Coronavirus cases rise in East Asian countries due to Lunar New Year

Tokyo/Seoul/Moscow – There has been a rise of Coronavirus infection in South- East Asian countries, including China, mainly due to the celebrations of the Lunar New Year. Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam have reported a high number of cases in the last few days. China has imposed a lockdown in the city of Baise due to the sudden increase of Coronavirus cases. The situation is similar in Russia as the nearly 200,000 cases have been in the last 24 hours.

The new Omicron variant of the Coronavirus, which started to spread in November, has triggered a fresh wave of infection transmission in many countries. The United States and Europe were the worst affected by the new wave of Omicron. Recently, the reported cases have been declining in these countries, but the numbers seem to be increasing in Asia. The spread in Asia is primarily due to the Lunar New year celebrations.

97,835 new cases and 162 deaths were reported in Japan on Wednesday. The number of cases in Kyoto, Miyagi, Osaka, and Tokyo is increasing. Reported cases have crossed 3.5 million, and reported deaths are around 20,000. The Omicron variant spread is witnessed in South Korea, with more than 54,000 new cases reported on Thursday. The reported cases with Omicron have increased fourfold in the last two weeks.

Coronavirus spread seems to increase across Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and Singapore. Nearly 24,000 new cases are reported in Vietnam, taking the total number to 2.4 million. Moreover, about 38,000 people have died in Vietnam due to Coronavirus. More than 25,000 new cases have been reported per day from Indonesia in the last six days. Whereas the number of cases in Singapore has doubled in the last two weeks.

More than 150,000 new cases have been reported in Russia since last week. On Thursday, more than 197,000 new cases were reported in Russia, the highest since the pandemic. Meanwhile, Maria Kerkhove, COVID-19 technical and health operations lead at the World Health Organization, has expressed the possibility of the emergence of a new Coronavirus variant. Kerkhove has warned that sub-variants of the Omicron variant have been identified and one of them could turn out to be a Wild Card.