S. Korea combs digital data to trace club cluster

SEOUL－South Korean authorities were combing multiple ways on Tuesday to identify people who visited nightclubs at the center of one of the capital's biggest novel coronavirus clusters.

Health authorities have tracked and tested thousands of people linked to the nightclubs and bars in Seoul's Itaewon nightlife neighborhood, but want to find others who they have not been able to identify.

"We are using telecom station information and credit card transactions from the nightclubs to identify 1,982 of those who are not available," health ministry official, Yoon Tae-ho, told a briefing.

The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday said at least 102 people have tested positive in connection with the cases linked to nightclubs and bars. The country now has 10,936 confirmed cases.

Elsewhere in Asia, the Japanese Health Ministry is set to approve antigen testing kits on Wednesday, in a move to boost the number of diagnostic tests available to battle the pandemic.

Japan has reported about 16,680 confirmed infections and 670 deaths to date, according to NHK.

Although those tallies are relatively low given its population of 126 million, critics say the low rate of testing has made it difficult to trace the virus, which has led to a series of in-hospital infections, crippling some facilities.

In India, the enormous railway network began coming back to life on Tuesday in a gradual lifting of the world's biggest coronavirus lockdown imposed in late March, even as new cases surge.

Restrictions have been steadily eased and on Tuesday parts of India's passenger train network were scheduled to resume.

Meanwhile, the number of cases continues to rise fast, with more than 3,600 new infections recorded on Monday, down slightly from Sunday's record of more than 4,000.

Experts say that India has not been testing enough people and that with the country of 1.3 billion people home to some of the most crowded cities on the planet, it is woefully ill prepared for a major outbreak.

Ramadan services

In the Middle East, all mosques in Iran will reopen temporarily on Tuesday, a further step in the government's plans to ease restrictions that aimed to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

The decision to reopen the mosques was made in consultation with the ministry of health, said Mohammad Qomi, the director of the Islamic Development Organization.

Mosques would be open only for three days commemorating specific nights for the holy month of Ramadan and it was unclear whether they would stay open, Qomi said.

In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday declared a fresh lockdown from May 16 to 19 as part of the measures to curb the spread of the pandemic.

The government also decided to lift the travel restrictions for nine cities, but the curbs for 15 other provinces, including Istanbul, would continue, Erdogan said.

Xinhua - Agencies