New virus outbreaks raise alarm as India cases hit 1 million

MITO, Japan (AP) — Fresh coronavirus outbreaks, even in places as far flung as China’s western Xinjiang region, are prompting worldwide moves to guard against the pandemic, as the number of confirmed cases globally approaches 14 million.

India on Friday said it had surpassed 1 million cases, third only to the United States and Brazil, with more than 25,000 deaths. That followed Brazil's announcement Thursday evening that the country had passed 2 million confirmed cases and 76,000 deaths — 1,000 fatalities a day, on average, since late May on a gruesome plateau that has yet to tilt downward.

India's grim milestone drove home concerns over the country's readiness to deal with an inevitable surge that could overwhelm hospitals and test the country’s feeble health care system.

In Bangalore, a city that prides itself as the center of of Indian technology innovation, the government ordered a weeklong lockdown that began Tuesday evening after the cases surged exponentially.

Local governments are frantically trying to quash outbreaks and keep their economies running as the pandemic spreads in the vast countryside.

“The acceleration in cases remains the main challenge for India in the coming days,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, adding that a vast majority of cases were still being missed.

China on Friday reported nine imported cases and one instance of local transmission, in Xinjiang, where health officials were monitoring three other people and flights to and from the regional capital, Urumqi, reportedly were being restricted.

The Muslim-majority region is so far from Beijing that residents operate by their own, unofficial time zone and had until now been little affected by outbreaks elsewhere that appear to have been...