supplies and protective gear abated and pressure on medical staff eased.
China’s sunnier news came two months into its outbreak. In the places the virus has spread more recently, the problems continued to magnify. "If we continue to hospitalize mild patients amid the continued surge in infections, we would be risking overworking medical professionals and putting them at greater risk of infections,” said the country’s vice health minister, Kim Gang-lip.
In the Middle East, a worsening situation in Iran was accompanied by concern for its top leaders after a member of the council that advises Iran’s supreme leader died of Covid-19. In Europe, leaders braced for worsening caseloads after the count surged in France and Italy over the weekend. Italy’s number of infection ballooned by 50% in 24 hours to 1,694. Health officials in northern Italy sought to bring doctors out of retirement and to accelerate nursing students' graduations to help an overwhelmed public health system.
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