Asia Today: Australian state reports record virus increase

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s hot spot Victoria state announced a new record 725 COVID-19 cases and 15 deaths on Wednesday, while businesses in Melbourne city prepared to draw down their shutters as new pandemic restrictions are enforced.

The new 24-hour record was marginally higher than the 723 cases and 13 deaths reported last Thursday.

From late Wednesday, many non-essential businesses including most detail retailers, hair-dressers and gyms in Australia’s second-largest city will be closed for six weeks. People employed in essential jobs will have to carry passes under Australia’s toughest-ever lockdown restrictions.

Like Melbourne hospitals, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews announced that non-emergency surgeries will be restricted in hospitals in regional Victoria, where infections rates are lower.

“It will be very challenging, but it is necessary to drive these numbers down,” Andrews said of the new restrictions.

He added that the “notion of more than 700 cases is not sustainable.”

In other developments in Asia and the Pacific:

— India has reported more than 50,000 new coronavirus cases for an eighth straight day, taking the country's number of confirmed cases since the pandemic began past 1.9 million. The Health Ministry on Wednesday reported a spike of 52,509 new cases and 857 new deaths in the past 24 hours. The ministry said India’s recovery rate among COVID-19 patients has touched 66.31%. It also said a record 661,892 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, taking the cumulative testing to more than 2 million. It also said that 50% of deaths have happened in the age group of 60 years and above, 37% deaths in 45-60 age group while 11% in 26-44 years age group. In the gender distribution, 68% of people who died were men and 32%...