UK, France tighten curbs

More than a million people in northern England will be banned from mixing with other households under new coronavirus rules announced yesterday, as France said it will extend curfew measures to curb the second wave of infections.

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 1,126,471 people since the outbreak emerged in China late last year, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT yesterday.

At least 40,856,210 cases have been registered worldwide. Of these, at least 28,035,900 are now considered recovered.

On Tuesday, 6,630 new deaths and 382,496 new cases were recorded worldwide.  The countries with the most new deaths were the United States with 854, followed by India with 717 and Brazil with 651.

The United States remains the worst-affected country with 221,083 deaths, followed by Brazil with 154,837, India with 115,914, Mexico with 86,993 and Britain with 43,967.

The county of South Yorkshire, which includes the city of Sheffield, will enter into "very high" alert or tier three restrictions from Saturday, the UK government announced.

Under the new rules, many pubs, bars, casinos and other venues will be closed for at least four weeks and residents will be barred from meeting anybody outside their household indoors or in private gardens.

The decision will affect around 1.4 million people, meaning that 7.3 million people -- or 13 percent of England's population -- will now be living under the toughest restrictions.

Similar measures were recently announced for the northwestern cities of Liverpool and Manchester and the county of Lancashire, following a surge in Covid-19 cases there.

In France, authorities said they will place more regions on the highest health alert level and some of them may be put under curfew.

A nightly curfew from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am went into force at the weekend in Paris and several other French cities in response to daily new infections reaching record levels. Some 20 million French people have already been ordered to stay home every night under a curfew adopted after an alarming surge in new coronavirus cases.

The Czech government says it will curb movement and close all retail stores except food shops, drugstores and pharmacies to battle a huge spike in cases.

Measures will begin today morning and last until November 3.