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What you need to know about the coronavirus today

Early August “decisive” for Vietnam
Vietnam is in the midst of a “decisive” fight against the coronavirus, the prime minister said, with the focus on the central city of Danang where infections have appeared in four factories.

Authorities are battling several new clusters of infection linked to the city, a tourism hotspot, after going more than three months without detecting any domestic transmission.

State of emergency, curfew in Melbourne
Australia’s second-biggest city, Melbourne, entered its first day of tougher restrictions to contain the spread of a resurgent coronavirus on Monday.
Authorities have declared a state of emergency across the surrounding state of Victoria and imposed a nightly curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. for six weeks in the city. Supermarkets will remain open along with restaurant takeaway and delivery services, but some other businesses will be asked to shut. Schools will move to remote learning from Wednesday.

Virus hits India’s government
India’s interior minister and the chiefs of two big states have been hospitalized with COVID-19 as the country’s daily cases topped 50,000 for a fifth straight day. India reported 52,972 new infections in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 1.8 million - the third highest in the world after the United States and Brazil. With 771 new deaths, the COVID-19 disease has now killed 38,135 people in India, including a minister in the state of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday.

“All hands on deck” for treatment trial
Rival drugmakers AbbVie, Amgen and Takeda Pharmaceuticals said they have begun testing patients in a trial to see if some of their products can be re-purposed to help in the fight against COVID-19. The pandemic is an “all hands on deck moment,” David Reese, Amgen’s research and development chief told Reuters. “We wanted a trial to be able to quickly sift through multiple agents and prioritize.”

Singapore tries tags to enforce quarantine
Singapore will make some incoming travelers wear an electronic monitoring device to make sure they comply with quarantines as the city-state gradually reopens its borders. From Aug. 11, travelers from a group of countries will have to activate the device, which uses GPS and Bluetooth signals, upon reaching their home and will receive notifications which they must acknowledge.

Breakingviews - Corona Capital: Euro zone, Beer, Asian outbreaks. Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe.

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Top Global Stories

Late in March, Laura Gross, 72, was recovering from gall bladder surgery in her Fort Lee, New Jersey, home when she became sick again. Her throat, head and eyes hurt, her muscles and joints ached and she felt like she was in a fog. Her diagnosis was COVID-19. Four months later, these symptoms remain. Gross sees a primary care doctor and specialists including a cardiologist, pulmonologist, endocrinologist, neurologist, and gastroenterologist. “I’ve had a headache since April. I’ve never stopped running a low-grade temperature,” she said. Studies of COVID-19 patients keep uncovering new complications associated with the disease.

While millions of U.S. workers thrown into unemployment by the coronavirus pandemic fret about feeding their families, idled German airline purser Marco Todte is mainly concerned about his next vacation. Todte, 41, hasn’t flown for work since April. But Germany’s state-subsidized “Kurzarbeit” furlough scheme and a top-up from employer Lufthansa means he is getting 90% of his regular income and has the cash to explore what few leisure options there are in an economy still emerging from lockdown. “It is hard to go to the cinema or to go out in the evenings. I had planned on a cruise but that was canceled,” Todte complained. “It’s not a question of money - more a question of what there is to do with it.”

COVID Science

The World Health Organization warned on Monday that, despite strong hopes for a vaccine, there might never be a “silver bullet” for COVID-19, and the road to normality would be long. More than 18 million people around the world are reported to have been infected with the disease and 688,080​ have died, according to a Reuters tally, with some nations that thought they were over the worst experiencing a resurgence.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan exhorted all nations to rigorously enforce health measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-washing and testing. “The message to people and governments is clear: ‘Do it all’,” Tedros told a virtual news briefing from the U.N. body’s headquarters in Geneva. He said face masks should become a symbol of solidarity round the world.

As the world awaits a COVID-19 vaccine, the next big advance in battling the pandemic could come from a class of biotech therapies widely used against cancer and other disorders - antibodies designed specifically to attack this new virus. Development of monoclonal antibodies to target the virus has been endorsed by leading scientists. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious diseases expert, called them “almost a sure bet” against COVID-19.

When a virus gets past the body’s initial defenses, a more specific response kicks in, triggering production of cells that target the invader. These include antibodies that recognize and lock onto a virus, preventing the infection from spreading. Monoclonal antibodies - grown in bioreactor vats - are copies of these naturally-occurring proteins.