Paris (AFP)

While the toll of the pandemic is close to 120,000 deaths in Brazil, the second most affected country in the world, Hungary will prohibit access to its territory to non-residents to cope with the increase in contaminations, France and the Germany relying on the wearing of masks.

"From September 1, foreign citizens will no longer be allowed to enter the territory of Hungary," said the head of Prime Minister's Office Gergely Gulyás.

"Hungarian citizens returning from abroad must be quarantined for 14 days or must present two negative tests," he added.

- Mask everywhere -

In France, the authorities have announced a dynamic of "exponential" contaminations progression with more than 7,000 new cases in 24 hours (against 6,111 Thursday and 5,429 Wednesday). Since Friday morning, wearing a mask is mandatory everywhere in Paris and its inner suburbs, under penalty of a fine of 135 euros.

A total of 21 departments out of the 96 in mainland France are classified in the "red zone", including that of the Alpes-Maritimes (south-east) where the first two stages of the Tour de France cycling which starts on Saturday are to take place.

The start in Nice will take place "almost behind closed doors", the authorities have decided, and along the route in this city and its mountainous hinterland, wearing a mask will be compulsory.

Germany, for its part, will increase the fines for not wearing a mask to at least 50 euros and strengthen controls to ensure compliance with quarantine periods.

But the city of Berlin suffered a snub: the justice lifted a ban decreed by the municipality of the German capital on a demonstration of opponents to the wearing of the mask and to the measures against the Covid-19 scheduled for Saturday and widely supported by the far right.

A demonstration by opponents of the wearing of masks and vaccination is also scheduled for Saturday in Zurich.

- "Even more difficult" -

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that she expected the pandemic to develop "even more difficult" in autumn and winter.

"We have all benefited from freedoms and relative protection against aerosols during the summer," thanks to "life in the open air," she said, but the situation is now in danger of changing.

The pandemic has killed at least 832,336 people around the world since the virus appeared at the end of December, according to a report established by AFP from official sources on Friday at 11:00 GMT. More than 24.5 million cases of contamination have been diagnosed.

Brazil has recorded 119,504 deaths from the coronavirus, for 3,804,803 reported cases. The United States remains the most affected country by far, with 181,704 dead and 5,912,016 recorded cases, according to the count from Johns Hopkins University.

Fraud and corruption are hitting two large countries in the southern hemisphere in connection with the fight against the coronavirus: Brazil and India.

Wilson Witzel, the governor of Rio de Janeiro, was impeached on Friday for alleged corruption linked to the fight against Covid-19 which he described as "conjecture" intended to "politically slaughter" him.

The suspicions relate to embezzlement of funds supposed to be intended for the purchase of respirators and the construction of field hospitals. Only two of the seven planned establishments were finally built.

- Resale of used masks -

In India, the police have uncovered illegal channels for the resale of used masks and surgical gloves sometimes recovered from hospital garbage cans.

Police in Navi Bombay, the twin city of Bombay (west), said on Friday they had seized 3.8 million single-use surgical gloves that had been washed, dried and wrapped ready for resale.

The criminals "had bought nearly 35 tonnes of used gloves from various hospitals and were preparing to give them away at low cost to dealers," investigator Subhash Nikam told AFP.

The pandemic meanwhile continues to hit economies hard.

That of Canada contracted by 38.7% year-on-year in the second quarter, an unprecedented plunge due to the constraints imposed on economic activities by the pandemic.

"Many sectors will continue to go through difficulties in the absence of a vaccine," said economist Brian De Pratto of TD Bank, adding that "we may have gone through the worst, but it's still a long way to normal ".

© 2020 AFP