France and the Netherlands were removed from a list of quarantine-exempt countries Friday, sparking a rush for the plane, train and ferry tickets by Britons hoping to get home before 4 am (0300 GMT) Saturday, after which arrivals will have to self-isolate for 14 days.

France is facing a resurgent wave of the disease that was first detected in China late last year and has so far infected over 21 million people and killed more than 750,000 around the world.

Authorities in France have reported more than 2,500 new cases for the past three days – levels not seen since May.

One British couple said they had spent nearly 1,000 pounds (S$1,794) to make it home via Eurostar from central France, AFP reported.

“I went to bed last night thinking it was all OK, woke up at 7am to find we had to get back here pretty sharpish,” Mr. Stuart Buntine told the PA news agency.

Neighboring Spain said it would close all nightclubs and ban smoking in the street where people are unable to stay at a safe distance, after the country reported almost 3,000 cases in 24 hours on Thursday.

Germany added all of Spain except the Canary Islands to its list of regions where incoming travelers must show a negative test for Covid-19 or quarantine for 14 days.

Austria urged its citizens to return from popular Mediterranean destination Croatia before similar rules come into effect on Monday, while Serbia introduced mandatory testing for travelers from four neighboring countries.

And thousands of Albanians queued in their cars at the Greek border, hoping to squeeze across and return to work before tougher entry requirements designed to brake mounting infections come into effect.

Some people had been waiting for three days in the 20km, 4,000-car jam, an Albanian police source said.

The US Department of Homeland Security also said it was extending a ban on non-essential travel through border crossings with Canada and Mexico throughout most of September “to slow the spread” of the disease.

French student Antoine, 23, had to rush back to Bristol, in south-western England where he is at university, cutting short his summer holidays.

“I’m a waiter in a small cafe near college, I can’t afford to spend 14 days in the house,” he said at London’s St Pancras railway station after getting off a Eurostar train.

French holidaymakers in the UK will be faced with tough choices of their own, as Paris swiftly announced a “reciprocal measure”, although it was unclear when that might be imposed.

The Netherlands said it would advise against all but essential travel to Britain, but will not impose a quarantine of its own for incoming travelers.

A slew of data Friday revealed the scale of the economic impact of the virus and punishing lockdowns, with Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Netherlands, Finland, and Denmark all booking hefty hits to GDP in April-June.

Denmark and Hungary both reported their worst slumps since the early 1990s and Poland entered its first recession since the end of the communist era.

Hopes to break the cycle of outbreaks and lockdowns have turned to a vaccine, with Britain saying Friday it has secured access to another 90 million doses of two “promising” vaccines.

Vietnam meanwhile said it was looking to buy a bulk order of Russia’s “Sputnik” vaccine, although Western scientists have raised concerns about the speed of its development and suggested that researchers might be cutting corners.

And Washington said it would distribute any vaccine proven to be effective to all Americans for free.

Mexico said it and Argentina aim to have a vaccine available for Latin America – now the region with the worst virus toll and most cases – early next year under a production agreement with drug giant AstraZeneca.

New Zealand is battling its second outbreak of infections and extended a lockdown of its largest city Auckland by at least 12 days, giving health authorities more time to trace and contain a variant of the virus previously unseen in the country.

The Pacific island nation’s initial response to the pandemic was hailed a success, but a run of 102 days with no reported community transmission ended on Tuesday.

The country has now detected over 50 virus cases, and genomic tests indicated the latest infections were not the same strain of coronavirus recorded earlier this year.

Britain last week re-imposed a 14-day quarantine period on people arriving from Spain.

Some other European countries which are currently exempt from the British quarantine measures have seen infections rise, Hancock said, without naming them.

“I am worried about a second wave of coronavirus in Europe. I think you can see a second wave starting to roll across Europe, and we’ve got to do everything we can to prevent it from reaching these shores and to tackle it,” Hancock said during an interview on Sky News.

“We have significant concerns about the second wave that is coming across Europe. And it’s not just Spain … but there are other countries too where the number of cases is rising. And we are absolutely determined to do everything that we can to keep this country safe,” he said, Reuters reported.

Hancock said the authorities were working on possible ways to shorten the quarantine period for people coming from Spain but no change was imminent.

“We are working on whether by testing people during that quarantine it is safe to then be able to release them earlier… But we are not imminently making an announcement on it,” he said in a BBC television interview.

“That work is not concluded. Until it is absolutely safe to make that sort of change then we won’t do so… We won’t be making changes on that in the next few days.”

Mainland China is battling the most aggressive return of COVID-19 in months, confirming 57 new locally transmitted cases on Sunday, the highest level since early March, driven by fresh infections in the far western region of Xinjiang.

In the northeast, Liaoning province reported a fifth straight day of new infections and Jilin province reported two new cases, its first since late May.

Hong Kong is expected to announce further restrictions on Monday including a ban on restaurant dining and mandated face masks outdoors, local media reported.

The measures, which are expected to take effect from Wednesday, would be the first time the city has completely banned dining in restaurants.

Australian authorities warned a six-week lockdown in parts of the southeastern Victoria state may last longer after the country registered its highest daily increase in infections.

Most of Australia is effectively virus-free but flare-ups in the two most populous southeastern states have authorities scrambling to prevent a wider national outbreak.

“The tragedy of COVID-19 is that we know, with the number of new infections that we have seen today, that there will be many further deaths in the days ahead,” Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd told reporters.

In Japan, the government said it would urge business leaders to ramp up anti-virus measures such as staggered shifts, and aimed to see rates of telecommuting achieved during an earlier state of emergency.

“At one point, commuter numbers were down by 70 to 80%, but now it’s only about 30%,” Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said late on Sunday. “We really don’t want to backtrack on this, so we have to explore new ways of working and keep telecommuting high.”

Japan has avoided mass infections but a record surge in cases during the past week in Tokyo and other urban centres has experts worried the country faces a second wave.

Vietnam is evacuating 80,000 people, mostly local tourists, from the central city of Danang after three residents tested positive for the coronavirus at the weekend, the government said on Monday.

The Southeast Asian country is back on high alert after the government on Saturday confirmed its first community infections since April, and another three cases on Sunday, all in Danang.

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte is expected to focus on COVID-19 and the economy in his annual State of the Nation Address on Monday.

Manila is weighing whether to re-impose stricter lockdown measures after easing them saw a dramatic surge in infections and deaths, with 62,326 cases reported since the first lockdown was relaxed June 1.

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Malaysia is expected to announce new measures to contain the outbreak as authorities struggle to contain more than a dozen new clusters that have appeared since curbs were lifted last month.

Indonesia is expected to report its 100,000th case on Monday, having surpassed China with the highest number of cases and deaths in East Asia.

North Korean state media reported on the weekend that the border town of Kaesong was in lockdown after a person who defected to South Korea three years ago returned this month with symptoms of COVID-19.

If confirmed, it would be the first case officially acknowledged by North Korean authorities.

South Korea has reported more than 14,000 cases and 298 deaths from the pandemic. Saturday’s 113 infections were the highest on a single day since March 31.

Papua New Guinea halted entry for travelers from Monday, except those arriving by air, as it tightens curbs against infections that have more than doubled over the past week.

Traditional border crossing were suspended from July 23, police Chief David Manning said in a statement distributed on Monday. PNG has fluid borders with Indonesia, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Solomon Islands with people regularly crossing on foot or in small boats.

While much of Asia is reimposing lockdowns and other curbs on movement, India continues to ease restrictions despite a relentless rise in infections. India has a total of 1.4 million cases, behind only the United States and Brazil.

More than 16.13 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 644,836​have died, according to a Reuters tally.

The Health Ministry’s spokeswoman, Sima Sadat Lari, put the death toll from the coronavirus in Iran at 12,305, saying the disease has taken the lives of 221 patients over the past 24 hours.

She said the number of people tested positive for COVID-19 infection in Iran has risen to 250,458 following the detection of 2,079 new cases since Wednesday noon.

The spokeswoman added that more than 212,000 coronavirus patients have recovered from the disease and left hospitals.

The number of people infected with COVID-19 across the world has surpassed 12.1 million and the death toll has exceeded 552,000.

A total of 335 people have been infected since a cluster emerged at the city’s massive Xinfadi wholesale market in early June.

Beijing health commission said on Tuesday it detected only one asymptomatic case the previous day, which China does not include in its confirmed coronavirus cases counts, AFP reported.

While Chinese authorities are still investigating the cause of the latest outbreak, the virus was detected on chopping boards used to handle imported salmon at Xinfadi market, prompting a ban on certain imports and increased scrutiny of foreign food suppliers.

The Beijing government has tested more than 11 million people for COVID-19 since June 11 — roughly half the city’s population, officials said at a press conference Monday.

Residents lined up in the summer heat at testing venues across the city in June, with hundreds of thousands of samples collected each day.

Localized lockdowns across the city have been eased in recent days, with people living in areas of the city considered “low risk” now allowed to travel freely again.

Beijing’s outbreak is “stabilizing and improving,” Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the city’s center for disease control, told reporters Monday.

China had largely brought the deadly outbreak under control before the new Beijing cluster was detected last month.

The government has since also imposed a strict lockdown on nearly half a million people in neighboring Hebei province to contain a fresh cluster there, adopting the same strict measures imposed at the height of the pandemic in the epicenter of Wuhan city earlier this year.

Speaking at a daily press conference on Monday, Health Ministry Spokesperson Kianoosh Jahanpoor said the number of people tested positive for COVID-19 across the country has risen to 154,445 following the detection of 2,979 new cases since yesterday.

The coronavirus death toll in Iran now stands at 7,878 following the death of 81 patients over the past 24 hours, he added.

The daily fatalities and new infections had reached 63 and 2,516 respectively a day before.

The spokesman also noted that 121,004 patients have recovered from coronavirus infection so far and have been discharged from the hospital.

Among those undergoing treatment in the hospital at present, 2,578 patients have critical health conditions because of more severe infection, he said.

He also noted that 955,865 coronavirus diagnostic tests have been carried out in Iran so far.

More than 6,267,000 people have been infected with COVID-19 globally, and the death toll has exceeded 373,000.