As second wave of COVID-19 hits parts of Australia, as of Monday morning (Australian time), the global number of coronavirus cases has exceeded 10 million, recorded at 10,072,616. The figure is provided by Johns Hopkins University in the US world leader in tracking COVID-19, it comes within six months of the first case reported in Wuhan, China.
Since then, the virus has spread to every continent except Antarctica.
As the global death toll crossed half a million (at 500,321), infections have now been reported in more than 210 countries and territories. India has reached at number three position from the top as far as COVID-19 deaths are concerned. More than 16,095 people have died in India of COVID-19 and the rate of infections has reached horrendous levels. Single day infections in India are now above 20,000.
Globally the number of infections have increased by four million in just 28 days and experts fear if countries fail to get a handle on the virus, by September, global infections will cross 20 million.
In Australia, the number of cases has risen to 7686 with death toll sitting at 104. While Victoria is grappling with it, both federal and state authorities are worried about the second wave being more widespread
Are we likely to have Suburban lockdowns in Victoria?
Inching towards the highest single day positive case number of 68 (April 2), Victoria has recorded double-digit increases in new COVID-19 infections for 12 days running. Having recorded 41 new cases on Saturday and 49 on Sunday, Victoria has recorded 90 new cases just over the weekend.
What worries the government is the difficulty in finding the origin links in many cases. Only four of the new cases could be linked to known outbreaks, with 26 detected through routine testing and 19 under investigation.
Fully focused on containing the onslaught of the second wave, the state administration ordered a Testing Blitz and more than 40,000 test have been conducted with results soon to come. There has been talk of imposing suburban lockdown measures to contain the virus within the hotspots to arrest its spread.
Premier Daniel Andrews said authorities are waiting for the results of the testing blitz in 10 suburban hotspots to come through before deciding on any further measures to contain the virus. A lockdown for the worst-affected areas may be on the cards.
“That is not our preference but we’ll do it if we need to,” Mr Andrews said.
Unfortunately, these latest figures for Victoria are in stark contrast with those of other states, particularly Western Australia which had just one new case, and NSW having recorded just three positive cases of COVID-19. Making it easy for the Authorities, all of those are people returning from overseas.
Queensland and South Australia recorded no new cases.