China reported 57 new cases of the coronavirus on Sunday, the highest daily figure since April, as concerns grew about a resurgence of the disease.
The domestic outbreak in China had been brought largely under control through strict lockdowns that were imposed early this year—but a new cluster has been linked to a wholesale food market in south Beijing.
The National Health Commission said 36 of the new cases were local transmissions in the capital, and Beijing health officials said later that all three dozen were linked to the Xinfadi market.
The other two domestic infections reported Sunday were in northeastern Liaoning province and were close contacts of the Beijing cases.
The new cluster has prompted fresh lockdowns with people ordered to stay home in 11 residential estates near the market which supplies most of the city's fresh produce.
City official Xu Hejian told reporters on Sunday that Beijing had entered an "extraordinary period."
The alert was sounded in the capital after the NHC confirmed the first cases for two months on Friday and city officials delayed the return of primary school students that had not already resumed classes.
One of Sunday's new cases was a 56-year-old man who works as an airport bus driver and had visited the Xinfadi market before falling ill, the state-run People's Daily reported.
Hospital beds running out in Delhi
Ashwani Jain succumbed to the coronavirus in an ambulance as his family pleaded with several hospitals to take him in, the latest victim of the pandemic sweeping through the Indian capital and exposing a deadly shortage of hospital beds.
"They don't care whether we live or die," said his 20-year-old daughter Kashish, whose uncle, Abhishek, sat with Ashwani in the back of the vehicle on its desperate journey across Delhi.
"It won't matter to them but I have lost my father, he was the world to me," she said, tears welling up as she showed a photo of him.
With surging infections highlighting the precarious state of the Indian healthcare system, the death of Jain and others like him have heightened anxiety in Delhi over the growing threat.
The city government has estimated that it could need 80,000 beds by the end of July, and warned hotels and wedding venues that they are likely to be turned into hospitals.
Currently, government hospitals have 8,505 designated pandemic beds while private hospitals have 1,441.
Mortuaries are overflowing with bodies and cemeteries and crematorium staff say they cannot keep up with the backlog of victims. Some local Delhi councils say the real death toll is twice the number given by the regional government.
Technicians freed over virus 5G scare
Villagers in rural Peru have freed eight technicians from broadband provider Gilat Peru who were held over fears they were installing 5G technology, which locals claim is responsible for the coronavirus, police said Saturday.
The eight-member maintenance crew had been held since Wednesday by villagers in Acobamba province, more than 500 kilometers southeast of the capital Lima.
"All of them have been released," Leni Palacios of Huancavelica police told AFP, adding that the workers said they were in good shape.
Palacios said the workers' release came after a meeting between locals and a commission made up of officials from the Ministry of Transport, the regional government, and Gilat Peru.
Transport Ministry spokesman Jose Aguilar told RPP Radio that Peru has no 5G antennas and that regardless, they are not linked to COVID-19.
With 33 million people, Peru is the second-worst affected country in Latin America after Brazil, with more than 214,000 confirmed cases and over 6,000 deaths.