India has become the third country to record more than 1m coronavirus infections, following the US and Brazil, as it reported 34,956 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking the national total to 1,003,832.
New peaks continue to appear around the world, including an alarming rise in the Brittany region of France.
Amid evidence that the disease was taking hold in poorer, rural areas of India with less effective public healthcare, the latest tally prompted renewed concerns about the country’s ability to cope with rising infections.
The figures have been released after a week in which authorities in India were forced to impose new lockdowns, including fresh restrictions on 128 million people in the state of Bihar, which came into force on Thursday.
The continuing and escalating outbreaks, on top of record cases in the United States – which passed 75,000 daily cases in the last count – have dampened hopes that the pandemic is anywhere close to being brought under control, even as researchers race to find a viable vaccine.
Three states in India – Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu – account for more than half of the total cases in the country so far. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, warned that the majority of cases in the country were still being missed.
The continuing rise has forced authorities to reinstate lockdowns in some cities and states.
In Bangalore, the government ordered a week-long lockdown that began on Tuesday evening after a rapid rise in cases.
Dr Anant Bhan, a global health researcher, said India was likely to experience a series of peaks as the virus spread in rural areas. He said the capital, New Delhi, and the financial capital, Mumbai, had already recorded surges, while infections have now shifted to smaller cities.
India’s response to the virus was initially sluggish, but on 24 March the prime minister, Narendra Modi, imposed a three-week nationwide lockdown of its 1.3-billion population.
By Friday more than 13.8m infections had been confirmed worldwide and nearly 590,000 people had died, according to Johns Hopkins University, with Brazil recording more than 2m infections by the end of the week and the US more than 3m.
Countries around the world have moved quickly to reintroduce restrictions as outbreaks flare up again. Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, Spain’s second largest city, announced a ban on gatherings of more than 10 people from Saturday as part of a package of measures to curb an increase in coronavirus cases in the Catalan capital.
“We have to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people … Only 10 people will be allowed in weddings and funerals from Saturday,” Colau told a press conference. Residents were urged to shop online and cultural and sports events will also be limited.
In France, which had already announced plans to make mask wearing mandatory in enclosed public spaces, authorities reported a sharp rise in the infection rate in Brittany. According to data released on Friday, the disease’s reproduction rate in Brittany had risen from 0.92 to 2.62 between 10-14 July.
“It’s a worrying number because it means the epidemic is taking off again,” Eric Caumes, an infectious disease specialist at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris, told BFM TV.
In China, flights into the city of Ürümqi in the far-western Xinjiang region were restricted on Friday, and underground and public bus services suspended, according to local social media.
The latest outbreak has underlined the continuing difficulty China faces in stamping out the virus – even with its imposition of draconian measures – which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
Amid fears around the world over the ease in which new resurgences have escalated after countries relaxed restrictions, Hong Kong reported 50 new locally transmitted cases on Friday, stoking further concern about a third peak of infections in the global financial hub.
Tokyo hit a daily high of 293 infections as Japan tried to keep the world’s third-largest economy running while curbing infections, a precarious balancing act of opening restaurants and theatres with limited seating, and having store clerks work behind plastic shielding.
“We have asked people and businesses to raise their alert levels,” said Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike. She said the recent higher numbers partly reflected more aggressive testing.
