New coronavirus cases have continued to climb nationally, with cases topping 2,500 for the first time and reaching a new high of 2,560 on Saturday, according to public broadcaster NHK. In Tokyo, the daily infection rate reached a record 539 cases.

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Elsewhere, South Australia has contained a coronavirus cluster and will ease its strict lockdown restrictions on Saturday at midnight, the state premier said.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” South Australia Premier Steven Marshall told reporters in Adelaide on Saturday. “The expert health advice we have received is that we are still managing a very dangerous cluster.”

At least 26 cases have been linked to the cluster, with one new infection detected in the past 24 hours after 19,000 tests were conducted. About 5,400 people who have been identified as close contacts to those in the infected group have been placed in quarantine.

The state was plunged into one of the strictest lockdowns in the world on Thursday after contact tracers said a man became had become infected after buying a takeaway pizza. They said they later established that the infected person had misled them and was an employee at the restaurant, where he had been in close contact with another infected worker during several shifts.

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said on Saturday the infected pizza-shop worker, who has been quarantined, is a 36-year-old Spanish man in Australia on a student visa. Detectives were investigating circumstances involving the shop, he said.

The cluster, and a more severe outbreak in neighbouring Victoria state that triggered a three-month lockdown in Melbourne, show ongoing vigilance is required to control the virus – even in a nation that has been spared the scale of infections and deaths experienced in Europe and the US

South Korea third wave continues

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 386 new daily coronavirus cases as of Friday midnight, bringing total infections to 30,403, with 503 deaths. New cases topped 300 for the fourth day in a row, after Tuesday saw the highest since August.

Without effective measures such as stricter distancing, the daily tally could reach 1,000 in the next two weeks, the Korean Society of Infectious Diseases and eight other medical societies warned.

“This winter is expected to be the biggest challenge in the Covid-19 response,” the groups said, calling on the public to take steps voluntarily. “There has been good news on successful development of Covid-19 vaccines, but this winter we have to stop it without a vaccine.”

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Although South Korea tightened prevention guidelines on Thursday and Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun called on Friday for all social gatherings to be cancelled, bars, nightclubs, religious services and sports events are still allowed with attendance restrictions.

The Seoul region recorded 262 new cases on Friday, up from 218 cases on Thursday.

Health officials have previously said the capital region, where about half of the country’s 52 million people live and work, could be subject to tougher restrictions if the average daily infection over a week rose to 200 or more.

India sees over 46,000 new cases

India’s health ministry on Saturday also registered 564 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking total fatalities up to 1,32,726. While the pace of recorded new cases overall in the country of 1.3 billion appears to be slowing, experts have cautioned that official figures may be offering false hope since many infections may be going undetected.

The country hit a grim milestone Friday, recording 9 million infections, currently the second largest in the world behind the United States.

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The situation is particularly alarming in New Delhi where intensive care wards in hospitals are nearly at capacity, and the city’s main crematorium is packed. Health officials this week found the prevalence of infections in markets much higher than expected. The city has added an average of 6,700 new cases each day in recent weeks.

The next two weeks in the post- festival season, including celebrations for the Diwali holiday, are expected to be important in determining which way the virus will go.

Philippines to lift travel ban on health workers, offers tax breaks

“The president already approved the lifting of the temporary suspension of deployment of nurses and other medical workers,” Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello said.

But to ensure the Philippines, which has the second-highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in Southeast Asia, will have enough medical professionals to fight the pandemic, only 5,000 health care workers will be allowed to leave every year, Bello said.

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The Philippine government will also offer tax breaks to manufacturers of medicine, medical equipment and protective gear like face masks, and operators of services that have become essential during the coronavirus pandemic.

Companies that make sanitisers, disinfectants and cleaning materials, as well as companies that have repurposed factories to produce goods to help fight the virus, may be exempt from paying income tax for as long as six years, according to the latest Investment Priorities Plan.

Hospitals, quarantine facilities, crematoriums, waste treatment and disposal, virus-testing centres and laboratories are included in the list of business eligible for tax breaks. Investment in activities that will create jobs away from congested cities may also qualify for fiscal perks, according to the plan.

Reporting by Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg