Beijing (AFP)

The emergency confinement of eleven districts of Beijing was ordered Saturday, after the appearance of a new outbreak of Covid-19, raising fears of a resurgence of the pandemic in China, where the disease appeared last year.

Concern also in Rome, where two new foci of this disease have been detected in recent days, one in a hospital, the other in a squatted building.

Just like in Iran, whose President Hassan Rohani reproached his fellow citizens on Saturday for the poor compliance with health guidelines intended to deal with the new coronavirus.

Russia meanwhile ended up registering for April more than double the deaths previously announced, or 2.712, according to a new counting method.

- New alert in Beijing -

In Beijing, officials from the Fengtai district announced on Saturday that they would set up a "wartime device". Several dozen residents of the Chinese capital have indeed tested positive for the new coronavirus, in the vicinity of the Xinfadi market.

It was temporarily closed by the authorities, as was a seafood market visited by one of the infected people. Nine surrounding schools and kindergartens suffered the same fate.

This episode makes fear a return to China of the epidemic, which strict quarantine measures had made it possible to control.

At the same time, in the United States, several states where activity restarted in April deplore an influx of new patients, which again raises fears of a second wave of contamination.

However, "we cannot close the economy again," warned US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Same scenario in South Africa where the number of new cases jumped more than 10,000 in one day, reaching nearly 62,000 Friday, including the Deputy Minister of Prison Services, a week after the release of confinement.

In total, the Covid-19 has killed more than 427,000 people and infected more than 7.7 million people on the planet, according to a report compiled by AFP from official sources.

Its epicenter is now in Latin America, where outside Brazil, the situation is getting worse in countries like Mexico and Chile, while in Honduras, the hospital system is "on the verge of collapse", warned the Professor Marco Tulio Medina, from the National University.

- Hour of accounts -

Accused of having mismanaged the health crisis or acting out of time, governments have found themselves on the dock almost everywhere in the world.

In Chile, the Minister of Health resigned on Saturday after a week of controversy over the increase in the number of cases of new coronavirus and the counting methodology.

Account time also seems to have struck in Europe.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was heard on Friday on his government's management of the coronavirus crisis by the prosecutor of Bergamo, martyr city of Lombardy (north) and epicenter of the epidemic which has killed more than 34,000 people in Italy.

To cushion the "unprecedented shock" caused by the Covid-19 in this country, the head of government called Saturday, during "states general" in Rome, to the preparation of a "courageous" economic recovery plan .

Meanwhile, tourists returned in large numbers to Venice, on the occasion of the reopening of the Doge's Palace.

And this while Greece said the same day, through the voice of its Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, "ready to welcome tourists this summer" in complete safety and that Germany was preparing to abolish as of Monday, not Tuesday as initially planned, its border controls with its European neighbors.

Anger is also mounting in France, where around sixty complaints have been filed against members of the government.

The Council of State, the highest administrative court, lifted there on Saturday the ban on assemblies of more than ten people, imposed as part of the state of health emergency, restoring the freedom to demonstrate.

A decision came the same day of a mobilization in all the big cities of France against racism and police violence.

Like the rest in Switzerland, where there were thousands to parade, despite the prohibition of groups of more than 300 people.

In London, it is sympathizers of the extreme right who took to the streets, saying they wanted to "protect" monuments from acts of vandalism on the part of anti-racist activists.

For his part, Pope Francis invited humanity, in a message broadcast on Saturday, to "reach out to the poor", lambasting in passing "cynicism" and "indifference".

As for the European Union, it secured its supply of vaccines against the new coronavirus on Saturday by concluding an agreement with the pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca which guarantees the supply of 300 million doses.

burx-thm / at / bds / fjb

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