Antagonisms between the United States and China are rattling governments around the world, prompting a German official to warn of “Cold War 2.0” and Kenya’s president to appeal for unity to fight the coronavirus pandemic.Global trade already was depressed by the 2-year-old tariff war between the world’s two biggest economies. That rancor has spread to include Hong Kong, Chinese Muslims, spying accusations and control of the South China Sea.Caught in the middle, other governments are trying to defend their own interests.Germany:Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government wants to preserve trade and cooperation on global warming but says a security law tightening Beijing’s control over Hong Kong is a “difficult issue.”The Hong Kong security law’s potential disruption of the autonomy Beijing promised to the former British colony is no reason to stop talking but is “a worrying development,” Merkel said.FILE – France’s President Emmanuel Macron takes pictures from a document held by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during the first face-to-face EU summit since the coronavirus outbreak, in Brussels, Belgium, July 20, 2020.Europe’s biggest economy has yet to take a final position on Chinese tech giant Huawei despite U.S. pressure to exclude its equipment from next-generation telecom networks as a possible security risk.”China is an important partner for us but also a competitor,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement after a video conference Friday with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.Peter Beyer, the government’s coordinator for trans-Atlantic cooperation, expressed alarm in an interview with the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland newspaper group.”We are experiencing the beginning of a Cold War 2.0,” Beyer said. He criticized both sides but said, “the U.S. is our most important partner outside the EU, and that is how it will stay.”France:President Emmanuel Macron calls President Donald Trump “my friend” but is trying to avoid riling Beijing.France has not echoed Trump’s criticism of Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus, but legislators applauded Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian last week when he condemned abuses of minority Uighurs in China’s northwest.  Le Drian mentioned “mass arrests, disappearances, forced labor, forced sterilizations, the destruction of Uighur cultural heritage.” He said France has asked that the camps be closed.”All these practices are unacceptable,” the minister said. “We condemn them.”Trump’s ambivalence toward U.S. allies and flouting of diplomatic norms has alarmed France.”Sino-American tensions don’t benefit France,” said Valerie Niquet of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a think tank. “We share the same interests as the United States towards China, we adopt more or less the same positions, so it doesn’t bring us any positive element.”Europe:Europe’s “strategic relations” with China will be an issue for the European Union while Germany holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc, Merkel said this month.EU foreign ministers have not managed to agree on a common position on China.Regarding Hong Kong, options include closer scrutiny of exports of sensitive technology to the territory and changing visa policies for its residents. But there is no talk of economic sanctions or targeting Chinese officials with penalties.”The message is that the recent actions change the rules,” said the top EU foreign policy official, Josep Borrell. “This will require a revision of our approach and will clearly have an impact on our relations.”  South Korea:South Korea is squeezed between its main military ally and its biggest trading partner.In 2016, Beijing destroyed supermarket operator Lotte’s business in China after the conglomerate sold a plot of land in South Korea to the government for an anti-missile system over Chinese objections.Washington is unhappy with South Korea’s desire to ease sanctions on North Korea to encourage disarmament and uneasy about its use of Huawei technology.Trump complains about the cost of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea to protect against North Korean threats. A cost-sharing agreement expired in 2019 without a replacement.The U.S.-Chinese row “has thrown a question to South Korea” about which side to choose, the newspaper Dong-A Ilbo said in an editorial Monday.”Sooner or later we will be forced to provide an answer, no matter how hard we tried to avoid it,” the newspaper said.India:Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to embrace both Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump, but the pandemic and a border clash that killed at least 20 Indian soldiers have fueled anti-Chinese sentiment.Protesters have called for boycotts of Chinese goods and burned Chinese flags. They applauded the government’s ban on the popular Chinese video-sharing app TikTok and some other Chinese apps.Washington wants stronger ties with India and supported its controversial move a year ago to split its only Muslim-majority state, restive Jammu and Kashmir, into two federally controlled territories. This month, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said the United States would stand up to China on the Indian border dispute.  “For India it is opportune that the U.S. is applying more pressure on China, and if it can get it to behave, that would be welcomed by the entire neighborhood,” said Jayadev Ranade, president of the Center for China Analysis think tank in New Delhi.Africa:  China-U.S. tensions are taking a toll: The African Development Bank said last year trade disruption due to the tariff war could lead to a 2.5% drop in economic output for some African countries.Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said political disputes should be set aside to better fight the coronavirus.”Let’s not be sucked back into isolationism or unilateralism. We need each other today more than ever,” Kenyatta said an Atlantic Council event last month. “We’re not going to fight coronavirus if one country fails and another succeeds.”  Southeast Asia:  The 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations has avoided taking steps that would alienate Washington or Beijing, both important trading partners.  “The great powers, as they escalate their rivalry, will woo us into their side,” said Harry Roque, a spokesman for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. “We will advance our national interest.”The region’s most sensitive conflict — over control of the South China Sea — escalated when the Trump administration publicly rejected most of Beijing’s claims to one of the world’s busiest waterways.  “We are making clear: Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a July 13 statement.  The Philippines and Vietnam, among the most vocal critics of Chinese assertiveness, could benefit from that stance but will move cautiously, said Greg Poling of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.  “They aren’t going to stick their necks in a noose until they see real follow-through from Washington,” Poling said.
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Indonesia is set to move into the front ranks of countries pursuing a vaccine against the coronavirus next week with the launch of phase 3 clinical trials in Bandung, West Java. About 2,400 samples of an experimental vaccine have been shipped from China to Bandung for the trial, which will begin August 3. The vaccine, developed by the Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech, is one of only five out of 166 candidates to have reached such an advanced stage of testing. An American entrant in the race for a vaccine, developed by Moderna, entered phase 3 trials in the United States on Monday.  Phase 3 testing involves giving a vaccine to thousands of volunteers to see how many become infected, compared with others who are given a placebo. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi announced the Bandung plan in a virtual press conference last week, saying the project is directed in Indonesia by the state-owned pharmaceutical holding company Bio Farma. The firm’s CEO, Honesti Basyir, said the clinical trial is scheduled to run for six months and will be completed by January 2021. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi announced via virtual news conference, July 23, 2020, that Indonesia is set to begin phase 3 clinical trials of coronavirus vaccines from Bio Farma and Sinovac Biotech. (Courtesy Indonesian Foreign Minister)She said Bio Farma expects to distribute 40 million doses of the vaccine per year as soon as the government authorizes its widespread usage and plans to expand distribution to 250 million doses per year. Bio Farma chose Sinovac Biotech as a partner because the manufacturing method used by the Chinese company matches the competencies of Bio Farma, which has already developed similar vaccines, such as one for the respiratory disease pertussis, or whooping cough. Retno said the partnership with Sinovac Biotech is one of multiple initiatives that Indonesia is taking to find an effective vaccine. She said Indonesia is working closely with Genexine, a South Korean biopharmaceutical firm, to develop a DNA-based vaccine. The foreign minister said Indonesia’s ambassador in South Korea, Umar Hadi, has facilitated the cooperation between Indonesia’s Kalbe Farma and Genexine. “Genexine has held its first phase clinical trial in South Korea and it will last until this August. The second phase will be held in Indonesia on September or October,” Retno said.Daniel Tumpal Simanjuntak, director for Africa in the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, said details of trials of vaccines from South Korea are still under discussion. (Courtesy Indonesian Foreign Minister)Daniel Tumpal Simanjuntak, the Indonesian foreign ministry’s director for Africa, said details of that trial are still under discussion. “We still don’t have any information on how many vaccine samples will be sent to undergo the second phase of clinical trials in Indonesia, as well as other arrangements,” Tumpal said. Indonesia is coordinating its vaccine efforts with the Oslo, Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI), which is funded by philanthropies, civil society organizations and several national governments.  CEPI was founded in 2017 to accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and ensure equitable access for all. Bio Farma is already on CEPI’s list of producers that will potentially produce a COVID-19 vaccine. Retno said Indonesia will work to make sure that any vaccine that is proved safe and effective will become widely available. “At every international meeting, Indonesia continued to reiterate the need to maintain equitable and affordable access to COVID-19 vaccine,” she said. “When a vaccine has been developed or the drugs currently undergoing clinical trials have been acquired, the next question is whether all countries have access to the vaccines and medicine at affordable rates.” Retno emphasized that Indonesia has been discussing the effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine with 11 countries, 12 international organizations and 97 NGOs. As of Monday, Indonesia had more than 100,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and had suffered more than 4,800 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracking site in the United States. 
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Vietnam may look to the United States for everything from technology to study abroad programs. But when it comes to a pandemic that  has killed nearly 147,000  Americans  and zero Vietnamese, according to Johns Hopkins University, the richer nation would do well to follow Vietnam’s lead, according to a top U.S. envoy in the Southeast Asian nation. After years of investing in public health, Vietnam headed off COVID-19 early in the year by testing, treating, and isolating patients quickly. The U.S. consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Marie Damour, held up this response as a model, speaking at an event to mark the silver anniversary of establishing diplomatic ties between the two former war enemies. FILE – Health workers walk through the grounds at a makeshift COVID-19 testing facility in Hanoi, Vietnam, Mar. 31, 2020.“Vietnam has very decisively become probably the country that has been most successful in addressing COVID-19 and suppressing and contact tracing and making sure that the entirety of the society has been involved in this struggle,” Damour said on Thursday. “And that is an example that I would love to see the United States emulate in this particular subject.” The comments came before Vietnam suffered a setback, this weekend, when it reported a new local COVID infection and broke a 100-day streak without infections. Still Vietnam has had just 424 cases this year and Damour was frank that, in contrast to Vietnam, her own nation should do more about the pandemic. U.S. government officials have run the gamut in their attitude toward the pandemic, from the president who said last week that the coronavirus will disappear, to state governors who have treated it as an existential crisis. Vietnam benefits US 
Damour’s comments were meant as well to highlight what the United States gets out of its relationship with Vietnam. Despite having more limited resources and less global visibility than the United States, Vietnam brings different contributions to the table. Lessons on Covid are an example of that. Skyscrapers rise over a vastly different Saigon-turned-Ho Chi Minh City than the one left by U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War. (VOA)A look at the two nations’ response to handling the pandemic is a study in contrasts. Vietnam and the United States both reported their first cases of the coronavirus in the same week in January.
Having experience with SARS and other tropical diseases, Vietnam moved immediately to quarantine patients, trace contacts and limited movement in the population. It is now the most populous nation, of nearly 100 million people, to have reported zero deaths from COVID and fewer than 500 cases.By contrast the United States went back and forth on whether to wear masks and shut down cities amid a shortage in tests and hospital capacity. The President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, half a year into the pandemic, that it probably will “get worse before it gets better.” The United States has turned to nations such as Vietnam for donations and purchases of personal protective equipment. Aboutface in diplomacy 
The year 2020 was supposed to be a banner year for Vietnam and the United States. There are not many diplomatic turnabouts as stark as that of the two nations, which fought a war that ended in 1975 and forced the closure of the U.S. Embassy in then-Saigon.Young Vietnamese use a library and study center at the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. (VOA)The site reopened in dramatic fashion as a U.S. consulate in the ’90s when the two sides re-established ties. Now, a quarter century later, they are celebrating a silver anniversary of relations, in muted form amid the COVID crisis. Bilateral trade has skyrocketed, along with the exchange of tourists and students, and signs of wartime resentment are scant. The turnabout gives the U.S. a friend in Asia at a time when regional strains with China are becoming increasing. In Ho Chi Minh City, blown up snapshots of Vietnamese and American officials paper the outer walls of the U.S. Consulate at street level. A few stories above, on Thursday, the consulate commemorated the anniversary with speakers from both sides.  “I think that the relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam is on a track that, it’s very hard to change course of the track,” said Dr. Nguyen Thanh Trung, director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University. “And I think it’s not dependent on the decision of any individual. I think it’s just, we have built so many things.”  
  
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South Korea has acknowledged that a North Korean defector, who had been accused of rape in the South, may have sneaked past South Korean border guards before apparently swimming back to his North Korean homeland. At a briefing Monday, South Korean military officials said they found the man’s bag near a drainage ditch he apparently used to get under a barbed wire fence on the northeastern island of Ganghwa, which is separated from North Korea by a portion of the Han River Estuary.  The 24-year-old, who fled North Korea in 2017, had recently been accused of raping another defector and was the subject of an arrest warrant in the South, according to South Korean media reports. He had also recently lost his job, the reports say.  But South Korean health officials said the re-defector was not registered as a COVID-19 patient or as someone who had come in contact with infected individuals. That undermines North Korea’s accusation that the man may have brought the coronavirus into the communist country.  Apparently referring to the same person, North Korean state media on Sunday said a “runaway” suspected to be carrying the coronavirus returned to the North on July 19th “after illegally crossing the demarcation line” that separates the two Koreas.  It was the first time North Korea has acknowledged a possible coronavirus infection. North Korea has declared a state of emergency and imposed a lockdown around Kaesong City, the border town where the re-defector was found.  Why admit it now? Even though 16 million coronavirus infections have been reported worldwide, North Korea had long insisted it was completely free of the virus – a claim most outside observers said was practically impossible. North Korea shares a 1,400-kilometer-long border with China, where the virus originated. Although the North formally closed its borders in February, much of its trade with China is informal and hard to control. Many analysts said North Korea may be using the incident to finally acknowledge a coronavirus outbreak, even while blaming South Korea. South Korean army soldiers spray disinfectant to help reduce the spread of the new coronavirus in a class at Cheondong elementary school in Daejeon.“This would make for an extremely convenient way for the regime to admit the existence of COVID-19 in the country,” wrote Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein, a North Korea specialist at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.  “The message is: our anti-epidemic measures, such as closing the northern border, were flawless. But one case still slipped through the cracks,” he said. “Having a first confirmed case coming in from the south relieves the regime of any awkwardness vis-a-vis China.”  The move could also have a domestic message, says Go Myong-Hyun, a research fellow at the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “They’re trying to send a message that North Korea is under siege, that there is a lot of infection going on outside of North Korea, and that the regime is trying their utmost to keep the country clean and effective,” he said.  In recent months, North Korea has hurled aggressive rhetoric at the South, accusing it of prioritizing relations with Washington over Pyongyang. “It goes along with the spin that South Korea is not to be trusted,” says Go. “They are trying to attach this negative image of an infection, virus, and pandemic along with South Korea and the defectors at the same time.” Border security lapses The defector incident has also raised concerns about possible security lapses along the 250-kilometer border that separates North and South Korea. A politburo meeting convened Saturday by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un chastised the “loose guard performance in the frontline area” where the runaway occurred and vowed possible “severe punishment,” according to state media. When North Koreans flee their country, they usually do so via the border with China, since the border between North and South Korea is one of the most heavily fortified in the world. But somehow the defector at the center of North Korea’s coronavirus claims appears to have crossed the inter-Korean border twice.  The defector, surnamed Kim, detailed his 2017 escape from North Korea in a pair of YouTube interviews last month with another defector.  “I decided to escape because of poverty,” he said in the interview that surfaced Monday.  Kim said it took more than seven hours to reach South Korea. The journey, he said, included crossing a minefield, going through barbed wire and electric fences, and swimming across the Han River.  The number of North Korean defectors reaching the South has steadily fallen in recent years, as North Korea and China tighten border controls. The coronavirus has only made things more difficult. During the second quarter of this year, the number of incoming defectors reached an all-time low, with only 12 reaching the South. North Koreans who have fled to the South rarely return. Since 2015, only 11 North Korean defectors have gone back to the North, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said Monday.  
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China says it has taken control of the former U.S. consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu, in a tit-for-tat response to the closure of its consulate last week in Houston, Texas. The foreign ministry announced that the consulate shut its doors at 10 a.m. (0200GMT) local time, the exact time Chinese authorities ordered its closure and just moments after the U.S. flag was lowered for the last time.  Minutes later, a group of officials entered the building and took over the premises.   The U.S. Embassy in Beijing bid farewell to the Chengdu outpost in a retrospective video posted on its Twitter account, saying “We will miss you forever.”今天，我们告别美国驻成都总领事馆 。我们会永远想念你们。 U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu, July 27, 2020.Washington ordered China to close the Houston office “to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information.”  As the Chinese consulate closure in Houston took effect last Friday, a group of men who appeared to be U.S. officials were seen breaking-in to the facility through a back door.  Wang said on Saturday that violated international and bilateral agreements and China would respond, without specifying how.  The tit-for-tat closures further escalated the tensions between the two countries over issues from trade and industrial espionage to human rights.  
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Pakistan and China have refuted as “absurd” and “fabricated” media reports that the two close allies are jointly conducting secret research to develop biological weapons in breach of global treaties. 
 
An Australian publication, The Klaxon, alleged in its investigative report last week that Beijing and Islamabad have entered a covert three-year deal “to expand potential bio-warfare capabilities, including running several research projects related to the deadly agent anthrax.” 
 
The report quoted multiple intelligence sources as saying that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology had “lent all financial material and scientific support” to set up the secret facility in Pakistan. “The Wuhan lab was providing “extensive training on manipulation of pathogens and bio-informatics” to Pakistani scientists “to help Pakistan develop its own virus collection database,” it said.  
 
“It is a politically motivated and fake story, composed of distortion of facts and fabrications that quote anonymous sources,” said a Pakistan Foreign Ministry statement issued Sunday. 
 
It insisted that “there is nothing secret” about the facility referred to in the report, saying the laboratory is being used for research and development on emerging health threats, surveillance and diseases outbreak investigation.  
 
The ministry noted that Pakistan has been “strictly” abiding by its international obligations and has been sharing information about the laboratory in question with states parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The international treaty forbids member nations from developing, producing and stockpiling biological agent or toxin. 
 
“The attempt to cast aspersions about the facility is particularly absurd against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted the need for better preparedness in the areas of disease surveillance and control and international collaborations in that regard,” the Pakistani statement lamented. 
 
The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan also denounced as “fabricated” the Australian media report.  
 
“It is totally irresponsible, vicious-intentioned to smear China and Sino-Pak relations. As a responsible nation, China always lives up to its obligations to BWC,” the diplomatic mission tweeted Sunday.  
 
Pakistan and China have traditionally maintained close political, economic and defense relations. The two neighboring countries have over the past six years further cemented bilateral ties, with Beijing investing billions of dollars in major infrastructure and energy development projects in Pakistan. 
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There was a tight security presence outside the U.S. consulate in the city of Chengdu, China Sunday, as the American staff prepared to leave the premises. Three moving trucks were seen entering the building compound, while uniformed and plainclothes police lined both sides of the street, which were lined with metal barriers.The editor of China’s Global Times tabloid tweeted that the U.S. consulate in Chengdu was given 72 hours to close, or until 10 a.m. (0200GMT) Monday, July 27.China charged that some personnel at the Chengdu consulate were “conducting activities not in line with their identities.”Without giving any details, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Wang Wenbin said such activity had interfered in China’s affairs and harmed its security interests.China’s order to close the consulate in Chengdu was issued Friday in retaliation for a U.S. order to close the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas. FILE – The Chinese Consulate General is seen Wednesday, July 22, 2020, in Houston.Washington ordered China to close the Houston office “to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information.”As Chinse consulate closure in Houston took effect on Friday, a group of men who appeared to be U.S. officials were seen breaking-in to the facility through a back door.Wang said on Saturday that violated international and bilateral agreements and China would respond, without specifying of how.The tit-for-tat closures further escalated the tensions between the two countries over issues from trade and industrial espionage to human rights. 
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After months of denying it had any coronavirus infections, North Korea has reported its first suspected case, blaming an alleged defector who had recently reentered the country.State media said a runaway who was “suspected to have been infected with the vicious virus” had left for South Korea three years ago but returned July 19 “after illegally crossing the demarcation line” that separates the two Koreas.The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said an “uncertain result was made from several medical checkups of the secretion of that person’s upper respiratory organ and blood,” but it did not say whether the patient had undergone a coronavirus test.“The person was put under strict quarantine as a primary step and all the persons in Kaesong City who contacted that person and those who have been to the city in the last five days are being thoroughly investigated, given medical examination and put under quarantine,” it said.North Korean leader Kim Jong Un convened a politburo meeting Saturday during which he acknowledged “the vicious virus could be said to have entered the country,” KCNA said.FILE – Students wearing face masks take a class at the Ryongwang Senior Middle School in Pyongyang, North Korea, June 3, 2020. After months of denying it had any coronavirus infections, North Korea reported its first suspected case July 25, 2020.Kim, the report said, declared a state of emergency in the affected area and “took the preemptive measure of totally blocking Kaesong City and isolating each district and region from the other within July 24 afternoon just after receiving the report on it.”North Korea had long insisted it was coronavirus-free, even though a wide range of outside experts said that was practically impossible. The country shares a long border with China, where the virus originated. Although North Korea moved quickly to formally close the border, much of the interaction across that border is informal and hard to control.An outbreak in North Korea would be extremely dangerous, since many parts of the country are impoverished and lack an adequate health care system.International aid groups have sent medical supplies, including face masks and thousands of coronavirus test kits, to North Korea since the worldwide coronavirus pandemic began.The delivery of that medical aid has been complicated by export controls, border closures and international sanctions on North Korea’s nuclear program.Since the coronavirus emerged last December in China, more than 200 countries have reported cases. Worldwide, nearly 16 million cases of coronavirus have been confirmed, and more than 640,000 people have died.
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Amid rising diplomatic tensions, China has ordered the United States to close its consulate in Chengdu. Experts see the move as retaliation for the U.S. closing of China’s consulate in Houston, and they say it reflects a new level of hostility between the two countries ahead of U.S. presidential elections in November.  VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington.Videographers: Stella Hsu, Zoom video interviews; Jela de Franceschi, Skype interview
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New Zealand has granted refugee status to a Kurdish-Iranian writer who was held for about six years in an Australian-run offshore detention camp, authorities said Friday.Behrouz Boochani arrived in New Zealand about eight months ago for a literary festival as a guest speaker and stayed on after his visitor visa expired.”So, I’m very happy,” he said. “You know for years we look at Australia, New Zealand as hope. But this hope was sometimes was very close but never, we couldn’t touch it, you know. So, I think it’s very interesting that finally I touch New Zealand, you know, after years. Hopefully, there will be hope for others who are stuck in Port Moresby.”Immigration New Zealand (INZ) general manager for refugee and migrant services,  Fiona Whiteridge, said in an email sent to the Reuters news agency that New Zealand has recognized Boochani as a refugee under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugee and its 1967 Protocol.Boochani was detained on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island after he was picked up and handcuffed on a refugee boat on its way to Australia in 2013.    
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Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said the city confirmed a new single-day high of 366 COVID-19 cases on Thursday, surpassing 300 for the first time as Japan begins a four-day weekend. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus. At a news briefing, Koike said the city conducted a record 4,926 tests this week, which she said accounts for some of the increase.  There are also indications the infections are spreading. The recent surge in cases was thought to be almost exclusively among young people going to nightlife areas in the city. Experts at a Tokyo task force meeting on Wednesday said infections have also spread to older people and regular homes, workplaces and restaurants. Tokyo’s new record comes after Japan saw a single-day record of 795 new coronavirus infections nationwide Wednesday, exceeding the previous high set in April. The previous record in Tokyo alone was 293 last Friday. Daily cases in the city had fallen to just several in late May, promoting the government to end a national state of emergency; but, daily cases began rising again last month.  Tokyo now has a total of 10,420 confirmed cases, including 327 deaths. Koike asked residents to stay home as much as possible during the long weekend, even though Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has gone ahead with a campaign promoting tourism to help the economy. The campaign excludes Tokyo for now. Tokyo hospitals are also on the brink of running out of space. The city, which earlier allocated 1,000 beds for coronavirus patients, has asked hospitals to secure up to 2,800 beds, but preparations are taking time and beds are filling up quickly. Koike said the city is also in the process of securing hotel rooms for less sick patients. 
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Thailand says it may be ready to begin human trials of a homegrown coronavirus vaccine by October, following promising results with mice and monkeys.   “We anticipate that ideally it’s October, or within Q4 of this year,” said Kiat Ruxrungtham, head of the vaccine research center at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University leading the trials.   If all goes well, he added, mass production could start by the third or fourth quarter of next year.   Scientists across the globe are scrambling to develop a vaccine that can beat back the COVID-19 virus, hoping to whittle a process that typically takes years down to months. About 180 vaccines are in development. More than 20 of them have already gone on to human trials, with some countries aiming to have a vaccine approved by the end of this year.   Most frontrunners are in richer countries, mainly in the West, leaving the less well-off worried they’ll be pushed to the back of the line when a vaccine is finally rolled out.   FILE – A subject receives a shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine by Moderna for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.Recent history gives Thailand cause to fret. When H1NI swine flu hit Asia in 2009, a vaccine was ready within months. Thailand struck deals with overseas developers to buy 2 million doses, but they arrived only after the pandemic had passed. By the time it was over, the virus had infected more than 47,000 Thais and killed 347.   “We got it … after the pandemic [had] gone. So that [was] one of the lessons learned,” Kiat said.   That lesson was that Thailand should not rely on others to fight its way out of the next pandemic. It’s the main motive behind the country’s push for a vaccine against COVID-19, said Sophon Iamsirithavorn, director of the communicable diseases division in the Thai Public Health Ministry.    “Since the demand for [a] vaccine will be very high, if Thailand can develop a vaccine and have our own vaccine manufacturing in the country, it will guarantee [an] adequate amount,” he said.   “If we want to buy it from other vaccine companies, it may take a longer time to get the vaccine that we need for a significant proportion of the population.”   The trials make Thailand one of the few developing countries in the hunt for a coronavirus vaccine.   FILE – A lab technician holds a bottle containing results for a COVID-19 vaccine at a testing center run by Chulalongkorn University in Saraburi Province, north of Bangkok, Thailand, May 23, 2020.Kiat said his team’s vaccine convincingly boosted antibodies to the coronavirus in two rounds of trials each on mice and monkeys. To gauge its potency in humans and discern the right dosing, they will start injecting 90 volunteers ranging in age from 18 to 80 with low, medium and high doses in the next few months. If the vaccine continues to prove its mettle, a second phase of human trials with 1,000 volunteers would begin by early next year.   Human trials would normally move on to a third and final phase with several thousand volunteers after that. However, given the urgency, Kiat said the Thai  Food and Drug Administration could decide to skip that step and grant emergency use authorization for mass production if the second phase goes well and other governments have already approved coronavirus vaccines developed using similar technology.  Even then, other vaccines are likely to make it to market well before Thailand can ramp up the manufacture of its own design.   Sophon said another, and possibly speedier, route by which Thailand could get its hands on enough doses is to strike deals with the developers of those other vaccines to manufacture them in Thailand by way of technology transfer.   “If one of those successful candidates matches with the capacity in Thailand then I think technology transfer could be another very good way to ramp up production within Thailand and get more vaccine doses,” said Renu Garg, a medical officer with the World Health Organization’s country team.   Some Western developers have pledged to make their vaccines widely and quickly available when ready. India’s Serum Institute says it will distribute 1 billion doses of a leading candidate in Britain just for other low- and middle-income countries, 40% of them by the end of the year.   The WHO is also working with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, which helps to vaccinate children in developing countries, on a plan that would see richer countries pay for vaccine doses in poorer ones. They hope to have distributed 2 billion doses by next year. Garg said Thailand has shown interest in benefitting, but added that any one country will get enough doses for no more than 20% of its population, hopefully enough to cover its health care workers and others at high risk.   Thailand will want more. Having thus far weathered the global pandemic with fewer than 3,300 confirmed cases among a population of nearly 70 million, Sophon said the country has nearly none of the herd immunity that might come from mass infection. To protect the entire country, he said, it will need to inject nearly half its people with a vaccine.   “We have [a] very low level of transmission, so the number of people who are susceptible [is] probably over 95%. So that’s why if we want to make herd immunity in Thailand we need at least 30 million doses,” Sophon said.   To get there, Thailand believes it will need to make its own vaccine.  
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