BANGKOK: Authorities in Thailand began transporting some people who tested positive for the coronavirus from Bangkok to their hometowns on Tuesday (Jul 27) for isolation and treatment to alleviate the burden on the capital’s overwhelmed medical system.

A train carrying more than 100 patients and medical workers in full protective gear left the city for the northeast.

It will drop patients off in seven provinces, where they will be met by health officers and taken to hospitals.

Medical authorities in Bangkok said Monday that all intensive care unit (ICU) beds for COVID-19 patients at public hospitals were full and that some of the sick were being treated in emergency rooms. Officials said they have asked army medics to help out at civilian hospitals.

“We will continue this service until no COVID-19 patients who cannot get beds in Bangkok are left,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul.

READ: Thailand’s COVID-19 national vaccination programme hit by supply shortage, uncertain delivery schedule

He said buses, vans and even aircraft might be deployed to send people back to less badly affected provinces.

Thailand initially kept coronavirus cases in check but outbreaks have flared in recent months.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s government is facing harsh criticism over its handling of a delta variant-fueled surge and slow vaccination program, amid reports of people dying in the streets or in their homes while waiting for treatment.

Of Thailand’s total of nearly 500,000 confirmed cases and more than 4,000 fatalities, 137,263 cases and 2,176 deaths have been recorded in Bangkok.

Most of the 4,451 beds for COVID-19 patients in the city of about 15 million are occupied by people with mild or no symptoms. Hospitals are beginning to urge such patients to isolate at home or in community isolation centers.

READ: Leaked letters show AstraZeneca vaccine commitment not as Thailand claimed

Bangkok governor Aswin Kwanmuang said the city government will coordinate with the State Railway to install 240 beds in 15 railway carriages in a maintenance shed in the city’s huge Bang Sue station as a “pre-admission centre” for coronavirus patients without symptoms.

He visited the station on Tuesday to inspect the carriages. He said they should be ready for use by Friday.

The government said supplies of medical oxygen are sufficient and manufacturers have been asked to ensure enough is available. But people ill with coronavirus who are unable to find places for treatment are not always able to get supplemental oxygen.

Meanwhile, some temples in the devoutly Buddhist country have begun to offer free cremations as the number of deaths rises, the government said.

Sydney, home to a fifth of Australia’s 25 million people, was due to exit lockdown on Jul 30 but Berejiklian has said the number of infections in the community must be near zero first.

She urged people to get vaccinated.

“Until we have enough of our population fully vaccinated, we will be living with some level of restriction and that will depend on how quickly we can overcome the severity of the current outbreak,” she said.

“The vaccine is key to our freedom.”

READ: Man in Australia ties bedsheets together to escape 4th floor hotel quarantine

Neighbouring Queensland state closed its border to New South Wales, citing the outbreak, shutting off one of the most travelled routes in the country.

In Victoria, to the south of New South Wales, all the 26 new cases were linked to known chains of transmission and 24 were in quarantine throughout their infectious period, the state authorities said.

South Australia state reported two new cases as officials track two “superspread events” – gatherings at a winery and a Greek restaurant in the state capital Adelaide.

MORRISON ‘SORRY’ FOR SLOW VACCINE ROLLOUT

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday apologised for Australia’s glacial vaccine rollout.

After months of boasting about his “gold standard” pandemic response and insisting vaccine rollout was “not a race”, Morrison bowed to critics.

“I’m sorry that we haven’t been able to achieve the marks that we had hoped for at the beginning of this year. Of course I am,” he said.

“I take responsibility for the vaccination programme. I also take responsibility for the challenges we’ve had. Obviously, some things are within our control, some things that are not.”

Morrison is under fierce public pressure to improve Australia’s vaccination rate currently languishing around 11 per cent, among the lowest rate of any rich nation.

ECONOMIC HIT

With large swathes of businesses shut down in the country’s two largest cities, Australia’s A$2 trillion (US$1.5 trillion) economy could take a big hit from the latest lockdowns that have forced more than half its population indoors.

The economy had boomed to pre-pandemic levels in the early months of this year thanks to low COVID-19 cases.

But the latest lockdowns could cost the national economy around A$300 million (US$220 million) a day, Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg estimated.

“It’s going to have a hit on the economy. We’ll see that in the future, jobs data as well as in the GDP growth numbers,” Frydenberg told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

READ: Singapore-Australia travel bubble more likely in end-2021, says Australian minister

The country’s main airline, Qantas Airways, said in a memo to staff that domestic capacity had fallen below 40 per cent of pre-coronavirus levels and that staff may be stood down without pay if lockdowns continued for “extended periods”.

Australia has fared better than many other developed economies in keeping infections relatively low, with about 32,200 cases and 915 deaths.

But with a sputtering immunisation campaign and just 11 per cent of the population fully vaccinated, it has relied on lockdowns and border closures to contain the outbreak.

“I have no doubt, no stone will be left unturned,” Hanzman said of the lawsuits.

So far 97 victims have been identified, many of them using DNA analysis. Miami-Dade officials said on Wednesday evening they believed they have two more victims to identify, but another person’s name was released later in the day — meaning there may be just one more.

Officials have not yet announced an end to the recovery effort.

The site of the tragedy has mostly been cleared away with the debris relocated to an evidentiary collection site near the airport where a thorough search will continue “with enormous care and diligence”, said Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

She spoke about the difficulties of the search in a statement on Wednesday.

“The enormous pressure of the weight of the collapse and the passage of time also make it more challenging,” she said, stressing that workers were still carefully combing through the rubble for the remaining victims as well as personal property.

On Wednesday, police said 24-year-old Anastasia Gromova and Linda March, 58, were identified.

READ: Florida condominium collapse lawsuits seek to get answers, assign blame

Gromova, a Canadian from Montreal, had just been accepted to a programme teaching English in Japan. She was visiting Florida with her friend Michelle Pazos, and were staying with Pazos’ father at the condo.

Gromova’s body was recovered three days ago and was one of the last to be identified. Pazos’ body, along with her father’s, was recovered earlier this month.

Gromova’s grieving family rushed from Canada after the collapse and had spent weeks in agony waiting in Miami.

“It just makes it real and hard but on a different level. At least we can move on now.” her sister Anna Gromova told the Associated Press, describing her sister as a bright star that fell fast. “We will remember her forever.”

Her parents said she was bright, always on the go, constantly smiling and unafraid to take on difficult challenges.

“It’s hard because you knew the loss was preventable and still nothing was prevented,” her sister said.

March’s body was recovered on Jul 5, police said. She was an attorney described by family as an outgoing woman looking for a new start in the Miami area. She had lost both her mother and father in the past decade and was divorced.

The rubble that will be key evidence is being stored in a Miami-area warehouse, with the rest in nearby vacant lots, said the receiver, attorney Michael Goldberg. All of that will be preserved as possible evidence for the lawsuits and for other experts to review, he said.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is leading a federal probe into the collapse, according to a receiver handling the finances on behalf of the condominium board.

“It may take years for their report to become public,” Goldberg said of the NIST probe.

The building was just undergoing its 40-year recertification process when it collapsed. That came three years after an engineer warned of serious structural issues needing immediate attention. Most of the concrete repair and other work had yet to be started.

There remain differences of opinion among condo owners about what to do with the site. Some want the entire condo rebuilt so they can move back in. Others say it should be left as a memorial site to honour those who died. A third suggestion is to combine both.

Owner Raysa Rodriguez, whose unit was on the ninth floor, said she couldn’t imagine going back into a building in a place where so many friends died.

“I personally would never set foot in a building. That’s a gravesite,” Rodriguez told the judge. “I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of everyone who perished.”

Oren Cytrynbaum, an attorney who is informally representing some fellow condo owners, said it was important to think creatively about the building sale, including whether requirements might be added such as a memorial of some kind for future developers.

“It shouldn’t be a traditional land sale,” Cytrynbaum said. “We’re not on one path.”

Hanzman, however, said time is of the essence because victims and families need money to begin rebuilding their lives.

“This is not a case where we have time to let grass grow underneath it,” he said.

The largest among these is still the Bootleg Fire in Oregon, which has burned through a section of land the same size as the city of Los Angeles, in just two weeks.

“The fire got so big and it creates so much energy that it started to create its own weather,” Marcus Kauffman, a specialist with the Oregon Department of Forestry, told AFP, adding that the blaze “feeds on itself” and has even been making its own lightning.

Firefighters’ work over the past two weeks “has undoubtedly protected hundreds of homes and we remain vigilant to the task at hand”, said Ian Yocum of the Oregon State Fire Marshal.

In neighbouring California, several towns were evacuated as they faced rising flames from the Dixie Fire, a conflagration that may have been caused by a tree falling on Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) lines.

READ: Major US wildfire grows, forcing new evacuations

Last year the company pleaded guilty to manslaughter and causing a fire that devastated the nearby town of Paradise, California in 2018, due to faulty lines.

On Wednesday, it announced its intention to bury thousands of kilometres of power lines, starting with those located in areas prone to fires.

“ABSOLUTELY” SCARY

Back in Canada, British Columbia declared a state of emergency on Monday, with more than 5,700 people under an evacuation order.

“We did it in 2017 and we will do it again in 2021. Is it stressful? Is it scary? Absolutely it is,” Wagner said.

Other neighbouring areas are preparing for the worst since weather conditions, particularly wind and heat, are not expected to give the more than 3,000 firefighters already battling the blazes a break anytime soon.

“I have been living here in Ashcroft for almost 25 years now and I have never seen anything like this before,” said Mayor Barbara Roden, whose municipality in the centre of the province has been on high alert since Jul 14.

“The most frightening thing in a lot of ways is that we’re all looking at the calendar and this is only halfway through July,” she said.

Climate change amplifies droughts which dry out regions, creating ideal conditions for wildfires.

The Canadian armed forces are preparing to deploy 350 additional troops to British Columbia and 120 to Manitoba, a central province also struggling with large fire outbreaks, according to the Canadian Joint Operations Command. In Ontario, about 75 soldiers are helping firefighters.

BERLIN: A relief official dampened hopes on Wednesday (Jul 21) of finding more survivors in the rubble of villages devastated by floods in western Germany, as a poll showed many Germans felt policymakers had not done enough to protect them.

More than 170 people died in last week’s flooding, Germany’s worst natural disaster in more than half a century, and thousands went missing.

“We are still looking for missing persons as we clear roads and pump water out of basements,” Sabine Lackner, deputy chief of the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.

Any victims found now are likely to be dead, she said.

One woman in Insul, in the rural Eifel region, said people had emerged from their houses like ghosts last week to see whether their neighbours were alive. In the Ahrweiler district, of which Insul is part, 123 people died.

READ: Knee-deep in sewage: German rescuers race to avert health emergency in flood areas

READ: ‘It’s terrifying’: Merkel shaken as flood deaths rise to 188 in Europe

For immediate relief, the federal government will initially provide up to €200 million (US$235.5 million) in emergency aid, and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said more funds can be made available if needed.

That will come on top of at least €250 million provided by the affected states to repair buildings and damaged local infrastructure and to help people in crisis situations.

Scholz said the government would contribute to the cost of rebuilding infrastructure such as roads and bridges. The full extent of the damage is not clear, but Scholz said that rebuilding after previous floods cost about €6 billion.

PUBLIC CRITICISM

The floods have dominated the political agenda before a national election in September and raised uncomfortable questions about why Europe’s richest economy was caught flat-footed.

READ: Germany picks through rubble after deadly European floods

READ: Germans describe helplessness in face of flood devastation

Two-thirds of Germans believe that federal and regional policymakers should have done more to protect communities from flooding, a survey by the INSA institute for German mass-circulation paper Bild showed on Wednesday.

Interior minister Horst Seehofer, who faced calls from opposition politicians to resign over the high death toll, said there would be no shortage of money for reconstruction.

“That is why people pay taxes, so that they can receive help in situations like this. Not everything can be insured,” he told a news conference.

Insured losses from the floods may total €4 billion to €5 billion (US$4.7-5.9 billion), said the GDV insurance industry association. Damage in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate is likely to exceed the €4.65 billion recorded after a deluge in August 2002, it said.

The estimate does not include losses from the southern German state of Bavaria and in Saxony in the east last weekend.

Only around 45 per cent of homeowners in Germany have insurance that covers flood damage, according to the GDV, triggering a discussion about the need for compulsory insurance.

“As the time interval between heavy natural disasters gets shorter and shorter, one needs a debate about a protection scheme and how it could be designed,” Seehofer said.

Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told Deutschlandfunk radio aid would include funds to help businesses such as restaurants or hair salons make up for lost revenue.

Those included Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, Britain, China, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Israel, Portugal, Russia, Singapore and South Africa.

“Growing evidence supports the increased transmissibility of the Delta variant as compared to non-VOCs. However, the exact mechanism for the increase in transmissibility remains unclear,” said the WHO.

READ: Concern grows over Indonesia’s regions as Delta COVID-19 variant ravages Java

CASES UP 12%

The Geneva-based organisation said overall, 3.4 million new COVID-19 cases were reported in the week to Jul 18 – up 12 per cent on the week before.

“At this rate, it is expected that the cumulative number of cases reported globally could exceed 200 million in the next three weeks,” said the WHO.

The organisation said the global increases in transmission appeared to be driven by four factors: More transmissible variants; the relaxation of public health measures; increased social mixing and large numbers of unvaccinated people.

Cases were up 30 per cent in the WHO’s Western Pacific region and up 21 per cent in its European region.

The highest numbers of new cases were reported from Indonesia (350,273 new cases; up 44 per cent), Britain (296,447 new cases; up 41 per cent), and Brazil (287,610 new cases; down 14 per cent).

The number of weekly deaths, however, remained steady at 57,000, similar to the previous week and following a steady decline for more than two months.