Indonesia must ensure a radical cleric and suspected mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings does not incite more violence when he is released from jail this week, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne said on Tuesday.

Abu Bakar Bashir was jailed in 2011 for links to militant training camps in the Indonesian province of Aceh. He is considered the spiritual leader of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI) network, which was accused of orchestrating the bombings of nightclubs on the holiday island of Bali.

“Our embassy in Jakarta has made clear our concerns that such individuals be prevented from further inciting others to carry out future attacks against innocent civilians,” Payne said in a statement.

Bashir, 82, denied any involvement in the Bali bombings. A lawyer for Bashir did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his release, due on Friday.

The Bali bombings killed more than 200 people, among them scores of Australians. JI operatives were also accused of organising an attack on the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people in 2003.

A senior JI operative was believed to have made bombs for both attacks.

Payne said Australia has told Indonesia to ensure he is no longer a danger to others.

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The number of deaths linked to the coronavirus in South Korea passed 1,000 on Tuesday, while an increasing number of gym owners said they would reopen in protest against strict social distancing rules.

After using aggressive testing and tracing to blunt several earlier waves of the coronavirus without widespread lockdowns, South Korea has imposed increasingly strident social distancing rules as it struggles to stop its largest wave yet.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 28 new deaths and 715 new cases, for a total of 1,007 deaths and 64,979 cases overall.

President Moon Jae-in told a cabinet meeting that the country’s top goal was to make it out of the “long tunnel of coronavirus” and said the daily numbers appeared to have peaked thanks to residents.

“This year, we will surely overcome the COVID-19 quickly to recover the everyday lives the people have lost,” he said.

Gym closure

For weeks, gyms have been among the venues forced to close under the rules, although Taekwondo and ballet classes have been allowed to continue under certain limits.

’’That is an unfair double standard, and is hitting gyms right when they usually sign up the most new customers,’’ said Kim Jae-kang. He also said he planned to soon reopen his fitness and pilates centre in Seoul. Operators and patrons who flout the rules can face up to 3 million won ($2,760) in fines.

“For the fitness industry, January is the peak season to draw gym members, who decide to start working out from the new year,” Kim said.

’’Social distancing works better in gyms than in restaurants,’’ said Oh Sung-young, head of South Korea’s gym owners association.

“Those who come to work out actually do care about their health, so they never take their masks off,” said Oh, who estimated that his was among as many as 300 gyms that have or planned to reopen, with many others holding secret training for customers.

The government has said it is avoiding imposing the highest level of lockdown, which would impose a blanket ban on restaurants and other businesses that can currently still operate with some restrictions, in order to avoid economic damage.

Officials have blamed businesses that flout social distancing rules for helping to fuel the wave.

Jeong Eun-kyeong, KDCA director, said on Monday that authorities are aware of the issue of fairness in the case of gyms but said the ban had been based on the difficulty of wearing masks during workouts.

She said the authorities were in talks to revise the guidelines and make the social distancing rules more sustainable.

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As a team from the World Health Organization (WHO) prepares to visit China to investigate the origins of COVID-19, Beijing has stepped up efforts not only to prevent new outbreaks, but also shape the narrative about when and where the pandemic began.

China has dismissed criticism of its early handling of the coronavirus, first identified in the city of Wuhan at the end of 2019, and foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that the country would welcome the WHO team.

But amid simmering geopolitical tensions, experts said the investigators were unlikely to be allowed to scrutinise some of the more sensitive aspects of the outbreak, with Beijing desperate to avoid blame for a virus that has killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.

“Even before this investigation, top officials from both sides have been very polarised in their opinions on the origins of the outbreak,” said Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. think tank.

“They will have to be politically savvy and draw conclusions that are acceptable to all the major parties,” he added.

While other countries continue to struggle with infection surges, China has aggressively doused flare-ups. After a new cluster of cases last week, the city of Shenyang sealed off entire communities and required all non-essential workers to stay home.

Recently, Wang Yi, a senior diplomat praised the anti-pandemic efforts, saying China not only curbed domestic infections, but also “took the lead in building a global anti-epidemic defence” by providing aid to more than 150 countries.

But mindful of the criticism China has faced worldwide, Wang also became the highest-ranking official to question the consensus about COVID-19’s origins, saying “more and more studies” show that it emerged in multiple regions.

China is also the only country to claim COVID-19 can be transmitted via cold chain imports, with the country blaming new outbreaks in Beijing and Dalian on contaminated shipments – even though the WHO has downplayed those risks.

Transparency

China has been accused of a cover-up that delayed its initial response, allowing the virus to spread further.

The topic remains sensitive, with only a handful of studies into the origins of COVID-19 made available to the public.

But there have also been signs China is willing to share information that contradicts the official picture.

Last week, a study by China’s Center for Disease Control showed that blood samples from 4.43% of Wuhan’s population contained COVID-19 antibodies, indicating that the city’s infection rates were far higher than originally acknowledged.

But scientists said China must also share any findings suggesting COVID-19 was circulating domestically long before it was officially identified in December 2019.

An Italian study showed that COVID-19 might have been in Europe several months before China’s first official case. Reports have supported theories that COVID-19 originated overseas and entered China via contaminated frozen food or foreign athletes competing at the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019.

Raina MacIntyre, head of the Kirby Institute’s Biosecurity Research Program in Australia, said the investigation needed to draw “a comprehensive global picture of the epidemiological clues”, including any evidence COVID-19 was present outside of China before December 2019.

However, political issues mean they are unlikely to be given much leeway to investigate one hypothesis, that the outbreak was caused by a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said MacIntyre.

“I think it is unlikely all viruses in the lab at the time will be made available to the team,” she said. “So I do not think we will ever know the truth.”

Olusola Akintonde/Reuters

Australia’s most populous state New South Wales on Tuesday called on residents in three cities to be tested for COVID-19 and isolate, as concerns grew that a Sydney cluster may have spread to regional areas after a visitor from the city tested positive.

Concerns over the extent of the Sydney cluster saw authorities ban residents from several suburbs from attending a Jan. 7 Australia-India cricket test in Sydney, and again called for widespread testing for even the mildest of symptoms.

Sydney is battling a number of clusters, the most concerning in its western suburbs which has been linked to a liquor outlet frequented by possibly thousands of people over the Christmas period.

New South Wales (NSW) state, the epicentre of Australia’s latest outbreak, on Tuesday said it had detected four new local cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, one in a man who travelled from Sydney to the outback town of Broken Hill.

“This is a reminder of what can occur for people who are moving out of Sydney. We said clearly in the past, if you have any symptoms, if you are concerned, you should limit your mobility,” acting NSW Premier John Barilaro said.

Barilaro urged people in three regional NSW cities, which the infected man visited, to get a COVID-19 test and isolate while awaiting a test.

New infections

NSW on Monday reported zero new local infections, the first time the state reported no new infections since Dec 15.

NSW has recorded nearly 200 cases in the recent Sydney outbreaks, though infections have largely been confined to just a few suburbs.

The state has imposed new social distancing restrictions and mandated the wearing of masks in shopping centres and on public transport or face a A$200 ($154) fine.

NSW has been effectively isolated from the rest of Australia after other states and territories closed borders or imposed 14-day mandatory quarantine rules.

Australia shut its international borders in March to all non-citizens and permanent residents. Those allowed to enter must enter a 14-day hotel quarantine.

Australia has reported just over 28,500 coronavirus cases and 909 deaths.

Olusola Akintonde/Reuters

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday ordered England into a new national lockdown to contain a surge in COVID-19 cases that threatens to overwhelm parts of the health system before a vaccine programme reaches a critical mass.

The announcement came just hours after the government hailed Britain’s success in becoming the first country to begin rolling out the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca against COVID-19.

Johnson said a new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus first identified in the United Kingdom and now present in many other countries was spreading at great speed and immediate action was needed to slow it down.

“As I speak to you tonight, our hospitals are under more pressure from COVID than any time since the start of the pandemic,” Johnson said

“With most of the country already under extreme measures, it’s clear that we need to do more together to bring this new variant under control,” he said.

“We must therefore go into a national lockdown, which is tough enough to contain this variant. That means the government is once again instructing you to stay at home.”

Non-essential shops and hospitality would have to remain closed, while primary and secondary schools would close from Tuesday for all pupils except vulnerable children and those whose parents are key workers.

Johnson said the disruption meant it would not be possible for all exams to go ahead this summer — the second academic year in a row in which the pandemic has played havoc with pupils’ education and future plans.

Johnson said that if the vaccine rollout went as planned and the number of deaths responded to the lockdown measures as expected, it should be possible to start moving out of lockdown by the middle of February.

However, he urged caution about the timetable and appealed to everyone to comply with the rules.

Britain’s economy suffered a historic crash of nearly 20% in the April-June period of 2020 as swathes of business were shuttered by the first lockdown.

’’The new measures, which allow companies such as construction firms to remain open, could cost about 10% of economic output for as long as they last,’’ said Julian Jessop, a fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think-tank.

New vaccine

As Britain grapples with the world’s sixth highest death toll and cases hit a new high, the country’s chief medical officers said the spread of COVID-19 risked overwhelming parts of the health system within 21 days.

The surge in cases has been driven by the new variant of COVID-19, officials say, and while they acknowledge that the pandemic is spreading more quickly than expected, they say there is also light at the end of the tunnel – vaccinations.

Johnson’s government earlier touted a scientific “triumph” as Britain became the first country in the world to start inoculating people with shots of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

Dialysis patient Brian Pinker, 82, received the first vaccination outside of a trial.

“I am so pleased to be getting the COVID vaccine today and really proud that it is one that was invented in Oxford,” said the retired maintenance manager, just a few hundred metres from where the vaccine was developed.

But even with the vaccines being rolled out, the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths keep rising.

More than 75,000 people in the United Kingdom have died from COVID-19 within 28 days of a positive test since the start of the pandemic. A record 58,784 new cases of the coronavirus were reported on Monday.

Moving a few hours ahead of Johnson, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon imposed the most stringent lockdown for Scotland since last spring.

The devolved administration in Wales said all schools and colleges there should move to online learning until Jan. 18.

Olusola Akintonde/Reuters