Global worries as infections spike in Russia, Brazil, India

MOSCOW (HRNW) — New coronavirus cases have been spiking from India to South Africa to Mexico in a clear indication that the pandemic is far from over, while Russia and Brazil now sit behind only the United States in the number of reported infections.

The surges come even as much of Asia, Europe and scores of U.S. states have seen enough progress in their fight against the virus to focus on how best to reopen their economies. U.S. autoworkers, French teachers and Thai mall workers are among the hundreds of thousands of employees back on the job with new safety precautions.

Russia reported a steady rise in new infections Tuesday and new hot spots have emerged across the vast nation of about 147 million. Russia registered 9,263 new cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to nearly 300,000 infections — about half of them in Moscow. Authorities say 2,837 people with COVID-19 have died in Russia, a figure that international health experts have questioned.

In Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg, one of the main hot spots, all burials now must be with closed coffins irrespective of the cause of death as an extra precaution. Previously the measure only applied to COVID-19 deaths.

Russia’s case load is second only to the U.S., which has seen 1.5 million infections and over 90,000 deaths.