Several countries previously acclaimed for managing the pandemic deftly – such as Australia and Vietnam – have seen alarming new coronavirus clusters. In the US, the average daily number of new confirmed infections has skyrocketed since mid-June – while in Spain, one of the countries the virus hit hardest in the early months of the pandemic, a big rise in cases prompted the UK to impose sudden travel restrictions on Saturday. Covid-19 infection rates are soaring in a variety of countries, several months on from the gruelling lockdowns that characterised the spring across the globe.
