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| A man gets his nasal swab sample taken for COVID-19 test at a government health center in Hyderabad, India, Monday. India is the third hardest-hit country by the pandemic in the world after the United States and Brazil. / AP-Yonhap |
India on Monday recorded a single-day record of 49,931 new infections of the coronavirus as China registered its largest increase in cases in months.
India's Ministry of Health reported the record-setting figure Monday morning, increasing its total number of infections to 1,435,453. Its death toll also climbed by 708 to 32,771.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to launch three high throughput testing facilities on Monday to ramp up testing capacity and strengthen early detection of the virus amid the spike, his office said in a statement on Sunday.
The facilities will be in Noida in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Mumbai and Kolkata and will each have the ability to test 10,000 samples a day.
The new testing facilities were announced as the number of infections in the country with 1.3 billion people continues to exponentially rise. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, only Brazil at 2.4 million cases and the United States with 4.2 million have more infections.
Worldwide, infections early Monday stood at nearly 16.3 million ― of which nearly half was attributed to those three countries.
China on Monday reported 61 new infections, its highest number since mid-April, with 41 cases in the Xijiang region, its national health commission said in an update.
Once the epicenter of the virus, China has slipped to 26th place worldwide in infections with 83,891 cases since the first case was diagnosed in its central city of Wuhan late last year.
In Hong Kong, Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung announced a two-person limit on gatherings, a face-covering mandate and a ban on dining at restaurants to be implemented from Wednesday amid a surge in cases.
Cheung said more than 1,10 cases had been reported in the past two weeks in the semi-autonomous city, with all but 113 being the result of community transmission.
Hong Kong's Queen Elizabeth Hospital also announced two more deaths on Monday, lifting the city's total to 20.
In Vietnam, the government said Monday it was evacuating some 80,000 people, mostly tourists, from Danang city after a man tested positive for the virus over the weekend. It was the city's first community transmission of the virus since April.
The government said it will also close the city's borders to inbound domestic travelers.
The strict measures came a day after the Danang Municipal People's Committee ordered residents to regularly wash their hands, wear a face covering while outdoors and keep a social distance of at least three feet from other people while banning public gatherings of 30 people or more.
The Asian nation has only 420 cases and zero deaths to the infectious coronavirus. (UPI)
