The latest:
Thirteen people died in a stampede at a disco in Peru after a police raid to enforce the country’s lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic, officials said Sunday.
The stampede happened at the Thomas disco in Lima, where about 120 people had gathered for a party on Saturday night, the Interior Ministry said.
People tried to escape through a door, trampling one another and becoming trapped in the confined space, according to authorities.
Neighbours had alerted police about the raucous event at the club in the Los Olivos district of the Peruvian capital.
“In these circumstances when people begin to fight to get out, it’s tumultuous, everyone goes against each other,” Orlando Velasco of the National Police told local radio station RPP.
An Interior Ministry statement said the revellers tried to squeeze en masse through the only entrance door and became trapped between the door and a staircase leading to the street.
Police detained at least 23 partygoers, the ministry said.
Peru ordered the closure of nightclubs and bars in March and banned extended family gatherings on Aug. 12 to fight what is Latin America’s second-highest COVID-19 infection rate, according to a Reuters tally. A Sunday curfew is also in effect.
Peru had recorded a total of 585,236 coronavirus cases as of Saturday, double the number reported on July 2, while the known death toll has risen to 27,453.
What’s happening with coronavirus in Canada
As of noon ET on Sunday, Canada had 124,821 confirmed and presumptive coronavirus cases. Provinces and territories listed 111,092 of those as recovered or resolved. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC’s reporting stood at 9,108.
Despite long workdays and promising early results, researchers in Saskatoon say a lack of manufacturing capacity is slowing down their efforts at a made-in-Canada vaccine — something that matters given concerns over “vaccine nationalism,” which could prevent access to a product that’s not made at home.
The Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac) says that before it can proceed to human clinical trials, the facility needs to complete more studies using higher-grade materials than what they needed for their early animal studies. But waiting for busy manufacturers to provide them is holding up the process.
Had the federal government invested more in a proposed manufacturing facility at VIDO- InterVac before the pandemic, a Canadian vaccine would be at the front of the race, director Volker Gerdts said.
“We’ve been telling the government — and I don’t want to use this as a blaming — but we have raised the issue of Canada’s unpreparedness for pandemic diseases for quite a while,” Gerdts said. “You need to have manufacturing capacity. You need to have the ability to quickly respond.”
Here’s what’s happening around the world
According to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 23.2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 805,000 deaths. Here’s a look at what else is going on around the world.
Churches were closed and professional baseball games were played in empty stadiums on Sunday as South Korea stepped up measures nationwide to fight a resurgence in coronavirus cases that has raised concerns that the epidemic is getting out of control.
The 397 new cases reported by South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the KCDC, marked the 10th straight day of triple-digit increases and indicated that the speed of the virus’s spread was nearing levels seen during the worst of the outbreak in the spring.
The resurgence, which began in the densely populated Seoul area before reaching practically every major city and provincial town over the past week, is a major setback for a country that had been eager to tout its hard-won gains against the virus.
After avoiding stringent physical-distancing measures because of concerns about hurting the economy, officials stepped up restrictions nationwide on Sunday.
Traffic was backed up for as much as 12 hours on Austria‘s southern border after new coronavirus safety measures were imposed on all travellers entering the country, authorities said Sunday.
Police told the Austria Press Agency that cars were backed up for up to 12 hours at the Karawanks Tunnel and seven hours at the Loibl Pass into Austria as vacationers returning from Croatia and Slovenia tried to enter the country.
Amid a rise in coronavirus cases attributed in large part to returning tourists, Austria imposed new rules this weekend requiring that the personal details of all travellers be recorded at the border, even if just passing through Austria.
The border traffic jams consisted primarily of German and Dutch tourists on their way home, APA reported.
By Sunday morning, Austrian officials were forced to relax the new restrictions to get the traffic moving again, performing only spot checks of random vehicles, Austria’s ORF broadcaster reported. Waiting times at the border were still several hours, however.
Pakistan‘s authorities on Sunday reported only four new COVID-19 fatalities in the past 24 hours, the fewest deaths since March.
The announcement raises hopes that Pakistan is on the right path to fully containing the coronavirus despite having a fragile health system.
The National Command and Control Center also reported 591 new cases, increasing the country’s caseload to 275,836, including 6,275 deaths.
Pakistan witnessed a sudden spike in infections and deaths in June, but confirmed cases and fatalities have gradually declined since then. The latest development comes days after Pakistan’s drug regulatory agency approved final-phase testing of a Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine.
Pakistan hopes it will get the vaccine on priority from neighbouring China if its clinical trials show success.
