Sick Workers Driving Up Covid-19 Infections in Australia’s Victoria State

— As India recorded nearly 50,000 new cases of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepared to ramp up testing capacity in three major cities.

The 49,931 cases reported on Monday brought India’s nationwide tally to beyond 1.4 million. India has the world’s third-highest confirmed caseload after the United States and Brazil.

The 32,771 reported deaths from the disease in India, however, represent a far lower fatality rate than in the other two countries, in part because of limited testing.

Modi’s office says new high-volume test facilities in Noida, a suburb of New Delhi, and Mumbai and Kolkata, each capable of as many as 10,000 tests per day, will help authorities track the virus.

India’s chief medical research agency says the country tested about 515,000 samples for Covid-19 on Sunday.

— Hong Kong will ban dining in at restaurants completely and make it mandatory to wear masks in all public places, as the city battles a worsening coronavirus outbreak that has infected over 1,000 people in the last two weeks.

The tightened measures will be effective for at least one week starting Wednesday.

They are an extension of a previous ban on eating at restaurants after 6pm, as well as mandatory wearing of masks on public transport.

A ban on public gatherings of more than four people has also been tightened, with gatherings limited to two people.

— Vietnam has postponed its hosting of Asia’s largest security forum, which includes North Korea, and an annual meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers by a month to September due to the pandemic.

Two Southeast Asian diplomats said Monday that Vietnam, which leads the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year, hopes to hold face-to-face meetings in mid-September instead of over video if the annual gatherings were to be held as originally scheduled later this week.

The 10-nation bloc hosts the ASEAN Regional Forum, which brings together its top diplomats with counterparts from the United States, China, Japan, Russia, India, the two Koreas, and other Asia Pacific countries to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and other security issues.

Most of about 1,300 ASEAN meetings this year have shifted online due to the pandemic.

— About 80,000 people, mostly local tourists, are being evacuated from the popular Vietnamese beach city of Da Nang after four people there were confirmed to have Covid-19 over the weekend, the government said Monday.

Vietnam reimposed a social distancing order in Da Nang on Sunday following the confirmation of the cases, the first known to be locally transmitted in the country in over three months.