The global epidemic continues to develop. Many states in the United States have reduced the tracking of close contacts due to the overburdened burden of health institutions. With the college entrance examination approaching, the number of new cases in South Korea is rising every day, and collective infections are frequent, which causes public concern.
The cumulative number of confirmed cases worldwide exceeded 60 million yesterday. According to previous reports, it only took 17 days for each increase in the number of confirmed cases worldwide to gradually shorten, from 50 million to 60 million.
The epidemic situation in the United States has continued to deteriorate in recent days, and the increase in patients has led to the brink of collapse of health institutions in many states. According to the New York Times on the 25th, overburdened state and local health officials are reducing the tracking of close contacts, or even abandoning the tracing completely.
According to the report, in the early days of the epidemic, public health workers across the United States tried to trace the infection chain. However, as the pandemic worsens, the U.S. public health agency now acknowledges that tracing close contacts has become more difficult. In Maine and the nation as a whole, COVID-19 spreads faster than states are training and deploying public health investigators, said Nirav Shah, Maine’s COVID-19 Response Director. Therefore, public health institutions have been forced to make the decision to reduce the tracking workload of close contacts.
In Europe, many countries have shown the momentum of epidemic spread. On the 25th local time, the number of new confirmed cases in Serbia exceeded 7,500, the highest number of new cases in a single day since March, including 2,142 new cases in the capital Belgrade. President Vučić has met with heads of departments in this regard to discuss the urgent purchase of vaccines.
According to the latest statistics of the Robert Koch Institute of Disease Control and Prevention in Germany, 410 new deaths occurred in Germany on the 25th, the largest one-day increase since the outbreak began. On the same day, the German government also decided to extend the national blockade measures originally scheduled for November 30 to be lifted until at least December 20, and then it may be extended to January 2021 again. German Health Minister Spahn said on the same day that the cantonal coronavirus vaccination centers are under construction and will start vaccinating people as early as December.
In Asia, the epidemic situation in Japan and South Korea is also of concern. From 00:00 to 21:30 local time on the 25th, there were nearly 1,950 new confirmed cases in Japan. So far, the cumulative number of confirmed cases in Japan has exceeded 137,000. According to Japan’s Sankei Shimbun, Yasuhiro Nishimura, the regeneration minister of Japan’s economy, said that it is crucial to control the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in the next three weeks. Once the infection continues to spread and the epidemic level rises to the most serious level 4, the government is considering issuing a declaration of emergency again.
South Korea added more than 500 confirmed cases on the 26th, the highest number of new cases in a single day after eight months since 518 new cases were added on March 18. There have been many mass infections in South Korea in recent days. It is worth noting that South Korea will hold the national college entrance examination on December 3 a week later. Now the number of confirmed cases has soared, which has aroused public concern.
In addition, due to the previous outbreak of mass infection in a new recruit training camp, South Korea’s Ministry of Defense said on the 26th that all troops in the country will implement the “level 2.5 epidemic prevention response in the battalion” from the same day to next month to make every effort to prevent the spread of the epidemic in the army. If someone violates the epidemic prevention regulations and causes the spread of the epidemic, the South Korean Ministry of Defense will seriously hold the relevant personnel accountable.
