Masks return in French coastal resorts as new wave bites; Spain extends virus aid until end of October

Madrid: Spain’s cabinet approved on Tuesday the extension of measures to protect the most vulnerable from economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, including a moratorium on home evictions until November.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s coalition government first approved the package of social measures in March 2020 during the height of the first wave of the pandemic in Spain, one of Europe’s hardest-hit nations.

The so-called "social shield" includes a ban on leaving impoverished families without water, electricity and other utilities and a moratorium on forced residential evictions for those who saw their income vanish due to the pandemic.

The measures were to expire on August 9 but Sanchez’s cabinet extended them until October 31. "Hopefully health indicators will tell us then that we can face the future without the shield," government spokeswoman Isabel Rodriguez told a news conference after the cabinet meeting, adding the measures aim to "protect the most vulnerable".

Spain’s economy contracted sharply by 10.8 percent in 2020, one of the worst results in the eurozone, with its key tourism sector battered by the pandemic travel restrictions. But it returned to growth in the second quarter of 2021 and the government predicts it will expand by 6.5 percent this year.

That has helped bring Spain’s unemployment rate down to 15.3 percent in the April-June period from 16 percent in the previous quarter, although it remains well above the 13.8 percent rate recorded in the fourth quarter of 2019 before the pandemic hit. The country of around 47 million people has reported 4.5 million confirmed Covid-19 cases and over 81,000 deaths.

Meanwhile, authorities in Wuhan on Tuesday said they would test its entire population for Covid-19 after the central Chinese city where the coronavirus emerged reported its first local infections in more than a year.

China is battling its largest coronavirus outbreak in months, confining the residents of entire cities to their homes, cutting transport links and rolling out mass testing as the fast-spreading Delta variant challenges its zero-Covid strategy and homegrown vaccines.

Beijing had previously boasted of its success in crushing the virus, allowing the economy to rebound and normal life to return while swathes of the globe have struggled with the pandemic that has killed more than four million people worldwide.

But the latest outbreak is threatening China’s success with more than 400 domestic cases reported since mid-July when a cluster among airport cleaners in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, sparked infections in over 20 cities across more than a dozen provinces. Wuhan, a city of 11 million, is "swiftly launching comprehensive nucleic acid testing of all residents", senior city official Li Tao said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Authorities announced on Monday that seven locally transmitted infections had been found among migrant workers in the city, breaking a year-long streak without domestic cases after Wuhan squashed an initial outbreak with an unprecedented lockdown in early 2020.

And the holiday destination of Zhangjiajie in central China’s Hunan province abruptly announced Tuesday that no one would be allowed to exit the city, after closing tourist attractions and encouraging visitors to leave last week.

"All residents, tourists and other personnel are forbidden to leave Zhangjiajie," according to a brief notice published in the city’s Communist Party mouthpiece Zhangjiajie Daily. Major cities including the capital Beijing have now tested millions of residents while cordoning off residential compounds and placing close contacts under quarantine.

China reported 61 domestic cases on Tuesday. The eastern city of Yangzhou, near Nanjing, was the latest local government to order residents to stay home after large-scale testing detected 40 new infections over the past day.

The more than 1.3 million residents of Yangzhou’s urban core are now confined to their homes, with each household allowed to send only one person outside per day to shop for necessities, the city government said Tuesday.

The announcement comes after Zhuzhou city near Zhangjiajie imposed similar orders in recent days on more than two million people combined. The outbreak spread to Hunan from Nanjing last month after people in the airport cluster attended theatre performances in Zhangjiajie.

Officials have since been desperately tracking down thousands of fellow theatregoers and urging tourists not to travel to areas where cases have been found. Meantime, Beijing has blocked tourists from entering the capital during the peak summer holiday travel season and asked residents not to leave unless necessary, with top officials vowing over the weekend to "spare no expense" in defending the city.

In a related development, less than two months after France ended compulsory mask wearing outdoors several coastal resorts have made it mandatory again to combat a fourth wave of Covid-19 infections.

Brittany’s Finistere area, which includes the towns of Quimper, Morlaix and Brest, became the latest on Monday to order people to cover their mouths and noses outdoors after a jump in Covid cases since the start of the summer holidays. With its rugged Atlantic coastline Brittany is one of France’s most popular destinations.

Authorities in Finistere said the number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants had risen over four-fold between June 30 and July 30, from 19 to 90. Last week, masks also became compulsory outdoors again in the Morbihan area, which covers the town of Vannes, and the Cotes-d’Armor, including Dinan and Saint-Brieuc.