2020-09-28 18:48:52
DHAKA: Bangladesh on Monday called off the forthcoming Test series in Sri Lanka because of coronavirus restrictions imposed by the hosts they say make preparing impossible.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board took the decision after Sri Lanka refused to ease stringent quarantine measures — which included players being confined to their rooms for 14 days, with no training allowed, after arriving in the island nation.
"It is impossible to play international matches under their tough coronavirus isolation policy. We will tour Sri Lanka at a later date when there will be no restrictions," BCB spokesman Jalal Yunus told AFP.
"We respect their coronavirus policy but, honestly speaking, international matches cannot be held in these circumstances."
The three Tests in October-November were meant to mark the return to international cricket by both nations after a months-long lockdown.
2020-09-28 18:30:00
AMSTERDAM: The number of new coronavirus infections in the Netherlands remained at near-record levels on Monday as the country’s second wave continued, with 2,914 new cases registered in the previous 24 hours, data released by health authorities showed.
That was just shy of the record 2,995 cases reported on Sunday, according to data published by the National Institute for Health (RIVM).
Local and municipal health authorities are gathering on Monday afternoon to consider new regional measures including making masks mandatory and closing bars early. Prime Minister Mark Rutte is due to address the nation on Monday evening.
2020-09-28 17:40:02
Sindh on Monday reported 378 cases and three more deaths due to the coronavirus taking the countrywide tally of positive cases past 311,000.
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah shared on Monday that 12,097 samples collected in the last 24 hours and the which resulted in 378 positive cases taking the provincial tally to 136,395.
"Three more patients of COVID-19 died overnight lifting the death toll to 2,495," said the CM in a statement. He added that 139 more patients recovered overnight and the number of the patients recovered in the province has reached to 129,892.
2020-09-28 17:25:54
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Finance Minister Taimur Jhagra announced on Monday that he will be working from home after he was tested positive for the coronavirus.
The KP minister said that he feels "fine and healthy" but has a "slight cough".
"I will continue to work from home, health permitting, Insha'Allah, and hope to be back as soon as possible. If you have come in contact with me please test yourself," said Jhagra
2020-09-28 17:05:09
Sindh Government Spokesperson Murtaza Wahab on Monday said coronavirus numbers are "rising fast" and urged people to exercise care and caution.
Wahab urged people to practice caution as he shared the data of the new cases that were reported from Sindh.
"As on 28.09.2020 at 8 AM (last 24 hours), a total of 12,097 COVID-19 test samples were taken in #Sindh. Out of the samples taken, 378 people have tested positive which makes the positivity ratio 3.1%," said Wahab
2020-09-28 16:30:23
MOSCOW: Russia has sent a first batch of its Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine to Belarus for clinical trials, the first such delivery of the jab abroad, Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF said on Monday.
Volunteers in Belarus would begin receiving the Russian vaccine from Oct. 1, the Russian Direct Investment Fund which is backing the vaccine developer, said.
2020-09-28 16:18:15
BERLIN: Germany plans to issue 6 billion euros ($7 billion) more debt in the fourth quarter than it originally planned, the German finance agency said on Monday, to fund spending to tackle the coronavirus pandemic that has battered the economy.
Europe’s largest economy will issue a total of 50.5 billion euros in debt in the October-December period excluding inflation-linked debt, the agency said.
That includes beefing up its issuance of money market instruments to 21.5 billion euros from its original plans to auction off 15.5 billion euros of the short-term debt.
The debt agency said it would issue two inflation-linked bonds in the fourth quarter, without giving details on their issuance volume, but it said the total funds generated from such debt in 2020 would reach around 6 billion euros.
The agency also said it would issue its second green bond in November with a five-year maturity and an issuance volume of 5 billion euros as part of its efforts to establish a yield curve for the booming sustainable finance market, confirming what sources had previously told Reuters.
Germany has seen good demand for its first-ever green bond, issued earlier in September, which was seen as a landmark moment for Europe’s climate-focused finance drive.
2020-09-28 15:38:39
BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel is deeply worried about sharply rising new coronavirus infections in Germany, her spokesman said Monday, urging citizens to keep to strict hygiene measures including masks if social distancing cannot be maintained.
"The development of infection numbers is of great concern to us," Steffen Seibert said. "We can see from some of our European friends where that could lead."
In a meeting with her CDU party's top brass, Merkel warned that new infection numbers — currently at around 2,000 a day — could leap to 19,200 daily by Christmas if the trend "continues in this way," party sources told AFP.
The chancellor's warning came a day before she is due to hold a video conference with the premiers of Germany's 16 states on the next measures to take to keep infections down.
Germany began to ease stringent measures including shop closures or limits to the numbers of people meeting from late April, after weeks of lockdown brought new infections down from the peak of around 6,000 daily.
But with travel picking up again, particularly during summer holidays, and larger gatherings taking place, contagion has returned swiftly.
During the CDU meeting, Merkel also reportedly cited where priority would lie in terms of which sectors to keep open while fighting the pandemic.
"We must set priorities — keeping the economy running, schools and kindergartens open. Football is secondary," she said, according to Germany's top-selling Bild daily.
2020-09-28 14:02:02
Over the last week, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan have reported the highest COVID-19 positivity rates in the country.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) reports, the test positive percentage in Gilgit Baltistan reached as high as 16.1% on September 24, but dropped to 5.3% on September 26. Similarly, Balochistan registered a spike of 11.9% in a single day on September 23, which fell to 7.8% on September 26.
A positivity rate is the percentage of coronavirus tests performed that return back positive. In May, the WHO recommended that the percent positive should remain below 5% for at least two weeks before governments can consider reopening.
Read more here.
2020-09-28 13:40:32
SYDNEY: Australia’s coronavirus hotspot of Victoria said on Monday its daily rise in new coronavirus infections fell to single digits for the first time in more than three months, as the state began winding back some restrictions.
Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state, placed nearly 5 million residents of its capital Melbourne into a hard lockdown in early August but lifted a night curfew on Sunday thanks to a steady fall in new daily case numbers.
The southeastern state reported just five new cases and three deaths from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, after daily cases topped 700 in early August.
The two-week average of new infections in Melbourne fell below 21. Authorities have flagged that more curbs could be relaxed once average cases hit certain targets.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday said the state should do more “in the weeks ahead to safely ease more restrictions,” after state authorities promised an accelerated time table for returning to normal.
The southeastern state said 127,000 workers will be allowed to go back to work on Monday, giving a boost to the economy, a rise of 30,000 from its previous plan.
Australia has so far reported just over 27,000 cases and 875 deaths, with Victoria accounting for about 75% of infections and nearly 90% of all deaths.
2020-09-28 13:00:02
LONDON: The British government is mulling tougher restrictions in England to tackle a swiftly accelerating second wave of the novel coronavirus outbreak, possibly outlawing more inter-household socialising, a junior health minister said on Monday.
“We don’t want to bring on new restrictions but of course we keep a constant eye on what is going on with the COVID rate,” Junior Health Minister Helen Whately told Sky News. “We were looking at what we might be able to do.”
The Times newspaper said ministers were preparing to enforce a total social lockdown across much of northern England and potentially London. The paper said all pubs, restaurants and bars would be ordered to shut for two weeks.
Asked about The Times report, Whately said the country was at a really serious point and so COVID-19 had to be brought under control. She did not give a direct answer on the report that pubs would be closed.
“This is the moment when we have an opportunity — we have a choice for the country — to get this back under control,” Whately said. “We have to break these chains of transmission.”
She said pictures from the weekend, after pubs were ordered to close early which showed crowds of young revellers outside pubs, were “worrying”.
2020-09-28 12:34:11
BENGALURU: India’s coronavirus case tally topped 6 million after it reported 82,170 new infections in the last 24 hours, data from the health ministry showed on Monday.
Deaths from COVID-19 rose by 1,039 in the last 24 hours to 95,542, the ministry said, which is 1.6% of total cases.
Globally, India has the second-highest number of c
2020-09-28 11:52:07
The death toll from the deadly COVID-19 has topped one million, according to an AFP tally with the United States leading the fatalities worldwide.
The pandemic has ravaged the world’s economy, inflamed geopolitical tensions, and upended lives, from Indian slums and Brazil’s jungles to America’s biggest city New York.
Sports, live entertainment, and international travel ground to a halt as fans, audiences, and tourists were forced to stay at home, kept inside by strict measures imposed to curb the virus’s spread.
Read more: Health expert believes Karachi fast approaching herd immunity
Drastic controls that put half of humanity – more than four billion people – under some form of lockdown by April at first slowed its pace, but since restrictions were eased cases have soared again.
On Sunday 2230 GMT the disease had claimed 1,000,009 victims from 33,018,877 recorded infections, according to the tally using official sources.
Read more here.
2020-09-28 11:11:47
Pakistan on Saturday reported 566 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 310,841.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,661 cases in AJK, 15,092 in Balochistan, 3,681 in GB, 16,470 in Islamabad, 37,701 in KP, 99,219 in Punjab and 136,017 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 9 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,466.
2020-09-26 17:45:35
PRAGUE: Slovakia’s daily count of new coronavirus cases rose to 552, a fresh record high, the Slovak government said on Saturday.
The country of 5.5 million has recorded one of Europe’s lowest death tolls from the novel coronavirus at 44 as of Saturday.
In total, Slovakia has recorded 8,600 infections, with an acceleration in recent weeks.
2020-09-26 17:00:57
MANILA: The Philippines’ health ministry on Saturday reported 2,747 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 88 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 301,256 cases and 5,284 deaths.
The Department of Health also said 787 individuals have recovered from COVID-19, bringing total recoveries to 232,906.
2020-09-26 16:36:53
MADRID: Spain’s health minister urged authorities in Madrid on Saturday to tighten restrictions in the coronavirus hotspot, warning that the capital’s residents and surrounding regions were at “serious risk” without tougher curbs.
Madrid extended a partial lockdown on Friday in several dozen districts with high infection rates, rejecting national government recommendations for a city-wide lockdown as cases continue to surge in the capital.
“Madrid is in a situation of serious risk and it’s time to act with determination,” Health Minister Salvador Illa told a news conference.
“There is a serious risk for inhabitants, for the neighbouring regions,” he said, calling on the capital’s regional authorities to “put the health of citizens first”.
Spain’s tally of confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 12,272 on Friday from the previous day to 716,481, the highest number in Western Europe. More than 31,000 people have died from COVID-19.
2020-09-26 16:00:02
LONDON: Britain could be moving too slowly to tackle the sharp rise in COVID-19 cases because of a lag between case numbers and deaths which means fatalities have remained relatively low, a government adviser said on Saturday.
Graham Medley, a professor of infectious disease modelling, said he worried the country could end up in a position it had tried to avoid.
“My concern is the lag, is the fact that we end up in a position that we didn’t intend to, either government or the population ..., because the numbers of deaths at the moment look very low, even though, as scientists, we say look infections are increasing,” he told BBC Radio.
“And unfortunately that lag means that we don’t act soon enough,” Medley, who attends the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) which advises government, said.
2020-09-26 15:07:44
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday authorised the country’s provinces to impose lockdowns wherever necessary to stem a rapid rise in coronavirus cases.
“We are forced to intensify regulations and supervisions,” starting in the capital Tehran, Rouhani said in televised remarks.
He said government-run coronavirus task-force offices around the country would make recommendations on restrictions and whether to impose one-week lockdowns.
Iran’s death toll from the coronavirus has surpassed 25,000 and identified cases on Friday totalled 439,882, according to the health ministry.
Iran’s health officials have expressed alarm over a surge in infections, urging the country to respect health protocols to control the spread of the disease.
2020-09-26 14:38:41
SYDNEY: The world’s nations must do all they can to understand the origins of COVID-19, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Saturday, comments that could worsen tensions with China.
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Morrison said an inquiry into the roots of the virus would minimise the threat of another global pandemic.
“This virus has inflicted a calamity on our world and its peoples. We must do all we can to understand what happened for no other purpose than to prevent it from happening again,” Morrison said via a teleconference video link.
“There is a clear mandate to identify the zoonotic source of the COVID-19 virus and how it was transmitted to humans.”
2020-09-26 13:11:06
SEOUL: South Korea on Saturday reported 49 new domestic coronavirus cases, the smallest number of locally transmitted cases in 44 days in a sign that tighter social distancing rules are paying off.
Health officials reiterated calls on people to refrain from visiting their hometowns and meeting with relatives during the Chuseok holiday, worrying that the holiday, which runs from September 30 to October 2, may lead to another spike.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 61 new coronavirus cases as of midnight Thursday, including 49 local cases, mostly in Seoul and nearby Gyeonggi Porvince.
This brings the country’s total to 23,516, while deaths increased by 4 to 399.
2020-09-26 12:45:18
Four US states reported record one-day increases in new COVID-19 cases on Friday as the nation surpassed the grim milestone of over 7 million total infections, according to a Reuters tally.
Wisconsin, one of the states where cases are rising the fastest, reported 2,629 new infections, surpassing its previous record set last Friday, according to the tally.
Minnesota, Oregon and Utah also reported record increases in cases on Friday.
All Midwest states except Ohio reported more cases in the past four weeks as compared with the prior four weeks, according to a Reuters analysis. On Thursday, Montana and South Dakota reported record one-day increases in cases.
2020-09-26 12:20:28
Pakistan on Saturday reported 566 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 309,581.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,630 cases in AJK, 14,932 in Balochistan, 3,635 in GB, 16,367 in Islamabad, 37,588 in KP, 98,941 in Punjab and 135,488 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 7 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,451.
2020-09-25 15:55:07
Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health Dr Faisal Sultan announced on Friday that international travelers coming to Pakistan from October 5 will require a negative PCR test.
As per the details the 'mandatory negative COVID-19 RT-PCR test" must be taken within 96 hours of the travel date.
Only 38 countries have been exempted from showing the test result.
2020-09-25 15:25:35
MOSCOW: Iran and Russia’s sovereign wealth fund are discussing the joint production of a vaccine against COVID-19, Russian news agencies cited the Iranian ambassador to Moscow as saying on Friday.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) has said it is in talks with a number of countries about the possibility of producing the Russian ‘Sputnik-V’ vaccine abroad, and has signed a deal to manufacture 300 million doses in India.
“We are holding talks, I spoke with the head of RDIF Kirill Dmitriev, our officials have held several rounds of consultations and we announced that we will co-operate,” Iran’s Ambassador to Moscow Kazem Jalali was quoted as saying.
“We announced that we will co-operate in two-three areas. That includes joint production with Russia. Iran has great potential to produce the vaccine,” Jalali was quoted as saying.
RDIF declined to comment on the Iran talks. RDIF has also struck several deals in recent weeks to supply the vaccine, which is currently being tested in a large-scale trial in Moscow, abroad.
It has signed deals with Kazakhstan and two states in Brazil, and private pharmaceutical firms in India and Mexico.
RDIF also said earlier on Friday it would supply 35 million doses to Laxisam, a pharmaceutical firm in Uzbekistan.
2020-09-25 14:44:44
TEL AVIV: The Israeli government decided Friday to limit outgoing flights as part of a slew of measures to bolster a second virus lockdown imposed last week.
"The arrangement agreed upon enables leaving the country for whoever bought an airplane ticket prior to the beginning of the lockdown, ie today, the 25th, at 1400," Transport Minister Miri Regev said in a statement.
"People who buy a ticket beyond then won't be able to use it," she said, noting Israelis would be able to return to the country "without limitations."
2020-09-25 13:47:33
MILAN: AC Milan star Zlatan Ibrahimovic tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday but responded: "COVID had the courage to challenge me. Bad idea."
"I tested negative to COVID yesterday and positive today," said Ibrahimovic, who turns 39 in a week's time, on Twitter.
"No symptoms whatsoever. COVID had the courage to challenge me. Bad idea."
The Swede is now self-isolating and missed the team's Europa League third qualifying round tie against Norwegian club Bodo-Glimt in the San Siro Thursday.
The positive test is a blow for Ibrahimovic who has been in stunning form despite his advancing years.
2020-09-25 13:04:40
MOSCOW: Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Friday ordered the elderly to stay at home and recommended employers allow home working after the Russian capital saw a sharp rise in virus cases.
Sobyanin's message came after virus figures that had remained steady for several months climbed steeply in recent days in Russia, the world's fourth most affected country, and particularly in Moscow, where current case numbers are the highest since late June.
Sobyanin said Muscovites over 65 years old should stay at home from Monday and shop rarely, while walks outside remain unrestricted.
At the beginning of the virus lockdown, Sobyanin brought in harsh measures including cancelling seniors' free travel passes.
"Unfortunately we see a significant increase in the number of confirmed cases in Moscow in recent days," Sobyanin said in his official blog.
New coronavirus cases in Moscow on Thursday reached their highest level since June 23, at 1,050, and Sobyanin said there had a been a "serious" increase in hospital admissions.
On Friday, he warned that simultaneously catching the common cold and the virus as winter approaches was particularly dangerous for elderly people and those with chronic illnesses.
"So from September 28, we are asking you to stay at home," he said.
2020-09-25 12:37:00
RIOD DE JANEIRO: Rio de Janeiro's world-famous carnival parades became the latest casualty of the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday as officials announced they were indefinitely postponing the February 2021 edition, with Brazil still reeling from COVID-19.
Rio's carnival, the world's biggest, is an epidemiologist's nightmare in a pandemic: an extended festival of tightly packed crowds dancing through the streets and flocking to the city's iconic "Sambadrome" for massive parades featuring scantily clad dancers, small armies of drummers and all-night partying at close quarters.
The event draws millions of tourists from around Brazil and the world to the beachside city each year.
Rio's elite samba schools, which typically spend the entire year preparing their elaborate parades, had said in July it would be difficult to organise the event for February 2021 if there were still no certainty of a vaccine for the new coronavirus by late September.
Meeting again to assess the situation, "we came to the conclusion that the event had to be postponed," said Jorge Castanheira, the president of the group that organizes the annual parades, the Independent League of Samba Schools of Rio de Janeiro (LIESA).
2020-09-25 12:06:30
BENGALURU: India’s coronavirus case tally surged to 5.82 million after it recorded 86,052 new infections in the last 24 hours, data from the health ministry showed on Friday.
A total of 1,141 people died of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, the ministry said, taking mortalities to 92,290, which is a relatively low 1.6% of all cases.
Globally, India has the second-highest number of coronavirus cases, behind the United States where infections crossed 7 million on Thursday.
2020-09-25 11:20:17
Pakistan on Friday reported 798 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 309,015.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,610 cases in AJK, 14,838 in Balochistan, 3,608 in GB, 16,324 in Islamabad, 37,525 in KP, 98,864 in Punjab and 135,246 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 7 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,444.
2020-09-24 18:15:02
KARACHI: Sindh on Thursday recorded 401 new cases and six more deaths from the coronavirus, said Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah in a statement.
The CM said that COVID-19 claimed six lives in the last 24 hours lifting the provincial death toll to 2,477. While the total positive cases of the province rose to 135,246 after 401 new cases were reported.
The CM also said that 95.4% or 129,101 patients have recovered from the virus and currently 3,668 patients are being treated in the province.
2020-09-24 18:00:27
PARIS: The French health ministry reported on Thursday that number of people in intensive care due to the coronavirus jumped over 1,000 for the first time since June 8.
The ministry also said that the number of people with COVID-19 in hospital was up by 136 to 5,932.
2020-09-24 17:22:04
LAHORE: Punjab Minister for Human Rights & Minority Affairs Ijaz Alam Augustine has said the Punjab government would continue its distribution of financial aid and goods among deserving people till elimination of coronavirus.
He expressed these views while attending a ceremony regarding distribution of grant to deserving people organized by Non-Government organisation 'Tang Waseb' in Lahore on Thursday.
During the ceremony, the minister distributed cheques of Rs 50,000 among 30 deserving families to start their own business on small level in Nishter Town Lahore while MPA Malik Asad Ali Khokhar was also present.
Ijaz Alam Augustine said the Punjab government had taken numerous measures to safeguard the most vulnerable segments of society affected by COVID-19.
2020-09-24 17:00:00
STOCKHOLM: Seven European Union countries — Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Czech Republic and Malta — are of "high concern" due to rising COVID-19 death rates, the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention warned Thursday.
The Stockholm-based EU agency's latest assessment report said these countries had "an increased proportion of hospitalised and severe cases", and "increasing or high death notification rates are already observed ... or may be observed soon," owing to a spread among older people.
2020-09-24 16:31:01
LONDON: Three times as many people tested positive for COVID-19 in England in latest weekly figures compared to the end of August, NHS Test and Trace said on Thursday, with more people being referred to the system, though the proportion reached fell.
NHS Test and Trace said 19,278 new people tested positive for Coronavirus (COVID-19) in England between September 10 and September 16, with 21,268 people transferred to the system, up 37% on the week before.
However, 77.7% of those people were reached and asked to provide contacts, down from 83.9% the week before.
2020-09-24 16:00:04
DUBAI: Iran’s death toll from the novel coronavirus rose by 175 to 25,015 on Thursday, the highest in the Middle East, with the total number of identified cases spiking to 436,319 in the country, according to health ministry.
Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari told state TV that 3,521 new cases were identified in the last 24 hours in Iran.
2020-09-24 15:47:16
BRUSSELS: The European Commission urged EU members states to better explain and enforce social distancing and hygiene rules to halt the return of a dangerous new wave of coronavirus infections.
Health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said: "In some member states, the situation is now even worse than during the peak in March. This is a real cause for concern.
"All member states need to roll out measures immediately and at the right time at the very first sign of potential new outbreaks."
2020-09-24 15:00:00
MOSCOW: New coronavirus cases in Moscow on Thursday reached the highest level since late June, raising fears of a new wave of cases in the world´s fourth most affected country.
The caseload increase had remained relatively stable in the capital at around 700 per day for several months, but the numbers began to climb again from September 15.
On Thursday, the capital recorded 1,050 new cases, the highest figure since June 23.
Russia as a whole confirmed 6,595 new cases, the highest figure since July 12. The government virus website said that 24 percent had no clinical symptoms.
The highest numbers of new cases are in Moscow, its surrounding region and the second largest city of Saint Petersburg.
Russia´s total number of recorded cases reached 1,128,836 on Thursday with a death toll of 19,948.
Russia has prided itself on registering the world´s first coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, although it is still undergoing large-scale clinical trials after promising results in early trials.
Numerous high-profile figures including Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin have already had the vaccine.
President Vladimir Putin, in a speech to the United Nations general assembly this week, offered to inoculate those working there for free.
He earlier said that one of his daughters had been vaccinated.
2020-09-24 14:30:09
BEIJING: China's candidate for the coronavirus vaccine caused no side effects among recruits in Moscow as part of large-scale clinical trials, reported Russian English-language newspaper The Moscow Times.
Russia approved Phase 3 trials of the Chinese vaccine developed by CanSino Biologics, a Chinese high-tech biopharmaceutical company, and a research team with the Academy of Military Sciences last month.
"At the moment, the volunteers are doing well. None of them have shown any side effects," Petrovax, the Russian pharmaceutical company working with the vaccine's Chinese developers, announced on Monday in a press release.
Petrovax said it has received more than 3,000 applications to get the Ad5-nCoV vaccine so far.
The study's participants will be under direct supervision for nearly a month, with four interim face-to-face examinations, and will undergo a control examination after six months, Petrovax said.
The Russian company said it expects preliminary results sometime in November, according to the Interfax news agency.
2020-09-24 14:02:23
JERUSALEM: Israel toughened its coronavirus measures on Thursday as a second nationwide lockdown now nearing its second week failed to bring down the world's highest infection rate.
The new rules will close the vast majority of workplaces, shutter markets and further limit prayers and demonstrations.
"Over the past two days, we've heard from experts that if we don't take immediate and harsh measures, we'll reach an abyss," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Wednesday, at the start of a cabinet meeting to thrash out the new measures.
The government's latest move comes as the country is poised to enter the second week of a three-week lockdown imposed last Friday, which included the closure of schools and restrictions on work and leisure.
Under the new measures set to be approved in parliament later Thursday, synagogues will only be allowed to open on Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday which begins Sunday afternoon.
At other times, only outdoor prayer will be allowed with a maximum of 20 people attending. The same restrictions have been applied to demonstrations.
"To save the lives of Israel's citizens we need to impose a full lockdown now for two weeks," Netanyahu said.
"This is also necessary for the economy. Whoever thinks we can work with a raging pandemic, with death and infections rising, without it affecting the economy, is wrong."
A decision on whether to close Ben Gurion international airport outside Tel Aviv will be made later on Thursday, the government said.
Israel has the world's highest coronavirus infection rate as a proportion of its population, according to an AFP tally of the past fortnight.
More than 200,000 coronavirus cases have been recorded, with 1,335 deaths, out of a population of nine million.
2020-09-24 13:16:16
Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar on Thursday said that that the positivity ratio of the country is "stable" and continues to remain below 2%.
“Significant build up in COVID testing done to carry out sentinel testing at educational institutions in order to identify early trends, if any,” said Umar. He added that the country also carried out 42,299 tests the last 24 hours “which is by far the highest” number of tests conducted by the country.
2020-09-24 13:00:35
Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho warned on Thursday that positivity rate for coronavirus was increasing in the province and also opposed the reopening of schools in the current situation.
“The positivity rate of the virus has increased from 1.5% to 3%,” the minister told Geo News. She added that there was a threat of a second wave of coronavirus in the current situation.
The minister’s comment comes after a report from the provincial health department said that 185 people from educational institutes have tested positive for COVID-19.
The report said that 35,339 tests were conducted in educational institutes of the province. It added that most of the cases were from Karachi.
2020-09-24 12:30:56
LONDON: The British government estimates less than 10,000 people a day are contracting COVID-19, health minister Matt Hancock said on Thursday, less than during the pandemic’s peak, even as numbers testing positive have risen to similar levels.
“(At the peak), we estimate through surveys that over 100,000 people a day were catching disease, but we only found around 6,000 of them, and they tested positive. Now we estimate that it’s under 10,000 people a day getting the disease. That’s too high, but it’s still much lower than in the peak,” he told Sky News on Thursday.
Britain reported 6,178 new daily cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday.
Hancock also said the proportion of people getting a so-called false positive test result is below 1%.
2020-09-24 12:03:38
Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal said 382 out 4,002 samples taken from educational institutes of the province's 11 district were positive.
CM Kamal tweeted that he chaired a meeting to "see the effect of COVID on schools, colleges and universities". He added that 5% sample was taken from "different places" out of which 382 came positive.
Kamal also shared that following the results Loralai, Kech, Kohl and Quetta districts had a "high" number of positive cases.
CM Kamal said that the "age group" studying is showing "more numbers of positivity". He urged the people to be watchful, adding that the province was increasing its testing capacity.
2020-09-24 11:34:57
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he may or may not approve any new, more stringent FDA standards for an emergency authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine, saying such a proposal would appear political.
Trump has repeatedly said a vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, could be ready for distribution ahead of the November 3 presidential election.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday the US Food and Drug Administration would issue the guidance to boost transparency and public trust as health experts have become increasingly concerned the Trump administration might be interfering in the approval process to rush out a vaccine.
Trump, however, questioned why a vaccine would need to be delayed and said such a proposal by the FDA would appear to be politically-driven.
“We’re looking at that and that has to be approved by the White House. We may or may not approve it,” Trump told a White House news conference, when asked about the Post report.
“That sounds like a political move. Because when you have Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, these great companies, coming up with the vaccines, and they’ve done testing and everything else, I’m saying why would they have to be adding great length to the process.”
Trump added he had “tremendous trust” in those companies.
2020-09-24 11:00:43
MILAN: Italy may apply well-targeted closures where necessary to contain the spread of the new coronavirus while another general lockdown is unlikely, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told la Stampa daily in an interview.
“Today the situation in Italy is certainly better than in other European countries, and we are better prepared — even as a health system — to face a possible resurgence of the spread of the virus,” Conte told the paper.
“At present I exclude the possibility of a general lockdown; there could be — if necessary — well-targeted closures.”
Conte added that the European Union’s proposal for an overhaul of its migration and asylum rules was a “first step but not enough” and the bloc would keep working to put in place efficient measures for repatriation and mandatory relocation.
2020-09-24 10:47:15
Pakistan on Thursday reported 799 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 308,217.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,591 cases in AJK, 14,765 in Balochistan, 3,572 in GB, 16,288 in Islamabad, 37,470 in KP, 98,686 in Punjab and 134,845 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 5 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,437.
2020-09-21 18:00:03
The Punjab primary and secondary healthcare department has ordered the suspension of nine health officers in Lahore after it found “fake and fictitious entries” of coronavirus data during the month of August.
A notification, seen by Geo.tv, issued by the department, reveals that the city’s COVID-19 data, spanning from August 23 to August 31, was comprehensively analysed. “Upon thorough examination/ scrutiny of data for the said period, following fake/ fictitious entries are found,” it notes.
The document then lists down nine areas in Lahore where smart sampling of the virus was conducted during the eight days.
Read more here.
2020-09-21 17:25:52
DUBAI: The number of novel coronavirus infections in Iran has risen by 3,341 in the past 24 hours, the highest daily tally since early June, taking total cases to 425,481, the health ministry spokeswoman told state TV on Monday.
Sima Sadat Lari said 177 people had died in the past day, pushing the official death toll to 24,478 in Iran, one of the hardest hit countries in the Middle East.
Iran’s deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi said last week that the whole country was on coronavirus red alert as daily deaths and cases increased at an alarming rate.
2020-09-21 17:04:06
KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah announced on Monday that three more patients died due to the coronavirus and 296 new cases were reported in the province.
CM Shah said that 15,211 people were tested in last 24 hours out which 296 were positive, taking the provincial tally to 134,243. He added that COVID-19 claimed three more lives overnight lifting the death toll to 2,463.
The CM also shared that 178 more patients recovered taking the total recovery to 127,991.
2020-09-21 16:00:09
YANGON: Myanmar plans to push ahead with a November general election despite calls from opposition parties to postpone it because of a surge in novel coronavirus cases, officials said.
The Southeast Asian country reported 671 new cases of the coronavirus on Sunday, its highest daily toll since the beginning of its outbreak in March, taking its total to 5,541 infections and 92 deaths.
Myanmar had gone weeks without a case of local transmission before an outbreak in August in the western region of Rakhine that has spread across the country.
Analysts say the Nov. 8 election is a test of the extent of Myanmar's democratic reforms.
Parties halted campaigning in the commercial capital of Yangon on Monday after authorities imposed a citywide lockdown, forcing the majority of its five million residents to work from home in the toughest measure yet to combat the virus.
But the polls will go ahead, the national election commission told reporters.
"We don't have a plan to postpone the election for the reason of COVID-19," Myint Naing, a senior commission official told an online briefing on the weekend.
2020-09-21 16:13:02
LONDON: Britain will face an exponentially growing death rate from COVID-19 within weeks unless Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government moves urgently to halt a rapidly spreading second wave of the outbreak, the country's senior medics said.
The United Kingdom already has the biggest official COVID-19 death toll in Europe - and the fifth largest in the world - while it is borrowing record amounts in an attempt to pump emergency money through the damaged economy.
But new COVID-19 cases are rising by at least 6,000 per day in Britain, according to week-old data, hospital admissions are doubling every eight days, and the testing system is buckling.
Chris Whitty, the government's chief medical officer, and Patrick Vallance, its chief scientific adviser, cautioned that if left unrestricted the epidemic would reach 50,000 new cases per day by mid October in the United Kingdom.
"If this continued along the path...the number of deaths directly from COVID ... will continue to rise, potentially on an exponential curve, that means doubling and doubling and doubling again and you can quickly move from really quite small numbers to really very large numbers," Whitty said.
"If we don't do enough the virus will take off and at the moment that is the path that we are clearly on and if we do not change course then we're going to find ourselves in a very difficult problem."
The virus is spreading across all areas of the country and less than 8% of the population have antibodies to the virus, though in London around 17% of the population may have antibodies, Vallance said.
Speed and action are urgently needed, Vallance and Whitty said, adding that as winter was approaching the COVID problem would haunt Britain for another six months at least.
Johnson is due to speak on Tuesday.
2020-09-21 15:44:34
NEW DELHI: For four decades Indian Nobel peace laureate Kailash Satyarthi rescued thousands of children from the scourge of slavery and trafficking but he fears all his efforts could reverse as the coronavirus pandemic forces children into labour.
“The biggest threat is that millions of children may fall back into slavery, trafficking, child labour, child marriage,” said Satyarthi who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his work to combat child labour and child trafficking in India.
As the pandemic pummels the Indian economy, pushing millions of people into poverty, families are under pressure to put their children to work to make ends meet.
While rates of child labour have declined over the last few years, about 10.1 million children are still in some form of servitude in India, according to the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF.
Across India child labourers can be found in a variety of industries such as brick kilns, carpet-weaving, garment-making, domestic service, agriculture, fisheries and mining.
2020-09-21 15:00:00
KARACHI: A top health expert in the city leading convalescent plasma therapy trials in the country believes that Pakistan, or Karachi at least, is knocking on the door of herd immunity.
The expert claims that millions have already contracted COVID-19 asymptomatically and are now immune to the infectious disease, The News reported Monday.
“COVID-19 antibodies were absent from the blood of 17% of Karachiites who had contracted the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and tested positive for the viral infectious disease through the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test,” said haematologist and bone marrow transplant surgeon Prof Dr Tahir Sultan Shamsi.
He said that 68 of the 400 plasma donors who were infected with COVID-19 were tested through different methods but SARS-CoV-2 antibodies weren’t found in their blood.
“Our research shows that 17% of those who tested positive through the PCR test of various reputed labs didn’t develop COVID-19 antibodies. They were tested through the latest methods, and after comprehensive testing, it was concluded that despite getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, they couldn’t develop antibodies.”
He said this phenomenon is also being observed in other countries, as 8% of South Korea’s positive patients have not developed antibodies and 4% of China’s, but the absence of antibodies in 17% of Pakistan’s patients is quite a surprising discovery.
Read more here.
2020-09-21 14:41:26
LONDON: Any steps taken to tackle the rise in coronavirus cases will be different to the last time, Britain’s health minister Matt Hancock said on Monday, when asked whether the government was about to introduce a new lockdown.
“If we do have to take action, it will be different to last time and we’ve learnt a huge amount about how to tackle the virus,” he told ITV.
2020-09-21 14:17:44
WELLINGTON: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern moved most of New Zealand to the lowest virus alert setting Monday, saying the country was edging towards eliminating COVID-19.
Ardern announced New Zealand would from late Monday move down to virus level one in its four-tier alert system, except for Auckland, where the country´s most recent outbreak emerged.
"Our actions collectively have managed to get the virus under control," said Ardern, whose government has been widely praised internationally for its coronavirus response.
The decision means that mass gatherings, such as the first Bledisloe Cup rugby Test between the All Blacks and Australia in Wellington on October 11, can proceed without restrictions.
New Zealand has recorded just 25 deaths in a population of five million, with no new cases reported on Monday.
The virus was believed to have been eradicated at one point, with the country enjoying 102 days without community transmission after a strict national lockdown that ran from late March to late May.
Ardern said elimination was still New Zealand's target.
"Analysis completed for the ministry of health suggests that by the end of this month, there is still a 50-50 chance of having eliminated COVID once again," she said.
But she said Auckland "needs more time" to eliminate a stubborn cluster of infections that was detected last month in the city of 1.5 million.
2020-09-21 13:49:17
MADRID: A million people in and around the Spanish capital on Monday were under new "stay-at-home" orders to contain another coronavirus surge, as the US death toll neared 200,000.
But unlike other nations that are tightening curbs to battle outbreaks, India pressed ahead with its measures to kickstart its battered economy, reopening the Taj Mahal and some schools on Monday — despite having the second-highest caseload in the world.
The restrictions in Madrid will last for two weeks starting Monday, affecting people living mainly in densely populated, low-income neighbourhoods who will be allowed only to travel for essential reasons such as work, medical care or taking children to school.
2020-09-21 13:16:34
OSLO: The coronavirus pandemic is having a "devastating" impact on people displaced and affected by conflict, tipping many into hunger and homelessness, a new study by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) showed on Monday.
The report, titled "Downward Spiral," is based on assessments and survey in 14 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia and Yemen.
According to NRC, nearly three quarters the 1,400 people surveyed said they had seen a clear deterioration in their conditions since the pandemic broke out.
For instance, 70% "had to cut the number of meals for their household," 77% had lost a job or income from work, and 73% said they were less likely to send their children to school due to "economic hardship."
"The world's most vulnerable communities are in a dangerous downward spiral," Jan Egeland, NRC secretary general, said in a statement.
"Already forced from their homes by violence, often with limited rights to work or access to government services, the economic impact of the pandemic is pushing them to catastrophe," he continued.
2020-09-21 13:03:47
AGRA: India's famed Taj Mahal and some schools reopened on Monday as authorities pressed ahead with kickstarting the nation's coronavirus-battered economy despite soaring infection numbers.
India, home to 1.3 billion people and some of the world's most crowded cities, has recorded more than 5.4 million COVID-19 cases, second only to the United States which it could overtake soon.
But after a strict lockdown in March that devastated the livelihoods of tens of millions of people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is reluctant to copy some other nations and tighten the screw on activity again.
Instead in recent months his government has eased more and more restrictions including on many train routes, domestic flights, markets, restaurants -- and now, visiting the Taj Mahal.
"So many people lost their job during the lockdown. People have suffered a lot and it is time the country opens up fully," said bank official Ayub Sheikh, 35, visiting the Taj with his wife and baby daughter.
"We are not afraid of the virus. If it has to infect us, it will," Sheikh told AFP. "Not many people are dying now. I don´t think it is going to go away soon. We have to get used to it now."
The jaw-dropping white-marble mausoleum in Agra south of New Delhi is India's most popular tourist site. It usually draws seven million visitors a year, but has been closed since March.
Officials said strict social distancing rules were in place and visitors were not allowed to touch the marble. The famous bench where visitors sit for a photo — most memorably Princess Diana in 1992 — has been specially laminated so that it can be regularly sanitised without damage.
Early on Monday a couple of hundred of visitors were inside. Security personnel were reminding everyone to wear masks once photos have been clicked. Daily visitor numbers have been capped at 5,000 — a quarter the normal rate.
2020-09-21 12:40:42
PRAGUE: The Czech Republic’s daily count of new coronavirus cases dropped to 985 on Sunday, the third day in a row the number has decreased, data from the Health Ministry showed on Monday.
Fewer tests are done on weekends than on weekdays.
The overall number of confirmed cases rose to 49,290 in the country of 10.7 million.
2020-09-21 12:25:03
LAGOS: Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo on Sunday announced the return of professional football as part of a loosening of restrictions following a fall in the number of coronavirus cases.
But the West African country's land and sea borders remain closed, and its beaches, bars, cinemas and night clubs will also stay shut for the time being, he said in a televised address.
"Now more than ever, we must be even more disciplined in our adherence to the personal hygiene, mask wearing and social distancing measures that have become part of our daily routines," he warned.
The loosening of restrictions means training in contact sports can resume, while Premier League and Division One football will resume on October 30, he said. Players and support staff will be regularly tested, he added.
But the wearing of masks will remain mandatory until December 14.
"No spectators will be allowed at the training centres, and, when actual competition resumes, seating at all stadia will be limited to twenty-five percent capacity to ensure social distancing," the president said.
The resumption of other sports would be discussed on a case-by-case basis between the sports ministries and the federations concerned, he added.
Ghana has recorded around 46,000 cases of coronavirus and 297 deaths.
2020-09-21 12:00:00
BEIRUT: Lebanon on Sunday said it confirmed 1,006 new novel coronavirus cases and 11 deaths from the disease in 24 hours, in a new record for the crisis-hit country.
The figures from the health ministry brought Lebanon's total tally since February to 29,303 COVID-19 cases, including 297 deaths.
Outgoing health minister Hamad Hassan told television channel Al Jadeed he had called for authorities to impose a new two-week lockdown to combat the virus' spread.
Cases have spiked in the aftermath of a massive explosion at the Beirut port on August 4 that killed more than 190 people and overwhelmed the capital's health services with thousands of wounded.
Authorities on August 21 declared a lockdown in all parts of the country except those ravaged by the explosion, as well as a night-time curfew.
But they eased the restrictions a week later following protest from the private sector, already reeling from the country's worst economic downturn in decades.
2020-09-21 11:25:22
SYDNEY: Australia’s coronavirus hotspot of Victoria reported on Monday its lowest daily rise in infections in three months, although state Premier Daniel Andrews said there were no plans yet to ease restrictions sooner than expected.
Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state and home to a quarter of its 25 million people, reported 11 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, the smallest one-day jump since June 16. It also reported two deaths due to the virus.
“This is not just a good day. This is a great day,” Andrews told reporters in the Victorian capital, Melbourne.
But the premier said his government would not accelerate a timetable for easing restrictions, which were imposed after daily case numbers topped 700 in early August.
“The formal position is clear,” Andrews said.
“If circumstances change, if we find ourselves ahead of schedule, not for one day, but in a manifest sense, common sense always guides us,” he added.
2020-09-21 11:00:36
LONDON: Britain is at a critical point in the COVID-19 pandemic and faces a very challenging winter, one of the government’s top medical advisers will warn at a public briefing on Monday.
Cases in Britain are on the increase in what Prime Minister Boris Johnson has labelled a second wave of the virus, with large areas of the country subject to restrictions on social freedom and London expected to be next in line.
“The trend in the UK is heading in the wrong direction and we are at a critical point in the pandemic,” England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty is expected to say in an address set for 1000 GMT on Monday.
“We are looking at the data to see how to manage the spread of the virus ahead of a very challenging winter period.”
More than 40,000 people in Britain have died within 28 days of testing positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic in March, the highest number in Europe.
New cases fell rapidly due to an unprecedented three-month national lockdown, but have risen as the shuttered economy, schools and offices reopened. The government has been heavily criticised for a shortage of testing capacity.
The warning from Whitty is expected to foreshadow a national address by Johnson later in the week, although this has not been confirmed by ministers.
2020-09-21 10:43:49
Pakistan on Thursday reported 633 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 306,304.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,533 cases in AJK, 14,394 in Balochistan, 3,483 in GB, 16,162 in Islamabad, 37,257 in KP, 98,428 in Punjab and 133,947 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 4 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,420.
2020-09-18 20:47:09
AMSTERDAM: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said his government is preparing "regional" measures to combat the coronavirus outbreak in specific hotspots after the Netherlands registered a record 1,972 cases in the past 24 hours.
European is seeing a wider surge in COVID-19 cases, but Rutte said the Dutch situation was "worrying" after the country registered a record number of cases for the fourth consecutive day.
"At this rate, the number of infections would double every week and we absolutely cannot have that," he told reporters.
The regional measures, which will be detailed later on Friday, are expected to include tighter restrictions on public gatherings and earlier closing times for bars and restaurants.
2020-09-18 20:34:37
BRUSSELS/PARIS: The European Union has agreed to buy a potential COVID-19 vaccine from Sanofi and GSK in its second such deal to secure supplies, as a deadline for joining the World Health Organization's (WHO) vaccine purchase programme looms.
The deal will see the French and British drugmakers, which have teamed up to manufacture a recombinant protein-based vaccine they hope to get approved next year, provide the EU with up to 300 million doses in exchange for a down payment of 324 million euros ($384 million).
Friday's agreement confirms an announcement made on July 31 by the two companies and follows an earlier deal between the EU and AstraZeneca for the supply of up to 400 million shots after a down payment of 336 million euros.
In return for the right to the doses, the European Commission will finance part of the upfront costs faced by vaccine producers. The vaccine doses themselves will be bought by EU countries.
The latest deal comes on deadline day for members of the WHO to join its COVAX scheme, which aims to buy COVID-19 vaccines and ensure immunisations are fairly and efficiently distributed.
2020-09-18 20:15:19
Moderna said Friday it expects to produce 20 million doses of its experimental coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year.
The company continues to expect to make 500 million to 1 billion doses of the vaccine in 2021, Moderna said in a filing with the US securities regulator.
There are currently no COVID-19 vaccines approved by U.S. regulators, although a handful are in late-stage trials to prove they are safe and effective.
Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine is among the furthest in development and the company had enrolled 25,296 participants out of a planned 30,000 in its late-stage study as of Wednesday.
2020-09-18 19:16:35
BERLIN: Germany has joined France in deciding against buying potential COVID-19 vaccines through a World Health Organization (WHO) programme, although it supports the scheme, government sources told Reuters.
The sources said Berlin was not buying supplies through the WHO's COVAX programme because it was already sourcing potential vaccines through a European Union scheme.
The WHO has set Friday as a deadline for its members to join COVAX, which aims to buy COVID-19 vaccines and ensure they are fairly and efficiently distributed around the world.
But while 92 lower-income nations are seeking assistance via COVAX, many wealthier countries have yet to sign up as they scramble to secure supplies separately.
The sources said Germany supported COVAX and noted the European Commission was contributing 400 million euros ($474 million) from the EU's development budget to the scheme.
2020-09-18 19:36:44
JOHANNESBURG: South Africa will allow travel from October 1 to and from all countries in Africa as well as other countries where levels of COVID-19 infections are not too high, a government minister said on Friday.
For countries outside Africa, the government will determine whether entry is allowed depending on that country's COVID-19 infection and transmission rate, cooperative governance minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said.
The government will prepare a list of countries from where travel will be restricted, Dlamini-Zuma said, but did not specify when the list will be published.
"International travel in the continent is allowed to all countries and from all countries," she said. Travellers should have a negative COVID-19 test obtained not more than 72 hours before the date of travel or would have to quarantine.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa had said on Wednesday the country would open its international borders selectively, as the infection rate has progressively slowed to below 2,000 new cases per day.
2020-09-18 19:50:57
YANGON: Myanmar reported 424 new coronavirus infections, the Southeast Asian country's biggest daily rise so far, amid a recent resurgence of the virus after weeks without confirmed domestic transmission.
The health ministry did not say where the 424 cases were found but recently most new infections have been in Yangon, the commercial capital and biggest city.
Myanmar has so far reported a total 4,467 COVID-19 cases and 70 deaths. Infections have increased to hundreds of new cases per day over the past weeks after the coronavirus resurfaced in the western state of Rakhine, following weeks without a confirmed domestic case.
2020-09-18 19:01:39
BRASILIA/GENEVA: A group of Central and Latin American countries have informed the World Health Organization (WHO) they intend to request more time to sign up for its global COVID-19 vaccine facility known as COVAX, according to a diplomat and a WHO official.
Countries have until midnight on Friday to formalize legally-binding commitments to COVAX, a mechanism for pooled procurement and equitable distribution of eventual vaccines.
Warning that "vaccine nationalism" will undermine efforts to fight the pandemic, the WHO has urged governments to join the mechanism. The request for a delay is the latest sign of reticence after key member France said it would not use it to source shots, undermining WHO efforts to get broad buy-in.
The requests for an extension to the deadline will be sent directly to the GAVI Alliance, which is the COVAX secretariat, said the official at the Pan-American Health Organization, which is the WHO's regional branch for the Americas.
A diplomat in Geneva said the request had been submitted in the form of a letter on Friday and sought a one-month extension. The diplomat did not give details of the reason for the delay.
He said that the dozen countries who made the request were: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Paraguay and Dominican Republic.
2020-09-18 18:48:01
PRAGUE: The Czech Republic reported a record increase in COVID-19 cases for a third day as it puts new measures in place to battle a surge in infections that is among the fastest in Europe.
The Health Ministry reported 3,130 new cases for Thursday. The daily rise has spiked to 1,678 on average over the last seven days, up from 853 a week ago.
Adjusted for population, only Spain and France within the European Union have seen a bigger jump in the last two weeks, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
After a strict lockdown kept cases among the lowest in Europe during the initial coronavirus outbreak in March, the Czech government lifted almost all restrictions ahead of summer.
Authorities are now bringing some measures back while seeking to avoid a full-scale lockdown.
From Friday, bar opening hours will be limited, stand-up indoor events banned and face masks -- already required in shops and other buildings -- must be used in schools.
2020-09-18 18:37:59
BEIJING: Around 350,000 people have taken experimental coronavirus vaccines developed by China National Biotec Group (CNBG), its chairman said, as part of the country's emergency inoculation programme.
China has been actively offering vaccines that are still undergoing late-stage trials to people facing high infection risk and considering expanding the programme to prepare against a potential resurgence, raising safety concerns from experts.
At least three vaccine candidates including two developed by CNBG, a unit of state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), are offered in the emergency use programme.
So far, none of those who have taken the CNBG vaccines through the emergency use program or clinical trials have shown antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) effect, an adverse reaction where antibodies against the virus worsens the infection, CNBG Chairman Yang Xiaoming said.
He said further monitoring was needed.
"Not every one of the 1.4 billion people [in China] needs vaccination," Yang told a forum sponsored by China's science and technology ministry, saying that inoculating key groups of people could be sufficient to prevent outbreaks.
2020-09-18 18:16:58
BRUSSELS: The European Union wants to raise more money to shore up its supplies of potential COVID-19 vaccines after estimating that the number of shots available next year around the world might fall short of demand, two EU sources said.
The possible move by the wealthy EU could weaken a global procurement effort co-led by the World Health Organization and further limit the vaccines available to poorer countries, even though the bloc has publicly championed the sharing of COVID-19 vaccines among the entire global population.
The EU executive, the European Commission, told a meeting of EU ambassadors last week that it was "trying to be pragmatic as the total number of vaccines that could be produced globally next year is 2.4 billion," one of the EU sources told Reuters.
The WHO scheme, called COVAX, wants to secure 2 billion doses by the end of 2021 and many countries, most of them wealthy nations such as the United States, are in a race to ensure they have their own supplies of potential vaccines.
According to the Commission's estimate, supply could far outstrip demand next year. Global coronavirus cases exceeded 30 million on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, and the pandemic shows no signs of slowing.
As part of its new push, the Commission is urging the 27 EU member states' governments to back negotiations with a seventh vaccine maker, the two sources said, after it reached deals with AstraZeneca and Sanofi and announced advanced talks with Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer and CureVac for their potential COVID-19 shots.
2020-09-18 17:59:09
LONDON: COVID-19 is spreading widely across all age groups in England and there are increased hospital and intensive care admissions, particularly among older people, a top health official said.
"We’re seeing clear signs this virus is now spreading widely across all age groups and I am particularly worried by the increase in rates of admission to hospital and intensive care among older people," said Yvonne Doyle, Medical Director at Public Health England.
"This could be a warning of far worse things to come," she said. "Our monitoring also suggests we’re seeing a spike in other viruses that cause the common cold.
2020-09-18 17:45:35
LONDON: New cases of COVID-19 in England almost doubled to around 6,000 per day in the latest week to September 10, according to new official estimates that are likely to raise speculation about a new national lockdown.
The latest modelled estimate, which is based on samples of the population, compares with 3,200 per day in last week's report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Earlier Britain's health minister said the novel coronavirus was accelerating across the country, with hospital admissions doubling every eight days, but refused to say if another national lockdown would be imposed next month.
"There is evidence of higher infection rates in the North West and London," the ONS said on Friday.
2020-09-18 16:15:41
Iceland has ordered the closure of entertainment venues and pubs in the capital area for four days between September 18-21 in order to counteract the spread of COVID-19, the government said in a statement.
2020-09-18 17:20:23
COPENHAGEN: Denmark will lower the limit on public gatherings to 50 persons from 100 in order to curb a recent rise in new COVID-19 infections, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at a press conference.
Additionally, bars and restaurants across the country will now have to close at 10 PM, Frederiksen said. Both measures will take effect from Saturday, Sept. 19.
2020-09-18 16:40:22
LONDON: Britain said it would impose further restrictions to tackle the rise of COVID-19 across large parts of central and northern England, preventing multiple households from mixing and hospitality running late in the night.
In new measures due to come into force from Tuesday, people in the north west of England will be told to only use public transport for essential purposes. Hospitality late night operating hours will also be restricted.
2020-09-18 16:59:23
LONDON: England saw around 6,000 new cases of COVID-19 per day in the week up to September 10, almost double the rate of the previous week, according to a new estimate from the Office for National Statistics based on samples of the population.
2020-09-18 17:11:36
Europe's health regulator has endorsed using dexamethasone to treat severely ill COVID-19 patients with breathing difficulty, paving way for the steroidal medication to possibly become the region's second approved medication for the illness.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Friday concluded in its review of results from a trial by British scientists that the drug could be an option to treat adults and adolescents needing oxygen therapy or mechanical ventilation.
Gilead's antiviral drug, remdesivir, was the first to be approved for COVID-19 by Europe in July, a month after the EMA endorsed the drug.
While approvals are up to the European commission, it typically follows the EMA's recommendation for its decision.
Companies that sell the widely available and low-cost dexamethasone, commonly used against a range of inflammatory conditions, can now apply for a license on the expanded use to their national regulators or the EMA, the watchdog said.
2020-09-18 17:32:08
ROME: Up to 1,000 spectators will be allowed to watch each of the final two days of the Italian Open tennis tournament as Italy begins to open up stadiums to fans, sports minister Vincenzo Spadafora said on Friday.
Professional sports events in Italy have been played without fans since March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although some supporters have been allowed into pre-season soccer friendlies.
"At last, starting from the semi-finals and finals of the (Italian Open), a thousand spectators will be able to attend all the sports competitions that will be held in the open air and which scrupulously respect the rules on spacing, masks and seat reservations", Spadafora told reporters.
He added that it was "a first, but significant step towards returning, hopefully soon, to normality in sport."
The semi-finals of the men's and women's tournaments will be on Sunday with the respective finals on Monday. Spadafora did not make any mention of the Serie A football championship which starts at the weekend.
2020-09-18 15:33:50
LONDON: Britain's government Friday warned it could re-impose a national lockdown across England to counter the coronavirus pandemic, noting rates of hospitalisation are doubling every eight days.
"We want to avoid a national lockdown, but we're prepared to do it if we need to," Health Secretary Matt Hancock told BBC television.
"We're prepared to do what it takes both to protect lives and to protect livelihoods," he said, warning of more local measures to come after restrictions were placed on swathes of northeast England from Friday.
Britain has been the worst-hit country in Europe by the pandemic, with the government registering nearly 42,000 deaths from COVID-19. Numbers of new cases are reaching levels not seen since April.
Hancock said "we've also sadly seen that the number of people hospitalised with coronavirus is doubling about every eight days, so we do need to take action".
2020-09-18 14:40:14
LONDON: Ryanair on Friday said it was cutting more flights than planned in October, blaming the move on virus-related flight restrictions imposed by governments.
The Irish no-frills airline said "it would cut its October capacity by a further 20% in addition to the 20% cut already".
The Dublin-based carrier added that it expects its October capacity to now fall to about 40% of its level in October 2019.
Ryanair said that "as customer confidence is damaged by government mismanagement of COVID travel policies, many Ryanair customers are unable to travel for business or urgent family reasons without being subjected to defective 14 day quarantines."
2020-09-18 14:16:59
TEL AVIV: Israel will enter a second nationwide lockdown on Friday at the onset of the Jewish high-holiday season, forcing residents to stay mostly at home amid a resurgence in new coronavirus cases.
The country’s initial lockdown was imposed in late March and eased in May as new cases tapered off, reaching lows in the single digits.
But Israeli leaders now acknowledge they lifted restrictions too soon in the hope of avoiding further economic damage by reopening the private sector. They had also permitted mass gatherings, which contributed in pushing new cases to daily highs of over 5,000.
The new lockdown, which is due to begin at 2 pm (1100 GMT) and will last three weeks, coincides with the start of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, traditionally a time for large family gatherings and group prayer.
Under the new rules, Israelis must stay within 500 metres (546 yards) of home, with exceptions for activities such as commuting to work, shopping for essentials and walking outdoors for exercise. Workplaces will operate on a limited basis.
Social distancing and limits on the number of worshippers will go into effect at synagogues, usually packed for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement that begins at sunset on Sept 27.
2020-09-18 13:28:10
PRAGUE: The Czech Republic registered a record high of 3,130 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, reaching in 24 hours a figure comparable with the entire month of March, health ministry data showed Friday.
It was the third straight daily record for the EU member of 10.7 million people, which has registered 44,155 confirmed cases and 489 deaths since the March outbreak.
And it matches a pattern across Europe of a surge in cases in August-September that has seen many countries move back towards tougher infection control restrictions.
Data cited by the Czech News Agency (CTK) show the Czech Republic is now the second worst-off in the EU after Spain in terms of daily growth in cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
2020-09-18 12:52:54
ISLAMABAD: Around 13 educational institutions have been closed across the country in last 24 hours due to non-compliance of health guidelines and protocols and disease prevalence, said theNational Command and Operation Centre on Friday.
The educational institutions that had been shut due to no compliance were 10 in KP and three in Sindh, said the NCOC statement.
2020-09-18 12:13:02
Pakistan in the last 24 hours carried out its highest number of tests, showed the data shared by the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC).
The NCOC said 33,865 tests sampled on September 17 in Pakistan.
2020-09-18 12:01:38
LONDON: Britain’s health minister said on Friday that the novel coronavirus was accelerating across the country with hospital admissions doubling every eight days but refused to say whether or not another national lockdown would be imposed next month.
The United Kingdom has reported the fifth largest number of deaths from COVID-19 in the world, after the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.
Asked repeatedly by Sky News about the prospect of a second national lockdown next month, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that a lockdown was a last resort but that the government would do whatever it takes to tackle the virus.
“The number of people in hospital is doubling every eight days or so ... we will do what it takes to keep people safe,” Hancock said. “We keep these things under review.”
Asked about a second lockdown, he said: “I can’t give you that answer now.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson was criticised by opposition politicians for his initial response to the outbreak and the government has struggled to ensure sufficient testing in recent weeks.
2020-09-18 11:30:00
US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Thursday bluntly contradicted President Donald Trump’s suggestion that a coronavirus vaccine may be only weeks away, warning Americans they cannot trust the president’s word.
“The idea that there’s going to be a vaccine and everything’s gonna be fine tomorrow — it’s just not rational,” Biden said during a CNN town hall in Moosic, Pennsylvania.
Trump again said on Wednesday that a vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, could be ready for distribution ahead of the November 3 election.
Most health experts, including Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have said a vaccine will likely not be widely available until mid-2021.
Trump has accused Biden of spreading “anti-vaccine rhetoric,” while Biden has emphasised that he will listen to scientists, not the president, regarding a vaccine’s safety.
2020-09-18 11:00:00
MELBOURNE: Australia said on Friday it would increase the number of citizens allowed to return home each week to 6,000 as it manages to get new COVID-19 infections under control.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the cap on the number of people allowed into Australia each week would increase by 2,000 by mid October after a National Cabinet meeting where states agreed to boost quarantine capacity.
The country’s weekly limit is currently set at 4,000 people.
Morrison said there were an estimated 24,000 stranded Australians wanting to return home which the government has pledged to facilitate before Christmas.
“With the success we have had as a country in recent months, we can start opening up again and we can start helping Australians getting home again,” Morrison told a press briefing.
Australia is also looking to ease quarantine restrictions for returned travellers from New Zealand which has effectively stamped out the virus, and who account for 15% of returns, to free up hotels for other travellers, Morrison said.
Australia closed its international borders early in the pandemic, and imposed strict lockdowns and social distancing measures, dramatically reducing the spread of the virus. It currently has a mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine for all international arrivals.
2020-09-18 10:36:00
OTTAWA: Canada's most populous province of Ontario on Thursday clamped down on big parties, unveiling steep fines for breaches of strict limits on the number of people attending social gatherings to try to prevent a second wave of COVID-19 outbreaks.
Organisers of private gatherings of more than 10 people inside homes and more than 25 outside will face a fine of up to Can$10,000 (US$7,600), while each partygoer could be fined Can$750, Ontario Premier Doug Ford told a news conference.
The fines — coming after an uptick in new coronavirus cases as students return to classes — are the harshest in Canada for breaking public health orders.
"This is a serious situation, folks. We will throw the book at you if you break the rules," Ford said, citing recent risky behaviors such as "drinking, hugging (and) kissing" at illegal parties hosted by "reckless, careless people."
"The second wave is coming," the Ontario Medical Association warned in a statement, calling for increased COVID-19 testing capacity.
The new restrictions will take effect in Ottawa and the Toronto region, starting on Friday.
They will not apply to public outdoor events or venues such as restaurants, cinemas or sports arenas.
2020-09-18 10:15:22
SHANGHAI: Mainland China reported 32 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, marking the highest daily increase in more than a month and up sharply from nine cases reported a day earlier, the Chinese health authority said on Friday.
Although the latest increase still remains well below the peaks seen at the height of the outbreak in China early this year, it is the biggest since August 10 and suggests continued COVID-19 risks stemming from overseas travellers coming into the country as the pandemic rages on in other parts of the world.
The National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement that all new cases were imported infections, 13 of which were in the northwestern Shaanxi province and another 12 in Shanghai.
Mainland China has not reported any local COVID-19 infections since mid-August.
2020-09-18 09:30:42
Pakistan's on Friday reported nine new deaths from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,408.
The country also reported 752 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 304,386.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,472 cases in AJK, 13,991 in Balochistan, 3,381 in GB, 16,033 in Islamabad, 37,242 in KP, 98,142 in Punjab and 133,125 cases in Sindh.
2020-09-18 09:09:14
PARIS: The number of coronavirus cases registered worldwide topped 30 million on Thursday, according to an AFP tally based on official sources.
The grim landmark came as the World Health Organisation warned of "alarming rates of transmission" of COVID-19 across Europe.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
The coronavirus death toll is now at 943,086 since it surfaced in China late last year and the number of cases has ballooned to 30,000,062, according to figures available at 19:45 GMT.
2020-09-18 08:41:40
MEXICO CITY: Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday reported 3,182 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the country, bringing the total to 684,113 cases, and 201 new deaths, for a cumulative death toll of 72,179.
2020-09-18 08:35:33
Guidance about novel coronavirus testing posted last month on the website of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was not written by the agency’s scientists and was posted over their objections, the New York Times reported citing people familiar with the matter and internal documents.
Under the guidance, it was not necessary to test people with no symptoms of COVID-19 — the potentially fatal disease caused by the virus — even if they had been exposed to the virus.
The agency’s previous position recommended testing all people who have had close contact with anyone diagnosed with COVID-19. The reversal shocked doctors and politicians and prompted accusations of political interference.
Admiral Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — the CDC’s parent — at the time said the goal was “appropriate testing”, not more testing for its own sake, and that there had been no political pressure.
Internal documents on the matter contained "elementary errors" — such as referring to "testing for COVID-19", as opposed to testing for the virus that causes it — and recommendations inconsistent with the CDC's stance, the NYT reported Thursday citing a senior CDC scientist.
Officials of the administration of President Donald Trump told the NYT the documents were produced by the CDC and had been revised with input from agency director Robert Redfield.
However, the NYT also reported the HHS rewrote and then “dropped” the guidance into the CDC’s website, flouting the agency’s review process.
2020-09-17 23:52:17
TORONTO/OTTAWA: The major Canadian province of Ontario will clamp down on social gatherings in response to "reckless careless people" who are spreading the coronavirus at illegal parties, premier Doug Ford said.
Separately, Canada's top medical officer said authorities could lose their ability to manage the coronavirus pandemic due to a worrying recent spike in new cases.
Ford said that, starting Friday, the maximum permitted size of indoor social events would be cut to 10 from 50 while the limit for outdoor gatherings would shrink to 25 from 100. Those who break the law will be subject to fines of up to C$10,000 ($7,580).
"This is a serious situation, folks. We will throw the book at you if you break the rules," he told a news conference, saying people were "drinking, hugging, kissing, spitting ... (and) spreading COVID-19" at illegal parties.
The measures will apply to Toronto - Canada's largest city - as well as the Peel and Ottawa regions. Ontario is the most populous of Canada's 10 provinces.
2020-09-17 23:19:23
PARIS: The French Open tennis tournament, rescheduled to September due to the coronavirus pandemic, will be limited to 5,000 spectators daily, a reduction from the 11,500 announced by organisers, the Paris police prefecture told AFP.
2020-09-17 23:36:36
NEWCASTLE: More than two million people in northeast England face new restrictions because of a surge in coronavirus cases, the government announced, as it battled to contain a potential second wave of infection.
Tighter regulations on socialising are due to come into force from Friday in Northumberland, North and South Tyneside, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Gateshead, and County Durham.
Residents will be banned from socialising in homes or gardens with people from outside their household, while food and drink venues will be restricted to table service only.
Pubs and bars will have to shut early by 10:00 pm (2100 GMT).
2020-09-17 22:59:41
Global coronavirus cases exceeded 30 million on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, with the pandemic showing no signs of slowing.
India was firmly in focus as the latest epicentre, although North and South America combined still accounted for almost half of the global cases.
Global new daily case numbers reached record levels in recent days and deaths neared 1 million as the international race to develop and market a vaccine heated up.
The official number of global coronavirus cases is now more than five times the number of severe influenza illnesses recorded annually, according to World Health Organization data.
Around the world, there have been almost 1 million deaths, considered a lagging indicator given the two-week incubation period of the virus. That has well exceeded the upper range of 290,000 to 650,000 annual deaths linked to influenza.
India this week became only the second country in the world, after the United States, to record more than 5 million cases. On Thursday, it reported another record daily rise in cases of almost 98,000.
2020-09-17 23:07:44
LOS ANGELES: Filming has resumed on the Warner Bros. movie “The Batman” after a two week shutdown caused by a member of the production testing positive for the coronavirus, Warner Bros. said.
“Following a hiatus for COVID 19 quarantine precautions, filming has now resumed on The Batman in the UK,” a Warner Bros. spokesperson said in a statement.
The person who tested positive in early September was widely reported to be Robert Pattinson, the star of the superhero film, although the movie studio never confirmed or denied this.
2020-09-17 21:59:51
PARIS: Gatherings of family are a major source of COVID-19 infections, French Health Minister Olivier Veran said, adding the spread of the disease had accelerated in the last weeks.
"If everyone reduced his number of social contacts, this would help reduce the spread of the virus", he said during a press conference.
Five people out of 100 tested for COVID-19 are today positive, versus one in a 100 at start of summer, Veran also said.
2020-09-17 22:10:37
BARCELONA: Mohamed Chirif, a 45-year-old Algerian living in Barcelona, is afraid he might lose his job as a plumber if the coronavirus test he took this week turns out to be positive.
"If I tell my boss that I have to stay home for 14 days, what do you think he will do? I am sure he would hire another person," he said, stressing that if he was infected, he would say so.
"And where would I self-isolate? In the bathroom?," he said during a voluntarily screening programme in his neighbourhood El Raval, one of Barcelona's most multicultural and poorest areas, whose infection rate is almost double the city's average. Chirif lives with his wife and two children in a one-bedroom apartment.
His words illustrate one of the challenges Spain faces trying to curb the spread of the virus. It has the highest number of cases in Western Europe, with more than 610,000, while more than 30,000 have died.
Less well-off communities like El Raval are being hit harder, with the gap between poorer and richer areas at the heart of a tense debate in Spain over how to curb the increase in cases, as some cities envisage targeted lockdowns that would focus on the more affected - and therefore often poorer - areas.
At the peak of the pandemic, Barcelona's district with the lowest income had 2.5 times more cases than the richest while across the Catalonia region the mortality rate was five times higher among the poorest, two studies showed.
In Madrid, the infection rate in a northern district is almost six times lower than in a southern district with a lower average income and a higher migrant population.
The risk of losing one's job was on the mind of many in the neighbourhood as tests were being carried out in El Raval.
2020-09-17 22:31:08
PARIS: France registered 10,593 new confirmed coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, setting a new daily record and pushing the cumulative number to 415,481, the health ministry reported.
The previous high was 10,561 new cases in a day, recorded on Sept. 12. The sharp increase is a result of a higher infection rate but also of a massive increase in testing. The government has made COVID-19 testing free, resulting in long queues at testing centres in cities across France.
The number of people who have died from the virus in France increased by 50 to 31,095, the second-highest number in two months following the 80 deaths reported on September 11.
2020-09-17 21:00:06
LONDON: Slovenia and Guadaloupe have been added to the list of countries from which travellers must quarantine when entering England to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus, British transport minister Grant Shapps said.
Anybody arriving in England from the two countries after 4 am on Saturday will need to self-isolate for 14 days, he said on Twitter.
2020-09-17 21:14:34
MEXICO CITY: Mexico's foreign ministry said it has requested another month-long extension on land-crossing restrictions at US-Mexico border.
2020-09-17 21:33:37
NEW YORK: With only four days' notice, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio delayed in-person learning at public schools for a second time for most students as the nation's largest system struggles to find enough staff willing to teach in classrooms during the coronavirus pandemic.
While virtual lessons via the internet are already underway, the start of in-person learning had previously been delayed from Sept. 10 to Monday, Sept. 21, for those students who opted in.
Now, only pre-kindergarten children and students with special learning needs will head into school buildings on Monday, the mayor said at a news conference. Elementary school students will begin Tuesday, Sept. 29. Middle school and high school students will start Oct. 1.
The delay came after leaders of the teachers' unions contacted de Blasio on Wednesday with "real concerns," according to the mayor, who oversees a school system that serves more than 1.1 million children.
2020-09-17 20:49:27
LONDON: The Bank of England said it was looking more closely at how it might cut interest rates below zero as Britain’s economy faces a triple whammy of rising COVID-19 cases, higher unemployment and a possible new Brexit shock.
The BoE’s monetary policymakers said the world’s sixth-biggest economy was recovering faster than they had thought as recently as last month, and they voted unanimously to keep their main stimulus programmes on hold for now.
But the BoE said its Monetary Policy Committee had been briefed on how a negative Bank Rate “could be implemented effectively, should the outlook for inflation and output warrant it at some point during this period of low equilibrium rates”.
Governor Andrew Bailey and some of his colleagues have previously said that they were looking at the pros and cons of following the lead of other central banks, including those in the euro zone and Japan, and taking rates negative.
The BoE said on Thursday that it would “begin structured engagement on the operational considerations in 2020 Q4”, a sign that it would look at how to take rates below zero without hurting banks’ ability to lend and damaging the recovery.
2020-09-17 20:36:16
PARIS: Hundreds of workers at COVID-19 laboratories in France went on strike, a trade union said, angry over poor working conditions as the coronavirus testing system buckles under huge demand.
The hard-left CGT union said the strike was disrupting testing in some towns and could drag on if laboratory owners failed to deal with staff shortages and increase pay.
The walkout comes as the government demands more and faster testing to fight a surge in new coronavirus cases.
“We’re overwhelmed,” laboratory nurse Aminata Diene, one of about 50 lab workers protesting outside a diagnostics centre on the edge of Paris said.
The 31-year-old said her Bioclinic laboratory in Bezons, which is staffed by four nurses and would normally handle 40 COVID-19 tests a day, was closed as a result of the strike.
“We can’t be on the phone, physically greeting patients and carrying out tests all at once. We’re exhausted, physically and mentally.”
2020-09-17 20:10:56
2020-09-17 18:59:48
JERUSALEM: Israel closed its schools , a day before entering a second national coronavirus lockdown, as daily infections topped 4,500.
The initial lockdown was imposed in late March and eased in May, when the number of new cases dropped to about 20 a day. Israeli leaders have acknowledged they lifted restrictions too soon, hoping to avoid further economic damage.
The new lockdown, due to last three weeks, coincides with the start of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, traditionally a time for large family gatherings.
Catching parents off-guard and trying to prevent further infections in schools, Israeli authorities decided late on Wednesday to close classrooms on Thursday, a day earlier than planned.
Teachers shifted to online lessons while children lamented not being able to hang out with friends just weeks after the school year started.
“I began first grade, I met new friends and suddenly corona comes and we have to stay home,” said Aviv Harel, whose family was taking advantage of the last day before the closure with a bike ride in Jerusalem. “Not fun.”
2020-09-17 18:47:45
DUBLIN: The Irish government tightened its COVID-19 travel restrictions by imposing quarantines on travellers from major holiday markets Italy and Greece, angering the country’s dominant airlines Ryanair and Aer Lingus.
Aer Lingus said it was concerned by the fact the government had repeatedly indicated in recent weeks it planned to adopt a more liberal European Commission proposal, but instead cut back the number of countries exempt from quarantine.
Ireland had initially waived quarantine for travellers from countries with lower COVID-19 rates, but as its 14-day infection rate surged to above 50 cases per 100,000, the government said only places half that rate would be exempt.
The move came as the head of Ireland’s COVID-19 modelling group on Wednesday warned of “exponential growth” without new restrictions.
The new “Green List”, which goes into effect on Monday, allows travellers arriving from just seven countries to avoid quarantine: Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
2020-09-17 19:00:16
WASHINGTON: White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows met with major airline chief executives as the industry braces for thousands of job cuts in two weeks, and urged lawmakers to embrace a $1.5 trillion coronavirus aid package proposed by a bipartisan congressional group and endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Meadows told reporters said that if House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi was willing to move a bill that would support airline workers and prevent layoffs, Trump would support it, noting the looming layoffs of thousands of workers set for October 1.
American Airlines Chief Executive Doug Parker said airlines would also be working with Pelosi.
Meadows said the administration had examined executive action options, all of them less than ideal.
Airlines did not offer a new proposal but again made the case that helping avert airline job cuts was one good reason to pass a broad coronavirus relief bill.
2020-09-17 19:23:20
LONDON: A sharp deterioration in turnaround times and availability of COVID-19 tests in Britain saw the government admit there were challenges to its testing regime that it says has been swamped by demand amid a spike in cases.
Only 14% of coronavirus test results in England came back within 24 hours last week, a sharp fall from the week before, according to data on Thursday that adds to pressure on a government fending off criticism that its strategy is collapsing.
The British government has been under intense pressure over the buckling of its promised “world-beating” system to test and trace coronavirus cases, meant to protect the country from a second wave of infection as schools reopened this month.
“There’s a challenge in testing,” UK health minister Matt Hancock said, adding that capacity for testing was growing. “The challenge is that demand has gone up faster.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged on Wednesday that there was not enough testing capacity, and said that he is aiming for the capacity to do 500,000 daily tests by the end of October.
2020-09-17 19:43:58
CHICAGO: If Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine proves to be at least 70 percent effective, the company plans to seek emergency authorization for its use in high-risk groups, the company’s chief executive told Reuters.
Moderna’s vaccine candidate - mRNA-1273 - is nearing the finish line in its push to enroll 30,000 individuals in a late-stage trial of a novel coronavirus vaccine. But the company may be able to declare victory early if it is able to show that people who got the vaccine fared much better in its trial that people who didn’t.
Vaccines must demonstrate they are at least 50% more effective than a placebo to be considered for approval. To prove that, government officials have said, at least 150 COVID-19infections must be recorded among trial participants with at least twice as many occurring among the placebo group.
If a vaccine is especially effective, companies could have their answer sooner.
An independent safety board will take a first look at Moderna’s data as soon as a total of 53 people in the trial become infected with COVID-19. Moderna is projecting the interim analysis will occur in November, but it could come as early as October.
If most of the people who got sick got the placebo shot, that would indicate the vaccine was protecting those inoculated and could be enough evidence to seek U.S. regulatory approval for Emergency Use Authorization(EUA).
“If the interim readout is deemed by the independent safety committee as positive with 70 or 80 or 90% efficacy, we will indeed consider approval,” Stephane Bancel, Moderna’s chief executive officer, said in a telephone interview.
2020-09-17 18:20:20
US manufacturers are sharply increasing production of cheap, fast - but less accurate - COVID-19 tests, aiming for 100 million per month by year end that will enable schools and workplaces to significantly expand testing.
Manufacturing and government sources tell Reuters that more than half a dozen so-called antigen tests will likely be authorized by the end of October. U.S. regulators in recent months have authorized antigen tests from Abbott Laboratories, Becton Dickinson & Co, Quidel Corp and LumiraDX.
When planned production of the newly authorized tests are combined with previously approved diagnostics, overall monthly U.S. testing capacity will exceed 200 million per month by year end, these sources said.
Makers of the four recently-approved antigen tests have the capacity to make around 40 million per month, but expect to more than double that by year end, according to a Reuters analysis that includes proprietary figures shared by companies.
Unlike the $100 and up molecular diagnostics currently dominating U.S. testing that must be sent to a lab and often take several days for results, antigen tests can cost as little as $5. They can be performed anywhere and produce results in minutes.
That opens the possibility of regular screening at schools and businesses of even asymptomatic people, an important tool for containing future outbreaks, experts said.
“If we could get testing to a scale where everyone you want to test can be tested quickly and cheaply with a quick turnaround time (for results), then you could screen people” before they spread the virus, said Dwayne Breining, director of labs at Northwell Health, New York state’s largest hospital system.
2020-09-17 18:00:17
VIENNA: Austria is limiting private indoor gatherings to 10 people in the face of rising coronavirus case numbers, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Thursday, a day after Germany issued a travel warning for Vienna, where most of the country’s cases are concentrated.
“These are restrictions that hurt but they are restrictions that are necessary to hopefully prevent a second lockdown,” Kurz said, adding that as of Monday, restaurants and bars could also only serve seated customers and that the requirement to wear face masks was being extended to places including markets.
2020-09-17 17:50:17
GENEVA: One in seven cases of COVID-19 reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) is a health worker and in some countries that figure rises to one in three, the agency said on Thursday.
The WHO called for frontline medical workers to be provided with protective equipment to prevent them from being infected with the novel coronavirus, and potentially spreading it to their patients and families.
“Globally around 14% of COVID cases reported to the WHO are among health workers and in some countries it’s as much as 35%,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
He added data was limited however and it was hard to know if people were infected at work or in their communities.
Tedros was addressing a news briefing marking World Patient Safety Day, as the number of people reported infected with the coronavirus neared 30 million, with 938,291 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.
“It’s not just the risk of infection. Every day, health workers are exposed to stress, burnout, stigma, discrimination and even violence,” he added.
2020-09-17 17:27:59
2020-09-17 17:18:39
LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Thursday he could close pubs earlier to "stop the second hump" of coronavirus cases, comparing the country's trajectory of resurgent transmission to a camel's profile.
His government is set to unveil new restrictions in England, which could also include greater social curbs, later on Thursday, initially targeting the northeast region where COVID-19 cases are surging.
It already imposed rules across England on Monday limiting socialising to groups of six people or fewer, as daily cases reach levels not seen since early May.
In an interview with The Sun newspaper, Johnson said new measures may be needed as "the only way to make sure the country is able to enjoy Christmas" and an alternative to another full lockdown.
"What I don't want to be doing is locking down sections of the economy," he said.
"We can grip it now, stop the surge, arrest the spike, stop the second hump of the dromedary, flatten the second hump," Johnson told the tabloid, before musing on his metaphor.
2020-09-17 17:00:01
PARIS: A French association of COVID-19 victims will on Thursday file a legal complaint against Prime Minister Jean Castex for alleged mishandling of the pandemic, its lawyer said.
The Coronavirus Victims France association, which has 200 members, accuses the government of "playing it by ear" in its response to the crisis, lawyer Fabrice de Vizio told AFP.
Castex took over from Edouard Philippe as prime minister in July when the worst of the epidemic so far was over in France. But the past weeks have seen a worrying surge in new cases.
The complaint will be filed with the Court of the Republic (CJR), the only court in France authorised to deal with cases against government ministers over alleged offences committed in office.
The court has already received more than 90 legal complaints against ministers.
A total of nine targeting Philippe as well as Health Minister Olivier Veran and his predecessor Agnes Buzyn have been declared valid by the court, which has begun investigating them for possible "failure to fight a disaster".
Di Vizio said the complaint against Castex was to highlight the association's view that shortcomings had continued after he took over as prime minister from Philippe on July 3.
2020-09-17 16:39:26
VIENNA: Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday said the coronavirus crisis was a "tremendous opportunity" to rebuild devastated economies with clean energy.
Speaking virtually at a climate summit that his non-profit organisation holds annually in Austria, the Hollywood star said the pandemic, which has killed almost a million people and caused massive economic downturns worldwide, was "a window of opportunity to act right now".
"Forward-looking decisions are needed right now, right now as trillions of dollars and trillions of euros are being poured into rebuilding economies and infrastructure in the wake of the coronavirus," he said on screen, speaking from a podium surrounded by plants.
"These funds are so massive they are capable of remaking societies. We have a tremendous opportunity here."
Schwarzenegger said money should be invested into building "a clean energy economy", providing "sustainable jobs" and upgrading buildings to make them more energy efficient.
2020-09-17 16:30:00
2020-09-17 16:07:00
KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah announced on Tuesday that four more patients died due to the coronavirus and 307 new cases were reported in the province.
CM Shah said that 13,787 people were tested in last 24 hours out which 307 were positive, taking the provincial tally to 133,125. He added that COVID-19 claimed four more lives overnight lifting the death toll to 2,455.
The CM also shared that 178 more patients recovered taking the total recovery to 127,991.
2020-09-17 15:43:49
COPENHAGEN: The European chapter of the World Health Organization on Thursday said it saw "alarming rates of transmission" of COVID-19 across the region and warned countries against shortening quarantine periods.
"The September case numbers... should serve as a wake-up call for all of us," the WHO´s regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said.
"Although these numbers reflect more comprehensive testing, it also shows alarming rates of transmission across the region," he told a press conference, as the organisation said it was concerned about countries which had decided to shorten quarantine requirements.
2020-09-17 14:26:43
GENEVA: The World Health Organisation’s top emergency expert, asked on Thursday about contradictory remarks by President Donald Trump and US health officials, said that it was important for all countries to have “consistent messaging” for their public.
Trump took exception on Wednesday to comments from the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, who said a vaccine for the novel coronavirus could be broadly rolled out in mid-2021 and that masks might be even more effective.
“It is important that we have consistent messaging from all levels, and it’s not for one country or one entity; consistent messaging between science and between government,” WHO’s Mike Ryan said in response to a question at an event marking World Patient Safety Day.
“What is important is that governments, scientific institutions, step back, review the evidence, and give the most comprehensive easy-to-understand-and-digest information so that people can take the appropriate action,” Ryan said.
“It’s understanding the confusion, it’s understanding their concern, it’s understanding their apprehension. And not laughing at it and not turning that into some kind of political football.”
2020-09-17 13:30:22
Amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis, New Zealand's economy fell into recession for the first time in a decade on Thursday, posting a record contraction in the June quarter, as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern heads into next month's general election.
"The 12.2% fall in quarterly GDP is by far the largest on record in New Zealand," the national statistics agency said.
The reporting period covers April to June, coinciding with a strict lockdown that began in late March and began easing in late May.
Stats NZ spokesperson Paula Pascoe said the closure of New Zealand's borders since March 19 had also had a huge impact of some sectors of the economy.
"Industries like retail, accommodation, and restaurants, and transport saw significant declines in production because they were most directly affected by the international travel ban and strict nationwide lockdown," he said.
Read more here.
2020-09-17 12:34:15
SHANGHAI: Mainland China reported nine new COVID-19 cases as of September 16, down from 12 reported a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said on Thursday.
The National Health Commission said in a statement all new cases were imported infections involving travellers from overseas. The number of new asymptomatic patients also fell to 14 from 16 a day earlier, though China does not count these patients as confirmed cases.
Total of confirmed COVID-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 85,223, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
2020-09-17 12:13:05
The World Bank on Thursday said that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic threatens to diminish progress made in the last decade in improving child education and health, particularly in the poorest countries
The conclusion comes in the Washington-based development lender's Human Capital Index for 2020, which ranks countries on how well children are prepared for the future, with an emphasis on factors like schooling and healthcare.
This year's report shows that most countries, particularly poorer ones, have made steady gains in improving health and education prior to the pandemic.
Despite that, the bank said in a statement a child in a low-income country will likely achieve only 56% of their human capital compared to one with access to complete education and full healthcare.
Read more here.
2020-09-17 11:37:55
ISLAMABAD: Authorities in the country have closed 22 educational institutes in the last 48 hours for not complying with government-issued standard operating procedures, according to a statement issued by the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) on Thursday.
“During the last 48 hours, 22 educational institutions across Pakistan have been closed due to non-compliance of health SOPs/protocols and disease prevalence,” read the statement.
As per the breakdown, 16 educational institutions have been closed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one in the federal capital and five in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
Read more here.
2020-09-17 11:24:44
A World Health Organisation (WHO) expert has said that the average age of people infected with COVID-19 was coming down
Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, told a Q&A, that incidences of hospitalisation among people aged 15 to 49 years was increasing and said it was possible for the same person to be infected with influenza and COVID-19.
2020-09-17 11:14:30
WASHINGTON: A group of wealthy nations representing 13 percent of the global population have already bought up more than half of the promised doses of future COVID-19 vaccines, according to a report by Oxfam on Wednesday.
The non-governmental organisation analyzed deals struck by pharmaceuticals and vaccine producers for the five leading vaccine candidates currently in late-stage trials, based on data collected by the analytics company Airfinity.
"Access to a life-saving vaccine shouldn't depend on where you live or how much money you have," said Robert Silverman of Oxfam America.
"The development and approval of a safe and effective vaccine is crucial, but equally important is making sure the vaccines are available and affordable to everyone. COVID-19 anywhere is COVID-19 everywhere."
The five vaccines analysed were from AstraZeneca, Gamaleya/Sputnik, Moderna, Pfizer and Sinovac.
2020-09-17 10:58:59
The adverse events that led to a pause in trials evaluating AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine candidate may not have been associated with the vaccine itself, according to a document outlining participant information that was posted online by the Oxford University.
Enrollment in the British drugmaker’s global trials of the vaccine, which it is developing with researchers at Oxford University, was paused on September 6, after a participant in its UK trial had a serious side effect thought to be a rare spinal inflammatory disorder called transverse myelitis.
Safety reviews were conducted when volunteers in the trials for testing the vaccine candidate, called AZD1222 or ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, developed unexplained neurological symptoms including changed sensation or limb weakness, and the study was paused while a safety review took place, according to the document.
“After independent review, these illnesses were either considered unlikely to be associated with the vaccine or there was insufficient evidence to say for certain that the illnesses were or were not related to the vaccine,” the document said.
The vaccine trials have resumed in Britain, Brazil and South Africa, but not yet in the United States.
AstraZeneca and Oxford University did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
2020-09-17 10:37:54
Pakistan on Thursday reported 545 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 303,634.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,451 cases in AJK, 13,798 in Balochistan, 3,336 in GB, 16,005 in Islamabad, 37,185 in KP, 98,041 in Punjab and 132,818 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 6 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,399.
2020-09-16 22:54:59
South Africa announced more relaxation of coronavirus measures on Wednesday, as President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country will reopen its borders to more countries from October 1.
"We will gradually and cautiously ease restrictions on international travel... allowing travel into and out of South Africa for business, leisure and other travel with effect from the 1st of October 2020," Ramaphosa said in an address to the nation.
"Travel may be restricted to and from certain countries that have high infection rates."
2020-09-16 18:03:12
LONDON: Britain’s record on COVID-19 testing compares well with other European countries and the government is working hard to turn them around even more quickly, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday.
“Most people looking at the record of this country in delivering tests across the nation will see that it actually compares extremely well with any other European country. We’ve done more tests than any other European country,” he told parliament.
2020-09-16 17:50:23
JERUSALEM: Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third holiest site, will be closed from Friday following a spike in coronavirus cases, the authority that administers the city's Muslim holy places announced.
With cases of the virus on the rise in Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Waqf authority held an emergency meeting with health officials.
Waqf members decided to "suspend the entry of worshippers starting from Friday afternoon (September 18) for a period of three weeks".
"We hope that citizens will understand this procedure, in order to preserve their health and wellbeing," Waqf member Hatem Abdel Qader told AFP.
The closure coincides with a three-week lockdown to be imposed by Israel, which controls the entrances of the compound.
The call to prayer will continue to ring out across Jerusalem's Old City, Qader said, while Waqf employees will be allowed to pray at the site.
2020-09-16 17:30:09
United Airlines said on Wednesday it would add an antimicrobial coating to the airline's safety and cleaning procedures to protect against the novel coronavirus.
The US carrier said it is currently applying the coating each week on more than 30 aircraft and expects to add this latest measure to its entire fleet before the end of the year.
2020-09-16 17:00:04
LONDON: Curfews could be imposed in London to fight a second COVID-19 wave, the Evening Standard reported on Wednesday, citing the director of the London public health unit.
“It might be local curfews so you’re not out drinking until the wee hours of the morning,” Kevin Fenton, London director of Public Health England, was quoted as saying.
2020-09-16 16:30:32
MADRID: The Madrid region, one of the worst hit in Spain, is to introduce targeted lockdowns and other restrictions on movement on Friday in areas with high COVID-19 cases, local authorities said on Wednesday.
Madrid accounts for around one-third of active coronavirus cases in Spain, with a higher incidence in high-density and low-income neighbourhoods, mainly in the south of the city.
“We are taking measures but it is not enough ... Nothing will work if we are not responsible,” Antonio Zapatero, head of COVID-19 response in Madrid, told reporters.
“There has been a relaxation of behaviour that we cannot afford.” He said people were organizing parties, drinking in the street and not respecting quarantine rules.
He did not give details of the measures to be announced on Friday, but said the health department was considering locking down areas with the highest incidence of the virus.
2020-09-16 16:00:15
LONDON: Britain will do whatever it takes to get the COVID testing system working properly, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said on Wednesday.
“We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure we have that capacity,” he told BBC TV. “We know where the pressure points are, we are piloting new walk-in test centres.
“Yes the work is huge but there is a big determination within government and from everyone involved to improve this and minimise disruption.”
2020-09-16 15:30:28
MOSCOW: Russia’s sovereign wealth fund has agreed a deal to sell 100 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik-V, to a major listed pharmaceutical company in India, a source close to the deal said on Wednesday.
Clinical trials of the Russian vaccine in India are expected to follow and to be held jointly with this firm, the source said. Both the trials and supply deal depend on domestic regulatory approval.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) has already inked vaccine supply deals with Kazakhstan, Brazil and Mexico and has reached a manufacturing partnership agreement with India to produce 300 million doses of the Sputnik-V vaccine there.
RDIF will announce the name of the Indian firm later on Wednesday, the source said.
Russia has billed Sputnik-V as the first vaccine against coronavirus to be registered in the world. Large-scale trials, known as Phase III, involving at least 40,000 people, were launched in Russia on Aug. 26 but have yet to be completed.
2020-09-16 15:01:32
MUMBAI/BENGALURU: Serum Institute of India has received Indian regulatory approval to resume local clinical trials of AstraZeneca’s potential COVID-19 vaccine, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The approval came from the Drugs Controller General of India, the source said.
AstraZeneca has resumed British clinical trials of the vaccine — one of the most advanced in development for COVID-19 — after they were paused earlier this month following a serious side effect in a trial participant.
Trials have also resumed in Brazil and South Africa.
The trial remains on hold in the United States, the US Food and Drug Administration’s top official confirmed on Tuesday.
2020-09-16 14:18:05
Sindh Government has decided to close down the field isolation centres at Expo Centre and PAF Museum Karachi which were established in the wake of COVID-19 emergency situation, reported Radio Pakistan.
This decision was taken during a meeting of Coronavirus Emergency Fund chaired by the Sindh Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah in Karachi.
Addressing the meeting Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah said that now the number of coronavirus patients has decreased and there is enough space available in the hospitals across the province to keep these patients.
2020-09-16 13:16:57
SYDNEY/MELBOURNE: Australia’s Victoria state on Wednesday said the daily rise in infections in its coronavirus hot spot of Melbourne has eased further, putting it on course to relax an extended hard lockdown in the city by the end of the month.
Average cases over the last two weeks in Melbourne, the state’s largest city, fell below 50, health authorities said, the benchmark the state set to start easing curbs.
Construction sites, manufacturing plants, warehouses and childcare facilities can reopen, allowing more than 100,000 workers to return to their jobs, if the 14-day rolling average is under 50 cases as of Sept. 28.
However, people will still be limited to moving around in a 5 kilometre (3 mile) radius around home and only allowed outside for two hours a day for exercise, with a curfew from 9 pm to 5 am.
“We have to see this through. We absolutely do. Because if we get ourselves in a situation where frustration gets the better of us...then we can open, but we won’t stay open for very long,” Victoria State Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters.
The state has set a much tougher target of a 14-day average of five cases for lifting the nightly curfew and reopening more businesses in Melbourne from Oct 26.
2020-09-16 13:03:13
SYDNEY: Air New Zealand Ltd said on Wednesday it aims to cut up to 385 more cabin crew jobs due to the lack of long-haul international flying, which would take its COVID-19 related job losses to around 37% of its workforce.
The percentage figure is higher than the cuts to nearly 30% of jobs at Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd and around 20% at Singapore Airlines Ltd.
Air New Zealand said in a statement it would need fewer cabin crew due to the decline in demand on North American routes, which had led it to reduce return flights to Los Angeles to three a week from daily and convert San Francisco flights to cargo only.
“In the foreseeable future, we have around 385 more widebody cabin crew in the business than we have work for,” an airline spokeswoman said. “Any decision we make will be made in consultation with our people and the unions, with redundancies as the last resort.”
2020-09-16 12:40:41
RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil on Tuesday registered 1,113 new coronavirus deaths, the health ministry said, the highest number since Sept 2.
Deaths now total 133,119. Cases rose by 36,653 to 4,382,263.
2020-09-16 12:40:20
The education ministers of Sindh and Punjab on Wednesday expressed satisfaction on the implementation of COVID-19 safety protocols at the educational institutions.
They were talking to Geo Pakistan today and shared their observations after the reopening of educational institutions across the country which welcomed students after more than six months.
Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani said he visited 15 schools and colleges in the city and reviewed the steps taken by the management of private and government-run institutions and found the measures satisfactory.
He, however, said that there was a need to take extra steps in order to improve implementation of SOPs in colleges.
Ghani vowed to take strict action against the school where a student had died after falling from the staircase if negligence on part of the management was found.
Meanwhile, Punjab Education Minister Murad Raas said all schools in the province are following the guidelines issued by the government.
Raas said that the action is being taken against schools where SOPs are not implemented.
Read more here.
2020-09-16 12:00:18
BENGALURU: India’s coronavirus cases surged past 5 million on Wednesday with a single-day jump of 90,123 infections in the last 24 hours, data from the federal health ministry showed.
India is only the second country in the world to cross the grim milestone of 5 million cumulative cases, after the United States.
The death toll from COVID-19 is now at 82,066, the ministry said, with 1290 fatalities recorded in the last 24 hours.
2020-09-16 11:33:08
Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmoon on Wednesday shared a video made by his ministry for schools that have started reopening.
The video acts as guide for schools to follow during COVID-19.
2020-09-16 11:15:00
SYDNEY: The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has introduced us to the term "herd immunity", beaming hope that the phenomenon can help slow or even end the outbreak.
Herd immunity refers to a large portion of a community developing a degree of immunity to a virus, thereby reducing person-to-person spread. As a result, the whole community gains protection, not just those who are immune.
Read more here to find out herd immunity.
2020-09-16 11:00:07
PHILADELPHIA: Despite cautionary notes sounded by some US public health officials about that accelerated timeline, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said a vaccine against the deadly coronavirus could be three or four weeks away,
Trump, speaking at a town hall hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia, defended his handling of the coronavirus crisis, and said a vaccine could be ready for distribution before the US presidential election on November 3.
"We're very close to having a vaccine," he said. "If you want to know the truth, the previous administration would have taken perhaps years to have a vaccine because of the FDA and all the approvals. And we're within weeks of getting it... Could be three weeks, four weeks."
Read more here.
2020-09-16 10:25:19
Pakistan on Thursday reported 665 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 303,089.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,441 cases in AJK, 13,690 in Balochistan, 3,297 in GB, 15,984 in Islamabad, 37,140 in KP, 97,946 in Punjab and 132,591 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 4 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,393.
2020-09-15 23:59:39
LONDON: Britain's health minister said that the government was working around the clock to fix what he said were "operational challenges" in the novel coronavirus testing system caused by a surge in demand.
"There are operational challenges and we're working hard to fix them," Health Secretary Matt Hancock told parliament. "As we expand capacity further we are working round the clock to ensure everyone who needs a test can get a test."
Hancock said there had been a sharp rise in people coming forward for tests, including those who were not eligible.
"As demand has risen, we are having to prioritise once again. I do not shirk from decisions about prioritisation. They are not always comfortable but they are important," he said. "I do not rule out further steps to make sure our tests are used according to those priorities."
2020-09-15 23:47:52
STOCKHOLM: Sweden will lift its ban on visits to care homes, the government said, as a result of a falling rate of new coronavirus infections and better routines to prevent new cases in old people's homes.
A surge in cases and deaths in care homes forced the government to introduce the ban at the start of April and the current restriction lasts until the end of September.
"The national ban on visits to care homes has for many elderly and their relatives, been one of the most difficult restrictions during the pandemic," Health and Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren told reporters.
"The decrease in new infections across the population, the measures that have already been taken in care homes, together with new guidelines from authorities mean that the ban can be lifted."
While many countries in Europe are seeing a rise in new cases, the number of new infections and deaths has been steady at a low level in Sweden in recent weeks.
2020-09-15 23:36:06
BRASILIA: Brazil's health regulator Anvisa authorised AstraZeneca PLC to test its COVID-19 vaccine on an addition 5,000 volunteers in the country for clinical Phase III trials, the Sao Paulo university running the test said.
The increase, in addition to 5,000 volunteers already recruited and being vaccinated, will help provide more solid results on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, the Federal University of Sao Paulo said in a statement. It said volunteers over the age of 18 are being sought in the states of Rio Grande do Norte and Rio Grande do Sul, at opposite ends of Brazil.
2020-09-15 23:23:49
HARARE: Zimbabwe lifted a ban on inter-city travel and extended working hours as the government gradually re-opens the economy by easing COVID-19 restrictions.
The Southern African nation went into a lockdown in March and President Emmerson Mnangagwa later imposed an overnight curfew to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
The pandemic has battered Zimbabwe, which was already reeling under hyperinflation and a looming scarcity of basic amenities, before the pandemic struck. The country of 14 million people has seen 7,531 cases and 224 deaths so far, according to a Reuters tally.
The cabinet approved the "resumption of inter-city travel to facilitate the smooth movement of examination candidates, citizens and visitors," Information minister Monica Mutsvangwa told reporters.
The government has extended business hours by two hours to close at 6.30 p.m., she said.
"Despite the measures taken today to further open up the economy, the threat from COVID-19 is still real and citizens should continue to religiously adhere to the COVID-19 containment measures," said Mutsvangwa.
2020-09-15 23:01:57
OTTAWA: Canada's health minister said she could not rule out another full lockdown if needed amid a surge in new COVID-19 cases, but added Ottawa was significantly more prepared to manage the virus than during the first wave.
Patty Hajdu's comments followed a pledge she made late Monday to take a "surgical approach" to tackling outbreaks. Canada reported 1,351 new cases on Sept. 14, the highest single daily addition since May 1, amid school reopenings and flare-ups tied to group gatherings.
"We see those numbers rising, but a full economic shutdown would be very difficult for this country. Not to rule it out, because ... listen we will protect the health of Canadians and we will do what it takes," Hajdu told reporters on Tuesday.
Canada's 10 provinces are responsible for introducing health restrictions, though the federal government could use emergency laws to impose a lockdown if deemed necessary.
The premier of Quebec, the second most populous province, said he was very worried by the surge, which he blamed on social gatherings.
"Some people will die ... there is also the risk that we may have to shut down some businesses," Francois Legault told a briefing on Tuesday.
2020-09-15 22:38:55
PARIS: France's health authorities reported 7,852 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, rising from 6,158 new infections on Monday.
In a daily website update, the French health ministry also reported the number of arrivals in hospital for COVID-19 over the last seven days had risen to 2,713 compared with 2,561 recorded on Monday.
These included 479 admissions to intensive care units over the past seven days, up from 448 in Monday's count, it said.
The number of people in France who have died from COVID-19 infections rose by 37 to 30,999. The cumulative number of cases now totals 395,104.
2020-09-15 22:03:39
DUBLIN: Ireland reported 357 new cases of COVID-19, the highest daily figure since mid-May and up from an average of 203 cases per day over the previous seven days, health department data showed.
2020-09-15 22:23:58
DUBLIN: Ireland's parliament has been suspended for a week and cabinet ministers have been told to self-isolate after Health Minister Stephen Donnelly fell ill, the speaker of parliament said on Tuesday.
"Arising out of events today, the cabinet must now self- isolate, therefore the possibility of proceeding with business does not arise and the house stands adjourned until Tuesday next or until I am directed (by the prime minister)", the speaker of the lower house, Seán Ó Fearghaíl, told parliament.
2020-09-15 21:36:10
WASHINGTON: US factory production increased for a fourth straight month in August, but the recovery is showing signs of strain, suggesting business investment in equipment could remain depressed through the end of the year as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on.
The report from the Federal Reserve on Tuesday added to data on the labor market that has indicated a stall in overall economic activity because of the coronavirus’ persistence and fading fiscal stimulus. The ebbing economic recovery, accompanied by firming inflation, is likely to dominate the US central bank’s two-day policy meeting, which started on Tuesday.
“It is looking increasingly like the recovery in factory production will stall in coming months if no one from Washington is going to ride to the rescue with another pandemic stimulus package,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York. “The coronavirus has made the public cautious and this uncertainty is keeping factories from opening back up completely.”
Manufacturing production rose 1.0% last month after advancing 3.9% in July. The Fed noted that “the gains for most manufacturing industries have gradually slowed since June.” Factory output remains 6.7% below its February level.
Government financial aid to businesses and the unemployed has virtually dried up, and talks on another package are at an impasse. At least 29.6 million people were on unemployment benefits in August. Government money was credited for the sharp rebound in economic activity. Cheaper crude oil because of the pandemic is also hurting oilfield services and equipment firms.
2020-09-15 21:52:37
DUBLIN: Ireland set out new rules for its quarantine-free travel “green list”, saying visitors from a list of countries with a COVID-19 infection rate of under 25 cases per 100,000 over the past two weeks can skip a 14-day quarantine.
Previously the green list was made up of countries with lower infection rates than Ireland, but the government stopped updating the list when cases in Ireland surged to 45 cases per 100,000 over the past 14 days.
Prime Minister Micheal Martin said that the government would soon publish a new list and would then adopt a coordinated EU system of travel restrictions that he said would be approved an EU General Affairs Council meeting on Oct. 13.
2020-09-15 21:21:14
FRANKFURT/BERLIN: German airline Lufthansa could cut its fleet by 130 planes in response to the coronavirus crisis, two people familiar with the matter said.
Such a cut would mean a reduction of at least 30 planes more than the recently bailed-out airline had planned previously.
Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr informed staff on Monday that the airline's management would make a decision about the move in the coming week, the people told Reuters.
The number of workers at Lufthansa, which stood at around 140,000 before the coronavirus crisis hit the airline sector, is likely to have to be reduced by a fifth, the sources said.
This would equate to 28,000 positions, slightly more than the 26,000 under previous plans to weather the crisis.
2020-09-15 20:59:12
MADRID: News of serious side effects in one participant of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine trial led some volunteers in Johnson & Johnson's vaccine trial in Spain to drop out, its lead investigator told Reuters.
Still, the trial had sufficient reserve volunteers to carry on as normal, lead investigator Alberto Borobia said.
"Many have called to ask us some more detail about the risk of the vaccine, whether what happened with that vaccine had anything to do with the one we are studying, these types of questions," Borobia said in the interview. He did not say how many people had dropped out.
This highlights the challenge for drugmakers in trialling potential vaccines to control the pandemic in enormous public scrutiny. Drugmakers often pause trials while testing drugs but they do not typically disclose that.
AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine trial was placed on hold globally on Sept.6 after a serious side effect was reported in a trial participant in the UK.
Trials restarted in Britain and Brazil on Monday with the go-ahead from British regulators, but remain on hold in the United States.
2020-09-15 20:46:21
WASHINGTON: US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that lawmakers are committed to reaching a deal on sending economic aid to those hurt by the coronavirus pandemic, despite the failure of Republicans and Democrats to find a compromise for many weeks.
"I just got off a call with my colleagues. We are committed to staying here until we have an agreement - an agreement that meets the needs of the American people. We're optimistic that the White House, at least, will understand that we have to do some things," Pelosi, a Democrat, said in a CNBC interview, adding that the disagreements are on how to "crush the virus."
2020-09-15 19:37:42
YANGON: Myanmar reported 307 new cases of COVID-19, its highest daily toll since the start of the pandemic in March, as the country battles a second wave of infections.
The health ministry did not say immediately where the new cases were found. Most recent infections have been in the commercial city Yangon and in Sittwe, capital of conflict-torn Rakhine state.
Myanmar has so far reported a total 3,502 COVID-19 cases and 35 deaths. Infections have quadrupled over the last month after the coronavirus resurfaced in the western state of Rakhine, following weeks without a confirmed domestic case.
2020-09-15 19:55:01
LONDON: The United Kingdom recorded 3,105 new positive cases of COVID-19, compared with 2,621 the day before, official statistics showed.
2020-09-15 20:04:04
JOHANNESBURG: AstraZeneca has resumed COVID-19 vaccine trials in South Africa, more than a week after tests were paused due to serious side effects in a participant in Britain, an official at the country's Department of Health told Reuters.
The move, confirmed to Reuters by director of affordable medicines in the health department, Khadija Jamaloodien, comes after the British drugmaker on Saturday got the go-ahead to restart trials in the UK, prompting Brazil to follow suit.
Tests remain on hold in the United States pending an investigation and the Serum Institute of India said it would restart its trials once it had permission from the Drugs Controller General of India.
2020-09-15 20:21:25
BRASILIA: Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro said he was scrapping plans to launch a new social welfare program called Renda Brasil and will keep the Bolsa Familia conditional cash transfer program begun by previous leftist governments.
The rebranded welfare proposal was aimed at boosting popular support needed for a re-election bid in 2022, but Bolsonaro was unable to agree on funding with Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, who is battling to control Brazil's budget deficit.
"It is forbidden to talk about Renda Brasil in my government until 2022. We will continue with Bolsa Familia and that's it," the president said in a video posted on his social media accounts.
Bolsonaro pledged never to cut welfare payments for retirees or disabled people, a measure proposed by Guedes' team as a way of funding the new Renda Brasil program.
Bolsa Familia, the successful flagship safety-net program of former Workers Party President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, will be kept in place for now, Bolsonaro said.
Disagreement with Guedes on the funding of Renda Brasil meant that the plan floated by Bolsonaro was not included in the 2021 budget proposal sent to Congress last month.
2020-09-15 19:20:43
Advisor for Commerce, Textile, Industry and Production, and Investment of Pakistan said thatthe federal cabinet had lifted the ban on export of tyvek suits, the last of the banned PPE items.
2020-09-15 18:59:33
LONDON: Britain's testing system for COVID-19 was creaking as a bottleneck prevented people including medics from getting a test in a potential threat to key health services, with the government saying it may take weeks to resolve the problem.
In an attempt to slow one of the highest coronavirus death tolls in the West, Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised in May to create a "world beating" system to test and trace people exposed to the virus.
Phil Sands, a medical engineer, who builds and repairs medical equipment at University College Hospital in London, said he has been off work for the last two days after one of his daughters developed a cold over the weekend.
Sands said he has tried more than 50 times to log on to the government's website to book a test, but each time it either said there are none available or the system crashes.
"It is frustrating that I can’t work, I have no symptoms, there is nothing with me, but following the guidelines I have to stay home until I can prove that I don't have COVID-19 or the (quarantine) time has passed," he told Reuters.
2020-09-15 18:45:05
AMSTERDAM: The Dutch government will maintain heavy spending in an effort to counter the effects of the coronavirus pandemic despite a rapid deterioration of the state finances, its draft budget for 2021 showed.
The budget deficit is set to balloon to 7% of gross domestic product this year and 5.5% in 2021, while national debt is expected to hit 62% of GDP next year, as support for workers and companies struck by the pandemic is extended well into 2021.
"In these insecure times, the government chooses not to cut spending but to invest in job security, social safety nets and a stronger economy," King Willem-Alexander said in his annual speech presenting the government's new budget.
The Dutch economy is expected to shrink by an unprecedented 5% this year before rebounding by 3.5% in 2021, said the government's main economic policy adviser, the CPB.
After years of austerity, the Dutch government had achieved a budget surplus of almost 2% last year and had brought down its debt to 49% of GDP.
But confidence in the economy has eroded quickly in recent months, and a national poll published last Thursday showed more than half of respondents expected the economic downturn to worsen in the coming year.
2020-09-15 18:22:03
2020-09-15 18:00:38
Punjab Education Minister Dr Murad Raas visited public and private schools to monitor if the SOPs are being implemented in the educational institutes.
"Minister for School Education visiting Public and Private schools to monitor the implementation of SOPs/Guidelines re. Safe Re-opening of Schools. Monitoring teams of SED are also on ground to ensure compliance of all SOPs issued by the department, tweeted the Punjab education department along with a video of the minister making the visits.
2020-09-15 17:46:00
STOCKHOLM: Sweden will lift its ban on visits to care homes, the government said on Tuesday, as a result of a falling rate of new coronavirus infections and better routines to prevent new cases in old people’s homes.
A surge in cases and deaths in care homes forced the government to introduce the ban at the start of April and the current restriction lasts until the end of September.
“The national ban on visits to care homes has for many elderly and their relatives, been one of the most difficult restrictions during the pandemic,” Health and Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren told reporters.
“The decrease in new infections across the population, the measures that have already been taken in care homes, together with new guidelines from authorities mean that the ban can be lifted.”
While many countries in Europe are seeing a rise in new cases, the number of new infections and deaths has been steady at a low level in Sweden in recent weeks.
However, the country has recorded far more deaths since the start of the outbreak — around 5,850 — in terms of its population than its Nordic neighbours. Many of the dead were residents in care homes.
2020-09-15 17:30:28
The National Institute of Health on Tuesday held a training session of trainers for hospital management on COVID-19 in Mirpur, Muzafarabad Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
2020-09-15 17:15:37
KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah announced on Tuesday that three more patients died due to the coronavirus and 341 new cases were reported in the province.
CM Shah said that 13,642 people were tested out which 341 were positive, taking the provincial tally to 132,591. He added that COVID-19 claimed three more lives overnight lifting the death toll to 2,448.
The CM also shared that 101 more patients recovered taking the total recovery to 127,727.
2020-09-15 17:02:31
2020-09-15 16:49:54
GENEVA: A World Health Organization official on Tuesday said that the decision by AstraZeneca to pause global trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine after an unexplained illness showed the firm was prioritising safety.
“This is what we want to see with trials, it is a well-run trial. Safety is always critical, it is crucial and they have looked at that in an appropriate manner,” Margaret Harris told journalists in Geneva.
Asked to react to experimental COVID-19 vaccine use in China and Russia, she said: “The WHO would like to see vaccines go head to head so we can have clear information and to see these results against each other.”
2020-09-15 16:33:26
BERLIN: Germany will not take risky shortcuts when developing a vaccine against COVID-19, Research Minister Anja Karliczek said on Tuesday.
“Even when the world is waiting for a vaccine — we won’t take risky short-cuts here,” Karliczek told a news conference in Berlin
“We will not deviate from this line in Germany or in Europe. And I also believe that all countries should proceed in this way globally.”
She repeated her assertion from July that she does not expect that a vaccine will be broadly available until the middle of 2021.
2020-09-15 16:02:55
SEOUL: South Korea said on Tuesday it plans to spend $146 million to procure coronavirus vaccines, initially aiming to secure a supply for 30 million people, or 60% of its population, as it battles persistent outbreaks of new cases.
The population target is higher than a World Health Organization (WHO) goal for the early purchase of supplies for 20% of the world’s most vulnerable people, and at least 40% agreed by European Union nations, Britain and EU partners for their populations.
While South Korean authorities would like to inoculate the entire population of 52 million, uncertainty around any vaccine’s safety, efficacy and development was limiting investment, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun told a cabinet meeting.
Global vaccine makers are racing to develop an effective vaccine against the virus that has killed more than 925,000 people since it emerged in China late last year.
Chung said the government would negotiate with relevant international organisations and vaccine makers to secure the supply and would buy more as developments unfolded.
2020-09-15 15:37:07
BEIJING: A Chinese border city launched coronavirus tests for tens of thousands of residents on Tuesday, following two imported infections from neighboring Myanmar, barring some people from leaving homes, and ordering vehicles off the streets.
The key transit point of Ruili in southwestern Yunnan province will run tests on its 200,000 residents following Sunday’s reports of the imported cases, although no local transmission of the virus has been reported.
Yunnan’s rugged 4,000-km (2,485-mile) border with Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam makes it tough for authorities to step up surveillance and cut illegal immigration as thousands pour into China, seen as a safe haven in the global pandemic.
“All residents in downtown areas shall be quarantined at home, and are not to enter or leave without special reasons,” the Ruili city government said in a statement on Tuesday.
All businesses were to be shut, except for supermarkets, pharmacies and food markets, it added. It also banned vehicles from the streets for the duration of testing, unless delivering essential items.
Chinese embassy officials in Myanmar have held talks via teleconference with the country’s authorities to beef up joint efforts for disease control and prevention, the embassy said on its website.
Chinese officials have said areas on the Myanmar border should put the fight against the disease on a wartime footing.
2020-09-15 15:00:01
2020-09-15 14:36:53
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's planning minister said Tuesday the government's ability to control the COVID-19 pandemic "early" has benefited the country's economy in terms of growth in the large-scale manufacturing sector.
Minister for Planning, Development, Reforms and Special Initiatives Asad Umar termed the gain as a "dividend of controlling covid early", which paid off Pakistan "on the economic side also, as V shaped recovery gets confirmed".
"Large scale manufacturing numbers for July show more than 9% growth over June and more than 5% growth vs July 2019," Umar said in a Twitter post.
Read more here.
2020-09-15 14:08:24
SYDNEY: Australia’s second-most populous state Victoria, the country’s COVID-19 epicentre, on Tuesday reported zero deaths from the virus in the past 24 hours, a milestone not recorded for two months.
Victoria state said 42 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, a small increase from the figure posted one day earlier and well below the peak of more than 700 infections detected in August.
Victoria last recorded no COVID-19 deaths on July 13.
The result will buoy optimism that a stringent lockdown of nearly 5 million people for nearly seven weeks has curtailed the spread of COVID-19.
Melbourne, Australia’s second most populated city, is on an extended hard lockdown until September 28. But with the steady fall in cases, some restrictions were relaxed from Monday, allowing people to leave their homes for longer periods for exercise and authorities shortened a night curfew.
Victoria, home to one-quarter of Australia’s 26 million population, now accounts for about 75% of the country’s more than 26,700 coronavirus cases and 90% of its 816 deaths.
Queensland state reported one new case on Tuesday, a returned traveller from overseas and in quarantine.
New South Wales state, Australia’s most populous, will report its case numbers later in the day. The virus has been effectively eliminated in all other states and territories.
With dwindling numbers of COVID-19, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has turned to reviving an ailing national economy, unveiling a series of policies to lower the price of gas to fuel a manufacturing recovery.
“We continue to do better than almost every other developed country in the world when it comes to protecting lives and livelihoods,” Morrison said in a speech in Newcastle, 161 km (100 miles) north of Sydney.
“If we are shut, we are not living alongside the virus, the virus is actually keeping us from living.”
2020-09-15 13:44:00
The National Command and Operation Centre shared on Tuesday that a "major educational institution" was sealed in Islamabad after 16 positive cases were reported from it during targeted testing.
"Contact tracing will follow to ensure containment of COVID cases," said the statement.
2020-09-15 13:18:50
Federal health ministry on Tuesday wished parents and children good luck as the schools reopen in the country from today.
2020-09-15 13:12:51
ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health Dr Faisal Sultan affirmed on Monday to ensure timely availability of the coronavirus vaccine – after it is internationally approved and complies with global standards of safety and efficacy.
The health advisor said this while speaking at a national consultation meeting on the COVID-19 vaccine organised by the Health and Population Think Tank (HPTT), Health Services Academy.
Read more here.
2020-09-15 13:00:00
SHANGHAI: Mainland China reported eight new COVID-19 cases on September 14, down from 10 cases a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said in a statement on Tuesday.
The National Health Commission said all new reported cases were imported infections involving travellers from overseas. The commission also reported nine new asymptomatic cases, down from 39 a day earlier.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases now stands at 85,202. The death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
2020-09-15 12:54:11
Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho urged people to keep wearing masks and practice social distancing as the province reported zero deaths from COVID-19 between Sept 13 and Sept 14.
"This was the second time this month that we have had no deaths," said Pechuho.
2020-09-15 12:18:46
Pakistan for more than week now has been reporting COVID-19 deaths in single digits.
Pakistan has not reported COVID-19 deaths in double digits since September 3 to date.
2020-09-15 12:02:14
2020-09-15 11:30:31
RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil registered 15,115 new cases of coronavirus on Monday, totalling 4,345,610, the health ministry said. Deaths rose by 381 to 131,625.
2020-09-15 11:10:42
LONDON: The knock-on effects of the coronavirus pandemic have halted and reversed global health progress, setting it back 25 years and exposing millions to the risk of deadly disease and poverty, a report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation warned on Tuesday.
Because of COVID-19, extreme poverty has increased by 7%, and routine vaccine coverage — a good proxy measure for how health systems are functioning — is dropping to levels last seen in the 1990s, the report said.
“It’s a huge setback,” Bill Gates, co-chair of the Foundation and a leading philanthropic funder of global health and development, told a media briefing on the report’s findings.
The Foundation’s Goalkeepers report, which tracks progress on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of reducing poverty and improving health, found that in the past year, by nearly every indicator, the world has regressed.
Alongside dropping rates of routine immunisation, which the report described as “setting the world back about 25 years in 25 weeks”, rising levels of poverty and economic damage from the pandemic are reinforcing inequalities, it said.
It found that the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women, racial and ethnic minority communities and people living in extreme poverty.
“After 20 consecutive years of declines in extreme poverty, we’ve now seen a reversal,” said Mark Suzman, chief executive of the Gates Foundation, in an interview with Reuters. “We’ve had nearly 40 million people thrown back into extreme poverty. That’s well over a million a week since the virus hit.”
2020-09-15 10:55:17
ISLAMABAD: All the educational institutions including seminaries in the country have reopened from today after a six-month break amid concerns of implementation of COVID-19 safety protocols and fears of a second wave of the virus.
The government had decided to close school, colleges and universities in March in order to curb the spread of coronavirus. Sindh, however, had suspebded educational activities in the province on February 27 after detection of first COVID-19 case in Karachi.
Read more here.
2020-09-15 10:39:10
Pakistan on Thursday reported 404 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 300,267.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,426 cases in AJK, 13,621 in Balochistan, 3,269 in GB, 15,962 in Islamabad, 37,079 in KP, 97,817 in Punjab and 132,250 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 6 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,389.
2020-09-15 10:25:29
BEIJING: Coronavirus vaccines being developed in China may be ready for use by the general public as early as November, an official with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.
China has four COVID-19 vaccines in the final stage of clinical trials. At least three of those have already been offered to essential workers under an emergency use programme launched in July.
Phase 3 clinical trials were proceeding smoothly and the vaccines could be ready for the general public in November or December, CDC chief biosafety expert Guizhen Wu said in an interview with state TV late on Monday.
Wu, who said she has experienced no abnormal symptoms in recent months after taking an experimental vaccine herself in April, did not specify which vaccines she was referring to.
A unit of state pharmaceutical giant China National Pharmaceutical Group and US-listed Sinovac Biotech are developing the three vaccines under the state's emergency use programme. A fourth COVID-19 vaccine being developed by CanSino Biologics was approved for use by the Chinese military in June.
Sinopharm said in July that its vaccine could be ready for public use by the end of this year after the conclusion of Phase 3 trials.
Global vaccine makers are racing to develop an effective vaccine against the virus which has killed more than 925,000 people. Leading Western vaccine makers pledged earlier this month to uphold scientific study standards and reject any political pressure to rush the process.
2020-09-14 18:39:01
2020-09-14 18:02:10
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah announced on Monday that 166 new cases of coronavirus were reported in the last 24 hours with no deaths overnight, said a statement.
The CM said that so far 1,145,262 samples have been tested out which 132,250 have tested positive since the start of the pandemic.
According to the CM, currently 2,179 patients are under treatment out of which 163 are said to be critical
2020-09-14 17:47:22
KARACHI: As the educational institutions start reopening around the country from tomorrow, a healthcare startup based in Karachi has found 13% positive cases among the school staff in eight private schools of the metropolis and has termed the situation “very alarming”.
“We carried out tests of over 2,000 people in eight schools in the past two weeks out of which 13% were positive,” founder and CEO of Find My Doctor Saad Siddiqui told Geo.tv. He also shared that they will be carrying out 1,500 more tests this week in different private schools of the city.
For the sceptics about the result, the CEO said even if they have included false positives in their results, they would still get 10% positive cases, which, according to him was “risky”.
Siddiqui, while talking about the kit used for testing, said that they used the COVID-19 rapid test kit to trace the positive employees at schools.
Read more here.
2020-09-14 17:41:46
MILAN: Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi left hospital on Monday after recovering from the new coronavirus, saying he had survived “the most dangerous challenge” of his life.
“I said to myself, with satisfaction, ‘You have got away with it again’,” a smiling Berlusconi told reporters at the gates of Milan’s San Raffaele hospital, where he was admitted on Sept. 3, after testing positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The 83-year-old media tycoon developed double pneumonia and was considered a high-risk patient because of his age and underlying health conditions, including heart problems.
Berlusconi, dressed in a dark suit and wearing a shirt and tie, said the viral load from his swab was “the highest among the tens of thousands” of patients treated at the hospital.
He is believed to have caught the virus while on holiday in his villa on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, and he urged people to take the ailment seriously.
“Each one of us is exposed to the risk of infecting others. I repeat my call for maximum responsibility from everyone,” Berlusconi said.
He is expected to remain in isolation for several more days in his villa in Arcore, outside Milan.
2020-09-14 17:28:18
Eli Lilly and Co said on Monday its rheumatoid arthritis drug baricitinib shortened the time taken to recover from COVID-19 in hospitalized patients when taken in combination with Gilead Sciences Inc’s antiviral remdesivir.
Lilly said the drug, which is branded as Olumiant, in combination remdesivir showed a roughly one-day reduction in median recovery time versus patients treated with remdesivir alone.
Based on the results from the trial, which tested more than 1,000 patients, Lilly said it plans to discuss the potential for an emergency use authorization (EUA) with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Remdesivir is at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19 after the drug was granted an EUA in May after trial data showed the antiviral drug helped shorten hospital recovery time.
The drug, which has been licensed by Lilly from Incyte Corp, could potentially help suppress a potentially lethal immune response to COVID-19 called “cytokine storm”.
2020-09-14 17:12:01
BRUSSELS: Six EU countries have begun testing technology to link national virus-tracing apps across Europe as a second wave of COVID-19 infections threatens the continent.
The Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Latvia have begun testing the new links between their tracing app servers, the European Commission said.
The new system "will ensure that apps will work seamlessly also across borders," the EU executive said.
"Users will only need to install one app and will still be able to report a positive infection test or receive an alert, even if they travel abroad," it said.
Brussels is trying to coordinate between the 27 EU capitals as they seek ways to trace victims of the coronavirus epidemic and better control new outbreaks.
But many member states went ahead with their own contact-tracing mobile apps that are not fully compatible with each other, hampering efforts to monitor the epidemic's spread.
Countries like France and Hungary that built a centralised pool of data will likely not be able to take part in the EU system.
But apps like those used in 18 EU members including Germany, Poland and Italy can be involved.
2020-09-14 16:51:34
NEW DELHI: India’s parliament met for the first time in six months on Monday, as novel coronavirus cases across the country rose by more than 90,000 in the space of a day and the total number of infections neared 5 million.
Members, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, wore masks and sat in seats enclosed by glass partitions designed to prevent the spread of the virus.
The assembly’s hours have been truncated; the lower house will sit in the morning and the upper house in the afternoon.
“There can be no laxity when there is no medicine. We hope that a vaccine is available soon, whichever part of the world it comes from,” Modi said in remarks to the media before the session began.
Federal Home Minister Amit Shah, Modi’s close aide, was absent from Monday’s session. He spent most of August in hospital after contracting the virus, and returned to hospital over the weekend for what hospital authorities said was a check-up.
Infections in India have been rising faster than in any other country and it lags only the United States in total infections.
On Monday, the health ministry said it had recorded 92,071 new cases of the coronavirus in the previous 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 4.85 million.
Deaths have been relatively low compared with the number of infections, but the rate is rising. More than 1,100 people died of COVID-19 in the previous 24 hours, the ministry said, taking the total number of deaths to 79,722.
2020-09-14 16:13:22
The World Health Organization expects Europe to see a rise in the daily number of COVID-19 deaths in October and November, the head of the body's European branch told AFP.
Cases in Europe have risen sharply in recent weeks, especially in Spain and France. More than 51,000 new cases were reported on Friday alone in the 55 countries monitored by WHO Europe, which is more than the highest peak in April, according to the organisation.
"It's going to get tougher. In October, November, we are going to see more mortality," WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said.
Even though the continent is experiencing a surge of cases, the number of deaths has remained relatively stable. But the resurgence is expected to lead to an increase in daily fatalities, the WHO said.
"It's a moment where countries don't want to hear this bad news, and I understand," Kluge told AFP in an interview, stressing that he wanted to send the "positive message" that the pandemic "is going to finish, at one moment or another."
The WHO Europe's over 50 member states are holding an online meeting on Monday and Tuesday to discuss their response to the new coronavirus and agree on their overall five-year strategy.
However Kluge, based in Copenhagen, issued a warning to those who believe that the development of a vaccine will end the pandemic.
2020-09-14 15:40:09
The National Institute of Health shared on Monday that it "successfully" trained the healthcare staff of the Sindh Infectious Disease Hospital and Research Center on infection prevention and control of COVID 19.
"National Institute of Health successfully trained healthcare staff including paramedics and housekeeping staff on infection prevention and control of COVID 19. Participants were from Sindh Infectious Disease Hospital and Research Center," tweeted NIH.
2020-09-14 14:56:03
Shares of AstraZeneca rose 1% to 8,516 pence on Monday after the British drugmaker received the go-ahead from safety watchdogs over the weekend to resume clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in the United Kingdom.
The resumption of the trials for the vaccine, one of the most advanced in development and regarded by governments and financial markets as one of the best bets to tackle the health crisis in the months ahead, buoyed stock markets around the world.
The late-stage trials of the vaccine were suspended last week after an illness in a study participant, casting doubts on an early rollout and sending the London-listed company’s shares lower.
Global trials of the vaccine had also been paused following the UK suspension. Brazil has approved restarting the trials and the Serum Institute of India is awaiting permission from the Drugs Controller General of India.
Cambridge-based AstraZeneca’s shares had risen about 11% this year up to their Friday close, giving the pharmaceutical giant a market capitalisation of 111 billion pounds ($142 billion).
2020-09-14 13:21:50
JERUSALEM: Israel will enter a three-week nationwide lockdown starting on Friday to contain the spread of the coronavirus after a second- wave surge of new cases, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
During the lockdown, which comes during the Jewish high-holiday season, Israelis will have to stay within 500 metres of their houses, but can travel to workplaces that will be allowed to operate on a limited basis.
Schools and shopping malls will be closed but supermarkets and pharmacies will remain open. The public sector will operate with fewer staff, but non-governmental offices and businesses will not have to close, as long as they do not accept customers.
Indoor gatherings are limited to 10 people and no more than 20 people outdoors.
"I know those measures will exact a heavy price on us all," Netanyahu said in a televised address. "This is not the kind of holiday we are used to. And we certainly won't be able to celebrate with our extended families."
The Finance Ministry said the lockdown will cost the economy, which slipped into a recession in the wake of the virus, an estimated 6.5 billion shekels ($1.88 billion).
2020-09-14 13:00:40
National Institute of Health continued its COVID-19 awareness and prevention campaign in the federal capital's schools.
The NIH also said that it carried out randomised testing along with the awareness sessions.
2020-09-14 12:45:09
The World Health Organization reported a record one-day increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 307,930 in 24 hours.
The biggest increases were from India, the United States and Brazil, according to the agency’s website. Deaths rose by 5,537 to a total of 917,417.
India reported 94,372 new cases, followed by the United States with 45,523 new infections and Brazil with 43,718.
Both the United States and India each reported over 1,000 new deaths and Brazil reported 874 lives lost in the past 24 hours.
The previous WHO record for new cases was 306,857 on Sept. 6. The agency reported a record 12,430 deaths on April 17.
India leads the world in new cases reported each day and set a global record last week with 97,570 cases reported in a single day, according to a Reuters tally.
In some parts of India, medical oxygen is becoming hard to find as total cases exceed 4.75 million. Only the United States has recorded more cases at 6.5 million.
COVID-19 infections are still rising in 58 countries, including surges in Argentina, Indonesia, Morocco, Spain and Ukraine, according to a Reuters analysis.
New cases are falling in the United States and are down about 44% from a peak of more than 77,000 new cases reported on July 16. Cases in Brazil are also trending downward.
2020-09-14 12:21:25
Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal urged the people not to take the recent coronavirus "spike" lightly with the weather change and prevalence of common flu.
"Corona spike be taken seriously.. the weather is changing and common flu has increased too... we may not take it very casually as its been witnessed," tweeted CM Kamal.
2020-09-14 12:03:56
LONDON: A collective failure by political leaders to heed warnings and prepare for an infectious disease pandemic has transformed “a world at risk” to a “world in disorder”, according to a report on international epidemic preparedness.
“Financial and political investments in preparedness have been insufficient, and we are all paying the price,” said the report by The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB).
“It is not as if the world has lacked the opportunity to take these steps,” it added. “There have been numerous calls for action ... over the last decade, yet none has generated the changes needed.”
The GPMB, co-convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), is chaired by former WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland, who now also chairs an independent watchdog that monitors the WHO.
The board’s 2019 report, released a few months before the novel coronavirus emerged in China, said there was a real threat of “a rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen” and warned such an event could kill millions and wreak havoc on the global economy.
This year’s report — entitled “A World in Disorder” — said world leaders had never before “been so clearly forewarned of the dangers of a devastating pandemic”, and yet they had failed to take adequate action.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed “a collective failure to take pandemic prevention, preparedness and response seriously and prioritize it accordingly”, it said.
“Pathogens thrive in disruption and disorder. COVID-19 has proven the point.”
2020-09-14 11:48:36
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday welcomed the return of children to schools as education institutions reopened today across the country.
Taking to Twitter, PM Imran said, “Today we welcome millions of children back to school. It is our priority & collective responsibility to ensure that every child can go to school safely to learn”.
The premier underlined that the government has worked to ensure that school operations are aligned with public health safety rules on COVID-19.
Read more here.
2020-09-14 11:34:56
SYDNEY: Australia reported its lowest one-day rise in novel coronavirus infections in nearly three months on Monday as authorities began to ease restrictions aimed at slowing its spread.
Thirty-nine people were found to be infected with the virus in the past 24 hours, the lowest one-day increase in new cases since June 26, when 37 infections were detected.
With dwindling numbers of new infections, the epicentre of Australia’s latest outbreak, Victoria state, has begun easing restrictions, allowing people to leave their homes for longer periods for exercise and shortening a curfew at night.
Still, frustrations are high, with hundreds of people taking part in protests on the weekend against the weeks-long coronavirus lockdown. Authorities urged patience.
Brett Sutton, Victoria’s chief health officer, likened the cautious easing of restrictions to “baby steps”.
“We can’t have short-term memories on this,” Sutton told reporters in Melbourne, referring to the virus.
“It starts with small numbers and it explodes.”
Australia’s second largest city was placed under strict lockdown in early August after more than 700 cases were detected in Victoria state in a single day.
In Queensland state, which has effectively eradicated the virus, authorities are under pressure as they decline to open its borders to other areas that are also free of infections.
With families separated, even for funerals, the state’s chief health officer is under police guard after getting death threats.
Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, was the only other to report any new cases with four in the past 24 hours. All but one of the cases was in quarantine after returning from overseas, though officials warned against complacency.
Australia has recorded a total of 27,000 novel coronavirus infections and 817 deaths.
2020-09-14 11:05:39
WELLINGTON: New Zealand will lift coronavirus restrictions across the country on September 21, except in its biggest city, Auckland, which is the epicentre of a second wave of infections, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday.
Ardern said Auckland's restrictions would be reviewed next Monday. She also said the government would immediately ease all physical distancing requirements on planes, a boost for Air New Zealand, AIR.NZ which has had to limit passengers on its planes for months.
“I know this change will make a real difference to Air New Zealand and those parts of the country seeking increased numbers of visitors,” Ardern said in a news conference in the South Island city of Dunedin, where she is on an election campaign trip.
Masks will still be mandatory on all public transport, she said.
New Zealand, a nation of five million, had appeared to have succeeded in halting community transmission of COVID-19, but a fresh outbreak in Auckland in August prompted the government to place the city back in lockdown.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who is facing a general election on October 17, scaled back the restrictions this month, but the city is still under alert level 2.5, meaning social gatherings of more than 10 people are not allowed.
Ardern cabinet will review the current rules for Auckland at its meeting on September 21, with a view to increase gathering limits if the situation stays stable.
That change, if it comes, will take effect on September 23, she said.
New Zealand on Monday reported one new case of coronavirus in the community, taking the total number of cases to 1,447 and 24 deaths.
2020-09-14 10:36:29
Pakistan on Thursday reported 548new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 300,267.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,421 cases in AJK, 13,595 in Balochistan, 3,227 in GB, 15,941 in Islamabad, 36,992 in KP, 97,760 in Punjab and 132,084 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 4 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,383.
2020-09-13 23:53:36
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 6,467,481 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 40,423 cases from its previous count, and said the number of deaths had risen by 807 to 193,195.
The CDC's tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, was of 4pm EDT September 12 versus its previous report a day earlier.
The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
2020-09-13 23:18:12
PARIS: France's health authorities have reported 7,183 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, down from a record 10,561 new infections on Saturday.
In a daily website update, the French health ministry also reported the number of arrivals in hospital for COVID-19 over the past week had risen to 2,464 compared with 2,432 recorded on Saturday.
These included 427 admissions to intensive care units over the past seven days, up from 417 in Saturday's count, it said.
2020-09-13 22:54:55
BRUSSELS: Around 4,000 health workers have demonstrated in Brussels today calling for more spending on the healthcare system in a country that was badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
With political parties in Belgium still struggling to form a permanent government more than a year after a national election, the workers — who wore masks and carried banners with slogans such as "take care of the careworkers" — called on politicians to increase pay and healthcare funding.
The event was organised by health workers group La Santé en Lutte, who demand an end to the "commodification of care" and say the coronavirus crisis has exposed the fragility of Belgium's healthcare system, including a lack of adequate protection for staff and enough testing for the virus.
Belgium has reported 9,923 fatalities from COVID-19, which puts it the third-highest in the world for deaths per 100,000 people - behind the tiny city state of San Marino and Peru. The government has said the high rate is explained by its decision to include in its tally deaths where COVID-19 is only suspected, not confirmed.
2020-09-13 22:39:23
JERUSALEM: Israel's government has approved the imposition of a three-week nationwide lockdown, starting on Friday, to contain the spread of the coronavirus, Israel's Ynet news website and Channel 12 television has reported today.
During the lockdown Israelis will have to stay within 500 metres of their houses, Channel 12 reported. But Israel's Ben Gurion airport will remain open, another TV channel reported.
The new measure was approved after cases of COVID-19 spiked in recent weeks, and amid criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's handling of the virus and the economy.
Netanyahu was expected to give a televised address Sunday night regarding his cabinet's decision.
2020-09-13 21:58:12
2020-09-13 21:11:24
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia will partially lift its suspension of international flights as of September 15 to allow “exceptional categories” of citizens and residents to travel, the state news agency SPA said.
The kingdom will lift all travel restrictions for citizens on January 1, 2021, it said.
2020-09-13 21:36:47
2020-09-13 20:50:32
France has had 10,561 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, health authorities say, a new daily record as the number topped 10,000 for the first time on Saturday.
The latest daily count, surpassing the previous record of 9,843 new infections reported on Thursday, highlights a resurgence of the disease in France.
The rise led the government to outline additional measures on Friday to avert a return to the general lockdown put in place earlier in the year. Prime Minister Jean Castex promised steps to speed up tests and toughen local measures in high-infection zones.
In its daily update, the French health ministry also reported that 772 clusters were being investigated, an increase of 86 in the past 24 hours.
Over the past week, there had been 2,432 arrivals in hospital for COVID-19, including 417 entries into intensive care units, the ministry said.
The death toll since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak this year in French hospitals and nursing homes has reached 30,910, with 17 deaths recorded in the past 24 hours, it added.
2020-09-13 20:25:56
LONDON: The United Kingdom reported 3,330 confirmed new cases of COVID-19, according to government data published, compared with 3,497 a day earlier.
It also reported a further five new deaths from the coronavirus.
Britain is to bring in a new ban on social gatherings on Monday in a bid to curb the increasing rise in infections.
2020-09-13 20:43:31
All NFL players and coaches involved in Sunday games passed tests for COVID-19 and “should be good to go,” pending a health check upon arrival at stadiums, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport tweeted.
The news came days after The Washington Post published an op-ed penned by commissioner Roger Goodell and Dr. Allen Sills, the league’s chief medical officer, that discussed starting the season amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“We have worked with players, teams and medical experts to build a comprehensive game plan. Our hope is that transparency about our operations will contribute knowledge and insights that will aid the country’s pandemic response,” they wrote in the piece, which appeared Thursday before the NFL’s first game of the season.
Still, the acknowledged they don’t expect smooth sailing.
2020-09-13 19:48:29
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said the province reported 204 new coronavirus cases, taking the overall infections to 132,084.
The province also recorded two more death, bumping the death toll to 2,445, he said.
2020-09-13 19:32:39
With millions around the world stuck at home due to the pandemic, "plane cafes" in Thailand are offering customers the chance to pretend they are in the sky — and the idea seems to have taken off.
On board a retired commercial airplane in the coastal city of Pattaya, coffee drinkers make themselves comfy on first-class-style seats and pose for photos by the overhead lockers.
Boarding passes in hand, some "passengers" even opt for a tour of the cockpit.
"With this cafe I can sit in first class and also mess around in the cockpit pretending to be the captain of the plane," 26-year-old Thipsuda Faksaithong told AFP.
2020-09-13 19:18:26
PRAGUE: The Czech Republic reported its biggest one-day increase in new coronavirus infections for a third straight day on Sunday, recording 1,541 cases as the country battles a surge in the virus in recent weeks.
It was the fifth day in a row with new infections above 1,000 for the country of 10.7 million after cases began to accelerate in August. One state health official said a second wave was under way.
Adjusted for population, the country has reported 94 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 14 days, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control data. Only Spain and France have seen a bigger spike in that time.
2020-09-13 18:55:01
MELBOURNE: Authorities in Melbourne arrested more than 70 people for flouting stay-at-home orders to protest against lockdown restrictions Sunday, with some demonstrators clashing with riot police at a market in the city.
About 250 people attended the illegal protest — the second in as many days in the city — promoted by coronavirus conspiracy groups on social media.
The demonstrators ignored official warnings and public health orders to gather at the central Queen Victoria market, calling for an end to a weeks-long lockdown of Australias second-biggest city.
They were met by a heavy police presence, with scuffles breaking out as the riot squad swept through market's fruit and vegetable aisles.
Police arrested 74 people and fined 176, saying in a statement that "many protestors were aggressive and threatened violence towards officers".
Read complete story here.
2020-09-13 18:37:38
TOKYO: Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who is set to become prime minister this week, said there was no limit to the amount of bonds the government can issue to support an economy hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
He also indicated he could look to a third extra budget to fight the downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic if needed, adding the government had enough resources to tap at present.
“Only when we have economic growth can we push through fiscal reform. What’s most important is to create jobs and protect businesses,” Suga said on a television programme.
“I don’t think so,” he said, when asked if there was a limit to bond issuance. “What’s important now is to improve current (economic) conditions,” he added.
2020-09-13 18:00:51
VIENNA: Lufthansa’s Swiss unit could cut up to 15% of its 9,500 jobs if it cannot agree salary cuts with staff as it seeks to meet strict savings targets in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, Swiss weekly Sonntagszeitung said.
“It is our target to get through the crisis with as many employees as possible,” the paper quoted a spokesman for Swiss as saying. “We have to cut costs by around 20%. We are not only focusing on personnel costs, but on every unit of the company.”
There has been a first round of negotiations on temporary adjustments to working conditions and an overhaul of the benefits plan, a spokesman for Swiss union VPOD which represents ground staff told Reuters.
“Swiss has declared that it must achieve 15% cost savings. How this will be achieved is not yet clear,” he said.
2020-09-13 18:17:00
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Iran rose by 2,089 to 402,029, a health ministry spokeswoman told state TV, as the country reported 128 new deaths in the past 24 hours.
Sima Sadat Lari said the official death toll stood at 23,157 in Iran, one of the worst-hit countries in the Middle East.
2020-09-13 17:40:58
AMSTERDAM: Air France-KLM might not survive its current crisis if the airline group cannot lower its costs, Dutch Finance minister Wopke Hoekstra said.
“The survival of Air France-KLM is not a given,” Hoekstra said in an interview on Dutch public television.
“They will have to address their cost base even as things stand now. And suppose this situation lasts until the end of next year, then they will have to cut even deeper.”
Air France-KLM’s immediate future was secured by the French and Dutch governments in July, as they provided a total of 10.4 billion euros ($12.3 billion) in bailout loans and guarantees to help the group survive the disastrous effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on air travel.
In return for the support, Dutch arm KLM has said it would cut another 1,500 jobs, reducing its staff by 20%, while a pay hike agreed for 2020 was frozen by the company.
French arm Air France plans to cut 6,500 jobs, or 16% of its workforce, through 2022.
2020-09-13 16:53:44
FRANKFURT: Euro zone governments must keep spending heavily to aid the bloc’s recovery from its historic pandemic-induced recession, complementing already super-easy monetary policy, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said.
With debt levels blowing past 100% of GDP this year, concerns are rising that politicians will struggle to push through more support and some subsidies, raising the risk that employment and income schemes could abruptly end.
“Confidence in the private sector rests to a very large extent on confidence in fiscal policies,” Lagarde said in a speech. “Continued expansionary fiscal policies are vital to avoid excessive job shedding and support household incomes until the economic recovery is more robust.”
2020-09-13 17:04:47
MUMBAI: India reported 94,372 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, taking total cases past 4.7 million, as infection numbers rose in several states amid a gradual opening up of businesses.
The number of deaths rose to 78,586, with 1,114 new deaths, health ministry data showed.
2020-09-13 17:27:35
DUBLIN: Ireland plans to replace its current system of travel quarantines with the European Union’s proposed coordinated system as soon as it is ready, Prime Minister Micheal Martin told RTE television.
The European Commission earlier this month proposed a common traffic light system for EU member states to coordinate border controls and remedy the current, confusing patchwork of coronavirus restrictions on travellers across Europe.
Ryanair, Ireland’s dominant airline, on Friday called on Martin’s government to commit to implementing the EU plan.
2020-09-13 16:37:32
JAKARTA:"Indonesia reported its sixth consecutive day of over 3,000 new cases of novel coronavirus infection, just as the capital city of Southeast Asia’s most populous country prepares to re-impose social distancing restrictions.
New infections on Sunday reached 3,636 with new deaths at 73, showed data from the health ministry’s website. That brought the total number of infections to 218,382 and deaths to 8,723.
To try and stem the spread of the virus in Jakarta, employees of businesses considered non-essential will be required to work from home from Monday. Certain government workers will be allowed to work from offices.
2020-09-13 16:14:59
JERUSALEM: An Israeli cabinet minister tendered his resignation in protest at a looming coronavirus lockdown that he argued would unfairly impede religious celebrations of Jewish holidays.
The restrictions - the most extensive Israel will have imposed since a lockdown that ran from late March to early May - are expected to go into effect on Friday, the Jewish new year Rosh Hashana, and span into the Yom Kippur fast day on Sept 27.
“This wrongs and scorns hundreds of thousands of citizens,” Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman, who heads an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative coalition, said in his resignation letter.
“Where were you until now? Why have the Jewish holidays become a convenient address for tackling the coronavirus...?”
2020-09-13 04:00:00
MELBOURNE : Police in Australia’s Victoria state arrested 74 people and fined 176 for breaching public health orders as scattered protests against a weeks-long coronavirus lockdown continued for a second straight day across Melbourne.
A riot squad marched through fruit and vegetable stalls at the city’s landmark, the Queen Victoria market, before the scuffling with protesters erupted, with some people throwing fruit at the police, television footage showed.
Victoria Police said in a statement that there were between 200 and 250 people involved in the protests, but there were no immediately known injuries to the police.
“It was extremely disappointing to see people not just protesting but putting the lives of other Victorians at risk despite all the warnings,” the police said in an e-mailed statement.
The protests came after 14 people were arrested at small dispersed rallies on Saturday and as Victoria is set to ease its lockdown restrictions very slightly as of Monday, as the number of new daily coronavirus cases continued to fall in the country’s hotspot.
2020-09-13 03:30:00
PRAGUE: The Czech Republic reported its biggest single-day increase in new coronavirus infections for a third straight day on Sunday, recording 1,541 cases as the country battles a surge in the virus in recent weeks.
It was the fifth day in a row with new infections above 1,000 for the country of 10.7 million after cases began to accelerate in August.
Adjusted for population, the country has reported 94 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 14 days, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control data. Only Spain and France have seen a bigger spike at that time.
The Czech Republic came through an initial outbreak of the coronavirus that began in March relatively well compared to western European neighbours and has kept the death toll lower than most peers.
2020-09-13 03:10:00
A pungent smell hangs in the early morning air as researchers collect samples of sewage dumped into a river in Nepal — a cost-effective way to trace the coronavirus spread for the resource-strapped Himalayan nation.
As the number of cases continues to rise worldwide, more countries are analysing wastewater for traces of the infectious disease to quickly identify which communities are experiencing an outbreak.
For impoverished Nepal, still recovering from a major 2015 earthquake and with its economy reeling from the pandemic's shattering impact on its crucial tourism sector, the sewage tests could become an affordable weapon in the virus fight.
"When you are limited in the resources that are available for testing and screening, this is a quick and easy way — and a cheaper way — of finding hotspots," said Dibesh Karmacharya, who co-founded Center for Molecular Dynamics Nepal, the NGO leading the research.
"Then you can go and do extensive screening there."
With some cases asymptomatic, the community-wide nature of the testing, rather than at an individual level, could help pick up the disease in places where it may not appear to be present.
The World Health Organisation's Nepal representative, Jos Vandelaer, described it as an "early warning system".
In other countries where testing has been done, positive samples were found three to seven days before coronavirus symptoms were visible, he said.
2020-09-13 02:50:00
SEOUL: South Korea on Sunday eased its tough social distancing policy for the next two weeks in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, with new daily novel coronavirus cases hovering stubbornly within triple digits.
The government has lifted a ban on onsite dining after 9 p.m. though still requires restaurants and cafes to restrict seating and record patrons’ names and contact details.
While leisure facilities such as gyms and internet cafes are also allowed to reopen, under the so-called phase two restrictions, indoor gatherings are limited to 50 people and outdoor gatherings to 100, while spectators are banned from sporting events.
Health authorities said the easing would contribute toward a reopening of the economy, before returning to tougher guidelines for two weeks again from Sept. 28 during the Chuseok holiday.
2020-09-13 02:30:00
MISRATA, LIBYA: As the pandemic started to rage through Libya last month, medics working in the war-ravaged country’s few functioning hospitals faced their nightmare scenario - a surge in cases and dwindling resources.
Hamza Abdulrahman Jelwal, 35, a supervising nurse at a quarantine centre in the coastal city of Misrata, has not seen his family since Libya’s lockdown began in March. He has also not been paid.
He tested positive for the coronavirus in August and was quarantined in the same facility. As soon as he got better, he got up and went back to work.
“We work 12 hours a day. It is exhausting for medical staff because there is no rest,” he said.
His experience underscores the high stakes and growing challenges for Libyan medics as the number of confirmed cases spikes. Figures have climbed rapidly from a few hundred last month to almost 20,000 now.
2020-09-12 23:59:30
YANGON: Some residents of Myanmar's biggest city used pieces of wood and corrugated iron to make barricades around their neighbourhoods late, trying to keep out COVID-19 as the country grapples with a second wave of infections.
The Southeast Asian nation has reported a total of 2,625 coronavirus cases and 15 deaths. The number of infections has quadrupled since mid-August, when the virus resurfaced in the western state of Rakhine after weeks without a domestic case.
Many of the recent cases have been in Yangon, the commercial capital and biggest city. Residents started erecting the makeshift roadblocks to stop people freely entering and leaving their districts.
Last week, government authorities issued stay-at-home orders for residents, and airlines and buses suspended services in and out of the city.
Aung Zaw Min, the chief of a district in Kyimyidaing township who was guarding one of the barriers, said residents had been careless about keeping the virus at bay after the previously low rate of infections.
"Now we have to realise we cannot underestimate the mass infection caused by Sittwe," he said, referring to Rakhine's state capital, where many recent cases were detected.
The barricades were built without permission from local authorities, who swiftly ordered the removal of the biggest barriers, though some were still in place on Saturday.
2020-09-12 23:45:35
PARIS: France has had 10,561 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, health authorities said on Saturday, a new daily record as the number topped 10,000 for the first time.
The latest daily count, surpassing the previous record of 9,843 new infections reported on Thursday, highlights a resurgence of the disease in France.
The rise led the government to outline additional measures on Friday to avert a return to the general lockdown put in place earlier in the year. Prime Minister Jean Castex promised steps to speed up tests and toughen local measures in high-infection zones.
In its daily update, the French health ministry also reported that 772 clusters were being investigated, an increase of 86 in the past 24 hours.
2020-09-12 23:33:11
MEXICO CITY: Mexico’s labor market added 92,390 formal tax-paying jobs in August, data from social security institute IMSS showed, as the country’s economy claws back jobs lost from the coronavirus spurred slowdown.
The Mexican economy has been especially hard hit by the pandemic, with health authorities confirming on Friday that the official death toll has surpassed 70,000, the fourth highest number of deaths globally.
The economy is seen contracting by up to 13% this year, the deepest downturn since the 1930s-era Great Depression.
Despite the modest August job gains, following several months of losses, the labor market has bled 833,100 formal jobs so far this year, according to IMSS data.
2020-09-12 23:22:08
MOSCOW: Russia reported 5,488 new coronavirus cases, bringing the tally to 1,057,362, the fourth largest in the world.
Authorities said 119 people had died in the past 24 hours, pushing official total fatalities to 18,484.
2020-09-12 22:50:42
BARCELONA: Princess Leonor, the heir to the Spanish throne, has gone into quarantine after a classmate at her school tested positive for COVID-19, the royal household said.
The 14-year-old daughter of King Felipe will be tested for coronavirus like other pupils in her class at the Santa María de los Rosales school in Madrid.
The king and Queen Letizia will continue their royal duties for the moment, a spokesman for the royal household said, as Spain struggles to control a surge in coronavirus cases.
2020-09-12 22:31:21
MANILA: The Philippines' health ministry reported 186 more deaths related to the novel coronavirus, a new daily record and the highest single-day fatality rate recorded so far in Southeast Asia.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total deaths have increased to 4,292, while confirmed cases rose by 4,935 to 257,863. The Philippines has the most COVID-19 infections in the region.
2020-09-12 22:08:38
JAKARTA: Indonesia reported 3,806 new coronavirus infections and 106 new deaths, data from the Health Ministry website showed.
Saturday marked the fifth consecutive day that Indonesia registered daily infections of more than 3,000, bringing the total number of cases to 214,746.
Total COVID-19 deaths rose to 8,650, the highest in Southeast Asia
2020-09-12 21:40:02
Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE on Saturday proposed to the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand their Phase 3 pivotal COVID-19 vaccine trial to about 44,000 participants while increasing the diversity of the trial population.
The initial target figure for the trial was up to 30,000 participants, which the companies said they expect to reach by next week.
The proposed expansion would also allow the companies to enroll people as young as 16 and people with chronic, stable HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B, they added.
Drugmakers racing to develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine pledged in July to ensure their larger clinical trials would include diverse sets of volunteers.
“Diversity in clinical trials is a priority for Pfizer and is critical given that COVID-19 disproportionately impacts communities of color in the U.S.,” Pfizer’s Chief Business Officer John Young said in a US congressional hearing in July.
2020-09-12 21:10:27
PARIS: French Prime Minister Jean Castex has tested negative for COVID-19 again and will come out of self-isolation, a week after being in contact with someone who had a positive result, his office said.
Castex had already tested negative for COVID-19 since sharing a car last weekend with the director of the Tour de France cycle race, who later tested positive.
France is grappling with a resurgence in coronavirus cases, and on Friday the prime minister outlined plans to speed up testing and toughen measures in certain cities as the government seeks to avoid a repeat of the spring's nationwide lockdown.
2020-09-12 20:50:52
BUDAPEST: Hungary's daily new coronavirus cases reached a record 916, by far the highest since the onset of the pandemic as schools reopened and strict measures that helped contain the pandemic in the spring have yet to be reinstated.
Even as the number of cases rise, the number of people dying from the disease has remained fairly low, with only two elderly patients with chronic pre-existing conditions dying from complications of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours.
The government's coronavirus task force said active cases reached 7,134, but Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who attended a session of the task force early on Saturday, said schools can stay open and life must go on.
"The health care sector is prepared to handle the next wave of the pandemic with more than 10,000 free beds," he said, adding that citizens must respect the lenient rules that are in place, such as mandatory mask wearing in public transit.
"We can operate schools," Orban said in a video on his Facebook page. "From October 1st we will impose mandatory temperature checks at school gates as well."
2020-09-12 20:35:06
LONDON: The United Kingdom reported 3,497 confirmed new cases of COVID-19, according to government data published, compared with 3,539 a day earlier.
It also reported a further nine new deaths from the coronavirus.
Friday's figure was the largest number of daily cases to be reported since mid-May, and Britain is to bring in a new ban on social gatherings on Monday in a bid to curb the increasing rise in infections.
2020-09-12 19:22:40
PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 80 new infections, taking the total to 36,942.
One more death was reported taking the death toll 1,257.
2020-09-12 19:00:08
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Oxygen supply has grown scarce in some parts of India hard hit by coronavirus, hospital and local government officials said, as India reported a record daily jump in cases for a second consecutive day, logging 97,570 new infections.
In some parts of the state, medical oxygen was becoming hard to find. Dr Amit Thadhani, Medical Director of Niramaya Hospitals in Panvel, a suburb of India’s financial capital Mumbai, said the shortage in his area was acute.
“The problem is that the filling stations are themselves not getting supply of oxygen from the manufacturers. Supplies are extremely limited,” Thadhani said.
“If we ask for 50 cylinders, we may get about 5 to 7.”
An official from the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation in a neighbouring suburb said they had received reports from multiple hospitals about dwindling oxygen supplies and made requests to state authorities. “Demand has risen in last few day because of rising cases,” the official said.
The Corporation’s commissioner Abhijit Bangar was not immediately available for comment.
Government officials and experts said the unabated rise in cases in Maharashtra and other parts of the country were likely a result of economic activity restarting, local festivals and lockdown fatigue.
“I am so disappointed with the pandemic situation in India,” Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, who has been tracking India’s COVID situation closely, said on Twitter.
2020-09-12 20:08:32
LONDON: British clinical trials for the AstraZeneca and Oxford University coronavirus vaccine have resumed following confirmation by the Medicines Health Regulatory Authority (MHRA) that it was safe to do so, the company said.
The late-stage trials of the experimental vaccine, one of the most advanced in development, were suspended this week after an illness in a study subject in Britain.
“The standard review process triggered a voluntary pause to vaccination across all global trials to allow review of safety data by independent committees, and international regulators,” AstraZeneca said.
2020-09-12 18:45:24
Iran’s coronavirus death toll rose by 116 to 23,029, a health ministry spokeswoman told state TV.
The total number of identified cases spiked by 2,139 in the last 24 hours to 399,940 in one of the Middle East’s worst-hit countries, Sima Sadat Lari was quoted as saying.
2020-09-12 18:00:45
DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates health ministry on Saturday reported 1,007 new coronavirus cases, its highest daily number of infections since the start of the pandemic.
The Gulf Arab state has seen cases surge over the past six weeks from 164 cases on August 3, a trend government officials have blamed on people not adhering to social distancing measures.
Case numbers had been generally falling after peaking at 994 on May 22, though there had been some periodic rises before the recent surge.
The UAE has recorded 78,849 infections and 399 deaths from COVID-19 so far. The government does not disclose where in the country of seven emirates the infections or deaths occurred. About 10 million people, mostly foreigners, live in the UAE.
2020-09-12 18:27:00
BUDAPEST: When he saw a sea of face masks around Budapest, Hungarian orchestra conductor Ivan Fischer had an idea; turn an unpopular pandemic necessity into a tool of music appreciation.
Fischer’s music-enhancing face mask has two plastic cups shaped liked life-size palms attached to the mask’s strings and designed to fit around the wearer’s ears, allowing concertgoers in the age of coronavirus to enjoy improved acoustics.
“I got to this idea that it should look like a hand because when we put our hands here...” he said, cupping his palms around his ears, “... we always understand the other person easier, we hear the consonants, and the music sounds much more beautiful.”
Speaking as the orchestra rehearsed for an evening of Beethoven and Strauss, Fischer - the chief of the Budapest Festival Orchestra - said his masks help to emulate church acoustics, with warmer undertones and clearer, sharper contours.
2020-09-12 17:40:57
MEXICO CITY: The confirmed coronavirus death toll in Mexico on Friday topped 70,000 after the government reported more than 500 new deaths, a grim milestone for a country among those most affected by the pandemic.
Making matters worse, excess mortality data from mid-March through early August indicates that the total number of deaths beyond the official count is likely tens of thousands higher.
Health officials late on Friday reported 534 new deaths linked to the virus, bringing the total to 70,183. Another 5,935 cases bring the total to 658,299.
The spread of the virus has ravaged an already ailing economy, which is now seen contracting by up to 13% this year, the deepest recession since the 1930s-era Great Depression.
Based on official data, Mexico is the nation with the fourth highest number of deaths globally, and the 13th highest on a per capita basis, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
2020-09-12 17:16:39
District health officer on Saturday warned of a possible second wave of coronavirus after 30 new cases were reported in the federal capital.
2020-09-12 16:32:35
TAIPEI: Taiwan will sign up to the “COVAX” global vaccine allocation plan to ensure it will be able to access a COVID-19 vaccine when one becomes available, the island’s health minister said on Saturday.
Chen Shih-chung told reporters in Taipei that the government had engaged lawyers to enter discussions about signing onto the scheme.
Taiwan is also researching its own vaccine, a process Chen said was going smoothly.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the GAVI vaccine alliance are leading the COVAX facility, aimed at helping buy and fairly distribute vaccination shots against the novel coronavirus around the world.
But some countries which have secured their own supplies through bilateral deals, including the United States, have said they will not join COVAX.
Taiwan has reported fewer than 500 coronavirus cases, including seven deaths, thanks to early and effective prevention steps such as entry bans for most foreign visitors and tough quarantine requirements for those who do come to the island.
While Taiwan is not a WHO member due to pressure from China, which considers the island its own territory, the WHO has said it is committed to providing Taiwan with the help it needs during the pandemic.
The GAVI alliance is a public-private partnership backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the WHO, the World Bank, UNICEF and others.
2020-09-12 16:16:32
Punjab Health Minister Yasmin Rashid warned that the opening of educational institutes does not mean that coronavirus has ended.
The minister, in a tweet, urged schools, students parents to follow the SOPs and maintain safety and protection at all times. She urged them to continue wearing mask, santize hands and maintain social distance.
2020-09-12 16:00:16
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has established special committees at district level across the province to monitor implementation of SOPs against COVID-19 ahead of the opening of educational institutions from next week, reported Radio Pakistan.
According to a notification, the special committees will consist of six members which will monitor implementation of SOPs of COVID-19 in schools.
Similarly, the committees will also observe social distancing, hand washing facilities and availability of soaps in schools.
2020-09-12 15:50:38
Sindh Government Spokesperson Murtaza Wahab appealed to the provincial and federal government to "reconsider" its decision of reopening of schools
"As a parent, I would request the Education Department, Government of Sindh as well as the Federal Govt to reconsider the decision of opening up the schools especially the primary sections. The situation is still not certain & children may not be able to follow the SOPs," tweeted Wahab.
2020-09-12 15:35:08
Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar announced on Saturday that trials for a Chinese developed vaccine will beigin in Pakistan in "10 days".
"Pakistan will be participating in phase 3 trials of a chinese developed vaccine for corona virus. The trials in Pakistan will inshallah start in about 10 days time," tweeted Umar.
2020-09-12 15:15:00
Deputy commissioner Islamabad shared on Saturday that the assistant commissioners were ensuring that schools are implementing the SOPs within schools ahead of their reopening on September 15.
"Opening up of schools is going to be challenging for us but In Sha Allah will be able to mitigate any spread. Request for everyone to be extremely vigilant," tweeted the DC.
2020-09-12 14:53:24
BARCELONA: Princess Leonor, the heir to the Spanish throne, has gone into quarantine after a classmate at her school tested positive for COVID-19, the royal household said on Saturday.
The 14-year-old daughter of King Felipe will be tested for coronavirus like other pupils in her class at the Santa María de los Rosales school in Madrid.
The king and Queen Letizia will continue their royal duties for the moment, a spokesman for the royal household said, as Spain struggles to control a surge in coronavirus cases.
Eight million Spanish children returned to school last week but some have closed or classes been sent home after pupils tested positive for COVID-19, while authorities in Galicia delayed the start of term by a week for pupils aged 14 to 18.
Spain reported 4,708 new coronavirus infections on Friday, bringing its cumulative total to 566,326, the highest in western Europe, as its total COVID-19 death toll rose to 29,747.
2020-09-12 14:20:51
MELBOURNE: Large crowds of people rallied in Auckland on Saturday against the government’s social distancing restrictions imposed on the country’s largest city after an outbreak of the novel coronavirus last month.
Local television footage showed tightly packed crowds, with many people not wearing masks, with estimates of the attendance varying in reports between a thousand and a few thousand people.
“We are all here today because we believe we need to stand up for our rights,” the public Television New Zealand cited Jami-Lee Ross, the leader of the Advance New Zealand party, one of the organisers of the protest, as saying.
“We’re all here today because we believe it’s time to stand up and say, ‘We need to get our rights and freedoms back’.”
There were no immediate reports of arrests.
2020-09-12 13:08:32
MELBOURNE: Protesters in Melbourne defied a coronavirus lockdown for the second straight weekend on Saturday, prompting 14 arrests and 51 infringement notices for breaching public health orders, as new infections in the Australian hotspot continued to fall.
Around 100 people protested in various locations in Melbourne, Victoria Police said, after about 200 people gathered the weekend before.
“Despite all the warnings, it was disappointing to see individuals turn out to protest in the city today, putting the lives of Victorians at risk,” the police said in an e-mailed statement.
New coronavirus infections cases in Victoria, the country’s second-most populous state, continued to fall from a peak of more than 700 in a single day in early August. It reported 37 new cases on Saturday, its lowest since late June.
It also reported six new deaths related to the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, bringing its total to 716, or more than 90% of the 803 deaths in Australia.
The state, home to one-quarter of Australia’s 25 million people, now accounts for about 75% of the country’s more than 26,500 COVID-19 cases. Its capital, Melbourne, has been under a strict lockdown for weeks.
The lockdown, which was initially to end on Sunday, has been extended for another two weeks.
2020-09-12 12:32:18
NEW DELHI: India reported a record daily jump in coronavirus cases for a second consecutive day, logging 97,570 new infections on Saturday, data from the federal health ministry showed.
With total cases of more than 4.65 million, India is the world’s second worst affected country, trailing only the United States, which has more than 6.4 million cases.
But the growth in infections in India is faster than anywhere else in the world, as cases surge through urban and rural areas.
The western state of Maharashtra has been particularly hard-hit, with total confirmed cases breaching the 1 million mark late on Friday, making it the first state or province anywhere in the world to cross that mark.
If the state, which is India’s richest, were a country, it would rival Russia for the fourth highest number of coronavirus cases globally.
Government officials and experts said the unabated rise in cases in Maharashtra and other parts of the country were likely a result of economic activity re-starting, local festivals and lockdown fatigue.
“I am so disappointed with the pandemic situation in India,” Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, who has been tracking India’s COVID situation closely, said on Twitter.
“It is getting worse and worse each week but a large part of the nation seems to have made the choice to ignore this crisis,” she said.
2020-09-12 12:01:46
TORONTO: Canada reported zero COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours for the first time since March 15, according to public health agency data released late on Friday.
Canada’s death toll from the pandemic stood at 9,163 as of Sept. 11, the same as the number of the deaths reported on September 10, government data showed. The number of positive cases rose by 702 to 135,626 on September 11 from the previous day, the data showed.
With most provinces easing lockdown restrictions and as schools reopen for in-person classes, Canada’s infections have seen a mild pick-up in recent days. Authorities have been on high alert to avoid fresh outbreaks, and provinces including British Columbia have imposed new curbs to tackle the spread of the virus.
Still, Canada’s situation looks relatively healthy compared to its southern neighbor. Across the border in the United States, more than 190,000 people have died from the pandemic and more than 6.38 million people have been infected.
Canada’s experience dealing with SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, helped health officials be better prepared. SARS killed 44 people in Canada, the only country outside Asia to report deaths from that outbreak in 2002-2003.
2020-09-12 11:35:28
Deputy Commissioner Islamabad Hamza Shafqat warned the residents of the federal capital that COVID-19 cases were rising.
The DC informed the people that public gatherings will be discouraged and urged everyone to "cooperate". He also said that experts have told the authorities that weather change was having an "adverse effect" of COVID-19
2020-09-12 11:12:41
BERLIN: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,630 to 258,480, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday.
The death toll rose by five to 9,347, the tally showed.
2020-09-12 10:33:31
Pakistan on Thursday reported 548new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 300,267.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,389 cases in AJK, 13,401 in Balochistan, 3,164 in GB, 15,862 in Islamabad, 36,862 in KP, 97,602 in Punjab and 131,675 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 3 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,372.
2020-09-11 23:10:53
WASHINGTON: The coronavirus pandemic has pushed the US federal budget deficit above $3 trillion for the first 11 months of fiscal 2020, more than doubling the previous full-year record, the U.S. Treasury said.
The budget deficit for August was $200 billion, matching the deficit in August 2019 and lower than the $245 billion forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll. However, $55 billion worth of benefit payments were shifted into July because August started on a weekend.
The $3.007 trillion year-to-date deficit was nearly triple the $1.067 trillion deficit for the comparable year-ago period, spurred by a massive increase in government spending to battle the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
The previous 11-month deficit record was $1.37 trillion, reported by the Treasury in August 2009 during the financial crisis and recession. The full fiscal 2009 deficit totaled $1.4 trillion.
2020-09-11 23:30:04
WASHINGTON: Top government infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci said he disagreed with President Donald Trump’s assessment the United States has “rounded the corner” on the coronavirus pandemic, saying the statistics are disturbing.
Fauci, the outspoken director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the United States was starting the flu season with a high baseline of around 40,000 new cases a day and deaths are averaging around 1,000 daily.
Trump, who has admitted playing down the severity of the virus since it emerged early this presidential election year, said on Thursday he believed the United States was “rounding the corner” on the crisis.
“I have to disagree with that, because, if you look at the thing that you just mentioned, the statistics ... they are disturbing,” Fauci said on MSNBC.
Fauci said he hoped the country did not see a spike in cases after the Labor Day weekend as it did after other long holiday weekends since May.
2020-09-11 23:59:19
WASHINGTON: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 6,381,013 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 37,451 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 1,091 to 191,353.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19.
2020-09-11 22:59:00
BRASILIA/MOSCOW: The Brazilian state of Bahia has signed an agreement to conduct Phase III clinical trials of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 and plans to buy 50 million doses to market in Brazil, officials have said.
The Russian vaccine is being developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Research Institute and marketed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which last month also entered an agreement with the Brazilian state of Paraná to test and produce the vaccine.
Russia will sell up to 50 million doses of the Sputnik-V vaccine to Bahia state, RDIF said in a statement.
Governor Rui Costa said an agreement was signed this week to undertake the trials and Bahia will receive an initial 500 doses as soon as Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa approves the protocol for testing.
2020-09-11 22:44:35
VILNIUS: The first European pandemic “travel bubble”, created in May by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, burst, as Latvia said it was mandating a 14-day quarantine on everyone arriving from Estonia.
Estonia has had 21 novel coronavirus infections per 100,000 population over the previous two weeks, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, passing the 16 threshold set by Latvia for mandatory quarantine.
Latvia, which has one of the lowest levels of infection in the European Union, has rejected the European Commission’s recommendation to raise threshold for quarantine to 25 new cases per 100,000 population over two weeks.
“This is a decision I am not ready for ... I do not think that society is ready to allow more people to enter Latvia,” Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said on Friday, according to LETA agency.
2020-09-11 22:28:10
The Balochistan health department reported 119 new coronavirus cases, taking the overall infections tally to 13,401.
2020-09-11 22:18:53
MADRID: Spain reported 4,708 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, bringing its cumulative total to 566,326 — the highest in western Europe.
Spain has been regularly revising up its daily tallies and while Friday’s figure was a new record for initial infection reports since the end of its strict lockdown in June, it was below recent peaks seen in those revised tallies.
A week ago, for example, the initially reported figure was 4,500 but that was later revised up to more than 11,000.
Spain also registered six new deaths on Friday, bringing its total COVID-19 death toll to 29,747.
2020-09-11 21:31:21
LONDON: The United Kingdom reported 3,539 confirmed new cases of COVID-19, according to government data published on Friday, compared with 2,919 a day earlier.
Six new deaths were also recorded.
Figures on Friday showed the spread of the coronavirus was accelerating across all parts of England with one study suggesting cases were doubling each week. A new ban on social gatherings comes into effect on Monday in a bid to curb the rise.
2020-09-11 21:49:05
AMSTERDAM: Dutch health authorities reported 1,270 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the Netherlands, close to previous record highs set in early April.
The Dutch government publishes daily case data on a website.
Regional health authorities said on Wednesday the country’s testing capacity is stretched to its limits and the National Institute for Health (RIVM) said in an update on Tuesday that cases had risen by 50% from the week before.
2020-09-11 21:19:34
LONDON: The spread of the coronavirus is accelerating across all parts of England with one study suggesting cases were doubling each week, fuelling concerns further public restrictions could be needed just days before a ban on gatherings comes into effect.
On Friday, the government brought in new limits on households meeting up in Birmingham, England’s second biggest city, and some surrounding areas, where the number of COVID-19 infections has been increasing significantly.
It is the latest area of England to introduce stricter lockdown measures, with the rising number of cases prompting Prime Minister Boris Johnson to announce earlier this week there would new restrictions on social gatherings, saying there was a clear need to act.
From next Monday, gatherings of more than six people will be banned in England, after the number of new coronavirus infections across the United Kingdom edged up to around 3,000 a day, from less than a third of that number a month ago.
2020-09-11 20:56:49
Sindh reported 271 new infections and one death, raising the overall cases to 131,675 and death toll to2,440, officials confirmed.
2020-09-11 20:45:33
ZURICH: Hundreds of workers demonstrated at Zurich’s airport to protest against wage cuts amid the coronavirus-linked travel slump.
The VPOD public-sector workers union and other labour groups called the action to demand employers negotiate fairly at a time when public money is helping to prop up hard-hit airlines and associated businesses.
The aviation sector employs around 190,000 people in Switzerland, VPOD says.
2020-09-11 21:06:08
PARIS: French Prime Minister Jean Castex said his government was not planning a new, nationwide lockdown to contain a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, but would instead implement a raft of less radical measures.
He said these would include fast-tracked COVID testing for priority cases, and giving local authorities the power to make some businesses reduce opening hours.
The French government is under renewed pressure to curb the spread of the disease as the country faces a sharp spike of infections since the beginning of the month.
Health authorities reported 9,843 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Thursday, beating by almost 900 a previous record of 8,975, set six days earlier.
2020-09-11 20:26:43
MANILA: Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law a 165.5 billion pesos ($3.4 billion) emergency relief measure to expand healthcare and help businesses after the coronavirus pandemic plunged the economy into recession.
Under the new law, the government could inject 40 billion pesos in additional capital into state-owned banks so they can lend more to small businesses.
The Philippines, which was among Asia’s fastest growing economies before the pandemic, is in recession for the first time in 29 years after a lengthy lockdown shuttered businesses and sapped domestic demand.
As the country grapples with the highest number of COVID-19 infections in Southeast Asia, the law also allots 25.5 billion pesos to hire nurses and doctors, purchase protective gear, and build medical facilities.
2020-09-11 20:06:24
LONDON: Authorities in Britain's second city of Birmingham announced new coronavirus restrictions Friday as the nation's reproduction rate, or R number, exceeded 1.0 for the first time since March.
From next Tuesday, more than 1.1 million people are banned from mixing with any other household, after the rate of infection rose from 30 to 75 cases per 100,000 people over a week in August.
"I know this is difficult, particularly when we have got used to seeing friends and family," said Ian Ward, leader of Birmingham City Council.
"But it is vital we stick to these rules and protect each other given the sudden rise in infection rate."
He added: "The virus has not gone away, it has not weakened, in fact it is relentless and we must be relentless in our efforts to control the spread."
2020-09-11 19:44:31
WASHINGTON: The United States saw inflation climb slightly above expectations in August, driven by sales of used cars and recreation equipment as well as gasoline prices' continued recovery, government data showed Friday.
The Labor Department's consumer price index (CPI) fell into the negative for three months starting in March as the coronavirus pandemic slammed the global economy, causing a huge drop in crude prices amid oversupply concerns as well as sharp pullbacks in consumer spending in some areas.
However, recent months have seen the indicator recover, and August's month-on-month growth of 0.4 percent, seasonally adjusted, was down from the 0.6 percent rise seen in July.
Used cars and trucks drove the growth with a 5.4 percent gain, while gasoline rose 2.0 percent, though that was less than its 5.6 percent rise in July.
2020-09-11 19:35:17
PARIS: Prime Minister Jean Castex will announce new measures against the spread of COVID-19 in France, after a surge in infections to record levels sparked concerns of a second wave of the epidemic.
Castex will make a statement at 1500 GMT following a meeting of experts and ministers, his office said.
Officials have been increasingly concerned about the high number of infections in France, even if the death toll and admissions to intensive care are way below the highs recorded in March and April.
However there is no indication Castex will announce restrictions as severe as the nationwide two-month lockdown that France experienced from March to May, at the peak of the epidemic.
The health ministry said 9,843 new coronavirus infections were recorded on Thursday, the highest number since large-scale testing began.
France´s total death toll from the pandemic now stands at 30,813.
2020-09-11 19:05:51
LONDON: The spread of the coronavirus is speeding up across all parts of England with the number of cases doubling about every week, according to a new study by Imperial College, which will fuel concerns that renewed restrictions may need be introduced.
The infection rate is rising in all age groups apart from those over 65, and cases are no longer clustering in hospitals or care homes as they were a few months ago, suggesting the virus is circulating more widely, Imperial found.
The study, which involved testing more than 150,000 volunteers, found 13 per 10,000 people were infected in England in the two weeks ending Sept. 7, compared to 4 per 10,000 in the same period ending August 11.
The signs of a new wave of infections emerged as people returned to offices and schools after the summer vacation.
2020-09-11 18:40:21
SEOUL: South Korea posted a slight rise in daily coronavirus cases on Friday, as infections eased from a church and political rally that sparked a second wave of outbreaks and new cases emerged in religious and sporting groups and a university hospital.
The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 176 new cases as of midnight Thursday, which brought the total infections to 21,919, with 350 deaths.
A fresh wave of infections erupted at a church whose members attended a large protest in downtown Seoul last month have driven the daily tally to its peak in months at 441.
The numbers had steadily dropped to the low 100s since the government imposed unprecedented social distancing curbs late last month, with less than 10 cases traced to the church and the protesters over the past several days.
But this week showed a resurge as smaller clusters continued to emerge from other religious gatherings, offices and medical facilities in the Seoul metropolitan area. More than 72% of the 161 locally transmitted cases from Thursday were reported from the regions.
2020-09-11 18:52:51
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Millions of coronavirus cases may have gone undetected in India earlier this year, a research paper estimates, saying that for every confirmed case in May, there were 82 to 130 infections that were not recorded.
The paper, published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research, estimated that the country had nearly 6.5 million cases as early as May. Total cases stood at more than 180,000 in late May, according to the health ministry.
The research paper, written by government scientists and other experts and published late on Thursday, said large numbers of cases could have gone under the radar earlier this year because testing was limited to symptomatic patients or states had varying testing rates.
During the period they surveyed, India was conducting around 100,000 tests per day. It has ramped that up to a current more than 1.1 million tests a day.
To determine the range of infections, the researchers looked at the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on May 3 and May 11, and compared it with the number of individuals who displayed coronavirus antibodies during a nationwide survey conducted in May and early June.
2020-09-11 18:23:58
ZURICH: Switzerland has added the regions around Paris and Vienna to its list here of areas with high COVID-19 infection rates requiring incoming travellers to enter quarantine for 10 days.
The government said it was adopting a regional approach for neighbouring countries for the measures which will come into force on Sept. 14. As part of this, it named Ile de France and the Vienna region in its list of areas with a raised risk of infection. Border regions are unaffected by the measures.
2020-09-11 17:51:33
PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 39 new infections, taking the total to 36,862.
"No new deaths were reported, keeping the tally at 1,256," the department said.
2020-09-11 17:24:53
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 910,300 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT on Friday.
At least 28,221,090 cases have been registered. Of these, at least 18,803,600 are now considered recovered.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
On Thursday, 5,862 new deaths and 302,322 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were India with 1,209 new deaths, followed by United States with 1,000 and Brazil with 983.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 191,802 deaths from 6,397,547 cases. At least 2,403,511 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 129,522 deaths from 4,238,446 cases, India with 76,271 deaths from 4,562,414 cases, Mexico with 69,649 deaths from 652,364 cases, and United Kingdom with 41,608 deaths from 358,138 cases.
2020-09-11 17:00:02
NEW DELHI: Bollywood star Akshay Kumar has revealed that he drinks cow urine daily, joining a growing number of Indians who believe it has medicinal benefits — including against the coronavirus.
Kumar is considered a staunch supporter of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party, which has earmarked millions of dollars for research into products using bovine waste to cure diseases like diabetes and cancer.
There is no comprehensive scientific evidence of any medicinal benefits, but several politicians from Modi's right-wing ruling party have advocated using the dung and urine to cure coronavirus.
The 53-year-old actor was promoting his appearance on a show with British television adventurer Bear Grylls, in which they drink tea made from elephant dung in an Indian tiger reserve.
"I was too excited to be worried. I have cow urine because of ayurvedic reasons every day, so that was okay," Kumar said on a social media live chat posted Thursday.
Covid-19 has infected 4.6 million people in India and killed 76,000.
2020-09-11 16:32:50
VIENNA: Austria will expand mandatory mask-wearing and slap new restrictions on events as it battles a surge in new coronavirus cases, the government says.
Masks will be compulsory in all shops and public buildings from Monday, in addition to places where they must already be worn such as supermarkets and public transport, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said.
Spectator numbers for events with fixed seating will also be reduced to 1,500 people for indoor events and 3,000 people for outdoor events.
Events without allocated seating will be restricted to a maximum number of 50 people indoors and 100 people outdoors from Monday.
Food and drinks indoors will also only be served at tables to avoid mingling at parties and in bar areas, while masks will have to be worn by waiters and waitresses, Kurz added.
Austria is witnessing its highest infection rates since the country was in lockdown in the spring, with 654 new cases recorded on Wednesday.
2020-09-11 15:38:17
BUCHAREST: Romania’s total of coronavirus cases has passed 100,000, the government said on Friday and authorities are set to extend a state of alert by a month, with face masks mandatory in all indoor spaces.
There were 1,391 new cases recorded, taking the overall total to 101,075 cases, with a total death toll of 4,100.
President Klaus Iohannis ordered a strict lockdown in March, replacing that in May with a softer “alert mode”. The government plans to extend that by another 30 days from September 14.
But schools across the country of 20 million are set to open next Monday, with about 70% of facilities ready to start regular classes. Another 27% will hold classes in a hybrid online-regular class format and the rest will learn exclusively online.
2020-09-11 15:00:49
KARACHI: Number of COVID-19 infected officers and personnel of Sindh Police being treated for the virus has decreased to 76 while 3,275 have returned to their homes after recovering from the disease, said the spokesman to Sindh Police on Friday.
As many as 3,369 policemen have contracted the coronavirus so far, he said. The spokesman said that 18 policemen lost their battle against COVID-19.
The spokesperson assured that all due care was being provided to infected cops by the department.
2020-09-11 14:56:12
2020-09-11 14:03:41
MANILA: The Philippines will have access to potential COVID-19 vaccines being developed by US firms without any strings attached, the health ministry said on Friday, after the presidential spokesman had linked the pardoning of a US Marine to ensuring access.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said none of the US vaccine makers the government is in talks with had set conditions, adding all potential vaccines will undergo a regulatory process to ensure safety and efficacy.
“No conditions were provided or given to us,” Vergeire told a news conference.
The Philippines, which is among a number of developing countries with big populations trying to secure a supply of COVID-19 vaccine, has met with US vaccine manufacturers Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc.
It has also held discussions with China and Russia, which are among countries leading the global race to develop coronavirus inoculations.
2020-09-11 13:16:14
BUDAPEST: Hungary reported 718 new coronavirus cases on Friday, the highest daily tally to date, the government said.
The country has reported 10,909 coronavirus cases with 631 deaths so far.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban said earlier in the day that Hungary would not impose blanket school closures, but would aim to protect the most vulnerable elderly as the goal was to keep the economy going.
2020-09-11 12:24:32
WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Thursday killed a Republican bill that would have provided around $300 billion in new coronavirus aid, as Democrats seeking far more funding prevented it from advancing.
By a vote of 52-47, the Senate failed to get the 60 votes needed in the 100-member chamber to advance the partisan bill toward passage, leaving the future of any new coronavirus aid in doubt.
“It’s a sort of a dead-end street,” Republican Senator Pat Roberts told reporters following the vote.
“Along with a pandemic — the COVID-19 — we have a pandemic of politics” in Congress, he added.
Senator Rand Paul, who opposed the deficit spending in the bill, was the lone Republican to vote no.
Democratic leaders in Congress have been pushing for a far more vigorous response: around $3 trillion in new funding amid the continuing pandemic.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who spearheaded the Republican bill that failed, had offered a more expansive, $1 trillion coronavirus measure in July. Amid strong opposition from Democrats and many Republicans, he was unable to even stage a vote on that proposal.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters before the failed Senate vote on Thursday that she thought negotiations could still produce a compromise before the November 3 presidential and congressional elections.
2020-09-11 12:00:02
UNICEF Pakistan on Friday urged teachers and school management to follow the coronavirus SOPs as the schools reopen next week.
The UNICEF has also shared a poster with the SOPs.
2020-09-11 11:43:18
RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil recorded 40,557 additional confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 983 deaths from the disease, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.
Brazil has registered more than 4.2 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 129,522, according to ministry data.
2020-09-11 11:21:04
BENGALURU: India reported another record daily jump of 96,551 coronavirus cases on Friday, taking its case load to 4.5 million, data from the federal health ministry showed.
Infections are growing faster in India than anywhere else in the world and the United States is the only nation worse affected.
Deaths have remained relatively low in the country, but are seeing an upward trend, with more than one thousand deaths being reported every day for the last ten days.
On Friday, 1,209 people died from COVID-19, the ministry said, taking total mortalities to 76,271.
2020-09-11 10:33:35
SHANGHAI: Mainland China reported 15 new coronavirus cases on September 10, up from seven cases a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said in statement.
The National Health Commission said in a statement all of the cases were imported infections involving travellers from overseas, marking the 26th straight day of no local infections.
The number of new asymptomatic cases also rose to 22 from 15 a day earlier. China does not classify these symptomless patients as confirmed COVID-19 cases.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in mainland China now stands at 85,168, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,634.
2020-09-11 10:00:35
SEOUL: South Korea posted a slight uptick in the daily number of its coronavirus cases on Friday even as infections from a church and a political rally that sparked a second wave of outbreaks ease.
The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 176 new cases as of midnight Thursday, which brought the total infections to 21,919, with 350 deaths.
A fresh wave of infections erupted at a church whose members attended a large protest in downtown Seoul last month have driven the daily tally to its peak in months at 441.
The numbers had steadily dropped to their early 100s since the government imposed unprecedented social distancing curbs late last month, but showed a resurge this week even as less cases arose from the church and the protesters.
Meanwhile, smaller clusters continued to emerge from other religious gatherings, offices and medical facilities in the Seoul metropolitan area. More than 72% of the 161 locally transmitted cases from Thursday were reported from the regions.
Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said the consistent outbreaks are deepening concerns whether the government should extend or ease the distancing rules, including an unprecedented ban on nightly on-site dining in the greater Seoul area, due on Sunday.
“It would be right to lift the restrictions, considering the sacrifices the people are making, but we’re as much worried if any hasty easing would lead to a re-spread of the virus and cause even greater pain for the public,” Chung told a meeting.
2020-09-11 09:24:36
Pakistan on Thursday reported 548new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 300,267.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,356 cases in AJK, 13,282 in Balochistan, 3,131 in GB, 15,832 in Islamabad, 36,823 in KP, 97,233 in Punjab and 131,404 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 5 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,368.
2020-09-11 09:02:51
GENEVA: The UN on Thursday called for an immediate "quantum leap" in funding to fight the new coronavirus as the death toll crossed 900,000 six months after the pandemic broke out.
Alarming figures cropped up, with France registering a record of almost 10,000 new COVID-19 cases over the last 24 hours ahead of a key meeting to decide a toughening of coronavirus measures.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged countries to find $15 billion over the next three months to fund the ACT-Accelerator programme, a global collaboration to hunt for a vaccine and treatments led by the UN's World Health Organization (WHO).
"Either we stand together or we will be doomed," Guterres said, calling the virus the "number one global security threat".
"We need a quantum leap in funding to increase the chances of a global solution to get the world moving, working and prospering again," he said.
He said the near $3 billion contributed so far had been critical but $35 billion more was needed to shift from start-up to scale-up -- beginning with $15 billion in the next three months.
2020-09-11 08:47:35
SYDNEY: Australia’s state leaders on Friday defended regional shutdowns and internal border closures against increased federal government pressure for restrictive coronavirus measures to be lifted as new case numbers ease.
While infections have declined in the hot spots of the country’s second wave in recent days, many state and territory leaders have retained tough containment measures, including barring inter-state travel, fearing a fresh outbreak.
Queensland state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said border security staff were forced to make “difficult and tough decisions”, referring to a decision by state officials to refuse to let a woman from a virus-free region of the country to attend her father’s funeral.
The family’s plight has become a flashpoint for growing tensions between Prime Minister Scott Morrison and state leaders over Australia’s handling of the pandemic.
Morrison had criticised decisions by Queensland officials to first bar the woman entry to the state while her father was seriously ill, and then deny her request to leave quarantine early to attend the funeral.
Morrison, who is keen to give the national economy a kickstart after it slid into its first recession in almost three decades, has also urged Victoria state to consider lifting a night curfew in Melbourne.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews has stood firm, saying it was critical to control the movement of people in the state’s capital, which has been the centre of Australia’s second wave of infections.
“If you can limit movement, then you will see less people doing the wrong thing,” said Andrews, who last week extended an initial six-week hard lockdown in Melbourne until Sept. 28.
Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state, on Friday reported 43 new cases and nine deaths over the past 24 hours, continuing a steady downward trend from a peak of more than 700 cases in a single day in early August.
Victoria, home to one-quarter of Australia’s 25 million population, now accounts for about 75% of the country’s more than 26,500 COVID-19 cases and 90% of its 797 deaths.
New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, reported 10 cases, while Queensland logged two new cases. The virus has been effectively eliminated in other states and territories.
2020-09-10 23:59:35
HARARE: A Zimbabwean court acquitted two journalists who were arrested for an alleged covid violation while covering the abduction of an opposition lawmaker and two party activists.
"Frank Chikowore and Samuel Takawira have been acquitted by the Mbare magistrate Kudzai Hove of charges of breaching coronavirus regulations relating to social distancing," Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights spokesman Kumbirai Mafunda told journalists.
Chikowore and Takawira, who write for the online media 263Chat, were arrested and charged in May and held for four days before being released after they paid bail of 500 Zimbabwean dollars ($60) each.
They were accused of not keeping an adequate distance between themselves and those they interviewed, and arrested by a police officer guarding the hospital where the interviews took place.
An opposition lawmaker and two party activists had been admitted after they were abducted at a police roadblock and dumped at a shopping centre after being assaulted by unidentified assailants.
2020-09-10 23:39:29
GENEVA: The United Nations called for an immediate "quantum leap" in funding for global programmes to combat the coronavirus and get the world going again.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged countries to find $15 billion over the next three months to fund the ACT-Accelerator programme, a global collaboration to hunt for a vaccine and treatments led by the UN's World Health Organization (WHO).
"Either we stand together or we will be doomed," Guterres told an ACT-Accelerator virtual meeting, calling the virus the "number one global security threat".
"We need a quantum leap in funding to increase the chances of a global solution to get the world moving, working and prospering again," he said.
He said the near $3 billion contributed so far had been critical for the initial phase since the accelerator's launch four months ago, but $35 billion more was needed to shift from start-up to scale-up -- beginning with $15 billion in the next three months.
Without it "we will lose the window of opportunity", Guterres said.
2020-09-10 22:59:52
WASHINGTON: US Senate Democrats blocked a pared-down coronavirus relief package , calling it "beyond insufficient" to help millions of suffering Americans and raising the prospect that no new aid will be approved until after November's presidential election.
The bill in the Republican-led Senate fell short on a party line procedural vote, 52 to 47. It needed 60 votes to overcome blocking tactics in the 100-member chamber.
The measure is a dramatic reduction from the $3 trillion bill that the Democratic-led House of Representatives passed in May but was never taken up by the Senate.
Now, Democrats have balked at the far smaller Republican measure that comes in at roughly $500 billion, including $300 per week for millions of unemployed Americans, compared to the $600 that expired in July.
Democrats complained that the new measure contained no new funds for cities and states, no second-round stimulus checks of $1,200 for individual Americans, and insufficient food aid.
2020-09-10 23:26:51
The Balochistan health department reported 55 new coronavirus cases, taking the overall infections tally to 13,282.
2020-09-10 22:39:34
ATHENS: Greece reported 372 new cases of COVID-19 infections, its highest daily tally since the start of the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
The latest jump in cases brought the total number of infections in Greece to 12,452 and 297 deaths since its first case surfaced in late February.
Of the new cases, 114 were due to an outbreak of COVID-19 infections at a food processing plant in northern Greece, with 133 recorded in the greater Athens area, health authorities said.
The increase in infections in recent weeks has prompted Greek authorities to gradually introduce more restrictions during the peak of the tourism season.
Greece has also found at least 35 cases of coronavirus in the overcrowded migrant camp of Moria on the island of Lesbos which burned down on Wednesday, leaving thousands of migrants homeless.
The facility had been placed under quarantine after authorities confirmed that a 40-year-old asylum seeker had tested positive.
2020-09-10 22:16:56
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department reported 68 new coronavirus cases, taking the overall infections tally to 36,823.
2020-09-10 21:54:58
The halting of clinical trials for one of the most advanced experimental COVID-19 vaccines shows the importance of safety in developing new medicines despite overwhelming international pressure, experts say.
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford said Tuesday they were "pausing" trials of the vaccine after a volunteer developed an unexplained illness.
AstraZeneca said in a follow-up statement that a participant in Britain had been taken ill during large-scale Phase 3 testing.
It called the move to pause the trial "a routine action", but the setback briefly spooked markets as the world races for a vaccine that could signal the beginning of the end of the pandemic.
"It's a totally reasonable measure of caution," immunologist Alain Fischer told AFP.
"This should be seen as the proper functioning of a vaccine evaluation system."
The vaccine in question is one of nine that are undergoing the final phase of clinical testing, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
2020-09-10 21:51:14
LISBON: Portugal's government on Thursday agreed tougher infection control restrictions against the novel coronavirus ahead of the start of the school year, hoping to brake a resurgence in new cases.
Ministers decided on new rules to come into force from Tuesday, including limiting gatherings to 10 people rather than 20 previously — a cap already in force in the capital Lisbon since late June.
Also extending a measure from the capital, sales of alcohol will be barred from 8 pm as will drinking in public spaces.
Meanwhile sporting venues will remain closed to fans ahead of the football championship kicking off next week.
"We've been seeing a sustained rise in the number of new cases since the beginning of August," Prime Minister Antonio Costa said, after Portugal saw 646 new infections in the 24 hours to Wednesday — its highest since April 20.
2020-09-10 21:30:39
LONDON: The British government said it was reinstating Portugal and adding Hungary to its coronavirus quarantine list, as it seeks to seeks to limit new Covid-19 cases from abroad.
"Data shows we need to remove PORTUGAL (minus the AZORES and MADEIRA), HUNGARY, FRENCH POLYNESIA and REUNION from the Travel Corridor list to keep everyone safe," Transport Minister Grant Shapps wrote on Twitter.
The new restrictions requiring all arrivals from the countries to self-isolate for 14 days will come into force from 0300 GMT on Saturday.
2020-09-10 21:18:39
HEBRON: Palestinian grape farmers are boasting a bumper crop this year, helped in part by coronavirus lockdowns that gave many of them more time to till their vines in the occupied West Bank.
But the pandemic’s economic ravages have also slashed sales of the fruit, depressing the hilly breadbasket region of Hebron.
“This year the yield was good, the rain was good, the grapes are all good ... but there is no market, because of this disease,” said farmer Mohammad Abdellatif Jallak, folding sheets of “malban”, or fruit leather made from dried grapes.
The pandemic, said Hebron Chamber of Commerce chairman Nour al-Deen Jaradat, “made people look after their lands more, and thus the production amounts increased, and so did the quality. But unfortunately there was a failure in marketing.”
For lack of customers, grapes that previous sold for around $10 box are now being turned into molasses at almost half the value, said Muntaser al-Jaabari, a fruit merchant.
2020-09-10 20:40:15
LONDON: The United Kingdom recorded 2,919 new daily confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to government data published, compared with 2,659 a day earlier.
Daily case numbers have started to increase in recent days. Britain’s testing capacity has also increased since the peak of the first wave of the virus earlier this year.
2020-09-10 21:00:48
ZURICH: The head of the World Health Organization urged countries to contribute resources that can expedite products which may help stem the coronavirus pandemic.
The WHO’s ACT-Accelerator programme already supports research into potential vaccines, drugs and diagnostics, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an online event.
“But we need to rapidly scale up our clinical trials, manufacturing, licensing and regulation capacity so that these products can get to people and start saving lives,” he said.
2020-09-10 20:33:10
ZURICH: United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for $35 billion more, including $15 billion in the next three months, for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) “ACT Accelerator” program to back vaccines, treatments and diagnostics against COVID-19.
Some $3 billion has been contributed so far, Guterres told an online event on Thursday, calling it “seed funding” that was less than 10% of what the WHO wants for the program, formally called Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.
Financial support has, so far, lagged goals, as nations or governments including the European Union, Britain, Japan and the United States reach bilateral vaccine deals, prompting Guterres and WHO General Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to plead to nations to contribute.
“We now need $35 billion more to go from ‘start up’ to ‘scale up and impact’,” Guterres said at a meeting of a council formed to help the ACT Accelerator gain traction. “There is real urgency in these numbers. Without an infusion of $15 billion over the next three months, beginning immediately, we will lose the window of opportunity.”
2020-09-10 20:23:44
SINGAPORE: Singapore Airlines said it was cutting about 4,300 jobs — about 20% of the workforce — due to the devastating impact of the coronavirus, and warned any recovery would be "long and fraught with uncertainty".
SIA is the latest airline to announce massive layoffs as the global aviation industry faces its greatest-ever crisis due to travel restrictions to fight the spread of coronavirus.
The city-state's flag carrier said about 1,900 positions had already been eliminated in recent months due to a recruitment freeze, natural attrition and voluntary departures, reducing further expected job cuts to around 2,400.
Positions are being cut across full-service Singapore Airlines, regional carrier SilkAir and budget airline Scoot in Singapore and overseas.
"The future remains extremely challenging," said Singapore Airlines chief executive Goh Choon Phong.
2020-09-10 19:24:01
HARARE: International donors have raised $700 million - less than half the target - to purchase future coronavirus vaccines for poor countries in a global initiative to ensure eventual vaccines do not go only to rich countries, a World Health Organization official said.
The COVAX Advanced Market Commitment has an initial target of $2 billion to buy the vaccines.
“Up to today, what has been mobilised so far is $700 million ... So there is a great deal of work to be done to diversify the possible sources of funding,” Matshidiso Moeti, Africa regional director for the WHO, told an online press briefing.
COVAX is co-led by the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, the WHO and the CEPI Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. Its aim is to deliver 2 billion doses of effective, approved COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2021.
At least eight African countries, including South Africa, Gabon, Namibia and Equatorial Guinea had agreed to self-finance access to the vaccine, Moeti said.
2020-09-10 19:50:24
ZURICH/FRANKFURT: AstraZeneca should still know by year-end whether its experimental vaccine protects people against coronavirus, as long as it is cleared to resume trials soon, its chief executive said amid doubts over its rollout.
Governments desperate to put an end to the COVID-19 pandemic which has caused more than 900,000 deaths and huge economic and social disruption during 2020 are pinning their hopes on a vaccine.
However British drugmaker AstraZeneca suspended late-stage trials on its potential vaccine this week after an illness in a participant in Britain who was reported to be suffering from symptoms associated with transverse myelitis, a rare spinal inflammatory disorder.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has flagged the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is being developed with the University of Oxford, as the most promising for coronavirus.
CEO Pascal Soriot said during an online event on Thursday that AstraZeneca did not yet know the diagnosis of the participant who was ill, adding that it was not clear if the volunteer had transverse myelitis and more tests were needed.
2020-09-10 19:13:24
ROME: Napoli's football club president Aurelio De Laurentiis has tested positive for Covid-19, the club announced Thursday, a day after meeting other Serie A club officials.
"SSC Napoli can confirm that club president Aurelio De Laurentiis tested positive for COVID-19," the club said on its website, but gave no further details.
Italian news reports said De Laurentiis showed symptoms of the disease when meeting other Serie A officials in Milan on Wednesday to discuss TV rights and the resumption of the Italy's top professional league competition.
De Laurentiis, 71, who is also a prominent Italian film producer initially thought his higher temperature was the result of indigestion after eating oysters.
He was not told that he tested positive until the evening after the Milan meeting, wrote the La Gazzetta dello Sport.
2020-09-10 18:27:50
FRANKFURT: European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde said the eurozone's pandemic-induced downturn was expected to be less severe than initially feared, but a recent spike in coronavirus cases was causing "headwinds" for the recovery.
Lagarde also addressed concerns about the recent appreciation of the euro, which can have a slowing effect on inflation and complicates the bank's efforts to push price growth higher.
The rise of the euro was "extensively discussed" when ECB governors held their meeting, Lagarde told reporters in Frankfurt in an online press conference.
The "appreciation of the euro is something to be monitored carefully", she added.
The governing council made no changes to its ultra-loose monetary policy, keeping interest rates at historic lows and leaving its 1.35-trillion-euro ($1.6-trillion) pandemic emergency bond-buying scheme in place.
Lagarde said the central bank would continue to provide an "ample degree" of monetary accommodation to support the 19-nation currency club through the COVID-19 crisis.
2020-09-10 18:42:35
Sindh reported three deaths, taking the death toll to2,439, chief minister Murad Ali Shah said.
The province reported 289 more infections, bumping the toll to131,404.
2020-09-10 18:14:58
ZAGREB: About 400 owners of bars and restaurants in Croatia's northern Adriatic halted work for an hour in an appeal to the authorities to help them survive the coming months as the coronavirus crisis threatens their businesses.
Guests were allowed to remain in the bars, restaurants and the terraces with their orders but were not served during the stoppage.
"We want to warn the authorities that we will not survive the winter months without help. This is a problem which bothers not just us, but also tourist agencies and guides," said Vedran Jakominic, who heads the association of bar and restaurant owners in the northern Adriatic regions of Kvarner and Istria.
Taxes remained too high and many businesses risk closure, he said.
"The banks do not expect that many of us will survive and are not willing to provide liquidity loans," Jakominic said.
The association believes some 20,000 people could lose their jobs in the coming period.
2020-09-10 17:52:10
LONDON: Airline giant IAG, the owner of British Airways and Spanish carrier Iberia, announced it was cutting more flights because of coronavirus restrictions and quarantine rules.
It comes as IAG said it had raised 2.74 billion euros ($3.23 billion) to help the company navigate through the Covid-19 crisis that has decimated travel demand.
IAG expects to operate 60% less capacity in the three months to the end of December from a year earlier. That compared with a previously planned capacity reduction of 46%.
The conglomerate blamed the deeper cutbacks on "the impact of current travel restrictions and quarantine requirements on booking activity".
Total 2020 capacity is expected to be 63% lower than in 2019 — down from previous guidance of minus 59%.
In response to the global health emergency, the London-listed titan embarked upon a massive jobs-slashing efficiency drive, in line with carriers like Air Canada, American Airlines and Lufthansa.
The European travel giant, whose portfolio also includes Aer Lingus, Level and Vueling, is in the process of axing 13,000 jobs or more than a quarter of its workforce.
2020-09-10 17:31:42
KUALA LUMPUR: Asia's football body cancelled this year's AFC Cup because of the coronavirus pandemic — and also announced further delays to Champions League matches in what it said were "tough times" for the sport.
The Asian Football Confederation had hoped to restart its long-delayed Cup competition next month in four host countries, but following a meeting of the executive committee Thursday they blew the whistle on the plans.
"These are tough times for everyone connected with football — and sport in general," said AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa.
Officials also said some matches in the Champions League — the region's showpiece tournament, which resumes next week in Qatar — would be further delayed.
The single-leg final will now take place on December 19. Officials previously said it would take place on December 5.
2020-09-10 17:17:54
KYIV: The commander of Ukraine's armed forces, Colonel-General Ruslan Homchak, has tested positive for COVID-19 and will spend 14 days in isolation, the country's military said.
Ukraine has reported high COVID infection levels in recent weeks. The total number of cases since the start of the pandemic now exceeds 145,000, including more than 3,000 deaths.
2020-09-10 17:07:08
ZURICH: United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for $35 billion more, including $15 billion in the next three months, for the World Health Organization’s “ACT-Accelerator” programme to support vaccines, treatments and diagnostics against COVID-19.
Some $3 billion has been contributed by countries so far, Guterres told an online event on Thursday, calling it “seed funding”.
“But we now need $35 billion more to go from ‘start up’ to ‘scale up and impact’,” he said. “There is real urgency in these numbers. Without an infusion of $15 billion over the next three months, beginning immediately, we will lose the window of opportunity.”
2020-09-10 16:39:39
CAIRO: Coronavirus cases in the wider Middle East from Morocco to Pakistan have topped two million, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.
The caseload for the 21 countries has more than doubled since July 1, the UN agency said.
Regional director Ahmed Mandhari warned that even countries like Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia, which had kept their infection rates under control, were now facing significant upticks.
The WHO listed the hardest-hit countries as Iran with more than 393,000 cases, Saudi Arabia with more than 320,000, Pakistan with just under 300,000 and Iraq with nearly 274,000.
Mandhari said that a number of factors threatened to raise infection rates further — the resumption of international travel across much of the region, the start of the new school year and the beginning of the flu season.
2020-09-10 16:14:06
PARIS: The French government will discuss on Friday whether to impose new, local lockdowns to try to tackle rising COVID-19 while keeping economic and social activities going.
Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Thursday that nothing would be ruled out at Friday’s cabinet meeting, while President Emmanuel Macron said he hoped any new measures would not be too restrictive.
Macron said that while he would not want to pre-empt any decisions, he hoped current rules would allow France to tackle the virus and let people live as normally as possible.
He was referring to measures such as social distancing and the compulsory wearing of face-masks in much of France.
“We need to do it while allowing us to continue to live, such as being able to educate our children, treat other illnesses and protect other patients,” Macron told a news conference in Corsica.
2020-09-10 15:25:06
ZURICH/FRANKFURT: AstraZeneca should still know before the end of the year whether its experimental vaccine protects people against COVID-19, the drugmaker’s chief executive Pascal Soriot said on Thursday, as long as it can resume trials soon.
The British company suspended late-stage trials this week after an illness in a participant in Britain. The patient was reportedly suffering from symptoms associated with a rare spinal inflammatory disorder called transverse myelitis.
Soriot said during an online event that AstraZeneca did not yet know the diagnosis, adding that it was not clear if the volunteer had transverse myelitis and more tests were needed.
He said the diagnosis would be submitted to an independent safety committee and this would usually then tell the company whether trials can be resumed.
Soriot said that the potential vaccine, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has flagged as the most promising for coronavirus, that it was usual for a trial to be suspended.
“It’s very common, actually, and many experts will tell you this,” Soriot said, adding: “The difference with other vaccine trials is, the whole world is not watching them, of course. They stop, they study, and they restart.”
2020-09-10 14:23:13
MEXICO CITY: Mexico reported 4,647 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infection and 611 additional fatalities on Wednesday, bringing its totals to 647,507 infections and 69,095 deaths, according to updated health ministry data.
The government has said the real number of infected people is likely to be significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
2020-09-10 12:54:12
ISLAMABAD: Secretary Primary and Secondary Health Care Department of Punjab Captain (r) Muhammad Usman Younis said on Thursday that the purpose of issuing a “COVID-19 Awareness Booklet” was to inform the children of the infection in their simple language.
Talking to a private news channel, Usman said that the purpose of making the booklet in the form of coloring and drawing was also to make it easy for children to understand and follow the SOPs. He added that a separate booklet will be issued for the teachers.
Replaying to a question he said COVID-19 test for millions of children and teachers are not possible, so the tests were carried out under a strategy, like 5% children, 10% of teachers and 100% of supporting staff will be tested.
2020-09-10 12:24:43
The NIH staff held a "training of trainers" session on clinical and hospital management in the context of COVID-19 for healthcare staff in Quetta.
2020-09-10 12:08:46
WASHINGTON: Headaches, confusion and delirium experienced by some COVID-19 patients could be the result of the coronavirus directly invading the brain, according to a study published Wednesday.
The research is still preliminary — but offers several new lines of evidence to support what was previously a largely untested theory.
According to the paper, which was led by Yale immunologist Akiko Iwasaki, the virus is able to replicate inside the brain, and its presence starves nearby brain cells of oxygen, though the prevalence of this is not yet clear.
S Andrew Josephson, chair of the neurology department at the University of California, San Francisco, praised the techniques used in the study and said "understanding whether or not there is direct viral involvement of the brain is extraordinarily important."
But he added that he would remain cautious until the paper underwent peer review.
It wouldn't be completely shocking if SARS-CoV-2 is capable of breaching the blood-brain-barrier, a structure which surrounds the brain's blood vessels and tries to block foreign substances.
Zika virus, for instance, also does this — leading to significant damage to the brains of fetuses.
But doctors had believed until now that the neurological impacts seen in about half of all patients could instead be the result of an abnormal immune response known as a cytokine storm that causes inflammation of the brain — rather than the virus invading directly.
2020-09-10 11:37:38
BENGALURU: India reported record jumps in new coronavirus infections and deaths on Thursday, taking its tally of cases past 4.4 million, health ministry figures showed.
In the last 24 hours, 95,735 new infections were detected, with 1,172 deaths accounting for the highest single-day mortality figures in more than a month, to push the toll beyond 75,000.
Infections are growing faster in India than anywhere else in the world and the United States is the only nation worse affected.
2020-09-10 11:13:04
Teams from the National Institute of Health held randomised COVID-19 tests and at different schools of Islamabad.
The NIH also shared that it also held awareness sessions regarding the coronavirus in the federal capital.
2020-09-10 10:30:24
PARIS: The global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has topped 900,000 since the respiratory disease first appeared in China last year, according to an AFP tally.
As the fatalities climbed, US President Donald Trump admitted he had tried to minimise the seriousness of the Covid-19 threat at the start of the pandemic, in audio recordings released Wednesday from interviews with veteran journalist Bob Woodward.
"I wanted to always play it down," Trump told Woodward on March 19, according to a CNN preview of the book "Rage", due to be published this month.
"I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic," he said in the recorded conversation with Woodward.
There have been more than 27.7 million confirmed virus cases worldwide, according to an AFP count based on official statistics, with the worst-hit region Latin America and the Caribbean, followed by Europe.
The country with the most coronavirus deaths is the United States with over 190,000 fatalities, followed by Brazil.
2020-09-09 18:04:35
KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah shared on Wednesday that six more patients lost their lives due to the coronavirus taking the death toll to 2,436, while 146 more patients in the last 24 hours taking the tally of positive cases to 131,115.
Six more patients lost their lives while struggling against COVID-19 lifting the death toll to 2,436 that constituted 1.9% death rate", said the CM. He also shared that 168 patients also recovered from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours.
Shah said that 9,292 samples were tested in the last 24 hours which detected 146 new cases that formed a 2% detection rate.
2020-09-09 17:54:49
ISLAMABAD: The National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) on Wednesday was briefed about the plan of carrying out targeted COVID testing across the country in schools and at tourists spot for health and safety of children and public safety at large.
During today's morning session, Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar ordered ramping up of testing and containment measures post opening of school and tourism sector.
NCOC special team which was on a visit to Balochistan updated NCOC through video link from Quetta about the situation on ground and support required from NCOC particularly support in contact tracing and other administrative support due to vastness of the area.
2020-09-09 17:30:47
ISLAMABAD: Japanese Ambassador Matsuda Kuninori on Wednesday appreciated the government of Pakistan for its successful handling of the coronavirus pandemic including its decision to reopen educational institutions by mid of this month.
“The reopening of educational institutions in phases after a long break due to the coronavirus is a welcome step and it is hoped that students will be back to their schools, colleges and universities very soon,” said Ambassador of Japan in a statement.
2020-09-09 17:14:22
AMSTERDAM: The number of new coronavirus cases registered in the Netherlands surged to 1,140 in the past 24 hours, the health minister said on Wednesday, the highest daily total since April.
Hugo de Jonge announced the figures recorded by the National Institute for Health (RIVM) during a live video stream. “It’s not going the right way,” De Jonge said. A day earlier the country recorded 964 cases, with cases rising quickly among young adults.
The RIVM said the increase was not tied to the reopening of primary schools across the country over the past three weeks.
2020-09-09 16:49:02
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis was seen on Wednesday for the first time wearing a protective face mask as he attended his second traditional general audience before a limited public presence after a six-month suspension.
The pontiff — known for a fondness for close personal contact — however quickly removed the mask as he emerged from the car carrying him to the audience, which was suspended in February over the coronavirus pandemic.
But he shunned his usual practice of shaking hands and kissing babies as some 500 faithful filled a courtyard at the Apostolic Palace inside the Vatican.
At his second meeting since suspending general audiences on February 26, the crowd thronged behind a barrier and some even lowered their masks to greet the leader of the Roman Catholic Church.
The pope shook hands with prelates attending the audience and, smiling, then turned to the crowd, urging them not to shake hands and to return to their seats in order to "avoid contagion".
Francis focused on the socio-economic impact of the pandemic which he said was "without barriers".
He advocated a society in which people should have more solidarity with their neighbours.
2020-09-09 15:50:01
LJUBLJANA: Slovenia, which was the first European state to declare an end to the coronavirus pandemic in May, on Wednesday reported its the highest daily count of new infections since registering its first case in March.
The government on Wednesday reported 79 new coronavirus cases, referring to Tuesday testing, versus 43 a day before, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 3,312.
Analysts said the surge could be due to the government conducting more coronavirus tests on Tuesday than before, at 2,560 compared to 1,581 on Monday. They said the start of the school year on September 1 also contributed to the spread of the virus.
So far Slovenia, which has 2 million citizens, recorded a total of 135 deaths due to the coronavirus.
Over the past weeks Slovenia has introduced obligatory two-week isolation for most people coming from a number of countries where coronavirus cases are on the rise, including neighbouring Croatia.
Slovenians are also obliged to were face masks in closed public spaces, keep safety distance from each other, while public events with more than 500 people are prohibited.
2020-09-09 15:23:15
The National Institute of Health on Wednesday said that it has started awareness sessions in public and private schools of the capital to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
2020-09-09 15:10:31
ISLAMABAD: Falling COVID-19 infection numbers in Pakistan will not affect a Phase 3 clinical trial for a potential vaccine being developed by China’s CanSino Biologics, which is expected to begin this month, according to officials running the trial.
Pakistan’s drug regulator last month gave the go-ahead for the country’s first Phase 3 clinical trial for CanSino’s candidate, Ad5-nCoV, which will be led by the government-run National Institute of Health (NIH) along with pharmaceutical company AJM — the local representative of CanSino.
“We are planning to launch the project on September 20, or at the latest within this month,” Hassan Abbas Zaheer, who is heading the trial for AJM, told Reuters.
The Ad5-nCoV vaccine and placebo injections are due to be received in Pakistan next week.
Daily positive cases in Pakistan peaked at more than 6,000 in June, but have since fallen sharply, with only 426 confirmed new cases detected on September 8 - taking its total to 299,659 and 6,359 deaths.
Zaheer said the low positive rates did not indicate COVID-19 was no longer present in the country, and the potential for people vaccinated in the trial to be infected was still adequate for testing their immunity.
2020-09-09 14:51:21
BEIJING: The organiser of China’s biggest airshow, set for November in the southern city of Zhuhai, has cancelled the event because of coronavirus measures, it said on Wednesday.
The biennial China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, which usually draws key suppliers, such as Airbus SE, Boeing Co and Commercial Aircraft Corp of China, is now set for 2022, the organiser said in a statement.
The news follows the cancellation of this year’s largest aerospace expo, Britain’s Farnborough Airshow, because of travel curbs and an industry downturn resulting from the pandemic.
2020-09-09 14:50:35
CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday proposed administering a Russian coronavirus vaccine to nearly 15,000 candidates in upcoming legislative elections so that they can campaign safely.
Russia in August licensed a COVID-19 vaccine after less than two months of human testing, a move celebrated by Moscow but questioned by some experts who note that only about 10% of clinical trials are successful.
Maduro’s adversaries are broadly planning to boycott the December 6 vote on the grounds that it is rigged in favor of the ruling Socialist Party, although one faction of the opposition has opened talks with the government to seek vote guarantees.
“It would be a good idea to give the Russian vaccine to the 14,400 candidates who have registered ... so that they can carry out their electoral campaign more comfortably,” Maduro said during a televised address.
He said that in September, some Russian vaccines would arrive for clinical trials, and that in October “other vaccines” would arrive, without elaborating.
Russia’s “Sputnik-V” COVID-19 vaccine produced an antibody response in all participants in early-stage trials, according to results published on Friday by The Lancet medical journal, which noted that long-term trials were still necessary.
Kirill Dmitriev of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which has backed the vaccine, said at least 3,000 people had already been recruited for the large-scale Sputnik-V trial, and that initial results were expected in October or November.
That trial involves some 40,000 participants, the sovereign wealth fund said in August.
2020-09-09 13:57:48
The National institute of Health took part in a "technical consultation" on Wednesday on the reopening of schools amid the coronavirus pandemic.
2020-09-09 13:49:52
SHANGHAI: Mainland China reported two new COVID-19 cases on September 8, down from 10 a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said on Wednesday.
The National Health Commission said in a statement that both cases were imported infections involving travellers from overseas, marking the 24th straight day of no local infections.
The number of new asymptomatic cases also fell to eight from 13 reported a day earlier. China does not count these symptomless patients as confirmed COVID-19 cases.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases for mainland China now stands at 85,146 while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
2020-09-09 12:56:55
SYDNEY: Australia is not worried about AstraZeneca Plc’s decision to put on hold its COVID-19 vaccine trial, its deputy chief medical officer said on Wednesday, as daily cases nudged higher in the country’s coronavirus hot spot.
AstraZeneca on Tuesday said it has paused a late-stage trial of one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates after an unexplained illness in a study participant.
The nature of the case and when it happened were not detailed, although the participant is expected to recover, according to Stat News, which first reported the news.
“With the information that I have got at the moment, I am not worried about it,” Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth told Sky News, adding the hold on trials does not mean the vaccine “is off the table”.
“In some respects, this is a very positive thing because it shows that despite the accelerated vaccine development, safety is the priority of the clinical trialists and investigators.”
Coatsworth said Australia like many other governments has invested in several coronavirus vaccine candidates, “knowing not all of them will get through”.
AstraZeneca’s decision to place the trial on hold comes after a pledge from nine leading US and European vaccine developers on Tuesday to uphold scientific safety and efficacy standards for their vaccines despite the urgency to contain the pandemic.
2020-09-09 12:20:49
OTTAWA: British Columbia on Tuesday ordered the closure of all nightclubs and Ontario delayed an easing of remaining restrictions imposed to fight the coronavirus pandemic, as Canada reported a spike in new COVID-19 cases.
The rise comes as schools across the country started to reopen after a nearly five-month forced shutdown to contain the spread of the virus, which has killed 9,153 people, according to latest government data. New cases jumped by 1,606 in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 133,748.
“This week is a really critical week,” Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam said. An average of 545 new cases had been reported daily over the past week, up from about 300 in July.
“This is concerning ... when cases occur, including in schools, it is a reflection on what’s happening in the community,” Tam told a briefing.
Canada’s western province of British Columbia has asked restaurants, pubs and bars to end sale of liquor at 10:00 pm and ordered bars and restaurants to close by 11:00 pm, unless serving food, according to a government statement.
Several of Canada’s 10 provinces started reopening schools this week for in-person learning after investing millions in added protections. Quebec, which welcomed back pupils last month, has already reported a number of cases in schools.
2020-09-09 12:01:09
STOCKHOLM: Sweden carried out a record number of new coronavirus tests last week with only 1.2% coming back positive, the health agency said on Tuesday, the lowest rate since the pandemic began at a time when countries across Europe are seeing surges in infections.
Sweden avoided a lockdown and instead emphasized personal responsibility, social distancing and good hygiene in a bid to slow rather than eradicate a disease deemed here to stay.
The strategy drew fierce criticism home and abroad as deaths shot up during the spring but has also been lauded by WHO officials as a sustainable model.
“The purpose of our approach is for people themselves to understand the need to follow the recommendations and guidelines that exist,” Swedish Health Agency Director-General Johan Carlson told a news conference.
Whereas many countries have changing rules and lockdown restrictions, Carlson said the Swedish guidelines were designed to be easy to understand and retain for an extended period.
“There are no other tricks before there are available medical measures, primarily vaccines. The Swedish population has taken this to heart,” he said.
More than 5,800 people with the disease have died, many times higher per capita than in neighbouring Nordic countries but lower than Italy, Spain and the UK.
Deaths, hospitalisations and new cases have now dropped to low levels whilst countries such as Spain and France contend with surges in infections after they lifted lockdowns.
Sweden carried out over 120,000 tests last week with just over 1,300 coming back positive, far below the 19% positive tests hit during some weeks in the spring, and now has the lowest rate of spread in Scandinavia.
2020-09-09 11:45:39
The US Embassy shared on Wednesday that the CDC along with Balochistan's health department held a training exercise for civil workers and forces deployed at the Pakistan Iran border at Taftan.
"#CDC, Global Health Security Agenda along with Provincial Health Department #Balochistan conducted training exercises for preparedness and response #COVID19 Taftan Border for civil workers in #Chagi and for forces deployed on #PakIran Border." tweeted the US mission in Pakistan.
2020-09-09 11:27:30
MEXICO CITY: Mexico reported 5,351 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infection and 703 additional fatalities on Tuesday, bringing its totals to 642,860 infections and 68,484 deaths, according to updated health ministry data.
The government has said the real number of infected people is likely to be significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
2020-09-09 11:22:18
Pakistan on Thursday reported 426 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 299,659.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,340 cases in AJK, 13,402 in Balochistan, 3,068 in GB, 15,780 in Islamabad, 36,711 in KP, 97,389 in Punjab and 130,969 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 9 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,359.
2020-09-08 23:59:33
HARARE: Zimbabwe will resume domestic flights from Thursday and international flights next month in a boost to tourism, but travellers will be required to have COVID-19 clearance certificates, the government said.
The Southern African nation suspended flights and shut its borders in March as it sought to curb the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected 7,388 people and resulted in 218 deaths.
The government said in a statement that domestic flights would resume on Sept. 10, while international flights would start on Oct. 1.
“All travellers will be required to have a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) COVID-19 clearance certificate issued by a recognised facility within 48 hours from the date of departure,” the statement said.
2020-09-08 23:49:03
CAIRO: Egypt Air will resume direct flights between Cairo and Moscow as of September 17, at the rate of three flights per week, state news agency MENA reported, citing a statement by the company.
Travellers to Moscow must obtain a medical certificate with a negative PCR test result for coronavirus (COVID-19) from an accredited laboratory in Egypt, issued 72 hours at most before the date of arrival, MENA added.
2020-09-08 23:25:02
Several states in the US Midwest and Northeast have seen new COVID-19 cases increase for two weeks in a row, though nationally both new infections and deaths last week remained on a downward trend, a Reuters analysis showed.
The United States reported more than 287,000 new cases in the week ended Sept. 6, down 1.4% from the previous week and marking the seventh straight week of declines. More than 5,800 people died from COVID-19 last week, the third week in a row that the death rate has fallen.
Nevertheless, 17 states have seen cases rise for at least two weeks, according to the Reuters tally of state and county reports. They include Missouri, North Dakota and Wisconsin, where between 10% and 18% of people tested had the new coronavirus.
In the Northeast, Delaware, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York also reported increases in new cases for at least two weeks, though the positive test rate ranged from a low of 0.9% in New York to a high of 4.3% in Delaware — below the 5% level the World Health Organization considers concerning.
2020-09-08 23:04:53
PARIS: The number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in France rose by 6,544 over the last 24 hours to give a total of 335,524 cases, the health ministry said, as the country battles to avert a second wave of the virus.
The number of deaths also climbed by 39 over the last 24 hours to reach a total of 30,764.
2020-09-08 22:21:43
ANKARA: Turkey announced it was scaling back plans to reopen schools later this month, with only the youngest pupils beginning classes at first, for up to two days a week.
Fatalities from the coronavirus have jumped to their highest since mid-May when lockdowns were in place.
The government has said it does not plan to reintroduce a full lockdown but has urged Turks to follow social distancing and hygiene measures to curb the virus. Masks have been made mandatory.
Last month, Education Minister Ziya Selcuk announced that schools, mostly shut since March, would start to reopen on Sept. 21. On Tuesday, however, he said only pre-school and first year pupils would attend in-person classes at first, with further reopening plans to be determined during an evaluation period of three weeks.
“We support a more controlled and gradual start in our country,” he said in a written statement. Schooling will include a mix of remote and in-person learning.
Children in the first school year would attend for one day during an “adaptation week” and then two days in following weeks. Parents who do not want to sent their children to school can opt to continue remote education, he said.
2020-09-08 21:59:03
NEW YORK: Oil futures tumbled, with Brent dropping below $40 a barrel for the first time since June and US crude off more than 8%, after Saudi Arabia cut its October selling prices amid a flare-up of coronavirus cases around the world.
Coronavirus infections are rising in India, Great Britain, Spain and several parts of the United States, where the infection rate has not come under control for months. The rebound in illnesses could weaken the global economic recovery and sap fuel demand.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 dropped $3.42 or 8.6%, to $36.35 at 11:33 AM EDT (1533 GMT), lowest since June 15. Brent crude LCOc1 fell $2.46, or 5.9%, to $39.55 a barrel.
Both oil benchmarks have dropped below the ranges they were trading in throughout August. Brent is falling for a fifth day and has lost more than 10% since the end of August.
“The streak of losses is driven by a stalling crude demand outlook for the rest of the year,” said Paola Rodriguez-Masiu, analyst at Rystad Energy.
2020-09-08 20:59:33
ATHENS: Coronavirus infections in Greece’s overcrowded migrant camp Moria on the island of Lesbos nearly doubled since Monday to 35 confirmed cases, the migration ministry said.
The facility was placed under quarantine last week after authorities confirmed that a 40-year-old asylum-seeker had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Health authorities conducted a total of 2,000 tests in Moria, including 100 on camp staff who tested negative. All 35 migrants who tested positive have been moved to a segregated space and only one has shown COVID-19 symptoms.
Since March 1, all migrants reaching Lesbos have been quarantined away from the island’s camps.
2020-09-08 21:11:54
BRUSSELS: European Union lawmakers have cancelled their session at the parliament’s headquarters in the French city of Strasbourg next week, despite a legal obligation to do so, because of the coronavirus, the assembly’s president said.
EU law states that the parliament must hold a four-day session once a month in Strasbourg, a right defended by France, despite regular lobbying by lawmakers to change the rules and meet in Brussels, the assembly’s second headquarters.
Authorities in Strasbourg had urged lawmakers to come. Next week’s session has additional prestige as the president of the European Commission, the EU executive, will deliver an annual address to the parliament.
“The resurgence of the pandemic in many member states and the decisions taken by the French authorities to classify the entire Lower Rhine department as a red zone obliges us to reconsider the move to Strasbourg,” European Parliament President David Sassoli said in a statement.
“The plenary session of the European Parliament ... will take place in Brussels,” he said, referring to the more regularly used assembly building in the Belgian capital, where EU lawmakers work when they are not in Strasbourg.
2020-09-08 21:33:45
2020-09-08 20:40:46
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department reported 48 new coronavirus cases, taking the overall infections tally to 36,711.
2020-09-08 20:23:35
FRANKFURT: Nine leading US and European vaccine developers pledged on Tuesday to uphold the scientific standards their experimental immunisations will be held against in the global race to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
The companies, including Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, issued what they called a “historic pledge” after a rise in concern that safety and efficacy standards might slip in the rush to find a vaccine.
The companies said in a statement they would “uphold the integrity of the scientific process as they work towards potential global regulatory filings and approvals of the first COVID-19 vaccines”.
2020-09-08 19:48:35
Ireland plans to allow the reopening of all pubs on September 21, dropping a ban on bars that do not serve food, a senior minister said.
Bars that serve food have been allowed to open since the end of June under strict conditions after public health officials said they represented a safer environment than pubs that only serve alcohol.
The disparity led over the last week to small protests from other publicans, whose premises have been closed since March.
A minister confirmed that the government would allow all pubs to reopen, but under strict conditions such as a requirement for table service.
“What we are not proposing to do on September 21 is to reopen pubs, packed bars, crowded places. We’re talking about allowing a pub to reopen with table service and not serve chicken goujons to justify it,” Simon Harris, minister for Higher Education and Science, told reporters.
2020-09-08 19:31:39
BERLIN: Germany’s banks are relatively stable and the government sees no need to boost the state’s holdings in them, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told a Bloomberg webcast.
Berlin has previously said it is ready to take stakes in strategically important companies that are endangered by the coronavirus pandemic, though no banks have yet been affected.
The government took a stake in German bank Commerzbank in 2009, during the global financial crisis. It still retains a 15% holding in the lender.
2020-09-08 19:16:09
PARIS: French Prime Minister Jean Castex is to undergo a COVID-19 test as a precaution after he shared a car with the director of the Tour de France cycle race, who has since tested positive for the virus, the prime minister’s office said.
Castex followed the route of the Tour de France on Saturday and spent time in a car following the race with tour director Christian Prudhomme. Tour organisers said on Tuesday that Prudhomme had tested positive.
Asked by Reuters about the contact, a representative of the prime minister’s office said: “They were both wearing masks and respecting social distancing. The prime minister is to undergo a new test, just in case.”
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin will also undergo a test after spending time with Castex earlier on Tuesday, a person close to him said.
2020-09-08 18:59:25
WASHINGTON: White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said he was hopeful there would be another round of federal COVID-19 stimulus funding ahead of the November 3 presidential election, but signaled no new breakthrough in talks with congressional Democrats.
Meadows, in an interview on Fox Business Network, said the bill being put forward by Senate Republicans would hopefully provide a basis for a future agreement with Democratic lawmakers and that negotiations were ongoing.
2020-09-08 18:20:16
LONDON: British ministers and medics are urging the public to get serious again about the coronavirus after fears the outbreak was slipping out of control in some areas.
Close to 3,000 new cases were recorded on Sunday and again on Monday - a sudden jump from numbers much closer to 1,000 for most of August, and the highest since May.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said young people who were too complacent about social distancing could endanger older relatives.
“Don’t kill your gran by catching coronavirus and then passing it on,” he told a BBC radio programme aimed at younger audiences on Monday.
Appearing before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, he was concerned about the rise in cases. “It is so important ... people don’t become relaxed about this virus,” he said.
Several media reported that the government was planning to cut the maximum number of people allowed to gather in a house in England. As things stand, groups of up to 30 people from two households are allowed to socialise indoors.
2020-09-08 18:42:14
WASHINGTON: The Republican-led US Senate will move to take up their proposed COVID-19 relief legislation and vote as soon as this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.
2020-09-08 18:00:00
LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told his cabinet team of top ministers on Tuesday that they must work to stop the spread of the coronavirus from the young to older people to prevent hospitalisations, his spokesman said.
The cabinet were updated on the coronavirus response by chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance after an increase in cases.
“The prime minister cautioned that in other countries which had seen an increase in infections this was followed a number of weeks later by a rise in hospitalisations,” his spokesman said.
“The PM said that what had taken place elsewhere was that young people had gone on to infect older generations, who had become seriously ill, and it was vital to ensure that did not happen here,” he said, adding that Johnson said the government must remain “extremely vigilant”.
2020-09-08 17:49:18
PARIS: French Prime Minister Jean Castex is to undergo a COVID-19 test as a precaution after he shared a car with the director of the Tour de France cycle race, who has since tested positive for the virus, the prime minister’s office said on Tuesday.
Castex followed the route of the Tour de France on Saturday and spent time in a car following the race with tour director Christian Prudhomme. Tour organisers said on Tuesday that Prudhomme had tested positive.
Asked by Reuters about the contact, a representative of the prime minister’s office said: “They were both wearing masks and respecting social distancing. The prime minister is to undergo a new test, just in case.”
A Reuters photographer following the Tour de France said that Castex and Prudhomme spent several hours in each other’s company during Saturday’s stage of the race, in the Pyrenees mountain range.
Posting on his Twitter account, Castex said since he had been in contact with an infected person, he would follow the protocol set out by the government.
French official guidance in such cases is for people to self-isolate, stay away from their workplace, and get tested.
2020-09-08 17:43:57
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian authorities on Tuesday reminded the public to avoid physical contact, including fist bumps as a form of greeting, as the number of new coronavirus cases in the country climbed to a three-month high.
The fist bump, where two people briefly press their closed fists together, has replaced the traditional handshake in popularity as people around the world sought to limit the spread of the pandemic.
But Malaysia’s top health official said any form of physical contact presents the risk of infection and reminded people to maintain a distance of at least one metre (3.3 feet).
“This is why we’re telling people not to fist bump,” the Director-General of Health Noor Hisham Abdullah told reporters.
The Southeast Asian country recorded a three-digit rise in new infections for the first time since early June, with 100 cases reported on Tuesday.
2020-09-08 17:38:11
MADRID: Wearing colourful masks, the pupils of the Mariano Jose de Larra primary school in Madrid laughed and played on Tuesday morning before their teachers made them form two lines at the gates to measure their temperature.
It was the first day back at school for millions of Spanish children after a six-month break, bringing parents feelings of both relief and worry about a possible rise in coronavirus infections.
“I’m a teacher and I still haven’t brought my children back to school because it’s not safe yet,” said Maria Varas, who teaches music. “For many days we’ve been working long hours, but it doesn’t just depend on us. Families, society, they’ve got to join us in this.”
On Monday Spain became the first western European country to pass 500,000 cumulative cases of coronavirus after detecting almost 50,000 in the past week. Eight new deaths were reported on Monday, bringing the total to 29,516.
With younger people now accounting for more infections than any other group, officials have sought to calm fears that the return to school will trigger a surge in contagion and imposed mandatory masks, smaller classes and regular hand washing.
They say a repeat of the epidemic’s late-March peak, which pushed hospitals to breaking point and killed close to a thousand a day, is unlikely.
Father of two Richard Moreno was confident in the government’s handling and was happy to see the gates reopen.
“It gives us hope because after being locked up so long, look how happy they are to see each other again. It’s marvellous,” he told Reuters.
2020-09-08 17:01:06
MOSCOW: Siberia’s Vector virology institute on Tuesday completed early-stage human trials, known as Phase II, of a second potential Russian vaccine against COVID-19, the state consumer safety watchdog was cited by the Interfax news agency as saying.
Russia registered its first vaccine candidate, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, in August. Late-stage trials of this vaccine, due to involve 40,000 participants, were launched last week.
Human trials of the second potential COVID-19 vaccine, a peptide-based jab, began on July 27 and involved a group of 100 volunteers, Interfax cited watchdog Rospotrebnadzor as saying.
“Today ... the final group of 20 volunteers was released from hospital,” said in a statement. “All 100 volunteers were vaccinated with two doses and have completed a 23-day monitoring period in hospital. The volunteers are feeling good.”
Results are due to be published on Sept. 30, Interfax said.
2020-09-08 16:40:00
LONDON: British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Tuesday he was concerned about a sudden jump in the number of new coronavirus infections over the past two days, urging the public not to become complacent about social distancing.
“It is so important ... that people take their responsibilities seriously and people don’t become relaxed about this virus,” Hancock told a parliamentary committee.
2020-09-08 16:17:03
India's top tourist attraction the Taj Mahal is set to reopen more than six months after it was shut, officials said Tuesday, even as the vast nation battles soaring coronavirus infections.
India, home to 1.3 million people, on Monday overtook Brazil to become the world's second most-infected nation with more than 4.2 million cases, behind only the United States.
"The Taj Mahal will reopen on September 21. All Covid-19 protocols, like physical distancing, masks will be followed," northern Uttar Pradesh state's Tourism Department deputy director Amit Srivastava told AFP.
Visitors will be limited to 5,000 a day, down from the usual daily average of 20,000, he added.
One of the New Seven Wonders of the World, the shining marble mausoleum south of the capital New Delhi has been closed since mid-March as part of India's strict virus lockdown.
2020-09-08 15:43:40
JAKARTA: The COVID-19 cases in Indonesia rose by 3,046 within one day to 200,035, with the death toll adding by 100 to 8,230, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
According to the ministry, 2,306 more people were discharged from hospitals, bringing the total number of recovered patients to 142,958. The virus has spread to all the country''s 34 provinces.
Specifically, within the past 24 hours, Jakarta recorded 1,014 new cases, East Java 401, West Java 336, Central Java 237 and Bali 164. No more new positive cases were found in two provinces, namely Jambi and Central Kalimantan.
2020-09-08 15:26:43
PARIS: Disruption to schooling stemming from the COVID-19 epidemic will cause a skill loss that could result in a 1.5% drop in global economic output for the rest of this century, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated.
For the United States, that will represent an economic loss of $15.3 trillion, the OECD said in a report published on Tuesday, with the bill rising higher still if disruption to education extends into the next academic year.
“Learning loss will lead to skill loss, and the skills people have relate to their productivity,” the report said, explaining the forecast drop in global GDP.
Governments around the world closed schools to curb the spread of COVID-19, in most cases for around 10 weeks, or one third of a year of schooling.
One impact was to widen the gaps in educational opportunities between the rich and poor. Children with internet access, computers, and supportive families fared better.
“Students from privileged backgrounds ... could find their way past closed school doors to alternative learning opportunities. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds often remained shut out when their schools shut down,” the report said.
Even as schools in many countries re-open, big challenges remain for education, according to the OECD report. Schools must navigate how to re-open without causing a new spike in infections.
With economies contracting, there is a risk education budgets will shrink, the report said. And universities will have to reinvent themselves so they stay attractive to students even when they can longer offer the traditional campus experience.
2020-09-08 14:53:37
HONG KONG: Hong Kong will expand the size of public gatherings to four people and re-open more sports venues from Friday as the Asian financial hub relaxes strict curbs against a third wave of the coronavirus.
The measures come as new daily cases have dropped into the single digits from three figures. Last week gyms and massage parlours re-opened and night-time dining hours were extended.
Restaurants will be allowed to seat four people, up from two now, while indoor and outdoor recreation spaces will re-open, said Sophia Chan, the city’s health secretary, but swimming pools are to stay shut.
“We must strike a balance. The third wave is entering two months already and we have yet to see an end to it,” Chan told a news briefing, adding that new infections were being reported each day, some of unknown origin.
A mass testing scheme initiated by China for Hong Kong has picked up 16 new cases from more than 800,000 people tested, the government said on Tuesday.
About 1.2 million people in the city have sought tests from a population of 7 million.
Theme parks and convention centers could re-open on September 18 in the former British colony, if conditions allow, authorities said, adding that Hong Kong was discussing travel bubbles with nations such as Singapore and Thailand.
Hong Kong Disneyland, majority-owned by the government with Walt Disney holding a minority stake, closed temporarily on July 15 for a second time this year due to the virus, after having reopened in June.
Hong Kong aims to re-open from September 23 for face-to-face classes, as it eases curbs that have kept about 900,000 students working at home for more than four months.
2020-09-08 14:09:37
MEXICO CITY: Mexico reported 3,486 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infection and 223 additional fatalities on Monday, bringing its totals to 637,509 infections and 67,781 deaths, according to updated health ministry data.
The government has said the real number of infected people is likely to be significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
2020-09-08 13:45:37
SHANGHAI: China reported 10 new COVID-19 cases for Sept. 7, down from 12 a day earlier, the national health authority said on Tuesday.
The National Health Commission said in a statement that all new cases were imported infections involving travellers from overseas, marking the 23nd consecutive day of no local infections.
The commission also reported 13 new asymptomatic infections, down from 17 a day earlier. China does not count symptomless patients as confirmed cases.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases for China now stands at 85,144. The death toll remains unchanged at 4,634.
2020-09-08 13:32:22
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina’s coronavirus death toll surpassed 10,000 on Monday, the government said, as the South American nation struggles to bring its infection rate under control.
There have been 10,129 deaths, with 488,007 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to government data. Almost half of coronavirus tests are yielding a positive result.
Argentina has been under lockdown since March 20, though cases have spiked in recent weeks. Some areas of the country, including capital Buenos Aires, remain under varying levels of quarantine, though some activities, like exercise and outdoor restaurant dining, recently resumed.
2020-09-08 13:10:13
SAO PAULO: Brazil recorded 10,273 additional confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, as well as 310 deaths from the disease, the Health Ministry said on Monday.
In all, Brazil has registered 4.15 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 126,960, according to ministry data.
Brazil has the third highest number of coronavirus cases. India, which has now registered 4.2 million cases, overtook Brazil in number of infections on Monday and is just behind the United States.
2020-09-08 12:56:45
World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday said the world must be better prepared for the next pandemic, as he called on countries to invest in public health.
More than 27.19 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 888,326 have died, according to a Reuters tally, since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
“This will not be the last pandemic,” Tedros told a news briefing in Geneva. “History teaches us that outbreaks and pandemics are a fact of life. But when the next pandemic comes, the world must be ready – more ready than it was this time.”
2020-09-08 12:44:02
MADRID: Spain’s Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said on Tuesday her government was pushing for a European Union harmonisation of COVID-19 travel measures to limit problems for tourists and tourism operators.
The Spanish government is also discussing with Britain and the EU to take into account indicators other than just the number of cases to make decisions on imposing quarantines on travellers such as the number of tests, the number of symptomatic cases and the number of hospitalised patients, Gonzalez Laya said in an interview with RNE radio station.
2020-09-08 12:18:26
SHANGHAI/BEIJING: President Xi Jinping honoured the “heroes” of China’s “people’s war” against COVID-19 at a ceremony on Tuesday, lauding the country’s resilience as well as the decisive role played in containment efforts by the ruling Communist Party.
Defying charges from the United States and elsewhere that early failures enabled the coronavirus pandemic to spread more quickly, Xi said that China acted in an open and transparent manner throughout, and took decisive actions that saved lives.
“China has helped save the lives of tens of millions of people around the world with its practical actions, showing China’s sincere desire to build a common future and community for humanity,” Xi said at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
He said China is the first major economy to return to growth during the pandemic — a fact he said demonstrates the country’s resilience and vitality.
Xi awarded Zhong Nanshan, the senior medical adviser and coronavirus expert who helped shape China’s COVID-19 response, with a Medal of the Republic, the country’s highest honour.
2020-09-08 11:34:17
MUMBAI: India recorded its highest daily deaths from the coronavirus in more than a month on Tuesday, even as new infections slowed, data from the health ministry showed.
The health ministry said 1,133 people had died of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, the highest since July, taking total mortalities to 72,775. But new daily cases were at 75,809, the lowest in a week.
India surprassed Brazil on Monday to become the country with the most number of coronavirus cases outside of the United States and has a cumulative caseload of 4.28 million.
2020-09-08 11:19:07
Pakistan on Thursday reported 330 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 299,233.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,333 cases in AJK, 13,321 in Balochistan, 3,041 in GB, 15,762 in Islamabad, 36,663 in KP, 97,306 in Punjab and 130,807 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 5 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,350.
2020-09-08 10:28:34
A new study by Aga Khan University (AKU) researchers reveals that more than 9 out of 10 people infected with coronavirus in Karachi experience no symptoms of the disease although the metropolis has been reporting the most COVID-19 cases in the past.
The study – which was conducted by AKU faculty to investigate COVID-19’s prevalence in parts of the city with high and low rates of transmission in the community during April and June 2020 – highlighted that 95% of those who tested positive for COVID-19 through blood tests, which register the presence of antibodies to fight the disease, reported feeling no symptoms such as a cough, fever or sore throat. In other words, they were asymptomatic.
The research report, prepared in collaboration with US-based international collaborators Dr Bailey Fosdick and Dr Daniel Barremore, noted that “the proportion of asymptomatic cases in Pakistan is much higher than in the developed world”.
2020-09-07 23:30:07
All team members, riders and staff have undergone a coronavirus test and further participation in the Tour de France depends on the results that will be announced hours before the start of
The members of the ‘teams bubble’ had until 1100GMT on Monday, the Tour’s first rest day, to take a test in the mobile laboratory provided by organizers.
In an email to teams seen by Reuters, the International Cycling Union (UCI) said the team doctors had until Tuesday, 1000 CET (0800 GMT) to download the test results on a dedicated platform.
Should there be positive results, the UCI medical director will contact the team doctor to assess the ‘following steps’, the email said.
The rules set by organizers Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO)and French health authorities state that should two members of a team, rider or staff, test positive for coronavirus, the whole outfit would be excluded from the race.
The UCI, who urged the teams not to communicate the results, and ASO, will issue a statement before the start of the stage in L’Ile d’Oleron.
2020-09-07 23:15:43
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department reported 38 new coronavirus cases, taking the overall infections tally to36,663.
The department also registered one more death, bumping the death toll to 1,256.
2020-09-07 22:59:58
The number of new, confirmed cases of COVID-19 in France has risen by 4,203 compared with the previous day to stand at a total of 328,980, the French health ministry said.
The number of deaths also rose by 25 over the last 24 hours to stand at 30,726.
France has the seventh-highest COVID-19 death toll in the world.
2020-09-07 22:33:42
Spain became the first country in Western Europe to record 500,000 coronavirus cases, after a second surge in infections that coincided with schools reopening.
Health Ministry data showed a total of 525,549 cases, up from 498,989 on Friday, and 2,440 infections registered in the last 24 hours. Spain updates its data retroactively, so the latest numbers could be revised.
Recent infections have been more common among younger people who often develop no symptoms thanks to their stronger immune systems, and the death rate remains far below the March-April peak when daily fatalities routinely exceeded 800.
Despite the unwanted milestone, unlike then, hospitals have enough beds to treat COVID-19 patients.
Read completes story here.
2020-09-07 21:59:00
Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech said its coronavirus vaccine candidate appeared to be safe for older people, according to preliminary results from an early to mid-stage trial, while the immune responses triggered by the vaccine were slightly weaker than younger adults.
Health officials have been concerned about whether experimental vaccines could safely protect the elderly, whose immune systems usually react less robustly to vaccines, against the virus that has led to nearly 890,000 deaths worldwide.
Sinovac’s candidate CoronaVac did not cause severe side effects in a combined Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials launched in May involving 421 participants aged at least 60, Liu Peicheng, Sinovac’s media representative, told Reuters. The complete results have not been published and were not made available to Reuters.
Four of the world’s eight vaccines that are in the third phase of trials are from China.
2020-09-07 21:35:00
Australia expects to receive its first batches of a potential COVID-19 vaccine in January, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday, as the number of new daily infections in the country’s virus hotspot fell to a 10-week low.
Morrison said his government has struck a deal with CSL to manufacture two vaccines - one developed by rival AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and another developed in CSL’s own labs with the University of Queensland.
“Australia needs some hope,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra. “Today, we take another significant step to protect the health of Australians against the coronavirus pandemic.”
Health Minister Greg Hunt said scientists leading the development of both vaccines have advised that recent evidence suggests both will offer “multi-year protection”.
Morrison said CSL is expected to deliver 3.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is currently undergoing late-stage clinical trials in Britain, Brazil and South Africa, in January and February next year.
AstraZeneca’s candidate, AZD1222, is viewed as a frontrunner in the global race to deliver an effective vaccine to combat the virus.
2020-09-07 22:10:34
Gilgit-Baltistan reported 34 new coronavirus cases, taking the overall cases to 3,042.
2020-09-07 21:14:04
Doctors at one of the largest private COVID-19 facilities in the Indian capital say they are exhausted and facing staff shortages after nearly six months of relentless work.
India’s total cases of the novel coronavirus crossed 4.2 million on Monday, overtaking Brazil as the second worst-hit country after the United States.
The federal government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given states more freedom to reopen their economies after a 3-month shutdown that saw unemployment surge and growth contract by a quarter.
After dipping under 1,000 cases per day in the summer, New Delhi is now reporting more than 3,000 per day as the city opens up, including restarting its metro system on Monday for the first time since March.
Hospitals in the capital are under additional pressure as patients from other states travel into the city to seek better healthcare.
At the Max Smart Super Speciality Hospital, the 32-bed COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) is full. Patients showing signs of recovery are quickly moved to other wards to free up ventilators.
“Everyone is mentally exhausted,” said Ronak Mankodi, a doctor at the ICU. “It requires continuous levels of attention and care.”
Read complete story here.
2020-09-07 20:52:27
Sindh reported 136 new COVID-19 infections and two deaths, raising the overall cases to130,807 and death toll to2,425, the province's chief minister Murad Ali Shah said.
2020-09-07 20:32:39
The German economy is recovering from the coronavirus shock and will reach its pre-crisis size at the beginning of 2022 at the latest, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told Reuters on Monday but he added more debt was needed to sustain the achieved progress.
The COVID-19 pandemic plunged Europe’s largest economy into its deepest recession on record in the first half of the year. Berlin unleashed an unprecedented array of rescue and stimulus measures, financed with record new borrowing of some 218 billion euros, to help companies and consumers get out of the crisis.
“We see that the economic recovery is making headway. That’s a good sign,” Scholz said in the Reuters interview, adding that the economy could also be back to pre-crisis level before 2022 if the recovery was supported in the right way.
Scholz said he was therefore planning to take on new debt to a large extent also next year to sustain the recovery.
2020-09-07 20:16:55
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday the world must be better prepared for the next pandemic, as he called on countries to invest in public health.
More than 27.19 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 888,326 have died, according to a Reuters tally, since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
“This will not be the last pandemic,” Tedros told a news briefing in Geneva. “History teaches us that outbreaks and pandemics are a fact of life. But when the next pandemic comes, the world must be ready – more ready than it was this time.”
2020-09-07 19:46:03
Britain is working to reduce the 14-day quarantine period for arrivals from countries including Spain and France, offering the chance of some respite to a travel industry reeling from the impact of COVID-19.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said a simple test when travelers land at an airport would not be effective, but the government was looking at ideas such as testing eight days after arrival.
Airline and tour companies have pleaded for a change to the 14-day quarantine rules.
“We are working to find a way that would allow for the quarantine to be reduced, but done in a way that also keeps people safe,” Hancock said on LBC radio on Monday.
But he said one test at the airport was not the answer.
“The reason it doesn’t work is because this virus can incubate for a period inside your body without a test being able to pick it up,” he said.
2020-09-07 18:59:09
About 90% of Sinovac Biotech employees and their families have taken an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by the Chinese firm under the country’s emergency use program, its chief executive said.
The extent of inoculations under the emergency program, which China launched in July but has released few details about, points to how actively it is using experimental vaccines in the hopes of protecting essential workers against a potential COVID-19 resurgence, even as trials are still underway.
The program is intended for specific groups, including medical staffers and those who work at food markets and in the transportation and service sectors.
Sinovac, whose CoronaVac is in Phase 3 clinical trials and has been included in the emergency scheme, offered the candidate vaccine to approximately 2,000 to 3,000 employees and their families on a voluntary basis, CEO Yin Weidong told Reuters.
“As a vaccine developer and manufacturer, a new outbreak could directly impact our vaccine production,” Yin said on the sidelines of an international trade fair in Beijing, explaining why his company was included in the emergency program.
2020-09-07 18:30:09
The Philippines reported its lowest number of new daily coronavirus cases in nearly eight weeks on Monday, but officials sought to temper optimism and warned of a prolonged battle as the pandemic rages on.
The health ministry confirmed 1,383 new infections, bringing total cases to 238,727, the highest in Southeast Asia, but the least since July 14. It reported 15 new deaths, taking total fatalities to 3,890.
Officials warned against complacency as the economy reopens.
“This challenge of COVID-19 could extend to next year. First of all, we cannot be complacent and ignore the threat,” Vivencio Dizon, who leads the government’s testing program, told a news conference.
2020-09-07 19:12:12
2020-09-07 18:16:00
Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways said it would cover medical and quarantine costs for passengers if they contract the new coronavirus after traveling on one of its flights.
Airlines around the world are trying to find ways to stimulate demand that has been shattered by the pandemic and expected to take years to recover.
Medical costs of up to 150,000 euros ($177,000) and quarantine costs of up to 100 euro a day for 14 days will be covered by Etihad for its passengers who contract the disease within 31 days of first travel.
“This additional cover will not only instill confidence to travel but also reassure our guests that we are doing all we can to keep them safe and protected,” Etihad Vice President Duncan Bureau said in a statement.
2020-09-07 17:58:35
Coronavirus cases are rising in 22 of the 50 US states, according to a Reuters analysis, a worrisome trend on a Labor Day holiday weekend traditionally filled with family gatherings and parties to mark the end of summer.
As little as three weeks ago, cases were increasing in only three states, Hawaii, Illinois and South Dakota, according to an analysis comparing cases for the two-week period of August 8-22 with the past two weeks.
Most of the 22 states where cases are now rising are in the less-populated parts of the Midwest and South.
On a percentage basis, South Dakota had the biggest increase over the past two weeks at 126%, reporting over 3,700 new cases. Health officials have linked some of the rise to hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists who descended on Sturgis, South Dakota, for an annual rally in August.
Cases are also rising rapidly in Iowa, with 13,600 new infections in the past two weeks, and North Dakota, with 3,600 new cases in the same period.
The increases are masked nationwide by decreasing new infections in the most populous states of California, Florida and Texas.
In California, cases fell by 39,000 over the past two weeks compared with the prior two weeks, compared to a 37,000-case increase in the 22 states in the same period, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county data.
While cases nationally have dropped from a peak in July, the United States is going into the Labor Day holiday weekend with an average of 44,000 new cases a day — double the number ahead of the May 23-25 Memorial Day weekend.
Many health experts partly blame the July spike on social gatherings held around Memorial Day.
At the same time, the United States continues to average about 1,000 new deaths from COVID-19 each day, with the total number of lives lost approaching 190,000 — the highest death toll in the world.
2020-09-07 17:40:57
MANILA: The Philippines reported its lowest number of new daily coronavirus cases in nearly eight weeks on Monday, but officials sought to temper optimism and warned of a prolonged battle as the pandemic rages on.
The health ministry confirmed 1,383 new infections, bringing total cases to 238,727, the highest in Southeast Asia, but the least since July 14. It reported 15 new deaths, taking total fatalities to 3,890.
Officials warned against complacency as the economy reopens.
“This challenge of COVID-19 could extend to next year. First of all, we cannot be complacent and ignore the threat,” Vivencio Dizon, who leads the government’s testing program, told a news conference.
Only three-quarters of testing laboratories submitted results on Monday, however, less than the 82% average in the past week.
2020-09-07 17:28:32
Amid a fast-evolving coronavirus pandemic, when the world is not only experimenting in laboratories but also in policymaking, the continued closure of schools remains a much-debated affair.
With over 160 countries observing complete or partial shutdown of educational institutes, nearly 90% of the world’s student population is currently out of class.
In a bid to curtail the rapid spread of the COVID-19 contagion, Pakistan, like most countries of the world, announced the closure of schools in the beginning of March.
Now, with the authorities reporting a steady decline in new coronavirus cases, policymakers are considering reopening educational institutes tentatively by September 15.
Read complete story here.
2020-09-07 17:13:28
DUBAI: Iran’s health ministry on Monday reported 2,152 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, the highest daily increase in 10 days, bringing the country’s nationwide tally of infections to 388,810.
Iran’s death toll from the novel coronavirus rose by 117 to 22,410, health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari told state TV.
Iran began the new school year on Saturday despite concerns by medical professionals and many parents over increased spread of the novel coronavirus in the country, one of the countries worst-hit by the pandemic in the Middle East.
2020-09-07 16:56:30
The National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) started Short Message Service (SMS) alert exhorting parental guidance based on safety guidelines for schools.
According to the SMS alert, the instructions were being issued for parents to send children to school wearing masks, even if it was a fabric or cotton mask.
It also warned the parents to never send children to school if they had a cough or COVID-19 like symptoms.
However, in case the condition deteriorates, the child should be tested immediately.
2020-09-07 16:48:25
ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood said Monday the educational institutions will reopen in the country in phases as the infections continue to decline.
Addressing a press conference alongside Special Assistant to Prime Minister Dr Faisal Sultan, the education minister said that the National Command and Operation Centre worked hard and it consulted with think tanks, specialists, and kept reviewing the situation in the region.
Earlier, the education ministers decided that the schools across Pakistan would be reopened in phases starting September 15 and strict monitoring would be done to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more here.
2020-09-07 16:31:23
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s health authorities reported 62 new coronavirus cases on Monday, the sharpest spike since early June, just as the government began barring long-term immigration pass holders from countries with high infection numbers.
From Monday, Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy imposed a ban on pass holders from 23 countries that have reported more than 150,000 COVID-19 cases, in a bid to clamp down on imported cases. Countries on the ban list include the United States, Britain and France.
Of the total new cases reported on Monday, 50 were detected in an existing cluster in Sabah state on Malaysian Borneo, stemming from the detention of two undocumented migrants two weeks earlier, the health ministry said.
The others were detected in a new cluster in the northern state of Kedah and six arrivals from Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Egypt, the ministry said in a statement.
Monday’s new infections were the largest since June 4, when 277 cases and one death were reported.
2020-09-07 16:24:00
Stool tests may be more effective than respiratory tests in identifying COVID-19 infections in children and infants since they carry a higher viral load in their stool than adults, researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) said.
Stool samples carry the virus even after it has cleared from a patient’s respiratory tract and that could lead to better identification of asymptomatic cases, particularly in infants and others who have difficulty providing nasal or throat swabs, CUHK researchers said in a press release on Monday.
The potential for stool testing in young people was a conclusion reached after researchers from CUHK’s Faculty of Medicine carried out stool tests on more than 2,000 asymptomatic children and others who needed such tests who arrived at Hong Kong airport from March 29. As of August 31, of samples collected, six children were confirmed with a COVID-19 infection.
Paul Chan, the chairman of CUHK’s Department of Microbiology and associate director of the Centre for Gut Microbiota Research, said the viral load in the stool of infants and children was “many times higher” than that in adults, and could be equivalent to that of adult respiratory samples.
2020-09-07 16:02:02
The National Institute of Health held a training of trainers hospital and clinic management in the context of the coronavirus.
The NIH tweeted that the session was held for the healthcare staff working in different hospitals of Rawalpindi division.
2020-09-07 15:20:30
MOSCOW: Russia reported 5,185 new coronavirus cases on Monday, pushing its national tally to 1,030,690, the fourth largest in the world.
Authorities confirmed 51 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 17,871.
2020-09-07 14:46:29
BERLIN: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 814 to 250,799, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
With no new deaths reported, the death toll stayed at 9,325, the tally showed.
2020-09-07 14:20:05
JAKARTA: Indonesia reported 2,880 new coronavirus infections and 105 more coronavirus-related deaths on Monday, data issued by the country’s COVID-19 task force showed.
It was the lowest rise in daily infections in six days and
brought the Southeast Asian country’s total cases to 196,989, while fatalities rose to 8,130.
2020-09-07 13:59:35
Punjab's Secretary Primary & Secondary Healthcare Department Captain (r) Usman on Monday shared the breakdown of the coronavirus cases reported in the province in the last 24 hours.
As per the latest update 60 new cases were reported in Punjab in the last 24 hours.
2020-09-07 13:50:53
SEOUL: South Korea reported its lowest tally of new coronavirus infections in more than three weeks on Monday, but officials are weighing whether to extend social distancing curbs ahead of one of the country’s biggest holidays this month.
Thousands of trainee doctors appeared set to end a two-week protest strike against government healthcare reforms after they agreed to go back to work from Tuesday.
Daily cases have dropped steadily since a late August peak of more than 400. By midnight on Sunday, 119 more cases took the national tally to 21,296, with 336 deaths, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Authorities stopped short of widespread lockdowns in a bid to avert economic damage, but unprecedented measures, such as curbs on coffee shops and eateries, and mandatory masks in public, have been extended in the Seoul area until Sunday.
Slightly looser nationwide curbs run until at least September 20, but officials said they may extend them over the Chuseok holiday, from September 30 to October 4.
Chuseok is one of South Korea’s biggest holidays, but officials urged against traditional visits to meet relatives or gather at family graves.
2020-09-07 13:28:58
District Health Officer Islamabad announced today that 16 new COVID-19 cases were reported from the federal capital today.
The DHO said that the positivity rate of the federal capital was 0.7%.
2020-09-07 13:16:15
YANGON: Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi pulled out of the first event of her election campaign on Monday, citing a worsening outbreak of the novel coronavheirus in the country.
The Southeast Asian nation reported 100 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, the biggest daily increase since detecting its first infection in March, followed by 45 more on Monday.
Suu Kyi, who rules as state counselor, was set to tour the constituency where she is seeking re-election in the commercial capital of Yangon on Tuesday, the first official day of campaigning ahead of polls set for November 8.
But she said in a live broadcast on Facebook that the health minister had advised her to cancel the trip.
“At the moment the ministry of health is the most powerful. We must follow the instructions of the ministry,” she said.
2020-09-07 13:13:46
SINGAPORE: Singapore’s health ministry reported 22 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, the city-state’s lowest daily count since mid-March.
2020-09-07 13:00:16
Bollywood actress Malaika Arora has also tested positive for coronavirus and is under isolation hours after her boyfriend Arjun Kapoor announced on social media that he was diagnosed with COVID-19, according to Indian media.
The Indian media, citing Malaika’s sister Amrita Arora, reported that the actress is taking all required precautions and is following the guidelines of authorities.
Earlier, Arjun Kapoor announced on Instagram that he has tested positive for novel coronavirus and has isolated himself at home under the advice of doctors.
Malaika Arora’s beau turned to Instagram and wrote, “It is my duty to inform all of you that I have tested positive for coronavirus. I’m feeling ok and I’m asymptomatic.”
Read more here.
2020-09-07 12:37:53
AMMAN: More than 200 UN staff members have been infected by COVID-19 in Syria as the global body steps up its contingency plans to combat the fast spread of the pandemic in the country, medical workers and UN officials said.
UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in Syria, Imran Riza, last Tuesday told UN heads of agencies in a letter to distribute to staff that the UN was in the final stages of securing a medical facility for treatment of cases.
“More than two hundred cases have been reported among UN staff members, some of whom have been hospitalized and three who were medically evacuated,” the top UN official in Syria said in the letter, which was leaked to Reuters from an infected local staff member.
Humanitarian workers and medics said the real number of cases is considerably higher, including the hundreds of staff employed by NGO partners working for the dozen UN agencies that oversee the country’s largest humanitarian relief operations.
Riza said there had been a ten-fold spike in infections in Syria in the two months since he last briefed staff, referring to health ministry figures that say there have been 3,171 cases and 134 deaths since the first case was reported on March 23.
“The “epidemiological situation across the country has changed considerably,” Riza said.
2020-09-07 12:16:18
BRASILIA: Five per cent of Brazilians would refuse under any circumstances to take a vaccine against coronavirus and a further 20% indicated they might not take it, according to a survey published in newspaper O Estado de S Paulo on Sunday.
The reasons given by those wary of taking a vaccine included doubts over its safety and effectiveness, and unfounded conspiracy theories such as fears over genetic manipulation, having a chip implanted by taking it, and that it is made with aborted fetuses.
The Ibope poll for non-governmental organization Avaaz surveyed 1,000 people across the country, the paper said.
Of those who expressed a reluctance to take a vaccine, 34% were in the 25-34 year-old age range, and 36% were evangelical Christians. The poll showed that 75% of Brazilians will take a vaccine when one becomes available.
The survey comes after right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, who has consistently downplayed the severity of the coronavirus outbreak, reiterated last week that COVID-19 vaccinations will not be obligatory when they become available.
Brazil has the second highest number of coronavirus cases and related deaths in the world, with these tallies currently standing at 4.1 million and 126,203, respectively.
2020-09-07 12:00:00
BENGALURU: India outstripped Brazil to become the country with the second-highest number of coronavirus cases after it surged past 4.2 million mark on Monday.
With 4,204,613 infections, India is nearly 70,000 cases ahead of Brazil, which will post its most recent numbers later on Monday.
Yesterday, India shattered global record after reporting over 90,000 new COVID-19 cases in a day.
There were 90,632 new cases in the 24 hours to Sunday, according to the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, while the number of deaths rose by 1,065 to 70,626.
Coronavirus cases in India have reached 4.1 million and about 3.2 million affected people have been treated so far, the government data showed.
Read more here.
2020-09-07 11:40:16
LONDON: The sharp rise in COVID-19 cases in Britain of 2,988 recorded on Sunday, the highest jump since May, was “concerning”, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said, although he added that the majority were younger people.
“The rise in the number of cases that we’ve seen today is concerning,” he said. “The cases are predominately among younger people, but we’ve seen in other countries across the world and in Europe this sort of rise in the cases amongst younger people leading to a rise across the population as a whole.”
He said everybody had to follow social distancing rules to prevent the spread of infections.
2020-09-07 11:38:48
LONDON: Britain said on Sunday it had recorded 2,988 new daily coronavirus cases, up from 1,813 on Saturday to the highest level since May 23.
The number of fatalities, however, remained at a low level, with two reported deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test in the previous 24 hours, government data showed.
2020-09-07 11:16:41
KARACHI: A senior health professional succumbed to coronavirus in Sindh raising the death tally to 2,432 across the province, The News reported on Monday.
According to a health department official, a 57-year-old senior doctor from Nawabshah named Dr Moinuddin Shaikh – who was associated with the Indus Health Network – lost his battle against the deadly contagion at the Sindh Institute of Urology & Transplantation in Karachi on Sunday.
Dr Shaikh, who was also a former district health officer, was laid to rest in accordance with the standard operating procedures (SOPs) in his home town, the official added.
Read more here.
2020-09-07 11:00:10
PARIS: French health authorities reported 7,071 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Sunday, down from Saturday’s 8,550 and also below Friday’s peak of 8,975.
Friday’s figure had set a new all-time high of daily additional infections for the country. The number of people hospitalised for the disease over the last seven days reached 1,704, of which 288 were in intensive care units.
The number of people in France who have died from COVID-19 increased by 3 to 30,701, and the cumulative number of cases now totals 324,777.
France must stay vigilant as more people will be hospitalised in intensive care units in the next two weeks, reflecting a flare-up in COVID-19 infections in recent days, Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Saturday.
2020-09-07 10:55:48
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia expects to receive its first batches of a potential COVID-19 vaccine in January, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday, as the number of new daily infections in the country’s virus hotspot fell to a 10-week low.
Morrison said his government has struck a deal with CSL Ltd to manufacture two vaccines — one developed by rival AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and another developed in CSL’s own labs with the University of Queensland.
“Australia needs some hope,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra. “Today, we take another significant step to protect the health of Australians against the coronavirus pandemic.”
Health Minister Greg Hunt said scientists leading the development of both vaccines have advised that recent evidence suggests both will offer “multi-year protection”.
Morrison said CSL is expected to deliver 3.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is currently undergoing late-stage clinical trials in Britain, Brazil and South Africa, in January and February next year.
AstraZeneca’s candidate, AZD1222, is viewed as a frontrunner in the global race to deliver an effective vaccine to combat the virus.
Australia had announced in August that it planned to buy AZD1222, along with an agreement of intent from CSL to manufacture it. That plan was thrown into some doubt when CSL announced shortly afterward that it would prioritise the manufacture of its own vaccine.
2020-09-07 10:52:40
Pakistan on Thursday reported 394 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 298,903.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,331 cases in AJK, 13,292 in Balochistan, 3,008 in GB, 15,750 in Islamabad, 36,625 in KP, 97,226 in Punjab and 130,671 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 3 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,345.
2020-09-06 18:58:57
MOSCOW: Russia reported 5,195 new coronavirus cases on Sunday taking its total to 1,025,505, the fourth largest in the world.
The Russian coronavirus crisis centre said 61 deaths had been confirmed in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 17,820.
2020-09-06 18:40:38
PARIS: A coronavirus vaccine that Sanofi is developing with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline is likely to be priced at less than 10 euros ($11.80) per shot if it is approved for use, Sanofi’s chief in France said on Saturday.
“The price is not totally set ... We are assessing production costs for the coming months ... We will be below 10 euros,” Olivier Bogillot told France Inter radio.
Drugmakers and government agencies are racing to come up with vaccines for the new coronavirus and treatments for COVID-19, the respiratory diseases it causes which has killed more than 879,000 worldwide and wrecked economies.
Asked about rival AstraZeneca, which is expected to price its shot at about 2.50 euros in Europe, Bogillot said: “The price gap for us can be that we use all our internal resources, our own researchers, our own research centres. AstraZeneca outsources part of its production.”
A Sanofi spokeswoman said in an emailed statement on Sunday that a final price would only be decided when the vaccine reaches its final testing stage.
“We anticipate being able to determine a final price at the time of our Phase III trials, when we know more about dosing. At this stage, any figure is imprecise. Less than 10 euros is only one of the hypotheses we are working on.”
2020-09-06 18:25:24
MEXICO CITY: Mexico is working to produce its own COVID-19 vaccines and could have one ready by next spring, according to a researcher coordinating local efforts amid a global race to tame a disease that has infected over 26.75 million people worldwide.
Esther Orozco, coordinator of the scientific group that represents Mexico at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, said research based on a virus that transmits the avian Newcastle disease is the most viable candidate to produce the first vaccine in Mexico.
Orozco said the vaccine, developed by the private firm Laboratorio Avimex with researchers from Mexico’s main public university, UNAM, and the Mexican Social Security Institute, is ready to start the first phase of testing with humans.
“They are advanced,” Orozco told Reuters in an interview. “I think it’s going to be ready by spring or the start of summer.”
She said the Avimex vaccine trials will begin with “dozens of humans.” A second stage will see “hundreds of patients” before thousands of volunteers take part in final Phase 3 studies.
Avimex, normally dedicated to the manufacture of vaccines and pharmaceutical products for animals, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mexico has launched a global effort to build diplomatic and commercial alliances to ensure it receives the approximately 200 million vaccine doses it estimates it will need for a disease that has infected more than 623,000 people and killed at least 66,851 in Latin America’s second-largest economy.
Mexico will take part in clinical trials of Italian and Russian vaccines, and has also struck a deal to produce pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca Plc’s vaccine.
2020-09-06 18:24:47
NEW DELHI: India added more than 90,000 cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, a global daily record, according to data from the federal health ministry.
There were 90,632 new cases in the 24 hours to Sunday, according to the data from the Ministry of Health and Famlily Welfare, while the number of deaths rose by 1,065 to 70,626.
The country is set to pass Brazil on Monday as the second most affected country by total infections and will be behind only the United States, which has 6.4 million cases and nearly 193,000 deaths.
Coronavirus cases in India have reached 4.1 million and about 3.2 million affected people have been treated so far, the government data showed.
Medical experts said the country was seeing a second wave of the pandemic in some parts of the country, and that case numbers have surged because of increased testing and the easing of restrictions on public movement.
The government will partially restore metro train services in the national capital of New Delhi from Monday.
The pandemic will not finish this year as the virus has spread from big cities to other parts of the country, Randeep Guleria, the director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, said in an interview with India Today TV.
The number of cases could continue to rise before the curve flattens out, he said.
India has logged the world’s largest daily coronavirus case load for almost a month even as its government pushes to open businesses to revive a contracting economy.
2020-09-06 16:04:54
JAKARTA: Indonesia reported 3,444 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, bringing the total to 194,109, data from the country’s health ministry website showed.
The Southeast Asian country also reported 85 new deaths on Sunday, taking the total to 8,025, the highest coronavirus death toll in Southeast Asia.
2020-09-06 15:40:25
2020-09-06 15:38:10
The Canadian government will extend its coronavirus rent-relief program for small businesses into September, the Globe and Mail reported late on Saturday, citing sources familiar with the policy discussions.
Officials in the government are also working on options to reform the program, the website reported, adding that the extension of the program was meant to be an interim measure.
No-one was immediately available to verify the report.
The Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance Program offered loans to landlords of entrepreneurs worth half the tenant’s rent from April through August, if tenants pay a quarter and the landlord absorbs the remaining quarter.
However, the program requires landlords to apply, which has prompted low uptake and left many tenants powerless to get relief as their landlords refuse to make applications.
Canada had also rolled out the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) to offer broad support to the millions of Canadians who lost their jobs amid coronavirus shutdowns.
The government put the CERB program in place because the traditional employment insurance (EI) system could not handle the rapid influx of new applicants as millions of people were laid off, or lost work hours, due to COVID-19.
2020-09-06 15:22:49
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Minister Taimur Jhagra said on Sunday that the public's approval regarding the provincial government's efforts of handling COVID-19 was a testament to the "collective efforts to take hard decision under extreme pressure".
"To everyone in KP, led by CM Mahmood Khan, healthcare staff, & civil and military authorities that worked day & night under incredible pressure, the approval of the KP public is a testament to your collective efforts to take hard decisions under extreme pressure. Courage pays!" tweeetd the minister after President PILDAT shared the data of the recent Gallup survey.
2020-09-06 15:09:38
SEOUL: South Korea on Sunday reported the smallest rise in coronavirus infections in three weeks, remaining under 200 for a fourth consecutive day as tighter restrictions cap a second wave.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 167 cases of the new coronavirus for the 24 hours through midnight on Saturday, down from 168 the previous day.
That brings the country's total infections to 21,177 with 334 COVID-19 deaths. Success in crushing early outbreaks was partially reversed after a wave infections among members of a church spread when they attended a political rally in mid-August.
Daily infections have hovered below 200 for four days after peaking at 441 in late August, as tougher social distancing curbs have taken effect.
The measures have included unprecedented restrictions on eateries in the Seoul area, where the spread is concentrated, banning onsite dining after 9 pm. and limiting coffee and bakery franchises to takeout and delivery all day.
2020-09-06 14:22:21
Indian actor Arjun Kapoor isolated himself at home after he announced on Instagram that he was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus.
“It is my duty to inform all of you that I have tested positive for coronavirus. I’m feeling ok and I’m asymptomatic,” said Kapoor in a statement posted on his Instagram account.
“I have isolated myself at home under the advice of doctors and authorities and will be under home quarantine,” the Panipat actor further said.
Read more here.
2020-09-06 14:11:02
Former singer Fakhr-e-Alam said on Sunday that what the frontline workers and the NCOC have achieved against COVID-19 was "heroic".
Alam said this while sharing the short video on the efforts of the frontline workers in the fight against COVID-19.
2020-09-06 14:03:44
BEIJING: China National Biotec Group (CNBG) and Sinovac Biotech Ltd said on Saturday they have each found two more countries to run late-stage clinical tests of their coronavirus vaccine candidates, as China steps up its efforts in the global race.
Serbia and Pakistan have agreed to participate in the Phase 3 trials of CNBG’s vaccine candidates while Sinovac has received approval from Turkey and Bangladesh. The two companies are seeking more data from overseas as new cases in China are dwindling.
Serbia will test two vaccines developed by CNBG’s Wuhan and Beijing units, and Pakistan will test the Beijing unit’s candidate, the company told Reuters.
CNBG’s Phase 3 trials are expected to involve 50,000 people in about 10 countries, said CNBG vice president Zhang Yuntao. Trials have already begun in United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Peru, Morocco, Argentina and Jordan.
Zhang said foreign countries have expressed interest in ordering a combined 500 million doses of its vaccines.
CNBG is expected to be able to produce 300 million doses of vaccine a year once it upgrades manufacturing techniques, and is working on a plan to raise its annual capacity to 1 billion doses, Zhang said.
The company will soon begin providing its vaccines to Chinese staffers working in overseas embassies and consulates, he added.
Sinovac’s vaccine candidate CoronaVac, being tested in Brazil and Indonesia, also obtained approvals from Turkey and Bangladesh for Phase 3 trials, Sinovac CEO Yin Weidong told Reuters on Sunday.
While the final stage of trials are still underway to prove the vaccines are safe and effective, China has already authorized the vaccine candidates from Sinovac and CNBG for emergency use for those in high-risk groups such as medical workers.
2020-09-06 13:49:44
MANILA: The Philippines health ministry on Sunday reported 2,839 new coronavirus cases and 85 more deaths, bringing the country’s total tally of infections to 237,365 and fatalities to 3,875.
The Department of Health also said 23,074 individuals have recovered from COVID-19, bringing total recoveries to 184,687.
2020-09-06 13:34:33
The National Command and Operations Centre on Sunday released a short documentary titled 'Sarfarosh' on the Defence Day to pay tribute to the frontline workers in the fight against coronavirus.
"On this Defence Day a tribute to the frontline workers who fought the battle for saving the lives of fellow Pakistanis from the threat posed by COVID-19. They deserve the highest possible gratitude of the nation," said the NCOC Chairman Asad Umar.
2020-09-06 13:10:59
Islamabad's District Health Officer shared on Sunday that the federal capital recorded its lowest number of positive cases in the last 24 hours.
The DHO also shared that positivity rate of the federal capital has also dropped to 0.2%.
2020-09-06 12:37:58
NEW DELHI: India added more than 90,000 cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, a global daily record, according to data from the federal health ministry.
There were 90,632 new cases in the 24 hours to Sunday, according to the data from the Ministry of Health and Famlily Welfare, while the number of deaths rose by 1,065 to 70,626.
The country is set to pass Brazil on Monday as the second most affected country by total infections and will be behind only the United States, which has 6.4 million cases and nearly 193,000 deaths.
Coronavirus cases in India have reached 4.1 million and about 3.2 million affected people have been treated so far, the government data showed.
Medical experts said the country was seeing a second wave of the pandemic in some parts of the country, and that case numbers have surged because of increased testing and the easing of restrictions on public movement.
The government will partially restore metro train services in the national capital of New Delhi from Monday.
The pandemic will not finish this year as the virus has spread from big cities to other parts of the country, Randeep Guleria, the director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, said in an interview with India Today TV.
The number of cases could continue to rise before the curve flattens out, he said.
India has logged the world’s largest daily coronavirus case load for almost a month even as its government pushes to open businesses to revive a contracting economy.
2020-09-06 12:37:12
MELBOURNE: Australia’s coronavirus hot spot state of Victoria on Sunday extended a hard lockdown in its capital Melbourne until September 28, as the infection rate has declined more slowly than hoped.
“We cannot open up at this time. If we were to we would lose control very quickly,” State Premier Daniel Andrews told a televised media conference on Sunday.
The hard lockdown was ordered on August 2 in response to a second wave of infections, that erupted in Melbourne.
Australia’s second most populous state has been the epicenter of a second wave of the novel coronavirus, now accounting for about 75% of the country’s 26,282 cases and 90% of its 753 deaths.
Victoria on Sunday reported 63 new COVID-19 infections and five deaths, down from a peak of 725 new cases on Aug. 5. By contrast, Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, has had no more than 13 cases a day since early August.
Melbourne’s stage 4 restrictions, which had been due to end on September 13, shut most of the economy, limited people’s movements to a tight zone around their homes for one hour a day and imposed a night time curfew.
From September 14, the rules won’t be quite as tough, as the curfew will begin an hour later at 9 pm, and people can go outdoors for two hours instead of one, while those living alone will be allowed to have a visitor.
If the infection rate subsides as hoped by the end of September, Andrews said restrictions would be relaxed gradually over the subsequent two months, though some businesses would have to remain shut through late November.
2020-09-06 12:34:26
Pakistan on Thursday reported 484 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 298,509.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,327 cases in AJK, 13,229 in Balochistan, 2,979 in GB, 15,734 in Islamabad, 36,591 in KP, 97,166 in Punjab and 130,483 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 2 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,342.
2020-09-04 23:59:49
Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is suffering a slight lung infection after coming down with coronavirus, but his condition is not worrying, his personal doctor, Alberto Zangrillo, said on Friday.
Zangrillo told reporters he decided to hospitalize Berlusconi late on Thursday as a precautionary measure given his age and previous health problems. Berlusconi is 83 and underwent major heart surgery in 2016.
2020-09-04 23:45:48
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 84 new cases in the province, taking the total to 36,498 in the province.
It said that no new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, keeping the total at 1,255.
2020-09-04 23:30:52
Johnson & Johnson will seek 20,000 volunteers for late-stage human trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine in hard-hit Latin America, one-third of the planned global total, one of its public health chiefs in the region said.
Josue Bacaltchuk, vice president of medical affairs for Latin America for Janssen, J&J’s Belgian unit developing the vaccine prototype, said countries hosting the trials would also likely get preferential access to vaccines once ready.
“We expect the majority in Brazil because it’s the biggest country and also the one most affected by the pandemic so we expect a lot of people volunteering, but we expect also high numbers in Colombia and in Argentina,” Bacaltchuk said.
“It’s the intention of the company to prioritize the countries that contribute to the development of the vaccine and that will have patients participating in the trials, yes,” he added in an interview with Reuters on Thursday.
2020-09-04 23:15:05
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for countries around the world to join forces to tackle the coronavirus on Friday, saying that “vaccine nationalism” would only slow the response to the pandemic.
The WHO and GAVI vaccine alliance are leading a global vaccine allocation plan known as COVAX aimed at helping buy and distribute vaccination shots fairly.
But some countries that have secured their own supplies through bilateral deals, including the United States, have said they will not join COVAX.
“Vaccine nationalism will prolong the pandemic,” Tedros told reporters at a WHO briefing in Geneva, without mentioning any specific countries.
2020-09-04 22:59:52
2020-09-04 22:34:05
Spain came close to clocking half a million coronavirus cases after authorities registered 4,503 new infections, bringing the total to 498,989 - the most in Western Europe.
A new wave of contagion has been less deadly than early in the pandemic, however, and infections appear to have slowed from a daily peak of more than 10,000 a week ago. The tally could be revised, as Spain updates its statistics retroactively.
The death rate remains well below the March-April peak when fatalities routinely exceeded 800 per day. The Health Ministry reported 19 deaths on Friday, bringing the total up to 29,148.
With schools due to restart next week and many adults returning to work, the latest surge in coronavirus cases has sparked concern and some confusion.
“In Madrid everybody wears a face mask, we maintain social distance, there are no night clubs, so I don’t know what the problem is,” teacher Maribel Cimas told Reuters from behind a zebra-patterned mask.
“What are we doing worse than the rest of Europe?”
2020-09-04 22:14:12
As COVID-19-weary people around the world are seen becoming more and more negligent in observing safety measures, Twitter has issued a reminder to "PLEASE WEAR A MASK".
2020-09-04 22:03:39
French health authorities have reported 8,975 new confirmed coronavirus cases, setting an all-time high of daily additional infections since the disease started to spread in the country at the end of the winter.
The number of people hospitalised for the disease, while still well below its April 14 peak of 32,292, has gone up for the sixth day running, at 4,671.
The number of people in France who have died from COVID-19 infections stood at 30,686 and the cumulative number of cases now totals 309,156.
2020-09-04 21:49:59
Brazil’s economy ministry revised its 2020 fiscal forecasts to account for the extension of emergency payments to the poor through the end of the year, which will push government and public sector deficits out to new records.
The ministry now expects the central government primary deficit excluding interest payments to reach 866.4 billion reais ($167 bln) or 12.1% of gross domestic product this year, up from 787.4 billion reais or 11% of GDP as forecast in July.
The wider public sector deficit was also revised wider to 891.1 billion reais or 12.4% of GDP, from 812.2 billion reais or 11.3% of GDP.
Speaking to reporters last week after data showed a narrower-than-expected government shortfall in July, Waldery Rodrigues, special secretary to the ministry, said the projected public sector deficit of 11.3% of GDP could be lowered.
2020-09-04 21:35:24
Russia has registered 10,079 deaths linked to suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19, data from the state statistics service Rosstat shows.
The virus had been the main cause of death in 4,863 of these cases, Rosstat said.
Russia recorded a total of 181,500 deaths that month, up from the 151,554 it had recorded in July last year, according to the data.
The country has overall recorded 1,015,105 cases of the coronavirus, the fourth largest caseload in the world.
2020-09-04 21:10:42
COVID-19 has forced the closure of a dozen schools in mainland France just days into the new academic year, the government said on Friday, as coronavirus cases surge in parts of the country.
Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said the overwhelming majority of France’s 12 million pupils had returned without any problems and that glitches were to be expected.
The school year began on Tuesday.
Pupils aged 11 and over must wear face masks at all times. Attendance is mandatory, though schools can adapt to surges in local infections by limiting numbers for a few days or weeks - again forcing some parents to juggle work and childcare.
“It’s just the third day, they’ve just started, and there are already (virus) cases,” said Giancarlo Ambrosini, whose son’s primary school in Paris’ 16th district sent home two classes for a fortnight.
2020-09-04 21:20:10
Gaza has reported hundreds of coronavirus infections since the first case emerged in the general population last week, and a UN aid group warned that a lack of key medical items including ventilators could make it hard to treat the disease effectively.
Widely impoverished and densely populated, the Palestinian enclave has been on lockdown since authorities confirmed four infections from a single family on Aug. 24. It was the first time the virus was detected outside quarantine zones set up for people returning from abroad.
Since then, 603 new cases have been recorded, nearly all among the general population, with four deaths since Aug. 24, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
Tamara Alrifai, spokeswoman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) devoted to Palestinian refugees, in a virtual briefing for reporters streamed from Geneva, said the real challenge in Gaza is the unavailability of needed items such as ventilators and other medical items.
UNRWA is asking for $94 million in contributions from countries so it can continue COVID-19 containment efforts.
2020-09-04 20:44:13
Ecuadorean mechanic Darwin Heredia, before opening his Quito garage each morning, sends WhatsApp messages to dozens of neighbors to find out if anyone is showing symptoms of COVID-19.
If any say yes, Heredia alerts a local clinic. Public health officials will then visit the neighborhood and, if needed, begin carry out contact tracing.
Heredia is a volunteer for a Health Ministry programme that since June has used a network of Quito community leaders to help it follow the spread of the pandemic that devastated Ecuador’s biggest city, Guayaquil, in the first months of the outbreak.
The program has tapped around 700 community leaders in twelve neighbourhoods that have been identified as high-risk areas of Quito, which has become the new epicentre of the coronavirus in Ecuador.
2020-09-04 20:32:27
Islamabad has recorded 26 more recoveries, according to the District Health Office.
The total number of recoveries in the city now stands at 15,144.
2020-09-04 20:10:06
2020-09-04 19:54:42
Canada added 245,800 jobs in August, most of them full-time, and the unemployment rate fell to 10.2% as the economy continued to reopen from coronavirus shutdowns, Statistics Canada said.
Analysts in a Reuters poll had predicted a gain of 275,000 jobs and for the unemployment rate to fall to 10.1% from 10.9% in July.
2020-09-04 19:39:05
Virgin Atlantic announced 1,150 more job cuts due to the coronavirus crisis, saying its 1.2 billion pound ($1.6 billion) rescue deal alone was not enough to secure its future.
The airline, which had already announced around 3,500 job losses, completed the rescue deal with major shareholders and creditors on Friday after various court approvals.
Chief Executive Shai Weiss said that while the deal was a major step forward towards survival, more action was needed.
“After the sacrifices so many of our people have made, further reducing the number of people we employ is heart-breaking but essential for survival,” he said.
Airlines across the world have been slashing jobs and seeking funds after the COVID-19 pandemic grounded most flights earlier this year and demand has been slow to recover amid continue restrictions in many countries.
2020-09-04 19:30:20
Agreeing the exact conditions on respecting democracy to attach to the disbursement of European Union funds is a key challenge for implementing the bloc’s plan to revive the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic, a top official said.
European Council President Charles Michel, who chairs EU summits, spoke to Reuters and five other European news agencies after Hungary refused to grant its final approval to the EU recovery plan without guarantees on a linked mechanism on the rule of law.
“There is a difficulty with this topic, it’s not new. But we made a big step on that in July and we must now continue,” Michel said of a deal between the 27 national EU leaders this summer on the economic recovery stimulus.
“When there is a problem, we need to find a solution. And we will find a solution,” he said, without giving details.
2020-09-04 19:15:21
Britain’s Co-operative Group said it would open over 65 new and extended stores this year, creating up to 1,000 jobs, as it seeks to capitalise on the popularity of local convenience shopping during the coronavirus pandemic.
The owner of the country’s sixth-largest supermarket chain said the new stores were part of a 135 million pound ($178 million) investment programme.
It said up to 12 more Co-op franchise stores would also open this year.
Britons’ grocery shopping habits have shifted during the pandemic toward more online shopping and more frequent trips to smaller convenience stores. The latter is the mainstay of the Co-op’s business.
2020-09-04 18:48:43
2020-09-04 18:29:20
Goalkeeper Steve Mandanda was withdrawn from the French squad to face Sweden and Croatia in upcoming UEFA Nations League clashes after returning a positive COVID-19 test, officials announced.
Mandanda will on Friday leave the squad before they depart for Solna where the world champions face Sweden on Saturday.
He will also miss the game against Croatia next Thursday. The 35-year-old returned a positive test on Wednesday.
"The goalkeeper carried out a second PCR test during the day. This new test was also positive.
Steve Mandanda will therefore not be able to participate in the match in Sweden," said the France team in a statement.
Mandanda has been in a training "bubble" before the trip to Sweden and, like all his teammates, had previously tested negative.
2020-09-04 18:10:54
South Korea’s top medical body faced a rift after trainee doctors rejected a deal by its leader to end a two-week-old strike, although the government backed down from reform plans aimed at averting future epidemics.
Some of the trainees vowed to continue the walkout by about 16,000 interns and resident doctors to oppose the government measures, such as increasing the number of doctors and building public medical schools, among others.
The strike has hindered efforts to damp a new wave of coronavirus infections, with 198 new cases on Thursday taking the nation’s tally to 20,842, with 331 deaths, while a surge in critical cases led to a dearth of hospital beds.
The government says its initiative could help tackle similar crises in future, but the doctors say it would merely swell their numbers in cities, without improving medical services and work conditions in rural provinces.
Lim Hyun-taek, a senior official of the Korean Medical Association (KMA), said he had filed a non-confidence motion against its president, Choi Dae-zip, who signed the pact, for not holding sufficient consultations with members.
“We were not informed of the agreement at all,” said Park Ji-hyun, the head of the Korean Intern Resident Association, adding that the deal fell short of its demands.
2020-09-04 17:30:14
Japan’s government said it would bear the cost of providing coronavirus vaccines to the populace, as it aims for a comprehensive inoculation against the pandemic.
The government also said it planned to establish funds to compensate for possible side effects from vaccines. The plans were outlined in documents distributed at a briefing by Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who also heads the coronavirus response.
2020-09-04 17:52:30
US job growth slowed further in August as financial assistance from the government ran out, threatening the economy’s recovery from the COVID-19 recession.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.371 million jobs last month after advancing 1.734 million in July, the Labor Department’s closely watched employment report showed on Friday. The unemployment rate fell to 8.4% from 10.2% in July. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 1.4 million jobs added in August and the unemployment rate sliding to 9.8%.
Companies from transportation to manufacturing industries have been announcing layoffs or furloughs, putting pressure on the White House and Congress to restart stalled negotiations for another fiscal package. With just two months to go until the presidential election, the jobs situation likely will provide political ammunition for both Democrats and Republicans.
Programs to help businesses pay wages have either lapsed or are on the verge of ending. A $600 weekly unemployment supplement expired in July. Economists credited government largesse for the sharp rebound in economic activity after it nearly ground to a halt following the shuttering of businesses in mid-March to control the spread of the coronavirus.
2020-09-04 17:17:42
The National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) asked the provinces to ensure health guidelines and standard operating procedures (SOPs) at schools and other educational institutions after recommencement to be announced soon and increase contact tracing and quarantining of affected people.
The NCOC meeting presided by Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar via video link discussed preparations for opening of schools including hand washing arrangements, update on sentinel testing and micro smart lockdowns (SLDs) and update on educational institutions’ planned testing.
Speaking on the occasion, Asad Umar said the provincial governments should increase their existing capacity of contact tracing and quarantining in order to mitigate the expected impact of public gatherings during the month of Muharram.
The provincial representatives through video link briefed the Forum on existing testing capacity, number of positive cases, positivity trends and framework underway for testing of schools after recommencement.
They also added that provincial administrations were watchful of the possible Muharram impact in rising positivity ratio of COVID patients and were ensuring requisite arrangements.
2020-09-04 17:06:52
Italy's flamboyant former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been hospitalised, his aides said, days after the media tycoon became the latest high-profile figure to contract the coronavirus.
Berlusconi, 83, was taken to San Raffaele hospital in Milan on Thursday night after suffering "certain symptoms", his entourage said in a statement.
But it said the move was just "a precaution" and there was "no cause for concern".
The billionaire tested positive for coronavirus earlier this week after returning from a holiday at his luxury villa on Sardinia's jet-set Emerald Coast.
The AGI news agency said Berlusconi was hospitalised in a room that he often occupies when staying at the facility.
AGI said this indicates that his condition is not serious, or he would be in intensive care.
2020-09-04 16:52:32
2020-09-04 15:40:17
Fearful of catching the coronavirus while also feeling the pinch from recession, Spaniards are increasingly shunning public transport and turning to cheap old cars, industry data shows, in a trend that risks more toxic emissions.
Sales of vehicles older than 20 years jumped 31% year-on-year in July and August to nearly 44,000 cars, according to data from the Institute of Automotive Studies.
The average price of those purchases was around 1,400 euros ($1,655.36), vehicle sales portal Sumauto said, with some cars going for as little as 500 euros.
As sales for old cars jumped, sales of new units rose a modest 1.1% year-on-year in July and fell 10% in August.
At the same time, public transport traffic plunged 40% during the summer compared with the same period last year, Sumauto added, quoting the association of public transportation operators.
With the economy set to shrink at least 9% in 2020 and unemployment ticking up in August after a brief recovery in July, many Spaniards are looking to save money.
But more use of old cars could be negative for the environment and respiratory health.
“Old cars, even when they were new, contaminated more as environmental rules were much less strict 15 or 20 years ago,” said Adrian Fernandez, a transport expert at Greenpeace Spain. After many years on the road these cars are now even more polluting, he added.
2020-09-04 15:55:10
Travellers to the United Kingdom faced what the transport minister said was confusion on Friday as Wales and Scotland slapped a quarantine on arrivals from Portugal but England and Northern Ireland held back from restrictions.
Wales will quarantine travellers from Portugal, Gibraltar, French Polynesia and the Greek islands of Mykonos, Zakynthos, Lesbos, Paros, Antiparos and Crete as of Friday.
Scotland will do the same for travellers from Portugal and French Polynesia from 0300 GMT on Saturday. England and Northern Ireland will not.
“I do realise it creates confusion for people not to have a single rule (across the UK) but we do have this devolved approach throughout the United Kingdom and I can only be responsible for the English part of that,” Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky News.
Asked about testing at airports, Shapps said there was no silver bullet as a day zero test was unlikely to work.
“A day zero test as you come home is unlikely to find the vast majority of people who travelled with coronavirus,” Shapps said, adding that the government’s health experts thought such a test would pick up just 7% of people who were positive.
2020-09-04 16:10:54
Russia’s “Sputnik-V” COVID-19 vaccine produced an antibody response in all participants in early-stage trials, according to results published on Friday by The Lancet medical journal that were hailed by Moscow as an answer to its critics.
The results of the two trials, conducted in June-July this year and involving 76 participants, showed 100% of participants developing antibodies to the new coronavirus and no serious side effects, The Lancet said.
Russia licensed the two-shot jab for domestic use in August, the first country to do so and before any data had been published or a large-scale trial begun.
“The two 42-day trials – including 38 healthy adults each – did not find any serious adverse effects among participants, and confirmed that the vaccine candidates elicit an antibody response,” The Lancet said.
“Large, long-term trials including a placebo comparison, and further monitoring are needed to establish the long-term safety and effectiveness of the vaccine for preventing COVID-19 infection,” it said.
2020-09-04 16:38:07
The World Health Organization does not expect widespread vaccinations against COVID-19 until the middle of next year, a spokeswoman said, stressing the importance of rigorous checks on their effectiveness and safety.
None of the candidate vaccines in advanced clinical trials so far has demonstrated a “clear signal” of efficacy at the level of at least 50% sought by the WHO, spokeswoman Margaret Harris said.
Russia granted regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine in August after less than two months of human testing, prompting some Western experts to question its safety and efficacy.
US public health officials and Pfizer Inc said on Thursday a vaccine could be ready for distribution as soon as late October. That would be just ahead of the US election on November 3 in which the pandemic is likely to be a major factor among voters deciding whether President Donald Trump wins a second term.
“We are really not expecting to see widespread vaccination until the middle of next year,” Harris told a UN briefing in Geneva.
“This phase 3 must take longer because we need to see how truly protective the vaccine is and we also need to see how safe it is,” she added. This referred to the phase in vaccine research where large clinical trials among people are conducted. Harris did not refer to any specific vaccine candidate.
2020-09-04 14:55:44
Australia's coronavirus hotspot Victoria state said on Friday its death toll from the virus rose by 59 and there were 81 new cases.
The death tally includes 50 people in aged-care facilities who died in July and August, the state health department said in a tweet. Victoria, Australia's second-most populous state, reported 15 deaths and 113 cases a day earlier.
2020-09-04 12:35:03
India reported a daily jump of 83,341 coronavirus infections, taking its tally to 3.94 million, health ministry data showed on Friday, as it closes in on Brazil as the world’s second-most affected nation from the virus.
Asia’s worst-hit country is now just around 60,000 cases behind Brazil, which has around 4 million confirmed cases, according to a Reuters tally.
India has logged the world’s largest daily caseload every day for almost a month as the government pushes to open up the economy to prevent further damage from the pandemic.
2020-09-04 11:15:08
Brazil has recorded more than 4 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 43,773 new cases and 834 deaths from the disease caused by the virus reported in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Thursday.
Brazil has registered 4,041,638 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 124,614, according to ministry data, in the world's worst coronavirus outbreak outside the United States.
2020-09-04 10:20:33
Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood has rejected "false news" that schools across the country would remain closed till October due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Mahmood tweeted that a meeting between all the education ministers will decide the likelihood of reopening schools and that too, in a phased manner.
"Some fake accounts in my name are spreading false news that schools will remain closed till Oct. Not true. Education ministers meet on 7th to finally decide with likelihood of opening on Sept 15 in a phased manner," he tweeted.
Read more here.
2020-09-04 08:35:30
Pakistan on Thursday reported 498 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 297,512.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,306 cases in AJK, 13,045 in Balochistan, 2,948 in GB, 15,714 in Islamabad, 36,414 in KP, 97,044 in Punjab and 130,041 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 7 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,335.
2020-09-03 23:59:46
Governor Andrew Cuomo announced more reopenings in New York state as new coronavirus infections remained low in what was once the US hot spot of the pandemic.
Next Wednesday, New York City malls will be allowed to reopen at 50% capacity and casinos statewide can reopen at 25% capacity, Cuomo said.
“Thanks to the hard work of New Yorkers, we are at a point in our fight against this virus where we can safely reopen malls in New York City as long as they adhere to strict health and safety protocols,” Cuomo said. “Masks, enhanced air ventilation systems, and social distancing will be mandatory.”
The governor also waded into the hotly debated issue of indoor dining in New York City, saying during a conference call with reporters that the final decision rested with the state.
New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson came out on Wednesday in favor of allowing indoor dining in the city, which is home to a thriving restaurant industry that was battered by the pandemic.
“It’s time to allow indoor dining in New York City with reduced capacity and clear guidance to ensure social distancing and safety,” Johnson said in a statement.
Cuomo said he would like to see restaurants reopen for indoor dining in the city but that compliance and enforcement remained a major hurdle in doing so.
“We open restaurants, that’s going to complicate by the hundreds if not thousands the number of establishments that need to be monitored,” he said.
2020-09-03 23:30:55
Nigerian authorities are disturbed by the low level of coronavirus test sample collections, a senior government official said.
Africa’s most populous country of some 200 million inhabitants, as of Thursday had 54,463 confirmed coronavirus cases which have resulted in 1,027 deaths.
Boss Mustapha, who chairs the government’s task force on the disease, said he and other officials who make up the panel overseeing the response to the pandemic were “disturbed by the low level of sample collection” because of the implications for testing, tracing, and treatment.
“Despite the increased diagnostic capacity and improved access to testing, the demand remains low with not enough samples being collected,” he said, adding that “the recent reduction in cases in some states could be attributed to low testing.”
2020-09-03 23:40:21
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 74 new cases in the province, taking the total to 36,414 in the province.
It said that no new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, keeping the total at 1,255.
2020-09-03 23:04:51
Israel will impose a partial national lockdown next week to battle a coronavirus infection surge, the head of its pandemic task force said , shouting his exasperation in an emotional television address.
The health official, Ronni Gamzu, said Israel was facing a “pivotal moment” in trying to contain the spread of COVID-19, with some 3,000 new cases now reported daily in a population of nine million.
He put much of the blame on what he called apathy among the Arab minority to social distancing rules and high infection rates in close-knit ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.
Other health experts have said political in-fighting among members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government has led to a slow response to a second wave of cases after a national lockdown flattened the infection curve in May.
2020-09-03 22:48:08
The Philippines’ health ministry recorded 1,987 additional novel coronavirus infections, a new five-week low, and 65 additional deaths.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total confirmed cases have increased to 228,403, while confirmed deaths have reached 3,688, of which more than 43% were reported in the past 30 days.
2020-09-03 22:40:46
The recovery of Germany’s services sector from the coronavirus shock lost steam in August, slowing the broader rebound of the private sector in Europe’s largest economy, a survey showed.
IHS Markit’s final services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to 52.5 from its 13-month high of 55.6 in July.
That was higher than a flash reading of 50.8 and it marked the second month in a row that the services index was above the 50 mark dividing growth from contraction.
The final composite PMI covering both the services and manufacturing sectors eased to 54.4 from 55.3 the previous month. That was higher than the flash figure of 53.7.
IHS Markit economist Phil Smith said the survey data showed that the economic progress in August was only gradual and predominantly driven by domestic demand, which itself was weakened by job losses during the pandemic.
2020-09-03 22:27:57
Dubai is seeking to attract wealthy foreign retirees as the economy of the Middle East trade and tourism hub reels from the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices, prompting many expatriates to leave.
It will grant visas renewable every five years to resident expatriates and foreigners over the age of 55 who fulfil specific financial conditions, the government media office said.
To be eligible, they must have a monthly income of at least 20,000 dirhams ($5,445) or 1 million dirhams in cash savings, or 2 million dirhams worth of property in Dubai.
Important sectors of the Dubai economy such as tourism and transportation have been severely impacted by the coronavirus crisis and firms have been cutting jobs to save costs.
2020-09-03 22:10:11
The euro zone’s rebound from its deepest economic downturn on record faltered in August, surveys showed on Thursday, with some countries in the bloc suffering more than others from restrictions imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
Overall growth in the dominant service industry - which has been harder hit than manufacturing from lockdown measures - almost ground to a halt, suggesting the long road to recovery will be bumpy.
Last quarter the bloc’s economy contracted 12.1% as lockdowns led to businesses being shuttered and citizens staying home, official data showed.
A Reuters poll last month predicted a bounceback this quarter with growth of 8.1% but said a full recovery would take two years or more.
But as infection numbers have risen some restrictions have been re-imposed, and IHS Markit’s final Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index, seen as a good gauge of economic health, suggested the economy was still floundering.
2020-09-03 21:46:39
South Korea, scrambling to control a second wave of COVID-19, vowed on Thursday to double its critical-care hospital beds amid a severe shortage, highlighting the strain of the pandemic on even well-equipped countries.
The spike in serious cases, as older people make up an increasing proportion of patients amid a broader resurgence, marks a sharp turn for a country that was seen as successful in crushing one of the worst early outbreaks of the new coronavirus outside China.
Fewer than 10 intensive-care beds were available in the greater Seoul area, a metropolis of 26 million people, as of Tuesday, health authorities said. Officials do not give daily numbers, which can fluctuate widely.
The Health Ministry said it will spend 100 billion won ($84 million) to acquire 500 beds for severely ill patients nationwide by the middle of next year, aiming to secure at least 110 by the end of the month.
“We are also exerting our full efforts to enable stable treatment for the patients,” the ministry’s director-general for public health policy, Yoon Tae-ho, told a news briefing.
2020-09-03 21:29:37
French drugmaker Sanofi and Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline said they had started a clinical trial of their protein-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, and aimed to reach the final testing stage by December.
If the results are conclusive, Sanofi and GSK hope to get the vaccine approved in the first half of next year.
The trial is currently in a “Phase 1/2 study” aimed at evaluating the safety, tolerability and immune response of the vaccine in 440 healthy adults across 11 investigational sites in the United States.
The vaccine candidate uses the same recombinant protein-based technology as one of Sanofi’s seasonal influenza vaccines. It will be coupled with an adjuvant, a substance that acts as a booster to the vaccine, made by GSK.
The two companies are scaling up manufacturing in order to be ready to produce up to one billion doses in 2021.
2020-09-03 21:01:20
Amazon brought a little cheer to Britain’s troubled labour market on Thursday, saying it will create a further 7,000 permanent jobs in 2020, taking total new hires this year to 10,000.
Last month the number of people in work in Britain suffered the biggest drop since 2009 and the coronavirus is expected to take a much heavier toll on unemployment when the government winds down its huge job-protection scheme.
The one bright spot however has come from online retail and logistics as orders surged during lockdown. Amazon’s latest recruitment will take its total UK workforce to over 40,000 by the end of the year.
The U.S. internet giant said the 7,000 new roles will be for warehouse workers, as well as engineers, HR and IT professionals and health and safety and finance specialists.
The jobs will be in over 50 sites, including two new distribution centres in the north east and central England and at corporate offices.
It said it needed more staff to meet growing customer demand for its services and to enable small and medium sized enterprises selling on Amazon to scale their businesses.
2020-09-03 20:50:53
Norway said it will impose a 10-day quarantine on all people arriving from Italy and Slovenia from Sept. 5 due to rising numbers of COVID-19 cases in those countries.
Restrictions will also apply to the Vatican and San Marino, but will be eased for those coming from Cyprus and six regions of Sweden and one in Denmark, the Norwegian foreign ministry said in a statement.
To try to prevent a domestic resurgence of the coronavirus, Norway quarantines all travelers from countries with more than 20 confirmed new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population during the past two weeks.
It also advises Norwegians against traveling to those nations.
With its latest additions to the list, Norway will be restricting travel from most countries, only allowing quarantine-free travel from EU countries Hungary, Slovakia, Finland, Cyprus and the Baltic states and parts of Denmark and Sweden.
2020-09-03 20:38:02
Nearly 1.5 more million Mexicans were economically active in the labor market in July compared with June, and the jobless rate slipped to 5.4% from 5.5% a month earlier, figures from the national statistics institute INEGI showed.
Of the 12 million Mexicans who left the labor market in April and were no longer economically active due to the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, some 7.2 million had returned by July, according to the INEGI data.
The number of Mexicans in full-time work jumped by 4.2 million in July, while part-time jobs fell by 2 million, the data showed.
2020-09-03 20:13:40
2020-09-03 19:53:42
2020-09-03 19:30:40
Ukraine’s central bank kept its main interest rate unchanged at 6% on Thursday for the second meeting in a row, balancing its aim of supporting an economy hit by the COVID-19 pandemic with the prospect that a higher minimum wage will fuel inflation.
The decision by the National Bank of Ukraine keeps the interest rate at its lowest level since the country became independent in 1991 and is in line with forecasts in a Reuters poll of analysts.
“Maintaining a loose monetary policy will support economic recovery amid moderate inflation and elevated uncertainty over how the pandemic is going to spread in Ukraine and the world,” the central bank said in a statement.
New Governor Kyrylo Shevchenko took charge in July promising to help revive the economy, which could contract 5.5% this year after lockdowns to contain the novel coronavirus slammed the brakes on business activity.
2020-09-03 19:12:56
Thailand reported its first domestic coronavirus transmission in more than 100 days, after a man recently jailed and with no overseas travel history tested positive in a Bangkok prison during a routine check for new inmates.
Authorities moved quickly to locate and isolate people in contact with the 37-year-old and trace his movements over the past two weeks, including three places where he had worked, the jail and the court at which he had appeared.
“We may go further back but we will examine this first,” said Walailak Chaifu, Director of the country’s Bureau of Epidemiology.
2020-09-03 18:57:09
For 12 years, the Costa Rican government has paid Rosa Picado about $2,000 a year so that she can protect an area of forest on her farm in Sarapiquí on the Atlantic coast.
The payment may be small, but it makes a big difference.
“I don’t know what I would do without it. It has been really hard for us,” she said, adding that she had fought for a long time to safeguard the 40-hectare (99-acre) forest.
Picado benefits from a government initiative, called the Program for Payment of Environmental Services (PPSA), which has helped expand Costa Rica’s forests by remunerating farmers for looking after trees on their property.
But the program’s funding depends on a gasoline tax that has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, threatening its future.
Most of the PPSA’s money comes from a levy on sales at the petrol pump, which have fallen sharply in the past five months due to movement restrictions to limit the spread of COVID-19, said Jorge Mario Rodríguez, director of the National Forestry Financing Fund (FONAFIFO).
Read complete story here.
2020-09-03 18:31:09
Deputy Commissioner Mirpur said that the city reported no coronavirus case in the past 24 hours as the infections drop in the country.
2020-09-03 18:05:52
US employers announced another 115,762 job cuts in August, led by struggling airlines as the COVID-19 pandemic weighs on travel and financial assistance from the government lapses.
Though the layoffs reported by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas on Thursday were 56% down from July, they lifted total job cuts so far this year to a record 1.963 million. The previous all-time annual high was 1.957 million in 2001. Companies announced 160,411 hiring intentions in August.
“The leading sector for job cuts last month was transportation, as airlines begin to make staffing decisions in the wake of decreased travel and uncertain federal intervention,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray. “An increasing number of companies that initially had temporary job cuts or furloughs are now making them permanent.”
The report followed news on Wednesday that private employers hired fewer workers than expected in August. The weak data raises the risk of a sharper slowdown in job growth in August.
2020-09-03 17:46:33
France will spend 100 billion euros to help pull its economy out of one of Europe’s worst coronavirus-induced slumps, under a recovery plan that revives pro-business reforms championed by President Emmanuel Macron with a greener tinge.
The $118 billion stimulus equates to 4% of gross domestic product, meaning France is ploughing more public cash into its economy as a percentage of GDP than any other big European country, an official said ahead of its formal launch later on Thursday.
France’s recession, marked by a 13.8% second quarter GDP contraction that coincided with a COVID-19 lockdown and expected to generate an 11% drop in 2020 as a whole, has also been one of the region’s deepest.
Focused mainly on boosting companies and running over two years, the stimulus package earmarks 35 billion euros to make the economy more competitive and 30 billion to promote greener energy policies.
The rest will go on supporting jobs, training and broader social initiatives.
“This recovery plan aims to keep our economy from collapsing and unemployment exploding,” Prime Minister Jean Castex said on RTL radio.
2020-09-03 17:24:38
Christopher Nolan’s thriller “Tenet” finally arrives in US movie theaters this weekend, hoping to revive movie going after a pandemic-induced closure of indoor theaters and a dearth of new content.
Hollywood breathed a sigh of relief last weekend when “Tenet” brought in a solid $53.6 million in Europe and other markets, suggesting that audiences are hungry for new content and prepared to put up with social distancing and masks to see them on big indoor screens.
Now the industry is waiting to see if Americans are equally as keen. The Warner Bros. movie, starring John David Washington and costing a reported $200 million to make, will be the first big budget release from a Hollywood studio since the coronavirus shuttered theaters in March.
The long wait “has elevated this film to the status of being very important symbolically, culturally and financially. It represents a turning point for the theatrical business which has been sidelined for five months,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
Although movie theaters in New York City and Los Angeles - the country’s biggest markets - remain closed, more than half of the nation’s indoor theaters are expected to be open although capacity will be limited to 50%.
AMC Entertainment, America’s biggest movie chain, said it was opening another 140 locations this weekend to put a total of 70% of its theaters back in operation.
2020-09-03 17:12:11
Some euro zone countries are running unsustainable public finances as they try to cope with the coronavirus pandemic but they may still struggle to exit crisis fighting policies, European Central Bank policymaker Pierre Wunsch said.
“We are going to have public deficits that probably would not be sustainable,” Wunsch, Belgium’s central bank chief told a conference hosted by think tank Bruegel.
“Exit is not going to be easy... (but) we have time, it’s not like we have to solve these issues in the next six months or even two years,” he added.
2020-09-03 16:50:32
Indonesia posted another day of record high coronavirus cases, with 3,622 new infections as the world’s fourth-most populous nation grapples to contain a spread that has caused the region’s highest COVID-19 death toll.
The new records come in a week when Indonesian President Joko Widodo said he expected cases to peak this month and the public should focus on declining active cases rather than overall infection numbers.
Despite his optimism, epidemiologists said Indonesia was struggling and needed to change tack.
“We haven’t managed to control transmission and remember the COVID-19 pandemic is not spreading randomly, but in distributed clusters in very large areas,” Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist at the University of Indonesia told a virtual news conference.
“We have to change strategy.”
Riono called for improvements in basic measures from testing to contact-tracing and isolation.
2020-09-03 16:32:28
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has told public health officials across the United States to prepare to distribute a potential coronavirus vaccine as soon as late October.
The timing of a vaccine has taken on political importance as US President Donald Trump seeks re-election in November, after committing billions of federal dollars to develop a vaccine to prevent COVID-19, which has killed more than 180,000 Americans.
“For the purpose of initial planning, CDC provided states with certain planning assumptions as they work on state specific plans for vaccine distribution, including possibly having limited quantities of vaccines in October and November,” a CDC spokesperson told Reuters.
The New York Times had earlier reported that the CDC had contacted officials in all 50 states and five large cities with the planning information.
The country’s top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci earlier on Wednesday said on MSNBC that based on the patient enrollment rate in COVID-19 vaccine trials underway, there could be enough clinical data to know by November or December that one of the vaccines is safe and effective.
Read complete story here.
2020-09-03 16:15:25
Seventy-six wealthy nations are now committed to joining a global COVID-19 vaccine allocation plan co-led by the World Health Organization (WHO) that aims to help buy and fairly distribute the shots, the project’s co-lead said on Wednesday.
Seth Berkley, chief executive of the GAVI vaccines alliance, said the coordinated plan, known as COVAX, now has Japan, Germany, Norway and more than 70 other nations signed up, agreeing in principle to procure COVID-19 vaccines through the facility for their populations.
“We have, as of right now, 76 upper middle income and high income countries that have submitted confirmations of intent to participate - and we expect that number to go up,” Berkley told Reuters in an interview.
“This is good news. It shows that the COVAX facility is open for business and is attracting the type of interest across the world we had hoped it would,” he said.
COVAX coordinators are in talks with China about whether it might also join, Berkley said.
“We had a discussion yesterday with the (Chinese) government,” Berkley said. “We don’t have any signed agreement with them yet,” but Beijing has given “a positive signal,” he added.
2020-09-03 15:30:27
Indonesia on Thursday reported 3,622 new coronavirus infections, a record high in daily cases, and 134 new deaths, data from the country's COVID-19 task force showed.
The number of new daily deaths reported was the highest since July 22. That brought the latest COVID-19 tally in Southeast Asia's biggest country to 184,268 infections and 7,750 deaths.
2020-09-03 14:50:00
Russia reported 4,995 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, bringing its national tally to 1,009,995, the fourth largest in the world.
Russia's coronavirus taskforce said 114 people had died over the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 17,528.
2020-09-03 14:05:33
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,311 to 246,166, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday.
The reported death toll rose by eight to 9,321, the tally showed.
2020-09-03 12:55:59
India reported another record daily jump of 83,883 coronavirus infections on Thursday, taking its tally to 3.85 million, just 100,000 behind Brazil, the world's second most affected nation, health ministry data showed.
Asia's worst-hit country has been posting the world's largest daily caseload every day for almost a month, although deaths remain relatively low.
The ministry said 1,043 people died from COVID-19, taking the toll to 67,376.
2020-09-03 12:00:13
Pakistan on Thursday reported 424 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of infections in the country to 297,014.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,305 cases in AJK, 12,935 in Balochistan, 2,935 in GB, 15,689 in Islamabad, 36,340 in KP, 96,983 in Punjab and 129,827 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 10 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,328.
2020-09-03 11:00:49
Turkey is seeing the second peak of the coronavirus outbreak due to "carelessness" at weddings and other social gatherings, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Wednesday, amid a rapid rise in the number of daily cases and deaths.
"The outbreak is increasingly continuing. The virus is spreading to more people each day. Our test numbers are rising every day, our new patient numbers are not falling.," Koca said.
The number of new COVID-19 cases rose by 1,596 to 273,301 in the last 24 hours, according to Health Ministry data, while the death toll from the virus rose by 45 to 6,462.
2020-09-03 10:10:45
Neymar is one of three Paris Saint-Germain stars to have contracted the coronavirus, a well-placed source told AFP on Wednesday, after the Champions League runners-up announced several positive tests.
"Three Paris Saint-Germain players have confirmed positive Sars CoV2 tests and are subject to the appropriate health protocol," PSG said in a statement.
"All of the players and coaching staff will continue to undergo tests in the coming days."
Read more here.
2020-09-03 09:40:06
Australia’s Victoria state reported a triple digit rise in new COVID-19 infections for the first time in four days, denting optimism that a second wave of cases has been contained.
Victoria state said 113 new cases were detected in the past 24 hours, up on the 90 infections reported on Wednesday.
Australia has now recorded more than 26,000 COVID-19 cases, while the death toll rose to 678 after 15 people in Victoria state died from the virus.
2020-09-02 23:59:22
Ford Motor said it is targeting the elimination of 1,400 US salaried jobs by year end as part of a multiyear $11 billion restructuring.
The layoffs will be achieved through voluntary buyouts, the U.S. automaker said in an email sent to employees. The buyouts will be offered to employees who are eligible for retirement.
“We’re in a multiyear process of making Ford more fit and effective around the world,” Ford’s Americas President Kumar Galhotra said in the email. “We have reprioritised certain products and services and are adjusting our staffing to better align with our new work statement.”
2020-09-02 23:45:44
The US Food and Drug Administration will organize meetings with an independent group of experts to review data of coronavirus vaccine candidates and advise the agency, FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn said.
"The meetings will reinforce the transparency of the process as FDA reviews data from trials now underway," Hahn said in a post on Twitter.
2020-09-02 23:33:38
White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr Deborah Birx dismissed the notion that the White House was considering a strategy of allowing Americans to become infected with coronavirus in order to reach “herd immunity.”
“Neither I, nor anybody in the administration, is willing to sacrifice American lives for herd immunity. We’ll get to herd immunity through a vaccine and that’s the right way to do it,” Birx told reporters during a briefing at St Mary Mercy Hospital in Livonia, Michigan.
Birx was responding to news reports that new White House pandemic advisor Scott Atlas, who is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, had advocated for the Trump administration to lift all social and business restrictions aimed at stopping infections from spreading.
Once enough individuals have been infected and become immune, others are less likely to be infected, creating what health officials call “herd immunity.”
“I would not be here if the White House believed that herd immunity was an option for America,” Birx said.
2020-09-02 23:21:50
Germany’s national institute for infectious diseases added the Canary Islands to its list of risk regions, citing a high rate of new coronavirus infections in the Spanish autonomous region.
The Robert Koch Institute said the whole of Spain, mainland and islands, was a risk region. The institute’s update is usually followed by a travel warning to the designated regions by the Foreign Ministry.
2020-09-02 23:14:01
Daily new COVID-19 infections in France are nearing an all-time high and the number of people hospitalised in intensive care units for the disease growing at its fastest pace in almost two months.
"The virus keeps spreading in the country," French health authorities said in a statement, adding roughly a fifth of France's departments — or administrative districts — were affected by an "active circulation of the disease".
There were 7,017 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Wednesday, just below the March 31 peak of 7,578 and only the third time since the beginning of the outbreak that the daily tally has stood above 7,000.
The seven-day moving average of new infections, which smoothes out reporting irregularities, stood at a record of 5,634 and remained above the 5,000 threshold for the fourth day in a row, versus a low of 272 on May 27 — two weeks after authorities lifted a two-month-long lockdown.
The cumulative number of cases now totals 293,024.
2020-09-02 23:11:00
From behind the large windows of Barcelona’s Centre Parc nursing home, elderly residents blow kisses, give virtual hugs and speak to loved ones on the other side of the glass using mobile phones.
Restrictions on visits are still in place across Spain as it reels from a resurgence in COVID-19 infections, but for visitors, the regular interaction beats the experience of only seeing residents on a computer screen.
“They no longer see a screen, a small square. They really see how their family member is doing,” said the nursing home’s director, Eduardo Badia.
In-person visits are permitted, but only occasionally and they are carried out in the residence’s garden to help visitors respect social distancing rules.
An 89-year-old woman smiles as she pretends to play with a dog her neighbors have brought for her to see through the ground floor window of the home’s communal room.
“It’s contradictory; happy on the one hand and frustrating on the other hand,” said Cristina, 68, after seeing her 94-year-old mother, who survived the coronavirus.
Every day makes it harder not to have the close contact she had before the pandemic, when she visited her mother every night.
“The time when you will be able to kiss her or caress her seems further away all the time,” she said.
2020-09-02 22:54:57
Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has tested positive for coronavirus and is currently in isolation at home, his staff says.
Berlusconi, 83, will continue working from his house in Arcore, near Milan, the statement said, and will contribute to the electoral campaigns of candidates from his Forza Italia party at local elections scheduled for September.
2020-09-02 22:27:08
Authorities in Madrid have shut down a coronavirus testing centre for teachers after large crowds formed outside, while the health ministry diagnosed 3,663 new cases of the virus, down from a peak of nearly 10,000 recorded in Spain last Friday.
With the new academic year starting next week, the Madrid region is screening all its teachers for coronavirus antibodies, with further tests for those with a positive result.
But the programme got off to a rocky start, as footage from the EFE news agency showed hundreds of people queuing around the block outside the Virgen de la Paloma school in the northwest of the city, with little space to observe social distancing.
A spokeswoman for the regional education department said the centre was shut at around 2 pm, and those who missed their test would be given a new appointment later this week.
2020-09-02 22:06:12
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the number of deaths due to the new coronavirus had risen by 1,033 to 184,083 and reported 6,047,692 cases, an increase of 43,249 cases from its previous count.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19.
2020-09-02 21:46:28
The European Union is warning governments not to reduce the 14-day quarantine for people infected with COVID-19 as some develop the infection even after two weeks, the head of the bloc’s health agency said, signalling a new surge in cases in Europe.
Germany, the EU’s largest country, informed EU authorities that it planned shortening the quarantine length, following similar moves by the Netherlands and Norway, minutes of a late-August meeting show.
“We are looking to provide some evidence to decision makers on what kind of risks they would take if quarantine was shorter,” Andrea Ammon, head of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), told EU lawmakers in a regular hearing on Wednesday.
She cautioned that in 3-4% of cases, infections emerge only after 14 days, which is currently the standard length of the COVID-19 quarantine.
2020-09-02 21:29:03
The coronavirus pandemic and its fallout will dramatically increase the poverty gap between men and women as it places 47 million more women and girls below the poverty line, a United Nations study stated.
The poverty rate for women had been projected to fall by 3% between 2019 and 2021, but it is now predicted to increase by 9% because of the global COVID-19 emergency.
Researchers warned that the public health crisis will roll back decades of progress on tackling extreme, desperate poverty but will also have a profoundly disproportionate effect on women — with those of reproductive age hit hardest.
2020-09-02 21:10:51
Chile’s central bank on Wednesday softened its prediction for an economic contraction in 2020 due to the impact of the coronavirus on the world’s top copper producer to between -4.5% and -5.5% from the 5.5% and 7.5% contraction it foresaw in June.
The bank said a “sharp fall” in the economy that coincided with the arrival of the virus in the second quarter had been followed by “signs of stabilization” as some sectors rallied gradually and others declined by a lesser amount than previously.
In its quarterly economic report, known as IPOM, the bank added that the gradual easing of lockdowns and “support for household income” had helped bolster the flailing economy.
The Chilean government has announced relief measures, including one-off cash handouts, loans and mortgage deferrals for hard-hit citizens. And a law to allow eligible individuals to withdraw 10% of their pensions early also brought an injection of liquidity. So far, $12.606 billion has been withdrawn by almost half the population.
2020-09-02 20:51:17
The United Kingdom has recorded 1,508 daily confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to government data, up from 1,295 a day earlier.
Ten people died within 28 days of testing positive for the disease, the daily statistics release said, bringing the total death toll under that measure to 41,514.
2020-09-02 20:37:46
The pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic on government finances might help bring about a stalled international agreement on how to tax digital giants like Google), Amazon, Facebook, Apple or Microsoft, German Finance Minister Olaf Sholz said.
Scholz told the economic committee of the European Parliament via video-link he hoped a breakthrough in works on such a digital tax might happen in the coming months in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The United States, home to the biggest digital companies, has so far blocked an international deal on taxing their revenues where they are generated.
2020-09-02 20:15:31
Tens of thousands of youngsters headed to sports arenas across Uzbekistan on Wednesday to sit university entrance exams in the open air due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The massive exercise, which will span two weeks, will see more than 1.4 million applicants take a three-hour test while seated at desks on the running tracks or walkways of the stadiums. They are competing for some 150,000 university places under a centralized admissions system.
Hundreds of young men and women attended the first session at one of the stadiums in Tashkent on Wednesday morning, wearing masks. The weather was comfortably warm for those seated in the shade while other test-takers used clothes and papers to protect themselves from direct sunlight.
2020-09-02 19:48:41
The first shots of British drug maker AstraZeneca's potential COVID-19 vaccine could be on the market by the end of 2020, Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza said.
"We are talking about a potential vaccine so we need to be extremely prudent, but... if the vaccine is confirmed as safe and able to meet its objective it will be already available by the end of 2020," Speranza told parliament.
Drugmakers are racing to combat the pandemic, which has killed more than 850,000 people and infected over 25 million.
The European Commission has paid 336 million euros ($397.82 million) to AstraZeneca to secure at least 300 million doses of its potential vaccine for EU nations.
2020-09-02 20:01:49
Dutch health authorities reported 734 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, the largest one-day total since mid-August.
The Netherlands Institute for Health (RIVM) reported the numbers in a daily update. On Tuesday the RIVM's weekly summary had shown new cases approximately flat at around 500 per day over the previous two weeks.
2020-09-02 19:31:22
Treating critically ill COVID-19 patients with corticosteroid drugs reduces the risk of death by 20%, an analysis of seven international trials found on Wednesday, prompting the World Health Organisation to update its advice on treatment.
The analysis - which pooled data from separate trials of low dose hydrocortisone, dexamethasone and methylprednisolone - found that steroids improve survival rates of COVID-19 patients sick enough to be in intensive care in hospital.
"This is equivalent to around 68% of (the sickest COVID-19) patients surviving after treatment with corticosteroids, compared to around 60% surviving in the absence of corticosteroids," the researchers said in a statement.
"Steroids are a cheap and readily available medication, and our analysis has confirmed that they are effective in reducing deaths amongst the people most severely affected by COVID-19," Jonathan Sterne, a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Britain's Bristol University who worked on the analysis, told the briefing.
He said the trials - conducted by researchers in Britain, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Spain, and the United States - gave a consistent message throughout, showing the drugs were beneficial in the sickest patients regardless of age or sex or how long patients had been ill.
The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reinforce results that were hailed as a major breakthrough and announced in June, when dexamethasone became the first drug shown to be able to reduce death rates among severely sick COVID-19 patients.
2020-09-02 19:18:45
COVID-19 infections in Europe are back to levels seen in March when the outbreak began its peak phase there, the head of the European Union's public health agency said, noting however school reopenings did not necessarily pose new risks.
"The virus has not been sleeping over the summer. It did not take vacation," Andrea Ammon, head of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), told EU lawmakers in a regular hearing.
She said this week's data showed that across Europe there were 46 cases per 100,000 people. "We are almost back to numbers that we have seen in March," Ammon said.
Infections in March in Europe began growing steadily to about 40 per 100,000 people at the end of the month, according to ECDC data, and kept increasing to around 70 per 100,000 by the end of April.
The current increase of cases was due in part to more testing.
New cases also concern largely younger people, she said, a new pattern that had resulted in stable hospitalisation numbers, as the illness is more serious for older people who were hit hard in March and April.
2020-09-02 18:59:20
The British government has re-imposed local COVID-19 restrictions on parts of the Greater Manchester area in northern England, just as they were being lifted, the latest in a series of abrupt reversals.
“Following a significant change in the level of infection rates over the last few days, a decision has been taken that Bolton and Trafford will now remain under existing restrictions,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said in a statement.
“We have always been clear we will take swift and decisive action where needed to contain outbreaks.”
2020-09-02 18:45:54
Europe's healthcare regulator said it was evaluating Dexamethasone Taw as a potential COVID-19 treatment for hospitalised adult patients after it received an application from drug developer Taw Pharma.
2020-09-02 18:32:12
Ireland's "green list" of countries exempt from travel restrictions is under review after a spike in Irish COVID-19 cases made adding countries with a similar or slightly better incidence rate too risky, the country's health minister said.
Ireland dropped a 14-day quarantine requirement for arrivals from an initial list of 15 European countries in late July and cut that down to 10 on Aug. 4, when an increase in cases in the likes of Malta and Cyprus struck them off the list.
More countries were due to be added or removed every two weeks, but the list has not been amended since Ireland's 14-day cumulative cases per 100,000 of population rose above 30 from around three cases when the measure was introduced.
"If we essentially pegged the countries that qualify to our own rate, we would have something perverse happening, which is as the prevalence of COVID increased in Ireland, we would be opening ourselves up to more and more countries with high rates of COVID," Stephen Donnelly told the Newstalk radio station.
"If we were simply to do that, it would self-evidently lead to a higher spread of the virus in the country. That's why we have it under review at the moment."
2020-09-02 18:13:20
Virgin Atlantic's 1.2 billion pound ($1.6 billion) rescue deal is set for completion this week after a London judge gave the go ahead to the airline's restructuring plan in a court hearing.
The deal aims to secure Virgin Atlantic's survival through the coronavirus crisis. The airline had projected it would run out of cash at the end of September unless the plan was approved.
Judge Richard Snowden sanctioned the recapitalisation plan after the remaining creditors voted to support it last week.
"This will allow you to make this plan effective by Friday which I understand is your aspiration," Snowden told a remote hearing at London's High Court.
The airline, which is 51% owned by Branson's Virgin Group and 49% by U.S. airline Delta, has had to close its Gatwick base and cut more than 3,500 jobs to contend with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has grounded planes and hammered demand for air travel.
2020-09-02 17:59:02
Next month's World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions in Shanghai, won last year by Rory McIlroy, has been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, organisers said Wednesday.
Asia's flagship event, which in 2019 had the largest prize fund of any tournament outside the US or majors at $10.25 million, is co-sanctioned by the US PGA, European Tours and Asian Tours.
It had been scheduled to take place from October 29 to November 1 at Sheshan International Golf Club and was the final stop on the PGA Tour's $29.75 million three-tournament Asian swing.
But the trio of events, the highlight of Asia's golf calendar, have been wiped off the continent by the coronavirus after South Korea's CJ Cup and Japan's Zozo Championship were relocated to courses in the US.
2020-09-02 17:48:24
The US government announced it will extend until the end of the year a moratorium on the eviction of tenants unable to meet their rent payments and on foreclosures of home owners who cannot pay their mortgages because of the coronavirus pandemic.
"People struggling to pay their rent due to the coronavirus will not have to worry about being evicted and risk further spreading... of or exposure to the virus due to economic hardships," said White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern.
The measure aims to protect tens of millions of people at risk of losing their homes because of the economic collapse triggered by the pandemic, and potentially finding themselves forced onto the streets or into collective housing, government officials said.
2020-09-02 17:26:20
2020-09-02 16:59:01
The chief executive of Rolls-Royce said demand for his company's luxury cars is rebounding, helped by sales in Asia, and he is optimistic about the outlook for next year after the coronavirus pandemic hit consumer confidence and closed dealerships.
Torsten Muller-Otvos said the demand meant Rolls-Royce was the first car company to resume car production in the United Kingdom on May 4.
"We see a very fruitful business now coming back from Asia, also Europe is coming back on track, the Americas just delivered an excellent July result and August result," the boss of the BMW-owned Rolls-Royce Motor Cars told Reuters.
"I am quite optimistic looking into 2021, particularly on the back of a very strong order bank we have already on our books."
2020-09-02 16:38:36
Greece recorded its first coronavirus case in the overcrowded migrant camp of Moria on the island of Lesbos, two migration ministry officials said.
A 40-year old asylum seeker has tested positive for the virus and had been put in isolation, one of the officials told Reuters. Authorities were trying to trace the people he had contacted, the official said.
The Moria facility, which hosts about 13,000 people, has been frequently criticised by aid groups for poor living conditions.
Since March 1, all migrants who reach Lesbos have been quarantined away from the island’s camps.
2020-09-02 16:20:49
Australia’s most-populous state reported the biggest daily jump in coronavirus infections in two weeks on Wednesday but said there were no plans to cancel the New Year fireworks show over Sydney Harbour, as new cases nationally also ticked up.
New South Wales (NSW) state reported 17 new cases, the biggest one-day jump since Aug. 12, while nationally the count rose to 109 cases from 85 a day earlier.
Victoria state remained the hardest-hit region with 90 cases, although this was well down from its daily peak of more than 700 in early August at the height of a second wave of infections.
Victoria’s capital Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, is in its fifth week of a six-week lockdown with authorities scheduled to detail on Sunday a timetable for easing curbs.
Though strict restrictions have helped to contain the spread of the virus, they have wreaked havoc on the economy with official data on Wednesday showing Australia had entered its first recession in three decades.
2020-09-02 16:00:28
2020-09-02 15:45:09
Russia reported 4,952 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, pushing its national tally to 1,005,000, the fourth largest in the world.
Authorities said 115 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 17,414
2020-09-02 15:10:14
India’s novel coronavirus infections rose to almost 3.8 million on Wednesday, as states continued to relax rules on movement despite the surge in cases.
The country reported 78,357 new cases in the past 24 hours, according to federal health data, taking total infections to 3,769,523. Some 66,333 people have died.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide lockdown in March when the country was reporting fewer than 100 daily cases, winning praise from some experts for early action but warnings from others the restrictions had been imposed too soon.
2020-09-02 14:40:53
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,256 to 244,855, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by eleven to 9,313, the tally showed.
2020-09-02 13:10:00
China reported eight new COVID-19 cases, down from 10 a day earlier, China's national health authority said on Wednesday.
The National Health Commission said in a statement all of the new COVID-19 cases were imported infections involving travellers from overseas, marking the 17th consecutive day with no local infections.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 85,066, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
2020-09-02 12:35:11
Australia's coronavirus hot spot of Victoria reported six deaths on Wednesday from the virus in the last 24 hours and 90 new cases of infections.
The country's second most populous state a day earlier recorded five deaths and 70 cases.
The rise in new infections has eased in recent days in Victoria as the state capital Melbourne begins its fourth week of a six-week lockdown, with authorities scheduled to detail on Sunday the timetable for easing curbs.
2020-09-02 11:45:31
The White House has pushed back on concerns expressed by WHO after a US health official said a coronavirus vaccine might be approved without completing full trials.
"The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt WHO and China," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.
"This President will spare no expense to ensure that any new vaccine maintains our own FDA's gold standard for safety and efficacy, is thoroughly tested, and saves lives," he said.
2020-09-02 11:05:38
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 296,590 on Wednesday after the country recorded 441 new infections.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,302 cases in AJK, 12,899 in Balochistan, 2,922 in GB, 15,666 in Islamabad, 36,265 in KP, 96,921 in Punjab and 129,615 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 18 fatalities from the virus, taking the nationwide death toll to 6,318.
2020-09-02 10:50:43
Australia fell into its deepest economic slump on record last quarter as coronavirus curbs paralysed business activity, while fresh outbreaks threaten to upend any immediate recovery, piling pressure on the government to keep fiscal taps open.
The country joins the United States, Japan, UK and Germany in technical recession, defined as two straight quarters of decline, in Australia’s first such downturn since 1991.
The contraction, which was deeper than median forecasts of 5.9%, comes as Australia’s second most-populous state of Victoria remains in a lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus while international borders are shut too.
2020-09-02 10:25:33
Brazil reported 42,659 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 1,215 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Tuesday.
Brazil has registered 3,950,931 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 122,596, according to ministry data, in the world's worst coronavirus outbreak outside the United States
2020-09-02 00:00:22
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced a ban on indoor household gatherings in Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, and two nearby areas following a rise in coronavirus cases.
Sturgeon said that from midnight (2300 GMT) the 800,000 residents living in Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire should no longer host people from outside their households indoors.
She said the transmission of the virus was mainly happening inside people’s homes and the measures may be in place for two weeks. Schools, pubs and restaurants will continue to remain open.
“I know how unwelcome this news this evening will be for people who live in these areas,” Sturgeon told a news conference. “I know that because I am one of you, I live in Glasgow. So, these rules apply to me as they do to everyone else in these areas.”
2020-09-01 23:42:04
The European Commission urged Italy to reform and invest rather than just drawing up a spending wishlist, as Rome formulated plans to tackle the economic challenge posed by the coronavirus pandemic.
EU leaders in July reached a historic agreement on a 750-billion-euro ($900-billion) coronavirus recovery plan, financed for the first time by joint debt.
Countries benefiting from the programme, including Italy which expects to receive 209 billion euros, must present their national recovery plans to Brussels by next month.
"I am confident that Italy has the potential for this challenge," EU economic commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said.
However a national plan must not be "a list of expenses but the necessary reforms and investments for a real relaunch," Gentiloni told a joint parliamentary committee hearing via a videolink from Brussels.
2020-09-01 23:11:50
Italian fashion house Valentino announced it is giving the catwalks of Paris a skip this month because of the coronavirus pandemic, instead presenting its new spring and summer collection in Milan.
For years a regular at the Paris Fashion Week, the designer brand cited the "unprecedented times" brought about by the coronavirus pandemic for the change of venue.
Paris officials earlier this week ruled face masks compulsory as France recorded its highest number of infections since early May.
"In the current scenario, we need to make decisions in advance to protect our first resources, our people, and to allow our brand to remain relevant in exploring alternative opportunities," Valentino chief executive Jacopo Venturini said.
"This is why we feel that it would be more ethical to produce the new show in Italy, in Milano," he said in a press release.
"Paris is the city that always hosted our shows and represents the DNA of Valentino," added creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli.
2020-09-01 23:27:59
Spain’s health ministry said the number of coronavirus cases detected daily had declined over the past four days, further off a peak of around 10,000 reached about 10 days ago, and officials said no new lockdown was necessary.
The country diagnosed 2,731 infections in the past 24 hours, but these data could be revised in future as Spain updates its statistics retroactively. Tuesday’s update raised the tally since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic by 8,115 cases to 470,973 overall, more than any other western European nation.
Since bringing the first wave largely under control through a strict lockdown that ended in June, Spain has suffered a sharp resurgence of infections as measures were relaxed and mass testing began.
Still, Health Minister Salvador Illa stressed that the surge in infections had not led to heightened pressure on hospitals, where occupancy of beds earmarked for COVID-19 patients is at around 6% across the country.
2020-09-01 22:59:31
More than four million people have been infected with the coronavirus in Europe, according to a tally by AFP using official data from across the continent.
In total, there have been 4,006,077 cases, with Russia, Spain and Britain recording the highest number of infections, while 216,080 people have died and 2,281,959 have recovered, the data showed.
2020-09-01 22:47:56
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department reported 147 new cases, taking the overall cases to36,265.
The department also registered five more deaths — two of which wereunrecorded — taking the death toll to 1,255.
2020-09-01 22:38:12
Federal Reserve will need to roll out new efforts “in coming months” to help the economy overcome the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and live up to the US central bank’s new promise of stronger job growth and higher inflation, Fed Governor Lael Brainard said.
“It will be important to provide the requisite accommodation to achieve maximum employment and average inflation of 2% over time,” Brainard said in prepared remarks in an online discussion organized by the Brookings Institution.
Brainard, among the architects of the new long-term strategy the central bank adopted last week, is the first Fed official to tie that new approach directly to the need for further monetary stimulus, likely in the form of more aggressive bond-buying or more ambitious promises about returning the country to low unemployment.
Some analysts have argued the Fed’s new “framework” is incomplete without more details on what it intends to do to implement it, and Brainard in prepared remarks suggested that needs to be addressed.
“With the recovery likely to face COVID-19-related headwinds for some time, in coming months, it will be important for monetary policy to pivot from stabilization to accommodation,” Brainard said. That decision “will be guided” by the new strategy which trades risks of higher inflation with efforts to promote further job growth.
2020-09-01 22:21:41
The French health ministry reported 4,982 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Tuesday, up on the 3,082 reported on Monday, but below the highs of nearly 7,400 seen last week.
The number of people who have died from COVID-19 infections increased by 26 to 30,661, and the cumulative number of cases now totals 286,007.
2020-09-01 22:06:45
Getting a coronavirus vaccine from manufacturing sites to some parts of the world with rural populations and unreliable electricity supply will be an immense challenge, given the need to store some vials at temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Celsius (-112 Fahrenheit), Deutsche Post warned.
The German logistics firm said that distribution of an eventual vaccine across large parts of Africa, South America and Asia would require extraordinary measures to keep deliveries of so-called mRNA vaccines refrigerated at Antarctic-level temperatures.
Companies developing vaccines requiring exceptional cold storage, such as Moderna and CureVac, are working hard to make their injections last longer in transit.
The novel class of mRNA vaccines is among the furthest advanced in a field of 33 immunisation shots currently being tested on humans globally, but they may need to be cooled at minus 80 degrees Celsius.
But upgrading cold storage infrastructure in regions outside the 25 most advanced countries, home to one third of the global population, will pose an immense challenge, said Deutsche Post in its study, conducted with consultancy firm McKinsey.
2020-09-01 21:56:36
The Spanish economy will likely grow in double digits in the third quarter after a record drop in the preceding three-month period due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Bank of Spain governor Pablo Hernandez de Cos said.
“It is likely that we will see double-digit growth rates in the third quarter,” De Cos said, adding that the central bank would update its outlook in around two weeks.
The Spanish economy was one of the worst-hit by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns in Europe, posting an 18.5% contraction in April-June from the previous quarter. The government has said the economy has been growing at a rate of over 10% so far this quarter.
2020-09-01 21:44:07
Saudi Arabia has postponed an annual Davos-style investment forum until January as the novel coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt global travel, organisers said.
Initially scheduled for October, the Future Investment Initiative (FII), which seeks to showcase the insular kingdom as a dynamic investment destination, will now take place from January 26-28.
"After careful consideration and assessment of the global travel and airline outlook, as well as the regulations imposed by a significant number of countries... we have decided to postpone the 4th edition of the FII," the organisers said.
The summit, dubbed "Davos in the desert", was launched by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017 to woo foreign investors and promote his Vision 2030 diversification plan to wean the economy off its dependence on petro-dollars.
2020-09-01 21:19:06
A person on a poorly ventilated Chinese bus infected nearly two dozen other passengers with coronavirus even though many weren't sitting close by, according to a research that offers fresh evidence the disease can spread in the air.
Health authorities had initially discounted the possibility that simply breathing could send infectious micro-droplets into the air, but did a U-turn as experts piled on pressure and evidence mounted.
The article published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine probes the threat of airborne infection by taking a close look at passengers who made a 50-minute trip to a Buddhist event in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo aboard two buses in January before face masks became routine against the virus.
Researchers believe a passenger, whose gender was not identified, was likely patient zero because the person had been in contact with people from Wuhan, the city where the contagion emerged late last year.
The scientists managed to map out where the other passengers sat, and also test them for the virus, with 23 of 68 passengers subsequently confirmed as infected on the same bus.
What is notable is that the sickness infected people in the front and back of the bus, outside the perimeter of 1-2 meters (three-six feet) that authorities and experts say infectious droplets can travel.
2020-09-01 21:02:12
US President Donald Trump said his administration would help airlines facing sharp downturns in traffic as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic, but gave no details.
“We’ll be helping the airlines. You have to help the airlines,” Trump told reporters before departing on a visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin. “Airlines are a tough business in good times.”
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows last week said Trump was weighing executive action to avoid massive layoffs at airlines if Congress fails to agree on a fresh stimulus package.
2020-09-01 20:45:25
2020-09-01 20:32:25
New York City public schools, the largest US school system, will delay the start of classes by 11 days to September 21 under an agreement with education unions that had pushed for additional coronavirus safety measures, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
2020-09-01 20:07:18
President Donald Trump’s administration will restart tours of the White House on September 12 with new restrictions aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus, according to an announcement released on Tuesday.
Tours at the usually bustling White House complex, where Trump lives and works, were suspended after COVID-19 began spreading throughout the country. At the same time, some White House officials have tested positive for the disease, which has killed more than 180,000 people in the United States, and media organizations have limited the number of journalists showing up each day.
2020-09-01 19:43:15
The EU criticised Hungary for a discriminatory border policy and said it will propose a bloc-wide approach to travel restrictions in order to more fairly fight a resurgence of the coronavirus outbreak.
Hungary - which is often in the crosshairs of Brussels - has since Tuesday implemented a ban on entry for foreigners that will remain in place for at least a month.
The measure however exempts Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic - countries of the so-called Visegrad group that often align on EU policy, especially on migration.
Top EU officials formally addressed Budapest over the exemption, warning that discriminating among member states was a violation of the rules governing the EU's passport-free Schengen area.
"Any measures that do not comply with those fundamental principles of EU law should of course be immediately retracted," tweeted EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders.
2020-09-01 19:26:19
Brazil's economy, the biggest in Latin America, contracted by a record 9.7 percent in the second quarter of 2020, plunging into recession as coronavirus lockdowns hit home, the official statistics agency said Tuesday.
Brazil has been hit hard by the pandemic, with the second-highest number of infections and deaths worldwide after the United States, and stay-at-home measures to contain the virus have taken a heavy toll.
"GDP is now at the same level as late 2009, at the height of the global financial crisis," the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) said in a statement.
The contraction was worse than the 9.2 percent average forecast by 49 economists polled by business daily Valor.
However, it was better than the 11.1 percent drop economists were predicting in May.
2020-09-01 19:15:58
Britain will urge people this week to get back to their places of work, ramping up Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s calls to revive the economy after its hammering during the coronavirus lockdown.
The government will launch a media campaign to explain to workers that they will be safe if they return to their offices and other places of employment.
Data has shown only 17% of workers in British cities had returned to their workplaces by early August, and one business leader said last week that big urban centers looked like ghost towns.
The government hopes that reopening schools, which began in England this week, will allow parents to go back to their workplaces after working from home since March in many cases.
“People are going back to the office in huge numbers across our country and quite right too,” Johnson said.
2020-09-01 19:05:08
Greek authorities have extended the reopening of schools by a week to Sept. 14, due to a surge in COVID-19 infections, the government said.
The rise in coronavirus cases in recent weeks has forced Greek authorities to gradually reimpose restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19, during the peak tourism season. The capital Athens and many popular islands have been affected.
Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said the extension was necessary for families to return to big cities from summer vacations and spend some time at home before children get back to class.
“We urge all parents to return with the children to their homes in the coming days and to make sure they stay safe ... until lessons resume,” Petsas said.
2020-09-01 18:49:27
Canadian manufacturing activity accelerated in August to its fastest pace in two years, adding to evidence of a rapid rebound in the domestic economy as businesses reopen following coronavirus-related disruptions, data showed.
The IHS Markit Canada Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ index (PMI) rose to a seasonally adjusted 55.1 in August, its highest level since the same month two years ago, from 52.9 in July. A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector.
In April, when many businesses were closed to help contain the coronavirus pandemic, the index slumped to a record low of 33.0.
The data “highlighted a strong upturn in the Canadian manufacturing industry, continuing the recovery from the severe second quarter downturn,” Shreeya Patel, an economist at IHS Markit, said in a statement.
2020-09-01 18:27:06
Chile’s economic activity was down 10.7% in July from the same month a year ago, the central bank said on Tuesday, an improvement on the 12.5% drop expected by the market as the Latin American country remained under strict lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The bank’s IMACEC economic activity index encompasses about 90% of the economy tallied in gross domestic product figures.
Economic activity rose 1.7% compared with the previous month, while the world’s top copper producer managed to keep its industrial engine on the road, with mining activity increasing by 1.4% from the same period the previous year.
Non-mining economic activity fell by 12%. The most affected sectors were construction and services, namely transport, restaurants and hotels, and, to a lesser extent, trade and the manufacturing industry.
2020-09-01 18:15:11
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday he has extended financial assistance to help offset the economic fallout from the pandemic until the end of the year, at a lower rate of 300 reais ($55.63) per month, down from 600 reais.
2020-09-01 17:59:08
Officials in hazmat suits paraded empty coffins through the streets of Jakarta to remind residents that coronavirus cases are still surging in one of Asia's worst-hit nations.
A convoy of truck hearses and pallbearers snaked its way through crowded neighbourhoods, with some participants also donning headpieces depicting ghost-like figures known as pocong.
"We're hoping this coffin parade will remind people to be more aware of the risk of disobeying health safety rules," said Mundari, the head of south Jakarta's Cilandak district, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
"They can picture how things would be if they died of COVID-19," he added.
The mock coffins got the attention of Cilandak resident Ahmad Soleh Suzany.
"It's very scary because this shows the huge dangers we're facing," he told AFP.
The move comes as Indonesia's coronavirus toll mounts, with the deadly respiratory disease killing more than 100 frontline doctors and possibly hundreds of children.
2020-09-01 17:40:33
Uber Technologies said it will roll out a global selfie feature to verify its ride-hail customers wear a mask, modeled after a similar feature introduced for drivers in mid-May.
Uber instituted its “No Mask No Ride” policy on May 18 and extended it indefinitely due to the ongoing pandemic, requiring both drivers and riders to wear a face covering at all times during a ride.
Drivers are required to take a selfie with a mask each day before starting work, while drivers and riders are able to cancel a trip without penalty if they report the other party is not wearing a mask. Failure to comply can lead to account deactivation.
The rider selfie feature will be rolled out in the United States and Canada by the end of September, and across Latin America and other regions after that, Uber said.
Unlike for drivers, the rider app will only prompt a passenger to take a selfie if a driver previously reported they were not wearing a mask.
“We definitely wanted to make sure that we are targeting this feature to riders who are maybe just coming back to the platform and maybe they’re not aware of ... our (mask) policy,” Sachin Kansal, Uber’s Senior Director of Product Management, said in an interview.
2020-09-01 17:25:19
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government is concerned about a spike in coronavirus infections in the capital Madrid.
Spain was one of the hardest-hit countries when the coronavirus struck Europe this year before a strict lockdown helped reduce the outbreak's spread.
But infections have surged since the lockdown measures were fully removed at the end of June, especially in Madrid, with the rise in infections often linked to the return of nightlife and social gatherings.
"We are worried about the state of public health and the evolution of the virus in Madrid," Sanchez said in an interview with news radio Ser.
The socialist premier added that "some" regional governments which he did not identify needed to boost their ability to track Covid-19 cases and improve their "strategic capacities" in the fight against the virus.
2020-09-01 17:14:02
Lady Gaga’s 2020 VMA appearance blew up the internet recently and landed the Grammy Award-winning singer the special Tricon Award and during her acceptance speech, she gushed over her adoring fan base, reminding them about he importance of wearing masks in the COVID-19 era.
During her acceptance speech for the award, Pinkvilla reported that Gaga gushed over the win, “This is so cool. This means a lot to me. I’ve been making music since I was a little girl. And even though I had really, really big dreams, I truly never could have imagined that someday I would be given an award like this that honoured me for so many of my passions.”
“I want you to know I’ve failed over and over again as an actress and as a musician when I was young. So I gave back to the local community through service as a young woman in New York, philanthropy became a much bigger part of my life as a star and I started the Born This Way foundation with my mother.”
Read complete story here.
2020-09-01 16:59:46
AstraZeneca has expanded its agreement with cell therapy firm Oxford Biomedica to mass-produce its COVID-19 potential vaccine, as it looks to scale-up supply ahead of a possible US fast-track approval.
While the British drugmaker works on the widely watched coronavirus vaccine hopeful, AZD1222, its main portfolio of treatments for cancer, diabetes and heart diseases scored a win after its drug, Imfinzi, was approved for use in Europe to treat an aggressive form of lung cancer.
The company’s shares gained as much as 1.5% to trade at 84.6 pounds by 0807 GMT, outperforming the benchmark FTSE-100 index, after Oxford Biomedica announced the expanded agreement and on news of the EU approval for Imfinzi.
Cambridge-based AstraZeneca’s vaccine is among the leading candidates in the global race for a successful vaccine and it has entered late-stage trials in the United States, the company said on Monday, as it targets 3 billion doses of the vaccine, globally.
2020-09-01 16:48:00
Nepal is making a royal exception to its coronavirus ban on foreign arrivals, with a mountaineering team including a Bahrain prince set to tackle two major peaks.
The Himalayan country shut its borders in March including grounding international flights just ahead of the busy spring season, devastating the local tourism sector.
The 18-member party were given special permission to enter Nepal to climb the 8,163-metre (26,781-feet) Mount Manaslu and the 6,119-metre (20,075-feet) Lobuche.
"A 15-member Bahrain team including the prince of Bahrain and three British citizens will be allowed to come to Nepal in a chartered flight... following the health protocols," government spokesman Yuba Raj Khatiwada said late Monday.
The Bahrain team, due to arrive as early as mid-September, is also planning to climb Everest — the world´s tallest mountain — next year.
2020-09-01 16:29:49
India skipper Virat Kohli has said he did not miss cricket as much as he expected during the months-long break caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Kohli, who also captains Indian Premier League side Royal Challengers Bangalore, recently started training in the United Arab Emirates for the virus-delayed start of the glitzy Twenty20 tournament on September 19.
"When I had our practice session yesterday, it is (when) I realised how long it has been," Kohli said during an interview posted on RCB's YouTube channel on Tuesday.
"When I was heading towards the practice session, I felt nervous, bit jittery, but I was OK. Honestly, I didn't miss the game as much as I thought I might.
2020-09-01 16:13:32
Germany is in a V-shaped economic recovery as it bounces back more strongly than expected from the effects of the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic, the economy minister said.
German GDP is expected to fall 5.8% in 2020, a smaller recession than the 6.3% drop projected earlier, Peter Altmaier said, in a signal that the country is emerging from the worst of the crisis.
Altmaier said Europe's largest economy was seeing "an unfortunately strong slump but then an unexpectedly fast recovery".
Before a press conference, the minister showed off a printed V-shaped chart for assembled photographers.
2020-09-01 15:50:11
The total number of coronavirus cases in Russia passed the 1 million mark on Tuesday after 4,729 new infections were reported.
That brought the country's total tally to 1,000,048. Russia's coronavirus crisis centre said 123 new deaths had been confirmed in the last 24 hours.
2020-09-01 15:20:28
WHO says India reported the most new COVID-19 cases of any country in the past week, its nearly half a million fresh infections pushing the global tally up by 1 per cent.
“South-East Asia has reported the largest week-on-week increase, largely due to increased case detections in India,” the WHO said. “India has reported nearly 500,000 new cases in the past seven days, a 9% increase compared to the previous seven days and the highest numbers of new cases globally.”
2020-09-01 14:45:39
China reported 10 new COVID-19 cases, down from 17 reported a day earlier, the country's health authority said on Tuesday.
The National Health Commission said in a statement that all new cases were imported infections involving travellers from overseas, marking the 16th consecutive day of no local infections.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in mainland China now stands at 85,058, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
2020-09-01 13:05:03
Schools in England and Wales reopened on Tuesday to all students for a new term after the COVID-19 pandemic forced their closure, leading to cancelled exams and throwing student grades into chaos.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had promised to get schools back up and running before the summer break, but was forced to shelve those plans, contributing to criticism over how his government has handled education during the crisis.
The Department for Education said that a “system of controls” would be in place to keep pupils and teachers safe, with social distancing maintained whenever possible.
“I do not underestimate how challenging the last few months have been but I do know how important it is for children to be back in school, not only for their education but for their development and wellbeing too,” said education minister Gavin Williamson, who has also come under pressure.
2020-09-01 12:00:42
India reported 69,921 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday, the lowest daily jump in six days, taking its overall caseload to 3.69 million.
India, the world's second most populous nation, has been reporting the highest single-day caseload in the world every day for more than three weeks, according to a Reuters tally, and is the third worst-hit country behind the United States and Brazil.
The death toll in India from COVID-19 rose by 819 on Tuesday to 65,288.
2020-09-01 11:30:09
Pakistan on Tuesday reported 300 new cases of the coronavirus to take the number of confirmed cases in the country to 296,149.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,299 cases in AJK, 12,879 cases in Balochistan, 2,903 cases in GB, 15,649 cases in Islamabad, 36,118 in KP, 96,832 cases in Punjab and 129,469 cases in Sindh.
The country also reported four more fatalities over the last 24 hours to take the nationwide tally to 6,298.
2020-09-01 11:05:02
Hong Kong began free coronavirus testing for all residents in the Asian financial hub on Tuesday.
The initiative began at 8am with a 60-strong mainland team conducting tests. It is the first direct help from China’s health officials for the semi-autonomous city as it battles the pandemic.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam told a regular press briefing the testing was necessary to find invisible transmissions within society and urged medical workers to treat the testing “objectively and professionally.”
2020-09-01 10:45:32
Brazil reported 45,961 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 553 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Monday.
Brazil has registered 3,908,272 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 121,381, according to ministry data, in the world's worst coronavirus outbreak outside the United States.
2020-09-01 10:05:11
Australia’s second-most populous state Victoria, the epicentre for COVID-19 infections in the country, on Tuesday reported its lowest rise in virus-related deaths in two weeks as a second-wave outbreak eases.
Victoria said five people died from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, the lowest one-day rise since August 15, while 70 people tested positive for the novel coronavirus, a seven-week low.
Australia has recorded nearly 26,000 COVID-19 infections and 657 fatalities from the virus.
2020-08-31 23:59:32
The UAE has sent medical aid to war-torn Syria to combat the novel coronavirus, in the first such delivery since their leaders broke a nine-year silence, the Syrian Red Crescent said.
The delivery late Sunday included medicine, ventilators and disinfectant, the Red Crescent and state news agency SANA said.
Prince Mohammed assured Assad of "the support of the UAE and its willingness to help the Syrian people" combat COVID-19, he tweeted.
2020-08-31 23:46:27
Countries with significant active spread of coronavirus must prevent amplifying events, as opening up without the virus being under control would be a “recipe for disaster”, the World Health Organization said.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recognised that many people are getting tired of restrictions and want to return to normality eight months into the pandemic.
The WHO fully supported efforts to reopen economies and societies, he told a news conference, adding: “We want to see children returning to school and people returning to workplaces, but we want to see it done safely.”
“No country can just pretend the pandemic is over,” he said. “The reality is this virus spreads easily. Opening up without control is a recipe for disaster.”
“Explosive outbreaks” have been linked to gatherings of people at stadiums, nightclubs, places of worship and other crowds, where the respiratory virus can spread easily among clusters of people, Tedros said.
2020-08-31 23:37:30
Former Manchester City midfielder David Silva has tested positive for coronavirus, his new club Real Sociedad announced.
The 34-year-old joined La Real on a free transfer earlier this month but returned a positive COVID-19 test after arriving to San Sebastian.
The Liga club said it was Silva's second test within 72 hours since landing in Spain, having previously tested negative.
The Spaniard, a former World Cup and European Championship winner, left Man City at the end of his contract before signing a two-year deal with Sociedad.
He is self-isolating and is displaying no symptoms, the club said.
2020-08-31 23:25:52
The United States passed six million coronavirus cases, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, adding one million new infections in less than a month.
The country remains by far the most impacted in the world by the pandemic in absolute terms, with nearly a quarter of global infections and 183,203 deaths from Covid-19, the Baltimore-based university's tracker showed.
The number of new daily cases has declined in recent weeks, but the virus is far from disappearing in the US — despite President Donald Trump's repeated assertion that it will — and the national average hides huge regional disparities.
Trump, whose re-election bid has been hit by the economic impact of lockdown restrictions, has promised a complete victory over the pandemic, and a readily-available vaccine by the end of the year.
2020-08-31 23:13:07
Fans can return to some German football stadiums in mid-September for the first round of the German Cup, the country's football federation (DFB) announced on Monday.
Matches in Germany have been played behind closed doors since the professional game restarted in May following the coronavirus lockdown.
"In the third division, the German Cup and women's matches, the number of spectators... must be decided by each club in agreement with local health authorities," the DFB said in a statement.
"This means that in some stadiums there may be fans, while in others, the home clubs may accommodate fewer, if any, spectators."
The 2020/21 German Cup gets underway on September 11.
2020-08-31 22:59:40
One of the most famous defenders of the Amazon rainforest, indigenous chief Raoni Metuktire, has been hospitalized with Covid-19 but is "well and stable," the institute he founded said.
The latest health scare for the 90-year-old chief came just over a month after he was released from the hospital for gastric ulcers and a series of other issues.
Known for his colorful feather headdresses and the large disc inserted in his lower lip, Raoni, a chief of the Kayapo people in north-central Brazil, has traveled the world raising awareness of the threat posed by destruction of the world's biggest rainforest.
Raoni was admitted Friday to the Dois Pinheiros hospital in the city of Sinop, a hospital source told AFP.
"Chief Raoni's family only authorized us to inform about his health after the medical staff confirmed Raoni is well and not at risk. He should be discharged soon," said the Raoni Institute, created in 2001 to defend the Amazon.
2020-08-31 22:38:10
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Monday partial restrictions in and around the capital Manila will be kept for another month starting September 1 to tackle a rising number of coronavirus cases and further expand hospital capacity.
Duterte announced the decision in a late night televised address after the health ministry reported another 3,446 new cases of the coronavirus and 38 fatalities that day, taking its total count to 220,819 cases with 3,558 deaths.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque said the daily reported cases “remains high,” citing a need to intensify anti-COVID-19 measures to slow the infection rate, which is the highest in Southeast Asia.
The time for cases to double has slowed to 12 to 13 days from seven days, Duque said.
Carlito Galvez, a former military chief in charge of the national coronavirus task force, said the government was working to boost hospital capacity and would add 1,000 beds in Manila and nearby provinces, which account for most of the cases.
“We need to strengthen treatment facilities, especially ICU (intensive care units), given the possibility of an increase in severe cases once we further open the economy,” Galvez said during the task force’s meeting with the president.
2020-08-31 22:26:00
Canada reached an agreement in principle with both Novavax Inc and Johnson & Johnson for millions of doses of their experimental coronavirus vaccines, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
Canada’s two agreements follow separate deals with Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc announced weeks ago, and are the latest example of countries rushing to secure access to vaccines.
2020-08-31 22:06:20
High-profile COVID-19 vaccines developed in Russia and China share a potential shortcoming: They are based on a common cold virus that many people have been exposed to, potentially limiting their effectiveness, some experts say.
CanSino Biologics’ vaccine, approved for military use in China, is a modified form of adenovirus type 5, or Ad5. The company is in talks to get emergency approval in several countries before completing large-scale trials, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.
A vaccine developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, approved in Russia earlier this month despite limited testing, is based on Ad5 and a second less common adenovirus.
“The Ad5 concerns me just because a lot of people have immunity,” said Anna Durbin, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “I’m not sure what their strategy is ... maybe it won’t have 70% efficacy. It might have 40% efficacy, and that’s better than nothing, until something else comes along.”
2020-08-31 21:33:14
Slovenia’s economy shrank 13% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020, the statistics office said, as the COVID-19 pandemic reduced household spending and exports.
The Bank of Slovenia said later that the fall was in line with expectations and that initial data for the third quarter “indicates a fast rebound of economic growth over the rest of the year” although risks remain high.
Household spending fell 16.6% year-on-year compared to a fall of 5.8% in the previous quarter, while exports were 24.5% lower. Investments declined by 12.8% versus the same quarter last year. GDP in the first half of 2020 was down by 7.9% year-on-year, the office said.
“Most components of GDP decreased in the second quarter, while the fall in domestic spending had the biggest impact on the GDP decline,” the statistics office said in its report.
2020-08-31 21:03:44
The mayor of the western city of Misrata died of the novel coronavirus, Libya's unity government said, as the conflict-scarred country struggles with mounting cases.
"It was with great sadness that we learned of the death of Moustafa Karwad, mayor of Misrata, Monday morning, after a battle against the coronavirus disease," the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord said in a statement on its Facebook page.
The municipality of Misrata, 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of the capital, said local elections would go ahead as planned this week "in accordance with the wishes of the deceased and the wish of members of the (city) council", after a mourning period of three days.
The United Nations support mission in Libya, UNSMIL, tweeted its condolences, calling Karwad "a dedicated person totally omitted to serving citizens and the nation".
Misrata is the home of powerful armed groups that have fought on the side of the GNA in the battle against eastern-based military strongman Khalifa Haftar, who tried to seize the capital last year.
2020-08-31 20:52:48
2020-08-31 20:30:40
Germany wants to put an end to the chaotic approaches by EU member states to travel restrictions within Europe as a new wave of coronavirus cases gains momentum across the continent.
Berlin currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, which has been dominated by Europe's response to the coronavirus pandemic.
That response has often sown chaos as member states rashly went their own way to fight the virus, most damagingly by shutting borders without notice and thus wreaking havoc on the economy.
The matter became more urgent on Friday when Hungary announced a blanket ban on non-residents entering its territory starting on Tuesday, replaying the sudden go-it-alone decisions seen earlier in the crisis.
Ahead of a meeting of member state envoys on Wednesday, Germany presented a discussion paper, seen by AFP, which offered several proposals for greater cooperation.
2020-08-31 20:19:22
The European Commission said it would contribute 400 million euros ($478 million) to an initiative led by the World Health Organization to buy COVID-19 vaccines, but did not clarify whether EU states would acquire shots through the WHO scheme.
The COVAX initiative aims to purchase for all countries in the world 2 billion doses of potential COVID-19 shots from several vaccine makers by the end of 2021.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, and Seth Berkley, head of the GAVI vaccine alliance, welcomed the financial support. “Big thanks to the EU_Commission for their contribution to the COVAX facility and for standing firm on their commitment to multilateralism,” Tedros said in a tweet.
The EU financial support will be provided through guarantees, the Commission said on Monday. A spokeswoman for the EU executive did not clarify how these guarantees would be offered and why they were preferred to direct funding in cash.
2020-08-31 20:03:22
The Spanish economy has been growing at a rate of more than 10% so far in the third quarter after a record drop in the preceding quarter due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Economy Minister Nadia Calvino said.
The Spanish economy was one of the worst-hit by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns in Europe, posting an 18.5% contraction in April-June from the previous quarter as non-essential activities ground to a halt for most of the period. It had contracted 5.2% in the first quarter.
“With all the precaution and prudence, we can expect growth of more than 10% in the third quarter of the year,” Calvino told a financial event held in the northern city of Santander.
The growth estimate from Calvino, who also said the labour market was rebounding, is slightly more conservative than that by fiscal watchdog AIReF, which last week upgraded its third quarter GDP expansion forecast to 15.2%.
2020-08-31 19:50:54
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte vowed that making schools safe from the coronavirus was Italy's "top priority", as millions of pupils get ready to return to class in two week's time.
Some eight million youngsters are due back on September 14 after a six-month absence following Italy's severe two-month lockdown which started in March.
"Once again Italy is in the front row to develop useful strategies to fight the coronavirus," Conte said in a tweet.
The safe reopening of schools "today is our top priority", he said.
One of the first countries in Europe to be struck by coronavirus, Italy shuttered schools on March 5 and since then learning has been very limited.
Ten days ago the government published new protocols to deal with renewed outbreaks of coronavirus which has killed almost 35,500 people so far, according to official statistics.
2020-08-31 19:37:31
As COVID-19 cases in China sink to new lows, the world’s largest population of university students is heading back to campus in a migration defined by lockdowns, patriotic education and cutting-edge surveillance equipment.
The highly choreographed return comes as Chinese universities revert to in-person instruction for the fall semester after months of pandemic controls.
Some universities have strict rules governing how students eat, bathe and travel. Students in Beijing, Nanjing and Shanghai told Reuters that they must submit detailed movement reports and stay on campus.
“But they haven’t yet told us the specific application process or what reasons will be considered reasonable,” said one student at Beijing’s Renmin University.
Renmin University did not respond to a request for comment. A notice on its social media account confirmed students must apply to leave campus.
At the same time, government procurement documents show dozens of universities have purchased “epidemic control” surveillance systems based on facial recognition, contact tracing and temperature checks.
There are more than 20 million university students in China, and most live on campus in shared dorm rooms, presenting a challenge for health authorities.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-31 19:10:40
Philips the US Department of Health had cancelled most of an order for 43,000 ventilators, leading the Dutch medical equipment maker to cut its 2020 earnings outlook.
The termination follows a July report by the US Congress House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy that found the White House had overpaid Philips by at least $500 million. Philips denied any profiteering on ventilators.
Philips was one of several firms contracted by the U.S. to supply 187,000 ventilators to the strategic national stockpile to treat patients affected by COVID-19.
It expanded capacity in Pennsylvania and California to meet sudden demand but said in a statement on Monday that it will now deliver just 12,300 hospital ventilators by the end of the year to the U.S. Department of Health and Human services.
A spokesman said he expected Philips will find other buyers for the 30,700 excess ventilators.
2020-08-31 18:30:10
More than 90% of countries have seen ordinary health services disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with major gains in medical care attained over decades vulnerable to being wiped out in a short period, a World Health Organization survey showed.
The Geneva-based body has frequently warned about other life-saving programs being impacted by the pandemic and has sent countries mitigation advice, but the survey yielded the first WHO data so far on the scale of disruptions.
“The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on essential health services is a source of great concern,” said a report on the study released on Monday. “Major health gains achieved over the past two decades can be wiped out in a short period of time...”
The survey includes responses from between May and July from more than 100 countries. Among the most affected services were routine immunizations (70%), family planning (68%) and cancer diagnosis and treatment (55%), while emergency services were disturbed in almost a quarter of responding countries.
The Eastern Mediterranean Region, which includes Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen, was most affected followed by the African and Southeast Asian regions, it showed. The Americas was not part of the survey.
2020-08-31 18:59:45
India’s economy contracted at its steepest pace on record of 23.9% in the June quarter as the pandemic lockdown cut consumer and business spending, putting pressure on the government and central bank for additional stimulus and a rate cut.
The gross domestic product (GDP) data INGDPQ=ECI released on Monday showed consumer spending, private investments and exports all collapsed during the world’s strictest lockdown imposed in late March to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
The read-out for the June quarter was worse than the 18.3% contraction forecast of analysts in a Reuters poll. It was also lower than a 3.1% growth rate for the previous quarter and upwardly-revised 5.2% growth in June quarter of 2019.
Some private economists have said the fiscal year that began in April could see a contraction of nearly 10%, the worst performance since India won independence from British colonial rule in 1947 and likely to push millions into poverty.
2020-08-31 18:15:33
The European Central Bank has no reason for now to add to its stimulus measures as disruptions related to the recent surge in coronavirus infections were already factored into its policy, ECB board member Isabel Schnabel told Reuters.
With case numbers inching towards their early-year highs, some European nations are once again imposing restrictions on business and travel, raising expectations that the ECB would be forced to expand its already lavish, 1.35 trillion euro ($1.6 trillion) emergency bond scheme, to help governments cope.
But Schnabel appeared to soften those expectations and she even played down concerns over the euro’s recent strength, which some analysts fear could automatically negate some of the ECB’s stimulus effort.
“We are seeing a certain resurgence of infections, but at the moment it looks unlikely that we are going to see a full lockdown again,” the head of the ECB’s market operations said in an interview. “This is precisely what we assumed in our baseline scenario in June.”
“If you look at incoming data, by and large they support the baseline... (and) as long as the baseline remains intact, there is no reason to adjust the monetary policy stance,” Schnabel added, including the size of its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme, or PEPP.
2020-08-31 17:59:47
Portugal’s record economic contraction in the second quarter saw exports of goods and services plunge by 40% as the coronavirus eroded revenue from overseas tourists, a breakdown of official GDP data showed.
Data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) confirmed its previous estimate that, between April and June, gross domestic product shrank 16.3% from a year earlier and 13.9% from the preceding quarter. It gave a breakdown of GDP components such as domestic and external demand.
Tourism is classified as an export under Portugal’s GDP calculations because the sector brings in money from overseas. It was the sector worst affected by the pandemic.
Exports of goods and services fell by around 40% from a year earlier to 13.3 billion euros in the second quarter of 2020, the data showed. Exports of just services, which are predominantly tourism-related, plunged 56% to around 3 billion euros.
Private consumption dropped by around 14% to 28 billion euros in the second quarter from a year earlier and investment fell nearly 11% to around 9 billion euros, together accounting for most of the steep GDP contraction.
2020-08-31 17:44:13
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 847,071 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT.
At least 25,273,510 cases have been registered. Of these, at least 16,355,100 are now considered recovered.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
On Sunday, 3,698 new deaths and 217,825 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were India with 971, Brazil with 366 and Mexico with 339.
2020-08-31 17:26:05
Turkey's economy shrank by 9.9% between April and June compared to the same period last year, the first reading since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic showed Monday.
The drop was smaller than the 10.7% contraction forecast in a survey by Bloomberg and less severe than those experienced in other big emerging markets.
It was also largely in line with the economic slowdowns experienced across Europe once weeks-long national lockdowns were imposed in March.
The Turkish economy grew by 4.5% in the first three months of the year as the country fought its way back from a deep economic crisis in 2018.
The pandemic forced the Turkish central bank to sharply cut interest rates and inject cash into the economy to help businesses and households survive.
But those measures are now taking a toll.
2020-08-31 17:14:39
GlaxoSmithKline and partner Vir Biotechnology have started testing their experimental antibody on early-stage COVID-19 patients, entering the race to find a winner in a promising class of antiviral drugs to combat the pandemic.
The British drugmaker said the long-acting single injection will be tested on recently diagnosed high-risk cases for its ability to prevent hospitalization, typically a life threatening disease stage.
GSK, which in April moved to invest $250 million in Vir and agreed to collaborate on the antibody, is behind some peers in developing the class.
Regeneron, which is working on antibody manufacturing with Roche, expects initial data from ongoing trials of its COVID-19 two-antibody combination in September.
Eli Lilly, working with biotech firm AbCellera, early this month started testing whether their antibody can prevent the infections in nursing homes. A separate trial testing the compound on recently diagnosed COVID patients may yield initial data in September or shortly after.
“We’re coming into the clinic a little bit later and part of that is because we spent some time selecting what we believe will be a best-in-class antibody,” Vir Chief Executive George Scangos told Reuters.
2020-08-31 16:59:36
Australia fast bowler Josh Hazlewood said Monday he was a "bit concerned" by a coronavirus outbreak at his Indian Premier League franchise but insisted he was fully focused on the national side's white-ball tour of England.
Hazlewood is a member of the Australia squad who are set to face 50-over world champions England in three Twenty20 and three one-day internationals from September 4-16.
Following his Australia stint, the 29-year-old Hazlewood is set to head to the United Arab Emirates, where this year's edition of the lucrative IPL T20 franchise tournament is being staged because of Covid-19, and play for the Chennai Super Kings led by India great M.S. Dhoni.
But IPL officials have reported that 13 Super Kings personnel, including two players, tested positive for coronavirus during tests administered from August 20-28 and have been isolated.
"The franchise, we have a group WhatsApp, with all the information that comes through, it's, obviously, a little bit of a concern, yeah," Hazlewood told reporters in a conference call from Australia's training base in Southampton on Monday.
"You ideally would have no cases.
"They are, obviously, in quarantine now and I think they finish up over the next few days. All my focus is, obviously, on this tournament at the moment. Once that IPL becomes closer, we will think more about that."
2020-08-31 16:25:24
Italy posted a record economic contraction as household spending and investment crashed during the country's coronavirus lockdown, driving the eurozone's third-largest economy deep into recession.
The country's gross domestic product fell by 12.8% in the second quarter compared to the previous quarter and by 17.7% versus the same period last year, national statistics agency Istat said.
"The full estimate of the quarterly economic figures confirm the exceptional extent of the drop in GDP in the second quarter, due to the economic effects of the health emergency and the containment measures adopted," Istat said.
The contraction was even worse than predicted in July, when Istat estimated a second-quarter drop of 12.4%.
A recession is commonly defined as two consecutive periods of a quarter-on-quarter drop in GDP.
Italy's economy shrunk 5.4% in the first quarter.
In the second quarter, household spending fell by 11.3% compared to the first quarter, while exports plummeted 26.4%, the agency said.
2020-08-31 16:45:54
German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned as "shameful" an attempt by protesters angry at coronavirus restrictions to storm parliament, saying they had abused the right to demonstrate peacefully.
Several hundred people tried to get into the Reichstag building during a rally against coronavirus rules in Berlin on Saturday.
"This right to demonstrate peacefully is of course a very valuable asset even during a pandemic," Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a government press conference in Berlin.
However, he said their actions were "a clear abuse".
"The result was disgraceful images at the Reichstag which are unacceptable, anti-democrats trying to make themselves heard on the steps of our democratic parliament," he said.
Police estimated 38,000 people, double the number expected, gathered in Berlin on Saturday to protest at restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus, such as wearing masks and social distancing.
2020-08-31 15:50:22
High-profile COVID-19 vaccines developed in Russia and China share a potential shortcoming: They are based on a common cold virus that many people have been exposed to, potentially limiting their effectiveness, some experts say.
“The Ad5 concerns me just because a lot of people have immunity,” said Anna Durbin, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “I’m not sure what their strategy is ... maybe it won’t have 70% efficacy. It might have 40% efficacy, and that’s better than nothing, until something else comes along.”
2020-08-31 15:15:31
The Paris local municipality said on Monday that it would look to make free COVID-19 testing available in all of the capital's 20 districts (arrondissements), as authorities battle against signs of a re-emergence of the virus in France.
The Paris mayor's office added in a statement that from Monday onwards, there would be three permanent laboratories set up to conduct free COVID-19 tests, as well as two other mobile laboratories that would go around the capital.
2020-08-31 14:50:26
Russia reported 4,993 new cases of the coronavirus on Monday, bringing its nationwide tally to 995,319, the fourth largest caseload in the world.
Russia's coronavirus taskforce said 83 people had died over the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 17,176.
2020-08-31 13:50:10
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 610 to 242,381, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The reported death toll rose by three to 9,298, the tally showed.
2020-08-31 13:10:59
Schools and businesses reopened in Auckland on Monday after the lifting of a lockdown in New Zealand’s largest city to contain the resurgence of the coronavirus, but face masks were made mandatory on public transport across the country.
Limits on public gatherings in Auckland remain and the rest of the country remains in alert level 2, which means social distancing norms must be followed.
New Zealand announced 9 new coronavirus cases on Monday, five of which were in the community and were traced to the known Auckland cluster.
New Zealand has recorded 1,387 total confirmed cases of COVID-19 so far, and 22 deaths.
2020-08-31 12:55:30
China reported 17 new coronavirus cases up from a day earlier, the country's health authority said on Monday.
The National Health Commission said all of the new cases were imported infections involving travellers returning from abroad, marking the 15th straight day of no local infections for the country.
China's total number of COVID-19 infections now stands at 85,048, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
2020-08-31 11:55:34
India reported 78,512 new novel coronavirus infections on Monday, slightly fewer than its record set the previous day when it posted the biggest, single-day tally of infections of any country in the pandemic.
India, the world’s second-most populous country, has been posting the highest single-day caseload in the world every day since Aug. 7, exceeding the tallies of both the United States and Brazil.
At 3.62 million total cases, India is fast catching up to these two countries in terms of cumulative caseload, but it has relatively lower death rate.
India’s deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, went up by 971 in the past 24 hours, taking the tally to 64,469, the health ministry said.
2020-08-31 11:10:12
The state at the epicentre of Australia’s second-wave of COVID-19 infections said on Monday the number of new cases fell to a near two-month low, allowing authorities to detail in a week’s time how stringent lockdown measures will be lifted.
Victoria said it has detected 73 new COVID-19 infections in the past 24 hours, the lowest since July 3.
Australia has now recorded nearly 26,000 COVID-19 infections and 652 fatalities from the virus— far fewer than other developed countries.
Read more here.
2020-08-31 10:30:23
Pakistan on Monday reported 213 new coronavirus cases, its lowest daily count in more than four months.
The total number of cases currently stand 295,849.
The country also reported six fatalities over the last 24 hours bringing the nationwide toll to 6,294.
In the last month, Pakistan's daily infections and fatalities have dropped significantly. On August 30, it recorded only 213 new cases in a day, and six deaths across the country, while it sampled 18,017 tests.
The August 30 figure is the lowest tally since April 10, when 186 new infections were reported in a day.
Read more here.
2020-08-31 10:05:55
A more infectious mutation of the new coronavirus has been found in Indonesia, the Jakarta-based Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology said, as the Southeast Asian country’s caseload surges.
The “infectious but milder” D614G mutation of the virus has been found in genome sequencing data from samples collected by the institute, deputy director Herawati Sudoyo told Reuters, adding that more study is required to determine whether that was behind the recent rise in cases.
The strain, which the World Health Organisation said was identified in February and has been circulating in Europe and the Americas, has also been found in neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia.
2020-08-31 09:50:35
Nearly 5,800 people suspected of killing health workers, selling defective medical equipment and lying about their travel history have been arrested in China for epidemic-related crimes since January, the state prosecutor's office said.
One case involved a shopper that beat to death another customer who reminded him to wear a mask in a supermarket.
Other cases included a person who deliberately mowed down medical workers with a car, and another was arrested for stabbing a health inspector with a dagger when monitoring temperatures.
Some have also been accused of embezzling money collected from fundraisers to help coronavirus patients, selling defective medical equipment and lying about their travel history or health condition.
Read more here.
2020-08-26 23:48:01
The Balochistan health department has reported 57 new infections, taking the total to 12,721 in the province.
No new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.
2020-08-26 21:16:43
Norway said on Wednesday it will impose a 10-day quarantine on all people arriving from Germany and Liechtenstein from Aug. 29 due to rising numbers of COVID-19 cases in those countries.
Similar restrictions will also be imposed on those coming from two additional regions in Sweden, the Norwegian foreign ministry said in a statement.
To try to prevent a domestic resurgence of the coronavirus, Norway quarantines all travellers from countries with more than 20 confirmed new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population during the past two weeks.
It also advices Norwegians against travelling to those nations.
With its latest additions, Norway will be restricting travel from most European countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Poland and Switzerland.
It still allows quarantine-free travel from EU countries Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Finland and the Baltic states as well as some parts of Denmark and Sweden.
2020-08-26 22:11:16
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 62 new infections in the province, taking the total to 35,893.
"No new death was reported but 1 death from mid-August was included taking the total to 1,249," it said.
2020-08-26 21:58:55
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah has said 201 new COVID-19 cases have been detected in the last 24 hours, taking the total number to 128,877 in the province.
Four more people also succumbed to the disease, taking the death toll to 2,388.
2020-08-26 20:43:45
Romanian theatres and cinemas could reopen from Sept. 1 with social distancing restrictions and protective masks, while the return of indoor restaurants depends on the number of new coronavirus cases in each region, the president said on Wednesday.
Romania has been reporting just over 1,000 new cases per day since late July, bringing confirmed cases to 81,646 since the pandemic reached the country in late February.
Some 3,421 people have died, and Romania has extended a state of alert until the middle of September. Indoor restaurants, cinemas and theatres have been closed since March.
"There are two sectors where I feel it is important that activity resumes, as much as possible under safe conditions," President Klaus Iohannis told reporters.
"After Sept. 1, indoor restaurants could open taking into account the epidemiological conditions in each town."
Iohannis added the government would decide the conditions on Thursday.
Romanian schools will reopen on Sept. 14 on a case-by-case basis, with towns affected by the pandemic likely to hold classes online.
The European Union state will hold a local election on Sept. 27, with a parliamentary election likely in December.
2020-08-26 20:43:31
Russia starts a new phase of clinic trials of Russia's approved COVID-19 vaccine called "Sputnik V" that will involve more than 40,000 people in Moscow, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said on Wednesday.
The RDIF, which is backing the vaccine, said similar trials would be held in five other countries.
The vaccine has been hailed as safe and effective by Russian authorities and scientists following two months of small-scale human trials, the results of which have not been made public yet.
2020-08-26 20:01:18
Nigeria expects the third and fourth quarters to reflect the continued effects of a slowdown, after the economy contracted by 6.1% in the second quarter, the presidency said on Wednesday.
Nigeria, Africa's largest economy and top oil producer, faces its worst crisis in four decades due to low crude prices, and the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which hurt demand for its main export commodity.
2020-08-26 17:16:00
KARACHI: The boat of philanthropist Faisal Edhi capsized during a rescue operation in Malir river on Wednesday.
Edhi, the head of one of Pakistan's largest charity groups Edhi Foundation, along with his team members, was taking part in relief operations after the recent torrential rains wrecked havoc in the city.
According to a PTI spokesperson, Edhi was patrolling the river in a boat with PTI MPA Raja Azhar and the team of five were searching for people in need of rescue when their boat capsized.
The Edhi officials were drowning when they were rescued by fishermen in a fishing boat and were shifted to Ibrahim Hyderi.
2020-08-26 17:34:00
Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz on Wednesday said PPP is responsible for Karachi's dismal state and is only blaming the Centre to hide its own shortcomings.
The minister's comments came a day after heavy rains lashed Karachi, causing damage to infrastructure, gutters to overflow, roads to be flooded, and prolonged power outages, among other miseries. One person was also reported to have died in a rain-related incident.
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad alongside Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research Syed Fakhar Imam, he said: "PPP said they would transform Larkana into Karachi. Instead, they did the opposite, and turned Karachi into Larkana."
2020-08-26 19:39:00
Passengers travelling to the Islamabad Airport were facing difficulties in reaching on time as the road is damaged due to rain, Geo News reported Wednesday.
The TV channel said that one lane has been blocked after it was damaged during heavy rains.
2020-08-26 19:49:47
The French government wants to avoid a new nationwide lockdown due to the new coronavirus epidemic, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Wednesday.
Speaking at the Medef employers' federation's annual end-of-summer conference, Castex also said that a normal restart to the school year was a precondition for restarting the economy.
2020-08-26 19:10:01
The 2021 Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) summit of business leaders and politicians has been called off for January due to the coronavirus pandemic, with organisers planning to reschedule the event to sometime early next summer.
"The advice from experts is that we cannot (host the event) safely in January," WEF said on Wednesday in a statement.
The confab in the Swiss Alps that has hosted rival heads of state including US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in recent years has been held in the Swiss ski resort of Davos since 1971.
WEF, which takes over the ski resort of Davos for about a week each year, has branded itself as the world's top venue for the business and political elite to meet and discuss the challenges of globalisation.
2020-08-26 18:41:00
Gatwick Airport, Britain's no.2 airport to the south of London, said it needed to axe up to 600 jobs, or 24% of its workforce, because of the travel slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gatwick, which is owned by VINCI Airports and Global Infrastructure Partners, said in a statement on Wednesday that it was only operating about 20% of last year's flights and would now start formal consultations on job cuts.
2020-08-26 18:23:14
The German government said Wednesday it was extending a travel warning for countries outside the European Union until September 14 over ongoing concerns linked to the coronavirus pandemic.
Government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said the decision to extend the advisory against "tourism trips" to so-called third countries -- those outside the EU and the no-passport Schengen zone -- had been taken in the face of rising infection numbers in Germany attributed to travellers.
The current warning had been set to run out on August 31 but a foreign ministry spokeswoman said that the "very dynamic development" of the pandemic required continued vigilance.
2020-08-26 18:06:31
Britain reverses its policy on wearing facemasks in schools in England, prompting fresh criticism about its handling of the pandemic.
Ministers had insisted face coverings were not necessary when children go back to school next week, but in new guidance the government now advises secondary school students and staff should wear face coverings in corridors and communal areas.
2020-08-26 17:42:00
The pandemic has killed at least 820,180 people worldwide since surfacing in China late last year, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT on Wednesday.
More than 23.9 million cases have been registered in 196 countries and territories.
The United States has recorded the most deaths with 178,524, followed by Brazil with 116,580, Mexico with 61,450, India with 59,449 and Britain with 41,449 fatalities.
2020-08-26 17:22:01
Ukraine on Wednesday imposed a temporary ban on most foreigners from entering the country until Sept. 28 and extended lockdown measures until the end of October to contain a recent spike in coronavirus cases.
Speaking at a televised cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Denys Shmygal also said the government would need to take a decision on Thursday on whether to ban major public events in September.
2020-08-26 16:42:00
The health minister for Lebanon's caretaker government was cited as saying on Wednesday that the tally of coronavirus cases in Lebanon was "concerning," an official of the Supreme Defense Council said on television, reading out a statement by the council.
Hamad Hassan added that hospital capacity needed to be increased to help combat the spike in cases, the official said.
2020-08-26 16:21:00
British military scientists have discovered that a product found in insect repellent can kill the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, Sky News reported on Wednesday.
The product, Citriodiol, could offer a new layer of protection against COVID-19 according to scientists at the UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Sky said.
2020-08-26 17:18:56
Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta on Wednesday extended a nationwide curfew by 30 days in the East African nation's fight against the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Kenyatta said in a televised address he had also extended the closure of bars and nightclubs for 30 days, while he increased the number of people allowed to attend events such as weddings and funerals.
2020-08-26 15:50:18
Iran’s death toll from the novel coronavirus rose by 119 to 21,020, the health ministry’s spokeswoman told state TV on Wednesday, with the total number of identified cases rising to 365,606.
Sima Sadat Lari said that 2,243 new cases were identified in the past 24 hours in Iran, rising from 2,213 a day earlier.
2020-08-26 15:00:26
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,576 to 236,429, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by three to 9,280, the tally showed.
2020-08-26 14:10:36
China reported 15 new COVID-19 cases compared with 14 cases reported a day earlier, the country’s health authority reported on Wednesday.
All of the new cases reported were imported infections, the National Health Commission said in a statement, marking the 10th consecutive day of no locally transmitted cases.
The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 84,996, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
2020-08-26 13:15:48
Australia's second most populous state of Victoria on Wednesday reported 24 deaths from the new coronavirus in the last 24 hours and 149 new cases.
The southeast state a day earlier recorded eight deaths from the virus and detected 148 cases.
Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, has become the epicentre of a renewed outbreak of infections but cases have slowed in recent days, helped by a six-week lockdown put in place to slow the spread of the virus.
2020-08-26 12:30:20
Myanmar reported 70 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday, the Southeast Asian nation’s biggest daily rise, amid a recent resurgence of the virus after weeks without confirmed domestic transmission.
Health authorities say detected among recent infections was a mutation now being reported in Malaysia, which has been found in Europe, North America and parts of Asia, and is thought to be more infectious.
The health ministry did not say where the 70 new cases were found. Most recent infections have been in Sittwe, the capital of conflict-torn Rakhine state, where authorities have imposed a lockdown, stay-at-home order and a curfew.
2020-08-26 11:45:35
Pakistan on Wednesday reported 482 new cases and 12 deaths in the last 24 hours, the national dashboard said.
According to the national dashboard, there are now 8,987 active COVID-19 patients in Pakistan and 278,939 recoveries.
A total of 294,193 cases detected has so far been recorded with AJK reporting 2,265 cases, Balochistan 12,664, GB 2,745, ICT 15,546, KP 35,831, Punjab 96,466, Sindh 128,676.
The death toll from coronavirus stands at6,267.
2020-08-26 10:55:28
Brazil registered an additional 1,271 COVID-19 deaths and 47,134 new cases over the last 24 hours, the nation's health ministry said on Tuesday.
The country has now registered 116,580 total deaths and 3,669,995 total confirmed cases.
2020-08-26 10:25:41
The head of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) has said young people are driving the spread of the coronavirus in the Americas, noting that both deaths and caseloads have doubled in the region over the past six weeks.
“This is not a good sign. Wishing the virus away will not work,” Dr. Carissa Etienne said, detailing what she described as a “real disconnect” between the relaxation of containment measures and the continuing spread of the virus.
Etienne said that “the vast majority” of reported COVID-19 cases in the Americas have been among those between the ages of 19 and 59, but that almost 70% of deaths have been among individuals who are 60 years old or older.
“This indicates that younger people are primarily driving the spread of the disease in our region,” she said.
2020-08-25 22:02:33
Turkey's new coronavirus cases jumped to its highest level since mid-June on Tuesday at 1,502, according data provided by the government, which responded by banning some celebrations in 14 provinces.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter that 24 more people died from COVID-19, bringing the country's toll to 6,163. More than 261,000 people have contracted the disease in Turkey, according to the official tally.
New cases were last this high on June 15 - two weeks after Turkey lifted a partial lockdown - when the country logged 1,592 cases.
2020-08-25 22:00:16
The University of Alabama, seen as a test case for returning to in-person learning amid the pandemic, has reported close to a thousand positive coronavirus cases since reopening.
The school has published a COVID-19 dashboard which shows a total of 566 positives since last Wednesday when term started, in addition to 400 people who tested positive when arriving.
Local news site AL.com quoted university president Stuart Bell saying the problem did not stem from student behavior on campus but probably came from the community.
"What we have to do is identify where does the virus thrive and where does the virus spread and how can we work together with our students, with our faculty and with our staff to make sure that we minimize those places, those incidents," he said.
2020-08-25 21:24:54
Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of president Jair Bolsonaro, has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to a statement by Flavio's spokesman.
Flavio has no symptoms of COVID-19 and is at home, it said, adding he has started taking chloroquine and azithromycin as part of a treatment against the virus.
President Bolsonaro is a big supporter of chloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria, despite the lack of solid evidence it works against the disease.
Bolsonaro himself caught the virus earlier, as well as his wife Michelle Bolsonaro and his youngest son, Jair Renan.
2020-08-25 17:22:00
India reported on Tuesday the highest number of new coronavirus cases globally for the 18th straight day, remaining well ahead of the United States and Brazil, a Reuters tally based on official reporting showed.
It took India from the end of January, when the country's first case was reported, until July to reach around 1.6 million cases, a period when the government imposed a strict lockdown.
However, infections have rocketed by another 1.5 million since the start of August, taking the total to around 3.1 million, behind only Brazil and the United States.
The rate of new cases in India is increasing rapidly, climbing by 60,975 in the latest 24-hour period, according to the federal health ministry.
"If we cross the absolute numbers (in Brazil and the United States), I won't be surprised, but we also have a larger population," Giridhar Babu, epidemiologist at the non-profit Public Health Foundation of India, told Reuters.
But deaths have remained comparatively low - at 58,390, or 1.84 % of total cases - lower than the global mortality percentage of 3.4%.
2020-08-25 17:28:00
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday he was "really pleased" by the work teachers had done to get ready to reopen from next week, a test of his government after it failed to return all children to schools earlier this year.
Johnson, whose Conservative government has come under fire for how it has tackled education during the coronavirus crisis, said it was "crucial" for all children to return to school and that he would look at medical evidence to see whether he should change the government's advice on wearing face-coverings.
"I'm really pleased by the work that teachers, schools, parents, pupils have done to get ready," he said on a visit in southwest England.
2020-08-25 18:56:00
EU trade chief Phil Hogan said on Tuesday he had complied with public health rules while in Ireland in the past month, although admitted that he should not have attended a golf dinner that has caused a furore in the country.
"To the best of my knowledge and ability I believe that I complied with public health regulations in Ireland during my visit," Hogan said in a statement which also outlined his trips in his home county Kilkenny and the golf dinner in Galway.
"Again I now recognize that the event should not have proceeded and I should not have attended," Hogan said.
2020-08-25 20:28:00
Hungary can reopen schools next week for the first time since mid-March based on fresh data on coronavirus infections, state news agency MTI reported on Tuesday, citing Minister of Human Capacities Miklos Kasler.
Kasler said the government had worked out a protocol for schools to follow about social distancing, using sanitizers, and the use of common areas.
He did not go into detail and did not say if wearing a mask would be mandatory.
Hungary, a central European country of around 10 million, has reported 5,215 cases of the coronavirus in all, and 614 deaths. On Tuesday, 24 new cases were recorded.
Hungary will tighten border crossing rules from Sept. 1 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus as the number of new infections is rising in neighbouring countries, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday.
"As the school year starts, we will no longer be able to work with the border crossing system that was used during the summer," Orban said.
The government is expected to announce the new rules this week.
Nationalist Orban's government imposed strict lockdown rules in March to contain the spread of the coronavirus, and eased those restrictions only gradually in May.
2020-08-25 20:44:00
Young people are driving the spread of the coronavirus in the Americas region, the Pan American Health Organization's (PAHO) director Carissa Etienne said on Tuesday.
PAHO is worried about the disproportionate incidence of coronavirus among young people, Etienne said.
2020-08-25 21:19:02
The United Kingdom recorded 1,184 new cases of COVID-19 in the latest daily statistics published on Tuesday, up from 853 on Monday, government figures showed.
Sixteen people died after testing positive for the coronavirus within the previous 28 days, compared with four deaths announced on Monday.
2020-08-25 16:00:38
AstraZeneca said on Tuesday it started early stage trials for an antibody-based treatment for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19, as the British drugmaker also ploughs on with its vaccine candidate.
The trial will evaluate if AZD7442, a combination of two monoclonal antibodies, is safe and tolerable in up to 48 healthy participants between the ages of 18 and 55 years in the United Kingdom with the backing of the United States.
2020-08-25 15:20:04
South Korea on Tuesday ordered most schools in Seoul and surrounding areas to close and move classes back online, the latest in a series of precautionary measures aimed at heading off a resurgence in coronavirus cases.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 280 new coronavirus cases as of midnight Monday, bringing the country's total to 17,945 with 310 deaths.
With most of the new cases centred in the densely populated capital area, however, health authorities say the country is on the brink of a nation-wide outbreak and have called on people to stay home and limit travel.
All students, except for high school seniors, in the cities of Seoul and Incheon and the province of Geonggi will take classes online until September 11, the Ministry of Education said.
Read more here.
2020-08-25 14:05:54
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,278 to 234,853, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Tuesday.
The reported death toll rose by five to 9,277, the tally showed.
2020-08-25 13:30:09
China reported 14 new COVID-19 cases all of which were imported infections involving travellers from overseas, the country's health authority said on Tuesday.
This compared with 16 new cases reported a day earlier, all imported as well, and marked the ninth consecutive day of no locally transmitted cases.
The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 84,981, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,634.
2020-08-25 12:40:52
World-record sprinter Usain Bolt has tested positive for the coronavirus, just days after he celebrated his 34th birthday with a lavish party.
The retired 100m and 200m world-record holder didn't confirm his test result, but he urged anyone who had been in contact with him to go into quarantine.
"I did a test on Saturday to leave (Jamaica) because I have work," Bolt said in a video posted on Twitter. "I am trying to be responsible so I am going to stay in and be safe.
"Also, I am having no symptoms, I will quarantine myself and wait on the confirmation to see what is the protocol and to see how I go about quarantining myself from the Ministry of Health.
According to the Jamaica Observer, health and wellness minister Christopher Tufton confirmed late on Monday that the eight-time Olympic champion had tested positive.
2020-08-25 12:05:02
2020-08-25 11:40:05
Pakistan on Tuesday reported 450 new cases of the coronavirus to take the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 293,711.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,257 in AJK, 12,560 in Balochistan, 2,720 in GB, 15,531 in Islamabad, 35,796 in KP, 9,6391 in Punjab and 128,456 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded nine fatalities from the virus. The death toll from the virus now stands at 6,250.
As of now, there are 9,031 active COVID-19 patients in Pakistan. The number of recoveries stands at 278,425.
2020-08-25 11:20:59
Australia's second most populous state of Victoria said on Tuesday eight people died from the new coronavirus in the last 24 hours and reported 148 new cases.
The state a day earlier reported 15 deaths from the virus and 116 cases, its lowest daily rise in new infections in seven weeks.
A flare up in infections in Victoria forced authorities in to tighten restrictions on people's movements and order large parts of the state's economy to close but the southeast state has seen a slowdown in new cases in recent days.
2020-08-25 10:50:07
India reported more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases for a seventh straight day on Tuesday, as infections moved beyond cities and spread further into smaller towns.
India reported 60,975 new cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total to 3.17 million, data from the federal health ministry showed. Deaths rose by 848, taking the total number to 58,390.
2020-08-24 23:59:42
US CDC reported 572 new deaths due to coronavirus in the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 176,223.
The province also reported38,679 new cases, bumping the overall cases to5,682,491, the CDC's website showed.
2020-08-24 23:45:28
A luxury resort in southern India has turned its swimming pool into a fish farm to stop the business sinking amid the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Normally the 500-foot pool at the Aveda Resort in Kerala state is packed with European tourists. Now thousands of pearl spot fish are causing the splash.
The complex was forced to shut in March when a nationwide coronavirus lockdown was ordered. Few hotels have been allowed to reopen since.
Of those which are still shuttered, not many boast a pool with 7.5 million liters of water, which can be put to alternative use.
“We have had zero revenues, so in June, we put around 16,000 two-month-old pearl spot fish in the pool,” Aveda’s general manager Jyotish Surendran told AFP.
The fish, which takes about eight months to reach full size, is a popular ingredient in dishes in southern India and the Middle East.
“We plan to harvest by November and will export to the Middle East,” Surendran said, predicting about four tons of pearl spots growing in the swimming pool could be worth $40,000 on the market.
2020-08-24 23:30:36
Kyrgyzstan will end the toughest restrictions it introduced to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, such as curfews, and allow certain businesses to reopen from Monday, the Central Asian nation’s government said.
The former Soviet republic will in the meantime keep in place lockdown regulations barring travel between provinces, the cabinet said.
Among the businesses allowed to reopen from May 11 are providers of maintenance, cleaning and financial services, lawyers, property and tourist agents, as well as some non-food retailers.
2020-08-24 23:16:33
Tunisian President Kais Saied ordered an end to a curfew imposed in March to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, his office said, citing success in controlling the disease.
Tunisia has already reopened shops, businesses, mosques, cafes and hotels after locking down nearly all normal business for months.
2020-08-24 22:59:49
A second member of France’s National Assembly has been taken to hospital after contracting coronavirus and five other lawmakers are being tested for the illness, the lower house’s presidency said in a statement.
The Assembly did not name the two legislators who have caught the disease but local media in the eastern region of Alsace have reported that the first of the two lawmakers is Jean-Luc Reitzer, who represents one of the departments most affected by the outbreak and is currently under intensive care.
The second lawmaker is a woman, according to the statement by the parliament. The Assembly said on Friday that a snack bar worker had also contracted the virus.
Sessions in the lower house will be interrupted for two weeks from March 9 and March 22 due to municipal elections that are taking place across France, reducing activity and the number of people present in the building, the assembly said.
2020-08-24 22:21:34
The Balochistan health department reported a rise in the province's infections by 33, taking the total to 12,560.
2020-08-24 22:43:07
2020-08-24 21:59:13
Trainee Santas in Britain are learning how to make traditional grottos COVID-safe this year, with festive red velvet masks, spaced seating and a contact-free transfer of gift to child.
London entertainment company Ministry of Fun has been running “Santa School” for 25 years and this year started earlier than usual to reassure clients hiring a Santa and the public that it’s possible to make the experience safer during the coronavirus pandemic.
Trainer and organisation founder James Lovell said there are three key changes they have advised on.
“We’ve created these masks, which, as you can see, they’re red velvet with white fur trim, just like Santa’s costume... I think a child will feel comfortable with that because I think we underestimate just how used to masks we all are.
“Secondly, there’s the social distance grotto... Very easy to do and to make a child two metres away from Santa does not in any way take away from the magic,” he added.
2020-08-24 21:45:38
Islamabad recorded 22 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Barakahu, the district health officer said.
2020-08-24 21:30:54
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department said that the province reported 30 new infections taking the overall cases to 35,796.
2020-08-24 21:09:44
Oil prices strengthened on Monday as storms threatening the Gulf of Mexico shut more than half of the region’s oil production and on expectations of progress in the development of a COVID-19 treatment.
Brent crude LCOc1 was up 53 cents, or 1.2%, at $44.88 a barrel by 11:22 a.m. EDT (1522 GMT). US West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 rose 28 cents, or 0.7%, to $42.62.
“Prices are taking their cues from Mother Nature this morning as two storms bear down on the Gulf of Mexico. Half of the region’s production has been shut down, though gains will be limited by the threat of a second prolonged COVID wave,” said Stephen Brennock of oil broker PVM.
Energy companies shut more than 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of offshore crude oil production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico because of the twin threat from Hurricane Marco and Tropical Storm Laura. Workers have been evacuated from more than 100 production platforms.
2020-08-24 20:45:47
The Syrian Constitutional Committee, which opened its first session in nine months in Geneva, is “currently on hold” after three members tested positive for COVID-19, a UN statement said.
The office of UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen did not identify which three of the 45 members of the so-called small body of the Constitutional Committee were infected. One third is nominated by the Syrian government, one third by the opposition, and one third is from civil society.
“Following a constructive first meeting, the Third Session of the Constitutional Committee is currently on hold. The Office of the Special Envoy will make a further announcement in due course,” it said, adding that Swiss authorities had been informed and contact-tracing was under way.
2020-08-24 20:26:15
South Korea’s capital ordered masks to be worn in both indoor and outdoor public places for the first time, as it battles a surge in coronavirus cases centred in the densely populated metropolitan area.
In May, the city government ordered that masks be worn on public transport and in taxis, but a recent spike in cases has health officials worried that the country may need to impose its highest level of social distancing, known as phase 3.
“If we can’t stop it at this stage, we have no choice but to upgrade to the third phase of social distancing,” President Moon Jae-in told his top aides.
“The raise to phase 3 is by no means an easy option.”
Under phase 3, schools and business will be urged to close inflicting more damage on Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 266 new cases as of midnight on Sunday, down from 397 a day earlier but another in more than a week of triple-digit daily increases.
2020-08-24 20:11:08
The World Health Organization was cautious about endorsing the use of recovered COVID-19 patients’ plasma to treat those who are ill, saying evidence it works remains “low quality” even as the United States issued emergency authorization for such therapies.
So-called convalescent plasma, which has long been used to treat diseases, has emerged as the latest political flashpoint in the race to find therapies for COVID-19.
The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on Sunday authorized its use after President Donald Trump blamed the agency for impeding the roll-out of vaccines and therapeutics for political reasons.
The technique involves taking antibody-rich plasma from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 and giving it to those who are suffering from severe active infections in hopes they will recover more quickly.
Soumya Swaminathan, WHO chief scientist, said only a few clinical trials of convalescent plasma have produced results, and the evidence, at least so far, has not been convincing enough to endorse it beyond use as an experimental therapy. While a few trials have showed some benefit, she said, they have been small and their data, so far, inconclusive.
“At the moment, it’s still very low-quality evidence,” Swaminathan told a news conference. “So we recommend that convalescent plasma is still an experimental therapy, it should continue to be evaluated in well-designed randomised clinical trials.”
2020-08-24 19:50:11
A Hong Kong man who recovered from COVID-19 was infected again four-and-a-half months later in the first documented instance of human re-infection, researchers at the University of Hong Kong said.
The findings indicate the disease, which has killed more than 800,000 people worldwide, may continue to spread amongst the global population despite herd immunity, they said.
The 33-year-old male was cleared of COVID-19 and discharged from a hospital in April, but tested positive again after returning from Spain via Britain on Aug. 15.
The patient had appeared to be previously healthy, researchers said in the paper, which was accepted by the international medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
He was found to have contracted a different coronavirus strain from the one he had previously contracted and remained asymptomatic for the second infection.
“The finding does not mean taking vaccines will be useless,” Dr. Kai-Wang To, one of the leading authors of the paper, told Reuters.
2020-08-24 19:30:52
2020-08-24 19:14:09
Zoom Video Communications Inc is investigating reports about users facing issues while running and accessing web meetings, the company said.
Zoom has transformed from a business-oriented teleconferencing tool to a global video hangout during coronavirus-induced lockdowns.
2020-08-24 18:49:02
Poland on Monday insisted it would reopen schools next week for the first time since mid-March despite reaching a record high number of daily registered coronavirus infections late last week.
Poland was at first successful in containing the outbreak, but cases have started rising in recent weeks and on Friday authorities reported 903 new infections, the highest daily increase to date.
The rise in infections has caused concern among some parents contemplating sending their children back to class.
"Every child, teenager, goes out on the street or to the store and can get infected there. I don't see the need to postpone the beginning of the (school) year," Education Minister Dariusz Piontkowski told a news conference, reiterating the government's position.
Children will not be required to wear face masks in classrooms, but individual principals may decide to impose this obligation in school halls and locker rooms. No temperature checks are to be introduced.
The ruling nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) imposed strict restrictions in March to curb the spread of the virus and started easing them in May, which critics said was to encourage Poles to vote in the presidential election.
2020-08-24 18:47:37
An Italian hospital said on Monday it had innoculated a first volunteer with an anti-COVID-19 vaccine as part of human trials expected to last six months.
The woman, in her 50s, received the first dose developed by Rome-based biotech company ReiThera at the capital's Spallanzani Institute for infectious diseases.
The trials, developed between ReiThera and Spallanzani researchers, will be carried out on 90 volunteers divided into groups by age to test the efficacy of different dosages of the vaccine, developed since March.
If the first results of Phase 1 of the human trials prove positive, researchers say they will be able to proceed to phases 2 and 3 by the end of the year, on a larger number of volunteers even outside of Italy.
The vaccine has already passed pre-clinical tests on animal models.
"It will take at least 24 weeks to complete phase I human trials of the vaccine," said Giuseppe Ippolito, the institute's scientific director.
2020-08-24 18:13:00
Bahrain's government has raised its debt ceiling to 15 billion dinars ($39.79 billion) from 13 billion dinars to help finance public spending, the cabinet said on Monday, as low oil prices and the coronavirus crisis have dented state revenues.
The debt ceiling was also increased to pay for other expenditure and to cover debt installments for the financial years 2020 through 2022, the cabinet said in a statement. Bahrain last raised its debt ceiling to 13 billion dinars in 2017.
2020-08-24 17:16:13
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that the province reported 172 new infections taking the overall cases to128,456.
Six more deaths were reported taking the death toll to2,373.
2020-08-24 17:41:23
Balochistan has announced to resume operations fully in all government and attached departments as coronavirus cases continue to decrease in the province, a notification said.
2020-08-24 17:50:11
Supermarket giant Tesco said Monday it will create 16,000 permanent UK jobs to meet soaring online demand for groceries triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
"The supermarket expects the majority of these roles to be filled by colleagues who joined on a temporary basis at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but who now want to stay with the business permanently," Britain´s biggest retailer said in a statement.
2020-08-24 17:01:15
The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on Sunday said it authorised the use of blood plasma from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 as a treatment for the disease, a day after President Donald Trump blamed the agency for impeding the rollout of coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics for political reasons.
The announcement from the FDA of a so-called “emergency use authorisation” also comes on the eve of the Republican National Convention, where Trump will be nominated to lead his party for four more years.
A day before the FDA's announcement, Trump tagged the agency's Commissioner Stephen Hahn in a tweet and said, "The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics." "Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!"
The FDA, which appeared to rush with an announcement on Sunday, said early evidence suggests blood plasma can decrease mortality and improve the health of patients when administered in the first three days of their hospitalization. It was not immediately clear what the immediate impact of this decision would be.
2020-08-24 16:39:00
The World Health Organization on Monday urged countries to join its plan to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines so they can work together in a coordinated manner.
Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the WHO director-general, told a news briefing that "the critical thing is to ensure that some vaccine gets to all countries as early as possible".
2020-08-24 16:27:46
US stock index futures rose as the country’s top drug regulator’s approval for emergency use of antibody-rich blood plasma on COVID-19 patients lifted treatment hopes and spurred bets of a quicker economic recovery.
The US Food and Drug Administration’s move to use plasma from recovered patients was hailed by President Donald Trump and came a day after he accused it of impeding the rollout of treatments for political reasons.
Further aiding market sentiment, was a report that the Trump administration is considering fast-tracking an experimental COVID-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University for use in the United States before election.
The news comes on the eve of the Republican National Convention, where Trump will be nominated to lead his party for four more years, kicking off the final sprint to November 3 Election Day.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed at record levels on Friday, wrapping up four weeks of gains on bets that technology focused companies will emerge stronger from the pandemic and the economy will return to growth on continued monetary and fiscal support.
2020-08-24 16:11:58
Some 172 countries are engaging with the WHO-led COVAX plan designed to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, the World Health Organization said, but more funding is urgently needed and countries should now make binding commitments.
“Initially, when there will be limited supply (of COVID-19 vaccines), it’s important to provide the vaccine to those at highest risk around the globe,” the WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing.
2020-08-24 15:25:37
Indonesia reported 1,877 new coronavirus infections on Monday, taking the total number of cases in the Southeast Asian country to 155,412, data from its COVID-19 task force showed.
The data showed an additional 79 deaths, taking total fatalities to 6,759.
2020-08-24 14:50:38
Russia reported 4,744 new coronavirus cases on Monday, pushing its confirmed infection tally to 961,493, the fourth largest in the world.
Authorities said 65 people had died over the past 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 16,448
2020-08-24 14:15:20
Tokyo reported 95 new coronavirus cases on Monday, marking the lowest single-day tally since July 8, data from the Metropolitan Government showed.
The cases were confirmed from around 2,900 tests, with those under 40-years-old accounting for 60% of new cases. Total serious cases in the Japanese capital declined by one from the previous day, to 38.
Cases have declined from peaks of above 400 seen in early August.
2020-08-24 12:50:17
Seoul ordered the wearing of masks in both indoor and outdoor public places for the first time on Monday as it battles a surge in coronavirus cases centred in the densely populated metropolitan area.
In May, the city government ordered that masks be worn on public transport and in taxis, but a recent spike in cases has health officials worried that the country may need to impose its highest level of social distancing.
"If we fail to flatten the curve this week we believe we will be faced with a very important crisis, that the virus will spread to the entire nation," health ministry official Yoon Tae-ho told a briefing.
The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 266 new cases as of midnight on Sunday, down from 397 a day earlier but another in more than a week of triple-digit daily increases.
Overall, South Korea has reported 17,665 coronavirus cases and 309 deaths.
2020-08-24 11:40:11
The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has said it authorised the use of blood plasma from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 as a treatment for the disease, a day after President Donald Trump blamed the agency for impeding the rollout of coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics for political reasons.
The drug regulator said early evidence suggests blood plasma can decrease mortality and improve the health of patients when administered in the first three days of their hospitalisation.
The agency added it had determined this was a safe approach in an analysis of 20,000 patients who received this treatment. So far, 70,000 patients have been treated using blood plasma, the FDA said.
2020-08-24 11:10:01
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 293,261 after the country reported 496 new cases in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 128,284 cases in Sindh, 96,178 in Punjab, 12,507 in Balochistan, 35,766 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 15,493 in Islamabad, 2,657 in Gilgit Baltistan and 2,245 cases in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also recorded nine fatalities in the past 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 6,244.
The national dashboard also reported that 94.4% of patients have recovered in the country with the recoveries reaching 276,829.
There are now 10,188 active coronavirus cases in the country.
2020-08-24 10:50:29
India reported 61,408 coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, taking its total caseload past 3.1 million, data from the federal health ministry showed.
India crossed the 3 million cases milestone on Sunday, 17 days after it crossed the 2 million mark. It is the worst-affected country in Asia, and third behind Brazil and the United States globally.
The number of deaths in the last 24 hours was 836, taking the total to 57,542.
2020-08-24 09:50:41
New Zealand will extend the current coronavirus restrictions in its largest city of Auckland until Sunday night, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday.
An abrupt resurgence of COVID-19 about two weeks ago in Auckland prompted Ardern to put the city’s 1.7 million residents in a lockdown, forcing businesses to close and schools to shut. The lockdown was due to expire on Wednesday.
Ardern said everyone using public transport under level two restrictions or above will be required to wear masks or any face covering to contain the spread of the virus.
2020-08-23 23:15:42
Infectious diseases expert at the University of Maryland in the United States, Dr Faheem Younus has shared some insight on things we must know about recovering from COVID-19.
2020-08-23 23:00:31
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 46 new cases in the province, bringing the total number of infections to 35,766.
No deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, keeping the total at 1,248.
2020-08-23 22:24:34
World Health Organisation Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has thanked Canada for its support in the COVAX initiative, a mechanism designed to guarantee rapid, fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines worldwide.
"Health is the key mover of humanity and that's why we need to combat COVID-19 together," he wrote, following a meeting with the Canadian foreign minister.
2020-08-23 22:05:00
Sicily's right-leaning leader Nello Musumeci clashed with Italy's central government on Sunday when he ordered the island's migrant centres closed in a bid to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Interior ministry officials in Rome dismissed the order as invalid but anti-migrant former interior minister Matteo Salvini praised the move ahead of a flurry of local Italian elections next month.
Migration has for years been a hot-button political issue in Italy, a main EU landing point for migrants crossing the Mediterranean who often arrive first in Sicily and sister island Lampedusa.
"Between now and midnight, all migrants in Sicily´s 'hot spots' and reception centres will have to be transferred to facilities outside the island," according to a decree published Sunday.
The document also bans any migrant from "entering, transiting and stopping over on the Sicilian region´s territory (which includes Lampedusa) with vessels big and small, including those belonging to charities," it said.
Musumeci justified his decision saying: "It is not possible to guarantee a visit to the island while respecting measures to prevent infections spreading."
Mayors on the island have voiced fears the presence of migrants will discourage tourism.
2020-08-23 21:43:00
TOKYO: Next year's Paralympics need to be able to guarantee zero coronavirus cases, the head of the Games told AFP, adding that they cannot go ahead if protection measures don´t improve.
The warning from International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons comes as Tokyo marks exactly one year to the postponed Games on Monday, with the pandemic still raging worldwide.
Parsons said some para-athletes were particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus, and that at current risk levels the Paralympics could not take place.
"If the situation was like it is today... if we were going to start tomorrow, we could not go ahead," Parsons said in an interview. "We need to learn more, prepare better."
After a recent surge in coronavirus cases, Tokyo is skipping the sort of public events held in 2019 to mark one year before the Games´ original start date.
The unprecedented decision to delay the Olympics and Paralympics over the pandemic has created a logistical nightmare for organisers, and concerns remain over whether they can safely take place at all.
2020-08-23 21:20:00
South Korea reported its highest daily number of coronavirus cases since early March on Sunday as authorities warned the country was "on the brink of a nationwide pandemic" and tightened social distancing rules.
The majority of the 397 new infections were in the greater Seoul region -- home to half the country's 51 million people, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Authorities warned of tougher social distancing rules, which may include closing schools and businesses if the number of new cases continues to grow at a fast pace after South Korea had largely brought its earlier outbreak under control.
2020-08-23 20:50:00
Transparent facemasks and shields are costly compared with classic counterparts but could prove a boon for the deaf and hard of hearing battling to communicate in the coronavirus era.
The concept has started to take off, aided not least by Youtube tutorials or the likes of American football coach Nic Saban, who makes a point of wearing his pitchside.
Other proponents include French secretary of state for people with disabilities Sophie Cluzel, who donned a mask with a see-through section to speak in parliament, and a sign-language interpreter at a Portsmouth hospital in southern England.
2020-08-23 20:30:00
South Korea ramped up coronavirus restrictions on Sunday to try to contain a growing outbreak, as many countries around the world battled worrying surges in infections.
The pandemic has killed more than 800,000 people globally and continues to unleash destruction with areas such as Western Europe detecting spikes in infections not seen for many months.
Infections have soared past 23 million globally, and some countries are still facing their first waves — such as India, which crossed three million cases on Sunday.
South Korea, which had largely brought its outbreak under control, tightened curbs to try to contain a new, growing cluster of cases.
2020-08-23 20:02:00
KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Sunday said that coronavirus has claimed nine more lives and has infected 319 others across the province.
The CM in a statement said that nine more patients lost their lives while battling against the contagious disease, lifting the death toll to 2,367 — that constituted 1.8% of the death rate.
He said that about 319 new cases of coronavirus have emerged in the province when 9,027 samples were tested that constituted about four percent of the current detection rate.
2020-08-23 19:30:00
The global death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 800,000 on Saturday, according to a Reuters tally, with the United States, Brazil, and India leading the rise in fatalities.
Nearly 5,900 people are dying every 24 hours from COVID-19 on average, according to Reuters calculations based on data from the past two weeks that ended on Friday.
That equates to 246 people per hour, or one person every 15 seconds.
The rate of deaths is holding steady with it taking 17 days to go from 700,000 to 800,000 deaths — the same time it took to go from 600,000 to 700,000.
2020-08-23 18:57:19
KYIV: Former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has tested positive for the novel coronavirus and is in serious condition with a fever, her party’s spokeswoman said on Sunday.
Tymoshenko, 59, who twice served as premier before her defeat in the 2010 presidential election, became the first high-profile Ukrainian politician known to have contracted COVID-19. Parliament has been on summer vacation since mid-July.
“Her condition is assessed as serious, her temperature is up to 39 (Celsius),” the spokeswoman for her Fatherland party said, declining to say whether Tymoshenko had been hospitalised or give further detail.
Ukraine has experienced a sharp rise in infections this week, with a new 24-hour total of 2,328 cases reported on Saturday. The overall number of infections reached 104,958 along with 2,271 deaths.
2020-08-23 18:47:00
Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid shared some areas of Rawalpindi, Gujranwala and Lahore are still under "smart lockdown" as a precautionary measures.
The minister shared the news along with the results of the PCR tests conducted in different areas of Punjab. She also urged people to be "careful and continue following the SOPs".
2020-08-23 18:40:28
ROME: Bologna coach Sinisa Mihajlovic, who has undergoing treatment for leukaemia since last year, tested positive for COVID-19 and is in isolation, the Serie A club announced on Sunday.
The Serbian coach is "absolutely asymptomatic", the club said on its website.
"When he returned to Bologna on Friday, he underwent a control test for COVID-19 with positive results."
Bologna are due to start pre-season training on Monday, but Italian football protocols mean the 51-year-old coach, whose contract has just been extended for another year until 2023, will have to remain in isolation for two weeks.
All the squad and staff must also be tested on Monday.
As players and staff return from their brief holidays, tests have already revealed cases at several clubs, all asymptomatic.
These include four players (Filip Bradaric, Luca Ceppitelli, Alberto Cerri, Kiril Despodov) at Cagliari in Sardinia, a coronavirus hot spot.
Roma´s substitute goalkeeper Antonio Mirante has also said he is positive. Sassuolo announced striker Jeremiah Boga was positive while Napoli said the same of striker Andrea Petagna. Torino reported two cases, without revealing names and Benevento also had an unnamed player test positive.
The Serie A season is due to start on September 19.
2020-08-23 18:28:52
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government has paired up with the World Bank to educate tourists regarding the coronavirus, reported Geo News.
The tourism department of the provincial government will teach tourists how to follow SOPs while travelling and staying in a place. It said the programme will be launched in Swat, Dir and Chitral in the first phase.
2020-08-23 18:15:28
BERLIN/FRANKFURT: Germany should temporarily ban private parties, several lawmakers suggested on Sunday, after the number of coronavirus infections in Europe’s largest economy reached a four-month high.
The number of confirmed cases in Germany rose by 2,034 to 232,082, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday, the highest level since late April. The reported death toll rose by seven to 9,267.
“We must not risk that day care centres and schools will close again and that children are forced to remain at home for weeks because we have accepted higher infection rates due to lax rules at family parties,” Saskia Esken, co-leader of the Social Democrats, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) newspaper.
Ralph Brinkhaus, leader of the CDU/CSU conservative parliamentary bloc, said: “Unfortunately since the start of summer a certain recklessness has spread.”
The remarks come ahead of a planned meeting of Chancellor Angela Merkel with the premiers of Germany’s federal states on Thursday to discuss a unified approach to the next steps.
2020-08-23 18:06:13
BRUSSELS: Phil Hogan will not resign as European Commission for Trade over his attendance at an event in his native Ireland that is being investigated for breaching COVID-19 regulations, an EU official close to the commissioner said on Sunday.
“The commissioner is not resigning,” the official said.
The Irish representative on the European Union’s executive was asked on Saturday by Ireland’s prime minister and deputy prime minister to consider his position over the golf dinner, which caused public outrage and led to other political resignations.
Earlier on Sunday, Hogan apologised again, but stopped short of bowing to calls to quit.
2020-08-23 17:56:49
NEW DELHI: India's confirmed coronavirus cases crossed the three million mark Sunday with nearly 70,000 new infections, as the disease continues to surge in the world's second most-populous nation.
The health ministry said 69,239 cases were detected on Sunday, with 912 deaths taking the total number of fatalities to 56,706.
Many experts say, however, that the real scale of the infection is much higher.
Authorities in New Delhi said last week that an antibody study in the megacity suggested more than a quarter of the capital's population had contracted the infection.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government imposed one of the world's strictest lockdowns in late March that has been mostly eased in recent weeks.
But the epidemic has left Asia's third-largest economy reeling, and tens of millions of people have lost their jobs and livelihoods.
Individual states and cities have imposed localised lockdowns — including Haryana and Punjab, where cases have spiked in recent weeks.
Previously the main hotspots have been the teeming megacities of New Delhi and Mumbai, home to some of the world's biggest slums.
"At the moment we are seeing a fairly sharp rise in cases overall for India," said K Srinath Reddy, of the non-governmental Public Health Foundation of India.
2020-08-23 17:39:19
The Punjab Health Department shared on Sunday that it had carried out random sampling in different areas after Eid Ul Adha and found only 95 people positive out of 60,000 for COVID-19.
The health department said the positivity rate in the province stood at 0.16% during the exercise.
Despite the low numbers the health department urged people to follow the precautionary measures against the virus to stop the spread of the virus.
2020-08-23 17:12:21
Rohingya in Myanmar's conflict-wracked Rakhine state expressed fears Sunday of a coronavirus outbreak reaching their overcrowded camps, after a spate of infections sent the state capital into lockdown.
Nearly 130,000 Rohingya Muslims live in what Amnesty International describes as "apartheid" conditions in camps around Sittwe.
The city has recorded 48 cases in the past week, making up more than 10 percent of the about 400 cases so far registered in Myanmar.
"We are extremely worried about the virus because we are living in limbo and it won´t be easy to control," said Rohingya Kyaw Kyaw.
Authorities visited the Thae Chaung camp this week to talk about social distancing — an impossibility as 10 families typically squeeze into a single house — and gave out hand sanitiser and face masks.
"But if the lockdown is for a long time, we will... need help," Kyaw Kyaw told AFP, adding that everyone in the camps had locked themselves indoors.
Sittwe's streets were empty Sunday, with masked residents encountering barricaded roads as they tried to run errands.
Street vendors hawked plastic face shields and surgical masks.
An overnight curfew order has been in place since Friday, while all public transport — including domestic flights — into the capital was suspended.
Rakhine state has long been a flashpoint for ethnic and religious conflict.
The embattled Rohingya Muslim minority are widely regarded as foreign "Bengalis" despite having lived in Myanmar for generations. They lack citizenship rights and their freedom of movement is restricted across the country.
A local Rakhine parliamentarian this week blamed the Rohingya for the virus spread in a Facebook post that was later taken down.
Some 750,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh following a military crackdown in 2017 — operations that Myanmar is currently facing genocide charges for at the UN's top court.
Further north in the state, the military is also battling the Arakan Army, a rebel group seeking more autonomy for the state's ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and violent clashes have displaced thousands of civilians from their homes.
In Mrauk-U — where three cases were found this week — Rakhine residents feared a halt to food donations to the displacement camps, said camp leader Hla Maung Oo.
"We have nowhere to run if the virus becomes widespread because we also can´t go back to our villages," he told AFP.
2020-08-23 16:41:16
BEIJING: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said the country’s economy could grow this year, state radio reported on Sunday, despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The world’s second-biggest economy grew 3.2% year on year in the second quarter, recovering from a record contraction as coronavirus lockdown measures ended and policymakers stepped up stimulus to combat the shock from the crisis.
Li also said the government expects more than 9 million new urban jobs to be created this year.
2020-08-23 16:32:25
MOSCOW: Russia expects to produce between 1.5 million and 2 million doses per month of its potential COVID-19 vaccine by the year end, gradually ramping up production to 6 million doses a month, the RIA news agency cited industry minister Denis Manturov as saying on Sunday.
Large-scale testing of the vaccine, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya institute, is due to start in Russia next week.
2020-08-23 15:02:00
SYDNEY: Australia recorded a further 17 new coronavirus deaths on Sunday but infections in the hard-hit state of Victoria, the site of all the latest deaths, are showing a downward trend, authorities said on Sunday.
Other than in Victoria, which accounts for over 80% of Australia’s COVID-19 deaths due to a second wave of infections, the country has largely avoided the high casualty numbers of many nations with about 24,500 infections and 502 deaths.
Globally, nearly 5,900 people are dying every 24 hours from COVID-19 on average, according to a Reuters tally, with the United States, Brazil and India leading the rise in fatalities.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the state, which is almost halfway through a six-week lockdown, had confirmed 208 new infections in the preceding 24 hours. That was higher than the 182 new cases reported on Saturday, but was still lower than the weekly average, he said.
“We’re going to defeat this second wave,” Andrews told reporters. “And then we’ll be able to begin the process of opening up. Exactly when that is, we can’t give people a definitive date. But ... my aim is to round out the year with something — a COVID normal.”
Andrews said 11 of the 17 deaths confirmed in the 24 hours to Sunday were linked to virus outbreaks at aged care facilities.
In neighbouring New Zealand, health authorities reported three new positive cases on Sunday.
2020-08-23 14:52:50
SEOUL: South Korean authorities reported the highest daily rise in novel coronavirus cases since early March on Sunday, saying tougher social distancing rules may be needed as outbreaks continued to spread from a Seoul church and other gatherings.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 397 new infections as of midnight Saturday, up from the previous day’s 332 and marking more than a week of daily three-digit rises.
That brings South Korea’s total infections of the new coronavirus to 17,399 with 309 COVID-19 deaths, it said.
From Sunday, the government extended second-tier social-distancing rules which had been in place in Seoul to other areas of the country, banning in-person church meetings and closing nightclubs, buffets and cyber cafes.
Health authorities say they may eventually deploy the toughest stage 3 social-distancing rules, where schools and business are urged to close, if the rate of increase in new infections does not slow soon.
“We’re on the brink of a nationwide pandemic as the number of new cases are increasing in all 17 regions across the country,” said Jung Eun-Kyeong, Director General at the KCDC at a briefing on Sunday.
“Please stay home as much as possible, unless you absolutely need to (be out) for necessities, or for work and visits to doctors.”
Families posted notes on social media saying they had cancelled vacation plans to nearby hotels and the southern resort island of Jeju to comply with government guidelines.
On Friday, health authorities said South Korea’s coronavirus infections were back “in full swing” as hundreds of infections have started to come out from the Sarang Jeil Presbyterian Church run by a far-right preacher.
Jung said a total of 841 confirmed cases were related to the church so far.
Members of the church attending an anti-government protest in Seoul on Aug. 15 have also led to new cases across the country, while another recent cluster has been linked to a Starbucks store.
2020-08-23 14:42:51
ROME: The Italian government is not considering new lockdown to curb coronavirus infections, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said in a newspaper interview on Sunday, despite a steady rise in new cases over the past month.
Italy, one of Europe’s worst-hit countries with more than 35,000 deaths, on Saturday reported 1,071 new coronavirus infections, exceeding 1,000 cases in a day for the first time since the government eased its rigid lockdown measures in May.
“We will not have a new lockdown,” Speranza told daily newspaper La Stampa, saying the current situation cannot be compared to February and March, when the disease was spreading out of control and it was difficult to track and isolate infected people.
“I am optimistic, although prudent. Our national health service has become much stronger.”
Speranza added that Italy has doubled the number of beds in intensive care units.
The number of new infections remains considerably lower than those registered in Spain and France and daily death tolls are low.
2020-08-23 14:18:01
Prime Minister Office on Sunday issued a video and urged people to follow the precautionary measures to stop a second wave of the coronavirus.
"Cooperate with us in stopping the pandemic from spreading again. Follow the precautionary measures," tweeted the PM Office along with the video.
2020-08-23 14:07:23
The chief medical officers of the United Kingdom have said children should return to school after the summer holidays, warning that missing out on their education posed much bigger risks to them than catching COVID-19.
The rare joint statement from the top health advisers to the governments of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland represents a boost for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who has said getting children back to school is a national priority.
Confidence in the government’s approach to schooling during the coronavirus pandemic took a hit last week when education minister Gavin Williamson was forced into an embarrassing U-turn over examination results.
“Very few, if any, children or teenagers will come to long term harm from COVID-19 due solely to attending school,” they said. “This has to be set against a certainty of long-term harm to many children and young people from not attending school,” the CMOs said in a joint statement published late on Saturday.
Evidence showed that a lack of schooling increased inequalities, reduced opportunities and could exacerbate physical and mental health issues, the statement said.
By contrast there was clear evidence of a very low rate of severe disease in children, even if they caught COVID-19, and an exceptionally low risk of dying.
2020-08-23 13:05:44
Mexico's health ministry on Saturday reported 6,482 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infection and 644 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 556,216 cases and 60,254 deaths.
The government has said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
2020-08-23 12:35:08
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told allies that “failure to reopen schools is not an option”, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.
Earlier this month, Johnson said reopening schools in September was a social, economic and moral imperative, insisting schools would be able to operate safely despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-08-23 11:35:17
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 292,765 on Sunday after the country reported 591 new cases.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,245 cases in AJK, 12,507 cases in Balochistan, 2,657 cases in GB, 15,493 cases in Islamabad, 35,720 cases in KP, 96, 178 cases in Punjab and 127,965 cases in Sindh.
The country also reported four fatalities from the virus taking the death toll to 6,235.
2020-08-23 11:15:33
Brazil reported 50,032 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 892 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Saturday.
Brazil has registered 3,582,362 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 114,250, according to ministry data from the world's worst coronavirus outbreak outside the United States.
2020-08-23 10:40:10
The global death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 800,000 on Saturday, according to a Reuters tally, with the United States, Brazil and India leading the rise in fatalities.
Nearly 5,900 people are dying every 24 hours from COVID-19 on average, according to Reuters calculations based on data from the past two weeks that ended on Friday.
That equates to 246 people per hour, or one person every 15 seconds.
The rate of deaths is holding steady with it taking 17 days to go from 700,000 to 800,000 deaths — the same time it took to go from 600,000 to 700,000.
Read more here.
2020-08-22 23:59:30
Indonesia reported 2,090 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total tally to 151,498, data from the country’s health ministry website showed.
The number of new deaths reported on Saturday was 94 deaths, taking the total to 6,594, the highest coronavirus death toll in Southeast Asia.
2020-08-22 23:50:02
South Korea said it held talks with China’s top diplomat over trade, denuclearisation and the coronavirus response, in the first visit by a high-level Beijing official since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted late last year.
Yang Jiechi, a member of the Communist Party Politburo, met with South Korea’s new national security adviser, Suh Hoon, in the southern port city of Busan, the South Korean government said.
The two sides discussed topics such as accelerating free-trade agreement negotiations, expanding cultural exchanges as well as the election of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General, South Korea’s presidential Blue House spokesman Kang Min-seok said in a statement.
Kang added that Yang addressed China’s position regarding the current U.S.-China relations and Suh in return emphasized the importance of cooperative U.S.-China relations for peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia.
2020-08-22 23:30:45
The World Health Organization (WHO) said children aged 12 and over should wear masks to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic under the same conditions as adults, while children between six and 11 should wear them on a risk-based approach.
Children aged 12 and over should particularly wear a mask when a one-metre distance from others cannot be guaranteed and there is widespread transmission in the area, the WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a document on the WHO website dated Aug. 21.
Whether children between six and 11 should wear masks depends on a number of factors, including the intensity of transmission in the area, the child’s ability to use the mask, access to masks and adequate adult supervision, the two organisations said.
The potential impact on learning and psycho-social development, and the interactions the child has with people at high risk of developing serious illness, should also play a role.
Children aged five years and under should not be required to wear masks based on the safety and overall interest of the child, the WHO and UNICEF said.
2020-08-22 23:15:07
India reported a record daily jump of coronavirus infections, bringing the total near 3 million and piling pressure on authorities to curb huge gatherings as a major religious festival began.
The 69,878 new infections - the fourth straight day above 60,000 - take India’s total cases to 2.98 million, behind only the United States and Brazil. COVID-19 deaths increased by 945 to 55,794, data from the federal health ministry showed.
2020-08-22 22:59:53
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of deaths due to the new coronavirus had risen by 1,155 to 174,645 and reported 5,598,547 cases, an increase of 46,754 cases from its previous count.
2020-08-22 22:40:16
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Sayed Zulfiqar Bukhari has directed his ministry to arrange special flights for Pakistani students willing to return to China.
The move comes after air travel and other restrictions were imposed across the world, including China and Pakistan, to curb coronavirus.
"Pakistani students who‘ve been waiting to go back to China to continue their education, please register yourselves on the given link," said the premier's aide.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-22 22:22:49
US President Donald Trump accused members of the “deep state” at the Food and Drug Administration, without providing evidence, of working to slow testing of COVID-19 vaccines until after the November presidential election.
In a Twitter post, Trump said the deep state “or whoever” at the FDA was making it very difficult for drug companies to enroll people in clinical trials to test vaccines and therapies for the novel coronavirus.
The comment came after Reuters exclusively reported on Thursday that a top FDA official said he would resign if the Trump administration approved a vaccine before it was shown to be safe and effective.
“Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!” Trump wrote, tagging FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn in the tweet.
2020-08-22 22:06:07
The French government said it would unveil details of its 100 billion euro ($118 billion) plan to reinvigorate the economy in the first week of September, instead of next Tuesday, as it focuses on preparing the new school term.
“The recovery plan is ready, the timetable for its implementation still stands,” government spokesman Gabriel Attal said in a statement.
Schools are set to reopen on Sept. 1, after most were closed during a two-month lockdown earlier this year to fight the coronavirus, and the government is working to ensure protective measures will be adequate, Attal said.
France has already outlined some of the parameters of its crisis measures, including cuts to domestic business taxes, investment in promoting jobs for the young and funding for environmental initiatives.
2020-08-22 21:00:55
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah says 274 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 127,965.
The chief minster said that another person had died, taking the death toll to 2,358.
2020-08-22 21:25:40
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department says 118 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 35,720.
The department reported two more deaths, taking the death toll to 1,248.
2020-08-22 21:47:25
Around 1,500 volunteers equipped with face masks, hand disinfectant and tracking gadgets attended an indoor concert in Germany on Saturday as part of a study to simulate how the novel coronavirus spreads in large gatherings.
As part of the so-called Restart19 study, researchers from the University Medical Center in Halle want to find out how cultural and sporting events can safely take place without posing a risk to the population.
Volunteers were handed protective facemasks of the type typically used in hospitals and bottles of flurorescent hand sanitizer at the concert of German singer-songwriter Tim Bendzko in an indoor arena in Leipzig.
“I am extremely satisfied with the discipline displayed by the participants,” Stefan Moritz, the head of the study, told a news conference after the concert. “I was surprised how disciplined everyone was in wearing masks.”
He said results of the study, which is being financed by the states of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, were expected in 4-6 weeks.
The participants were also given contact tracers to help track the distance between concertgoers and to identify in which parts of the arena, such as entrance halls and grandstands, people might crowd too closely together.
2020-08-22 20:48:06
China has been giving experimental coronavirus vaccines to groups facing high infection risks since July, a health official told state media.
No vaccine has yet passed final, large-scale trials to prove it is safe and effective enough to protect people from contracting the virus that has led to almost 800,000 deaths worldwide.
The aim is to boost the immunity of specific groups of people, including medical workers and those who work at food markets and in the transportation and service sectors, Zheng Zhongwei, a National Health Commission official, told state TV in an interview aired late on Saturday.
Authorities could consider modestly expanding the emergency use programme to try to prevent possible outbreaks during the autumn and winter, added Zheng, who heads the Chinese government-led team that coordinates state resources for coronavirus vaccine development.
The guidelines for emergency use of potential coronavirus vaccines, approved on June 24 according to Zheng, have not been made public.
2020-08-22 20:34:24
The United Kingdom recorded 1,288 new positive cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, up from 1,033 a day earlier, government figures showed.
Eighteen people died after testing positive for the coronavirus within 28 days, up from two a day earlier.
The new cases were recorded as the government ramps up testing so it can suppress the spread of the virus and ease restrictions that have crippled the economy.
2020-08-22 20:09:04
The Rome region has recorded 215 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours mainly because of people returning from holiday, the largest such rise since the Italian capital was in lockdown in March, health officials say.
The figure is a record number and is more than the 208 people infected in a one-day period on March 28, when Rome had come to a virtual standstill to stop the coronavirus spreading, the capital's health official Alessio D´Amato said.
"Sixty-one percent (of the cases) are linked to people returning from vacation," D'Amato said, almost half the cases were returning from Sardinia.
Sardinia had been spared the first wave earlier this year but D'Amato said the movement of tourists and people partying have helped spread the virus.
Most of those infected are young people who are not showing symptoms and it is urgent to "block the chain of transmission as fast as possible by finding the asymptomatic and averting the spread of the virus among families, he said.
"Be very careful especially with your relatives and the people dearest to you," he said in an appeal to the young.
He warned them to stay home and not meet with people while awaiting test results. "Don't feel invincible," he urged them.
Italy — particularly the northern Lombardy region, the Venice area and Rome — are seeing a resurgence in the virus over the summer, even if the daily numbers remain below the national threshold of 1,000 — unlike in neighbouring France.
The Italian government has taken several steps to block the spread, such as closing nightclubs since August 17 and making mask wearing compulsory in busy public spaces between 6pm and 6am.
Since the pandemic erupted, Italy has recorded more than 257,000 cases, including more than 35,000 dead.
2020-08-22 19:47:00
Russia reported 4,921 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, pushing its confirmed national tally up to 951,897.
Authorities said 121 people had died of COVID-19 over the last 24 hours, raising the official death toll to 16,310.
2020-08-22 19:36:58
Iraq has registered nearly 4,000 cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases recorded by the country to over 200,000.
According to the Iraqi health ministry, 201,050 Iraqis have contracted the virus, including 6,353 who have died, while 143,393 are declared to have recovered since the pandemic began.
The daily increases have hovered around 4,000 for more than a week, but authorities have declined to reimpose a strict lockdown that was lifted earlier this summer.
An overnight curfew remains in place, most restaurants are closed for dine-in customers and land crossings are officially shut.
But airports, supermarkets and take-out cafes are open, with varying degrees of social distancing or mask-wearing.
2020-08-22 17:13:00
Kei Nishikori's hopes of playing at the US Open have faded further after the Japanese former world number four revealed he had tested positive for COVID-19 for a second time.
The 30-year-old, a finallist at Flushing Meadows in 2014, withdrew from the Western & Southern Open hardcourt warm-up after his first positive test last week.
"Just a little update, I just took another COVID test and am still positive. I have very minimal symptoms and am staying in full isolation in Florida," Nishikori posted on social media late on Friday.
"The next test will be early next week at which time we will update you with more information."
Nishikori, who has been staying at the IMG Academy in Florida, has enjoyed his greatest Grand Slam success at the US Open, reaching the semi-finals in 2016 and 2018 in addition to his loss to Marin Cilic in the 2014 title-decider.
2020-08-22 19:19:41
The head of Israel’s coronavirus task force has asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to ban an annual pilgrimage in which Hasidic Jews visit the central Ukrainian town of Uman over concerns the site may become a virus hotspot.
Tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews descend on Uman every Jewish New Year to visit the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who revived the Hasidic movement and died in 1810. This year, Jewish New Year celebrations run from Sept. 18-20.
The Ukrainian and Israeli governments have already issued a joint statement pleading with pilgrims to cancel their trips, but huge crowds are still planning to fly.
Ronni Gamzu, Israel’s lead adviser on coronavirus, has now sent a letter to Zelenskiy, urging him to take action.
“A gathering of this sort, at such troubled times, is expected to generate mass events of infection of tourists and local Ukrainian residents, turning into a heavy burden on local medical systems, while thousands more are expected to come back to Israel and further spread the virus,” Gamzu said in the letter seen by Reuters on Saturday.
“I urge you to enforce a ban on these celebrations this year, as part of the entire global community’s effort to stop this horrific pandemic,” he said.
2020-08-22 16:00:58
More than half the companies in Spain which closed at the height of the coronavirus pandemic have reopened, according to government data released, suggesting the economy is recovering slowly.
The number of companies registered to pay social security by the end of July was 1,282,346, according to figures from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, or 91,240 fewer firms than in February before the government imposed a strict lockdown to try to contain COVID-19.
However, the statistics showed that since the easing of lockdown started in May, 49,159 companies have registered with the government.
This is just over half the number which closed when the pandemic was at its height in March and April.
The worst affected sectors of the economy between February and July were education, where 22.6% of companies closed, and agriculture and fishing, in which 15.2% of firms stopped trading, the government data showed.
The number of cases of COVID-19 has been rising steadily since the end of lockdown in June.
2020-08-22 18:22:52
Finding the pandemic scary? A Japanese group is trying to take people’s minds off COVID-19 - by putting them in coffins surrounded by chainsaw-wielding zombies.
Customers this weekend in Tokyo can lie in a 2-metre (6 1/2-foot) windowed box, listening to a horror story, watching actors perform and getting poked with fake hands and squirted with water.
“The pandemic is stressful, and we hope people can get a bit of relief by having a good scream,” said Kenta Iwana, coordinator of production company Kowagarasetai - “Scare Squad” - which is putting on the 15-minute shows.
As Japan experiences a COVID-19 upswing - with 1,034 infections of the new coronavirus on Friday - Iwana, 25, is scrambling to find work for his actors, who normally perform at venues such as theme parks.
Last month Kowagarasetai offered drive-in horror shows.
Customers, too, are looking for alternatives - and a way to blow off steam.
“Lots of events have been cancelled because of the coronavirus, and I was looking for a way to get rid of my stress,” said Kazushiro Hashiguchi, 36, said after lying through the 800-yen ($7.60) show.
“I feel relaxed now.”
Customers for the shows, held in a rest lounge usually used by passengers arriving in the capital on overnight bus trips, include shopping mall owners and operators of other venues who Iwana hopes will host his mobile shows.
“We needed to have something that we could take anywhere, and coffins are easy to move. All you need to do is put them in a dark room,” said Iwana. “It’s good business for us and satisfying for our customers.”
2020-08-22 18:57:35
The United States closed lanes at select ports of entry at the border with Mexico and will conduct more secondary checks to limit non-essential travel and the spread of coronavirus, a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official said.
Non-essential travel has been restricted at the border since March, but US citizens and permanent residents can still enter the United States from Mexico. The new measures are aimed at those travelers, the CBP official said.
US President Donald Trump, who faces re-election Nov. 3, has taken a series of sweeping steps to scale back immigration during the coronavirus pandemic, including emergency border rules that allow U.S authorities to rapidly deport migrants arrested at the border.
The United States leads the world with more than 174,000 confirmed deaths from the coronavirus, followed by Brazil with 112,000 and Mexico with 59,000, according to a Reuters tally.
“We need people to think twice about non-essential travel and to ask themselves if the travel is worth risking their lives and the lives of others,” El Paso CBP spokesman Roger Maier said in a written statement.
2020-08-22 18:31:12
Russia reported 4,921 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, pushing its confirmed national tally up to 951,897.
Authorities said 121 people had died of COVID-19 over the last 24 hours, raising the official death toll to 16,310.
2020-08-22 17:47:00
China has approved human testing for a potential coronavirus vaccine cultivated within insect cells, local government in the southwestern city of Chengdu said on Saturday.
China is in a global race to develop cost-effective vaccines to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.
Using insect cells to grow proteins for the coronavirus vaccine - a first in China - could speed up large-scale production, the city government of Chengdu said in a notice on social media WeChat.
The vaccine, developed by West China Hospital of Sichuan University in Chengdu, has received approval from the National Medical Products Administration to enter a clinical trial, the notice said.
When tested on monkeys, the vaccine was shown to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infections with no obvious side-effects, the notice added.
Chinese scientists are already leading work on at least eight other potential coronavirus vaccines that have entered different stages of clinical trials.
Foreign players, including Germany's BioNTech and Inovio Pharma in the United States, have also cooperated with local firms to test their experimental vaccines in China.
2020-08-22 17:32:47
The Philippines reported 4,933 infections of the new coronavirus on Saturday, the fifth straight day above 4,000, and 26 COVID-19 deaths.
In a bulletin, the health ministry said total confirmed cases have increased to 187,249 while confirmed deaths have reached 2,966. The Philippines has the most infections in Southeast Asia, and second-highest number of deaths, behind Indonesia.
2020-08-22 17:14:00
MUMBAI: Coronavirus cases in India jumped closer to the three million mark in India as the country prepares for weekend gatherings to celebrate a festival in Mumbai.
For most of western India, especially the country’s financial capital, Ganesh Chaturthi marks the beginning of an 11-day festival usually marked by big public celebrations.
Social media was flooded with pictures of shoppers crowding markets to buy flowers and sweets, but it is expected to be a quieter Ganesh festival this year.
“You can see everyone’s shops are full of idols. No one is coming out to buy anything,” Ramdas Ghodekar, who sells Ganesh idols in central Mumbai, told Reuters.
2020-08-22 16:51:00
A beauty salon in Syria is offering tailor-made face masks for people who want to look more stylish amid the coronavirus pandemic.
2020-08-22 16:37:00
The French government said Saturday that it will unveil a week later than originally planned a 100-billion-euro ($118 billion) plan to nurse its coronavirus-stricken economy back to health.
Businesses had eagerly awaited details of the new shot in the arm for the eurozone´s second-largest economy, trailed for August 25, and government spokesman Gabriel Attal said it was "ready".
But for now "the government is completely mobilised to prepare for the health deadline" of September 1, when pupils return to school and many workers will be back from summer holidays, Attal said in a statement.
2020-08-22 16:23:00
The number of deaths from the new coronavirus has surpassed 800,000 around the world, according to an AFP tally based on official sources at around 1100 GMT on Saturday.
In total, 800,004 fatalities have been recorded globally, out of 23,003,079 declared infections.
Latin America and the Caribbean is the region the most affected with 254,897 deaths. More than half of global fatalities have been reported in four countries: the United States with 175,416, Brazil with 113,358, Mexico 59,610 and India 55,794.
2020-08-22 15:49:00
The French government said on Saturday it would unveil details of its 100 billion euro ($118 billion) plan to reinvigorate the economy in the first week of September, instead of next Tuesday, as it focuses on preparing the new school term.
"The recovery plan is ready, the timetable for its implementation still stands," government spokesman Gabriel Attal said in a statement.
Schools are set to reopen on Sept. 1, after most were closed during a two-month lockdown earlier this year to fight the coronavirus, and the government is working to ensure protective measures will be adequate, Attal said.
France has already outlined some of the parameters of its crisis measures, including cuts to domestic business taxes, investment in promoting jobs for the young and funding for environmental initiatives.
2020-08-22 15:40:31
India reported a record daily jump of coronavirus infections on Saturday, bringing the total near 3 million and piling pressure on authorities to curb huge gatherings as a major religious festival began.
The 69,878 new infections— the fourth straight day above 60,000 — take India’s total cases to 2.98 million, behind only the United States and Brazil. COVID-19 deaths increased by 945 to 55,794, data from the federal health ministry showed.
2020-08-22 15:10:07
Australia’s second most populous state, Victoria, reported 13 new coronavirus deaths in the 24 hours to Saturday morning, authorities said, while new infections in the hotspot state remained below 200 for the second consecutive day.
Other than in Victoria, which accounts for over 80% of the country’s COVID-19 deaths due to a second wave of infections, Australia has large avoided the high casualty numbers of many nations with just under 24,500 infections and 472 deaths.
The state, home to about one in four Australians, had reported 179 new cases and nine deaths a day earlier, down from over 700 a day two weeks ago.
2020-08-22 14:40:46
The number of new coronavirus infections in Germany topped 2,000 in the past 24 hours, a high not seen since the end of April, health authorities said Saturday.
The RKI disease control institute said it registered 2,034 new cases and seven more deaths, taking the total fatalities to 9,267 and confirmed cases to 232,082.
Daily infection counts have increased sharply in recent days, with authorities suggesting large numbers of returning tourists— some coming from regions with elevated risk of transmission— may be bringing the virus with them.
2020-08-22 13:45:15
Inmates in Peru are making face masks during the coronavirus pandemic. The program is run by a former inmate and owner of clothing brand Lima la Gris.
2020-08-22 13:10:08
If you are organising a small gathering or an event such as a wedding, a party or sports tournament, here are some precautions you can take to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among guests.
2020-08-22 12:20:11
South Korea said tougher social distancing guidelines to curb the spread of coronavirus will be rolled out nationwide starting Sunday as it battles a new outbreak of the disease spreading from the capital, Seoul.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 315 new domestic coronavirus infections as of midnight Friday, the latest in a string of triple digit increases in new local cases which take the country's tally to 17,002 with 309 deaths.
"If we don't curb the spread (of the virus) in early stages, this will grow as a large-scale wave. To us, there is nothing more important than focusing on responding to COVID-19," Health Minister Park Neung-hoo told a briefing on Saturday.
2020-08-22 11:40:10
The coronavirus crisis in Brazil appears to be leveling off, if not easing, the WHO said, offering a chink of light for the world's second biggest COVID-19 hot spot.
The number of weekly infections detected have stabilized, transmissions are slowing, and intensive care units are under less pressure, Mike Ryan, WHO's top emergency expert, told a news conference in Geneva.
"In general, the trend in Brazil is stable or downwards ... and that needs to keep going," Ryan said.
2020-08-22 10:45:43
Pakistan on Saturday reported 586 new coronavirus cases taking the nationwide tally to 292,174.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,241 cases in AJK, 12,473 in Balochistan, 2,638 in GB, 15,472 in Islamabad, 35,602 in KP, 96,057 in Punjab and 127,691 cases in Sindh.
The country also reported 10 fatalities to take the number of deaths from the virus to 6,231.
2020-08-22 10:20:39
The World Health Organisation hopes the coronavirus crisis can be over in less than two years, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.
"Our situation now with more technology, of course with more connectiveness, the virus has a better chance of spreading, it can move fast," he said.
"At the same time we have the technology and knowledge to stop it."
More than 22.81 million people have been reported to be infected by the coronavirus globally and 793,382 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Read more here.
2020-08-21 23:59:12
Moderately ill COVID-19 patients saw their condition improve after a 5-day course of Gilead Sciences remdesivir, but the drug did not significantly shorten hospital stays and a 10-day course did not show a benefit, according to new data.
The drug, which was shown in a trial of severely ill COVID-19 patients to shorten their hospital recovery time, has been at the forefront of the battle against the pandemic.
The 600-patient analysis, published on Friday by the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that moderately ill patients treated with the antiviral drug for up to 5 days had significantly higher odds of improvement in certain areas, such as whether or not they needed supplemental oxygen, compared to patients given standard treatment.
Researchers said the clinical importance of the benefit for those patients was uncertain, however.
The new study in moderately ill COVID-19 patients showed that 11 days after starting treatment, 65% of the 10-day remdesivir patients, 70% of the 5-day patients and 60% of the standard care patients had left the hospital.
2020-08-21 23:54:04
Britain is investigating using coronavirus testing to shorten quarantine times for travellers from restricted countries but does not want to offer false hope that the rules can be changed easily, transport minister Grant Shapps said.
Heathrow said on Wednesday that a testing area was ready to open should Britain approve a rule change and allow two tests, one on arrival and one some days later, to cut the quarantine time from the current two weeks.
“It’s not quite as simple as the way it’s been presented. But we do review these things constantly... it’s just that I don’t want to sort of offer false hope,” Shapps told BBC radio after on Thursday announcing travellers arriving from Croatia, Austria and Trinidad and Tobago would have to quarantine themselves for two weeks.
2020-08-21 23:47:59
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the number of deaths due to the new coronavirus had risen by 1,074 to 173,490 and reported 5,551,793 cases, an increase of 44,864 cases from its previous count.
2020-08-21 23:46:27
The Balochistan health department reported a rise in the province's infections by 49, taking the total to 12,473.
Two more deaths were also recorded, taking the toll to 141.
2020-08-21 23:25:03
The French health ministry has reported 4,586 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours.
The ministry also said the total for coronavirus deaths in the country had risen by 23 in the past 24 hours.
2020-08-21 22:59:40
President Arif Alvi on Friday warned the nation against negligence in taking precautions, stressing that the war against COVID-19 is still on.
"While Pakistan is winning the war against coronavirus, the battle is still raging," he said.
"Do not let your guard down in exercising precautions, for your own sake, and for the sake of your relatives and friends," Alvi added.
The president's remarks were preceded by a statement from the National Command and Operation Centre chief Asad Umar who issued a similar warning.
He said that the NCOC is prepared for "every occasion which can increase cases", citing Eid, Muharram, and the reopening of schools as examples.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-21 22:45:15
The scale of the coronavirus pandemic in Mexico is “under-represented” and “under-recognised” and testing is limited, the World Health Organization’s Dr Mike Ryan said.
He told a Geneva briefing that testing in Mexico worked out at about three people per 100,000, compared with about 150 tests per 100,000 people in the United States.
2020-08-21 22:28:34
China’s Sinovac Biotech has committed to provide 50 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine candidate to Indonesia’s government from November to March, a minister and Indonesia’s state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma said.
The Southeast Asian nation is seeking to secure a supply as cases rise unabated.
“Indonesia sees a strong commitment from China’s industries to forge partnerships and a strong commitment from its government to foster those partnerships,” she said late on Thursday via video.
2020-08-21 22:15:20
Much more research is needed on the impact of mutations in the coronavirus, World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said.
“A special working group has been formed to identify mutations ... and we’re looking at how we can better understand what the mutation means and how they behave,” she told a briefing in Geneva.
2020-08-21 21:59:54
2020-08-21 21:45:37
The World Health Organization hopes the coronavirus crisis can be over in less than two years, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The Spanish flu that hit in 1918 took two years to end, he said.
“Our situation now with more technology, of course with more connectiveness, the virus has a better chance of spreading, it can move fast,” he said.
“At the same time we have the technology and knowledge to stop it.”
2020-08-21 21:30:14
Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri said that Italy’s economy has held up better than expected in the face of the coronavirus and the third quarter would show “a very strong rebound” in growth.
In the second quarter Italian gross domestic product shrank by 12.4% from the previous three months, national statistics bureau ISTAT reported last month, the steepest drop on record but less severe than forecast.
Speaking by video-link at a conference in Rimini, Gualtieri said recent Italian data had been consistently better than consensus forecasts, and he believed the conditions were in place for “positive surprises.”
He said it now looked as though Italy could end the year with GDP “not far from our original forecast,” an apparent reference to the government’s most recent official projection of an 8% GDP drop.
2020-08-21 19:43:19
2020-08-21 19:27:50
Britain’s official budget forecasters raised their estimate for the size of the country’s public debt pile at the end of the current financial year, after data showed earlier that it had passed 100% of annual economic output for the first time.
The Office for Budget Responsibility said it now expected public sector net debt to increase to 106.4% of gross domestic product, up from a forecast of 104.1% in the central scenario of projections the OBR published last month.
2020-08-21 21:16:35
A top US health regulator who will help decide the fate of a coronavirus vaccine has vowed to resign if the Trump administration approves a vaccine before it is shown to be safe and effective, Reuters has learned.
Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, made the statement in response to concerns raised on a conference call late last week of government officials, pharmaceutical executives and academics who serve on a vaccine working group organized by the National Institutes of Health, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Scientists, public health officials and lawmakers are worried that the Trump administration will pressure the FDA to authorize a COVID-19 vaccine in advance of the November presidential election, even if data from clinical trials do not support its widespread use.
Marks told Reuters he has not faced any political pressure and that the FDA would be guided by science alone. Should that change, “I could not stand by and see something that was unsafe or ineffective that was being put through,” Marks said.
“You have to decide where your red line is, and that’s my red line,” he said. “I would feel obligated (to resign) because in doing so, I would indicate to the American public that there’s something wrong.”
2020-08-21 20:00:24
Israel officially reached a tally of more than 100,000 coronavirus cases as the government struggled to contain a resurgence in infection rates.
The latest daily tally showed 1,496 new cases, bringing the total number to 100,716, the health ministry said. Israel has reported 809 deaths among its 9 million population.
2020-08-21 20:22:17
Britain’s AstraZeneca has received regulatory approval to conduct part of a Phase III trial of its potential COVID-19 vaccine in Russia, a filing in the Russian registry of clinical trials showed.
The trial of the AZD1222 vaccine will involve 150 participants and will be handled by four medical facilities in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the filing, dated Friday, showed.
Moscow has previously agreed a deal with AstraZeneca to manufacture the potential vaccine, developed in tandem with Oxford University, at the facilities of Russian firm R-Pharm.
2020-08-21 20:38:37
World Bank President David Malpass warned that the coronavirus pandemic may have led as many as 100 million people back into extreme poverty.
The Washington-based development lender previously estimated that 60 million people would fall into extreme poverty due to COVID-19, but the new estimate puts the deterioration at 70 to 100 million, and he said "that number could go higher" if the pandemic worsens or drags on.
The situation makes it "imperative" that creditors reduce the amount of debt held by poor countries at risk, going beyond the commitment to suspend debt payments, Malpass said in an interview with AFP.
Even so, more countries will be obliged to restructure their debt.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-21 20:53:30
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department says 57 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 35,602.
The department reported another death and two more from mid-August, taking the death toll to 1,246.
2020-08-21 21:00:57
Tour de France organisers have told teams they will boot them off the race if they return two positive COVID-19 tests in seven days, official sources said on Friday.
The measure concerns not only the riders, but other team staff inside the "race bubble".
The 2020 Tour will start on August 29 in Nice. There are 28 teams each with eight riders but those in close contact in the bubble take the total to 25 to 30 people.
Tour organisers and a team that had received the health protocols confirmed the measures on Friday.
All the riders must undergo two PCR nasal tests in the days leading up to the start of the Tour.
"A first wave will be made on Saturday, Sunday and Monday," said a Tour official explaining the tests were spread over three days because riders were competing in their national championships spread across Europe and over the weekend "and riders are not tested on race day."
He added "a second wave of tests" will also be staggered over three days — Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — because some riders will be competing in the European championships, which run from Monday to Thursday in Brittany.
2020-08-21 19:13:33
Shares of Pfizer Inc and US-listed shares of partner BioNTech SE rose on Friday after they released additional data for their experimental coronavirus vaccine and reiterated they were on track to seek a regulatory review in October.
Pfizer has said repeatedly since June that it was targeting October for its application and the companies started a large late-stage study last month of the candidate vaccine, one of the few globally in later stages of development.
2020-08-21 18:49:24
Physical gold dealers in India this week offered the highest discounts in more than one and a half months, as buyers stayed away even as more bullion flowed in from the United Arab Emirates.
On Friday, gold futures in India, traditionally the world’s second biggest gold consumer after China, were trading around 51,800 rupees ($691.24) per 10 grams, having surged to a record high of 56,191 rupees earlier this month.
“A significant amount of gold was imported from Dubai last week and customs cleared that this week. But demand is not there because of volatile prices,” said Chanda Venkatesh, managing director of CapsGold, a bullion merchant in the city of Hyderabad.
Discounts of up to $20 an ounce were offered against official domestic prices — including 12.5% import and 3% sales levies — versus the $2 premiums last week.
The country remained in the grip of the coronavirus, with the third highest number of cases globally.
Demand suffered in China as well, where discounts eased slightly to $80-$70 from last week’s record $100-$75 levels versus international benchmark spot prices, which traded in a volatile $1,911.00-$2,014.97 an ounce range.
2020-08-21 18:36:00
2020-08-21 18:10:53
Lebanon imposed a partial lockdown for two weeks starting in an effort to counter COVID-19 infections which have spiralled since the catastrophic explosion at Beirut port.
The spread of COVID-19 is compounding the woes of a country still reeling from the Aug. 4 blast that killed at least 179 people and wounded some 6,000, and a financial meltdown that has devastated the economy since October.
“In this area those who escaped death have relatives who are wounded, there are no homes or cars, frankly we have forgotten corona,” said Nabil Nahed, 50, a public sector employee whose house in the Gemmayzeh area was badly damaged in the blast.
“But we have to take precautions as much as we can because in the last two weeks everyone has been mixing, and corona certainly increased,” he said.
Lebanon recorded its highest 24-hour tally of new infections on Thursday, with 613 new cases. The infections have spread in the aftermath of the blast as hospitals were flooded with the casualties, medics say.
“Before the explosion, the total cases were 5,000-6,000, now we are approaching 10,000 and above,” Iman Shankiti, the World Health Organisation representative in Lebanon, told Voice of Lebanon radio. “In the last two weeks, the total is equal to everything from February to the day of the explosion.”
2020-08-21 17:59:05
A jump in coronavirus infections pushed India closer to the 3 million mark, piling pressure on authorities to prevent huge gatherings this weekend as Mumbai celebrates the Hindu elephant-headed god Ganesh.
For most of western India, especially the country’s financial capital, Ganesh Chaturthi marks the beginning of an 11-day festival usually marked by big public celebrations.
Social media was flooded with pictures of shoppers crowding markets to buy flowers and sweets, but it is expected to be a quieter Ganesh festival this year.
“You can see everyone’s shops are full of idols. No one is coming out to buy anything,” Ramdas Ghodekar, who sells Ganesh idols in central Mumbai, told Reuters.
India reported 68,898 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours - the third straight daily increase above 60,000 - taking the total to 2.91 million, the third worst in the world after the United States and Brazil
Deaths increased by 983 to 54,849.
Cases have plateaued in Mumbai, which now averages 1,000 a day and has recorded more than 120,000 in total, but strict government regulations have meant that the festival season, which begins this month, has been lacklustre.
“People are buying cheaper idols and cutting down their budgets because there have been pay cuts and job losses. Last year, I sold all the idols in my shop - this year I will sell half of that,” idol-maker Nandkumar Patil said.
2020-08-21 17:41:53
New York City, once an epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, has managed to contain the virus as it reopens, but faces risks of an uptick in cases in the fall, public health experts told Reuters.
The city’s success comes from a mix of high rates of compliance with local and federal public health guidance and also substantial immunity among the general population, a result of the severity of the outbreak in March and April, according to public health experts based in New York City.
“There was an alignment in New York with the state government, the healthcare system and the media on what to do - namely, lock everything down,” said Mark Jarrett, chief quality officer at Northwell Health. “The lockdown didn’t please everyone but was really well accepted.”
“The big challenge is schools reopening, recreating that density anew,” which had been reduced by social distancing, said Troy Tassier, a professor of economics at Fordham University who specializes in epidemiology.
2020-08-21 17:21:38
2020-08-21 17:10:25
2020-08-21 16:51:47
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said seven people had died of coronavirus and another 310 had been infected with COVID-19.
The death toll now stands at 2,357, while the overall cases have reached127,691.
2020-08-21 16:31:56
Russia’s plan to roll-out its “Sputnik-V” COVID-19 vaccine even before full trials show how well it works is prompting concern among virus experts, who warn a partially effective shot may encourage the novel coronavirus to mutate.
Viruses, including the pandemic SARS-CoV-2, are known for their ability to mutate all the time - and often this has little or no impact on the risk posed to people.
But some scientists are worried that adding “evolutionary pressure” to the pathogen by deploying what might not be a fully protective vaccine could make things worse.
“Less than complete protection could provide a selection pressure that drives the virus to evade what antibody there is, creating strains that then evade all vaccine responses,” said Ian Jones, a virology professor at Britain’s Reading University.
“In that sense, a poor vaccine is worse than no vaccine.”
2020-08-21 16:18:25
South Korea’s battle to contain a new outbreak of the coronavirus has been complicated by a political and religious fight between President Moon Jae-in’s administration and some of his fiercest critics.
Sarang Jeil Church is the second religious group at the centre of a major coronavirus outbreak in South Korea.
The government accuses the church of obstruction by not providing complete lists of its members and spreading fake news that is hindering anti-virus efforts, while church members they are victims of a politically motivated witch hunt.
When the first infections were reported among church members on August 12, the government says the group flouted social distancing instructions, with the church’s leader and others attending a massive anti-Moon rally in downtown Seoul on August 15.
Speaking at the rally, Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon said Moon had “terrorised our church with the Wuhan virus”.
Jun, an outspoken government critic, later tested positive for the virus. As of Thursday, at least 739 people affiliated with the church have tested positive, out of 3,415 tested, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
Read complete here.
2020-08-21 16:09:21
MANILA: The Philippines on Friday recorded 4,786 new coronavirus infections, taking its total confirmed cases to 182,365 since the pandemic began, the highest in Southeast Asia.
In a bulletin, the health ministry also reported 59 more fatalities, bringing the country’s death toll to 2,940.
“The infectiousness has increased because the strain has evolved,” Health Secretary Francisco Duque said at a webinar on Friday.
2020-08-21 15:35:00
STOCKHOLM: Sweden plans to ease pandemic rules to allow more spectators at cultural and sporting events, if they can be organised to prevent the risk of spreading the new coronavirus, the government said on Friday.
In March, Sweden limited public gatherings to 50 people to halt the spread of the virus, effectively preventing theatres, soccer clubs and concerts from being able to bring in revenues from the public.
But with the number of new infections and COVID-19 deaths falling in Sweden, the government said it planned to introduce exceptions to the 50-person maximum for events where crowds could be seated two meters apart from each other, from October 1.
“We know that many have been hit hard by the restriction and that many see the rules as a blunt instrument,” Interior Minister Mikael Damberg told reporters.
“We have to make sure that the rules about public gatherings and events do not needlessly affect events that can be held in a way that limits the risk of infection.”
2020-08-21 15:11:26
NAIROBI: Doctors in most public hospitals in Kenya’s capital went on strike on Friday to protest against delayed salaries and a lack of protective equipment when handling patients who may have COVID-19.
The strike began at midnight on Friday, said Thuranira Kaugiria, secretary general for the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union.
He said 320 doctors employed by the Nairobi County government were taking part in the strike because they had inadequate health insurance, poor quality protective gear and too few isolation wards to treat COVID-19 patients.
The strike will not affect private hospitals and public hospitals within Nairobi run by the national government.
Latest data show 31,441 confirmed coronavirus cases in Kenya, 620 deaths and 13,536 recoveries out of 407,610 tests done so far. The majority of confirmed cases have been in the capital.
2020-08-21 14:47:07
A study carried out by the Health Services Academy and other organisations said that 11% of Pakistanis have developed immunity from the coronavirus pandemic.
The national seroprevalence study was carried out by government of Pakistan in July in collaboration with multiple partners including AKU and with technical support from World Health Organisation.
The study was part of the WHO Unity Study also being conducted simultaneously in 25 other countries, said a statement issued here by the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination.
Seroprevalence studies are carried out with an objective to assess as to what percentage of population has developed protective immunity (antibodies) to the virus.
It was estimated that almost 11% of Pakistanis have developed protective immunity across Pakistan. It means that every 10th Pakistani has developed antibodies in their blood against the COVID-19 virus.
2020-08-21 14:41:16
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa extended the health emergency imposed in the province till September 30, Director General Health Dr Niaz Muhammad confirmed to Geo News on Friday.
The DG said that the province was providing all kinds of health facilities to the people during the coronavirus pandemic. He added that the educational institutes and marriage halls were also opening up in the province.
Dr Niaz assured that the health authorities of the province were monitoring the coronavirus situation closely in the province.
2020-08-21 13:54:26
DUBLIN: Ireland’s prime minister on Friday accepted the resignation of Agriculture Minister Dara Calleary after his attendance at a social event which may have breached COVID-19 regulations drew a wave of public anger.
“His attendance at this event was wrong and an error of judgment on his part. I have accepted his resignation,” Prime Minister Micheál Martin said in a statement.
“People all over the country have made very difficult, personal sacrifices in their family lives and in their businesses to comply with COVID regulations. This event should not have gone ahead in the manner it did.”
2020-08-21 13:28:08
ISLAMABAD: Parliamentary Secretary for Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination Dr Nousheen Hamid announced on Friday that Pakistan's drug regulator has approved Phase-III clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine developed in collaboration with a Chinese company, with the trials of the vaccine beginning from September.
Talking to a private news channel, she said under the supervision of National Institute of Health (NIH) vaccine trial would be started where around 8,000 volunteers were selected for the first-ever Phase-III clinical trial for any vaccine in Pakistan.
She said the clinical trials on these vaccines were already in progress in the other countries.
Clinical trials of these drugs in Pakistan will help identify those drugs which can be more helpful for treatment of COVID-19 patients.
2020-08-21 13:07:02
HONG KONG: Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Friday that mass testing of residents for coronavirus in the Asian financial hub will begin on September 1, as she warned people not to be complacent despite a steady fall in the number of new infections.
The testing, which will be done with the assistance of a 60 person team from the mainland, is the first time Chinese health officials have assisted the special administrative region in its battle to control the epidemic.
2020-08-21 12:58:59
SINGAPORE: Researchers in Singapore have discovered a new variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus that causes milder infections, according to a study published in The Lancet medical journal this week.
The study showed that COVID-19 patients infected with a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 had better clinical outcomes, including a lower proportion developing low blood oxygen or requiring intensive care.
The study also showed the variant, which has a large deletion in a part of its genome, elicited a more robust immune response.
The study involved researchers from various Singapore institutions, including the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID), the Duke-NUS Medical School and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research.
“These studies provide the first convincing data showing that an observed genetic change (mutation) in SARS-CoV-2 has affected the severity of disease in patients,” said Gavin Smith at Duke-NUS.
The scientists said the findings had implications for vaccine development and treatments for COVID-19.
The variant, which likely came from Wuhan, China, was detected in a cluster of infections that occurred from January to March 2020. In Singapore, the virus was transmitted from person-to-person across several clusters before being contained.
An expert told Reuters this week that mutations in viruses may be “a good thing”. Viruses tend to become less virulent as they mutate so as to infect more people but not to kill them as they depend on the host for food and shelter, according to Paul Tambyah at Singapore’s National University Hospital.
2020-08-21 12:32:39
LONDON: British government debt has exceeded £2.0 trillion for the first time following large state borrowing as the coronavirus pandemic pushed the UK economy deep into recession, official data showed Friday.
At the end of July, total accumulated debt hit £2.004 trillion ($2.61 trillion, 2.2 trillion euros), the Office for National Statistics said in a statement.
2020-08-21 12:00:00
SYDNEY/MELBOURNE: Australia headed for its lowest daily increase in coronavirus infections in five weeks on Friday as the hotspot state of Victoria neared the midway point of lockdown, prompting the prime minister to hail “a week of increased hope”.
While the rest of Australia eases restrictions, the home state of a quarter of its population is in a six-week lockdown due to a second wave of virus infections.
Victoria reported 179 new cases in the past 24 hours, from 240 a day earlier and down from over 700 a day two weeks ago. The state reported nine deaths.
The country’s most populous state, neighbouring New South Wales, reported just one new case as an emergency cabinet of state and federal leaders discussed the prospect of relaxing closures of state borders that have been in place for months.
“Today’s meeting of national cabinet came during what I would describe as a week of increased hope,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told a televised news conference.
“We’re doing better than most and many of the developed world in this situation.”
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said new case numbers in his state had fallen faster than he expected after the state imposed a nightly curfew and shuttered many businesses.
“We are all pleased to see a ‘one’ in front of these additional case numbers,” Andrews said. “To be at this point shows that the strategy is working.”
With cases in Victoria declining and low or zero levels of infections elsewhere — some states had yet to report daily figures by mid-afternoon — business leaders have called for an easing of internal travel restrictions to alleviate the blow to business and the economy.
Many states have closed their borders to prevent the spread of infection, and Queensland’s premier said earlier this week its border won’t reopen to any states with cases of community transmission.
However, Prime Minister Morrison said Queensland had now agreed to relax a ban on interstate travel for people seeking health services. He said he would call for an agreed definition of a “hot spot” so the authorities and travellers could understand who was, or was not, allowed to travel interstate.
Qantas Airways Ltd said this week that state border closures were severely hampering a recovery in the domestic aviation market, while retail group Wesfarmers said the restrictions were causing “enormous hardship”.
Other than the Victoria outbreak, Australia has largely avoided the high casualty numbers of many other nations with just under 24,500 infections and 472 deaths linked to the virus.
2020-08-21 11:47:57
Civil society members on Friday distributed masks to the tourists visiting the Khunjerab Pass in Hunza to spread awareness regarding the coronavirus.
The tourists were also informed about the important of wearing masks at the Pakistan-China border.
2020-08-21 11:38:52
Distirct Health Officer of Islamabad shared on Friday that the positivity rate in the federal capital remains under 1% as the country witnesses a steady decline in positive cases.
However, the DHO asked the people to be cautious as they return to "normalcy".
2020-08-21 11:10:48
SEOUL: South Korean health authorities warned on Friday that a cluster of coronavirus infections in the capital Seoul was threatening to spread after thousands of people attended a rally by conservative political groups last week.
While many of the current spike in cases have been among members of a church, some of whom attended the rally, officials say more people need to come forward and be tested to head off an uncontrollable outbreak.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 324 new cases as of midnight Thursday, bringing the country’s total to 16,670, with 309 deaths. It was the highest daily count since March 8.
“This is a very serious situation,” Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip told a briefing.
The government is trying gather the names of everyone who attended the rally, as well as the names of the drivers who drove attendees from the provinces, he said.
To that end, health investigators and police had obtained the cellphone location data of at least 12,000 people who had been in the area, and were seeking to convince the church to hand over a full list of its members, Kim said.
South Korea was one of the first countries outside China to see an explosive spread of the new coronavirus, but intensive tracing and testing had brought infections under control and quelled a subsequent series of spikes.
Now officials are turning once again to those methods to contain the latest outbreak, and have urged those who may have been in contact with infected people to be tested and self-isolate.
In Seoul and some surrounding cities, the government has reimposed social distancing rules, including restricting large gatherings, banning in-person church meetings while closing nightclubs, karaoke bars, buffets and cyber cafes.
For the third week in a row, thousands of South Korea doctors staged a strike on Friday to protest government plans to train new doctors.
The government plans to increase the number of medical students by 4,000 over the next 10 years, which it says is necessary to be better prepared for public health crises like the coronavirus pandemic.
But the Korean Medical Association (KMA), which helped organise the protests, says the country already has more than enough physicians.
2020-08-21 10:58:46
WELLINGTON: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Friday deferred a decision on whether to ease a lockdown on the city of Auckland as 11 new coronavirus infections were reported, including nine cases of community transmission.
New Zealand’s biggest city was placed in lockdown earlier this month until Aug. 26 amid a spike in new cases, forcing businesses to close and schools to shut.
Ardern said after a review of the lockdown that there was no need to change any settings at this stage, and promised to review them again on Monday.
“We have made good progress. Unlike our first lockdown we are not dealing with multiple outbreaks,” she said at a news conference.
“There is nothing to suggest we need change our course and certainly nothing that suggests that we need to escalate our response.”
The latest cases brought the total in New Zealand to 1,315, including 105 active cases. The country of 5 million people has reported 22 deaths from the respiratory disease caused by the novel virus.
Ardern also took aim at U.S. President Donald Trump after he claimed there had been a massive breakout of coronavirus cases in New Zealand, his third such reference to the country this week.
The United States had 16,563 cases per million people, while New Zealand had 269 cases per million people, Ardern said.
“Everyone can see that in New Zealand today we are talking 11 cases, whereas the United States has been dealing with over 40,000 cases,” she said.
“But I’ll also add, it’s not just whether you have cases it’s how you choose to deal with them as a nation and personally I am incredibly proud of the approach that all New Zealanders have taken to the battle against COVID-19.”
2020-08-21 10:03:45
BEIJING: Health authorities in China’s capital Beijing have removed a requirement for people to wear masks outdoors, further relaxing rules aimed at preventing the spread the novel coronavirus after the city reported 13 consecutive days without new cases.
Despite the relaxed guidelines, a large proportion of people continued to wear masks in Beijing on Friday.
Some said the mask made them feel safe, while others said social pressures to wear the masks were also a factor.
“I think I can take off my mask anytime, but I’ll need to see if others accept it. Because I’m afraid that people would be scared if they see me not wearing mask,” one 24-year old Beijing woman surnamed Cao told Reuters.
It’s the second time Beijing’s health authorities have relaxed guidelines on mask wearing in the capital, which has largely returned to normal after two rounds of lockdowns brought it to a standstill.
Beijing’s municipal Centers for Disease Control first said residents could go without masks in outdoor areas in late April, though the rules were swiftly reversed in June after a new outbreak in a large wholesale market in the city’s south.
China has reported no new locally transmitted cases on the mainland for five days after successfully controlling flare ups in the capital, Xinjiang and elsewhere.
Experts say the key to the country’s success in controlling the disease has been the strict enforcement of local rules, including wearing masks, mandatory home quarantine and participating in mass testing.
Authorities reported 22 imported cases in the mainland on for Aug. 20, and has closed its borders to most non-Chinese citizens. The country has reported a total of 84,917 cases since the outbreak began.
2020-08-21 09:51:40
Pakistan on Friday reported 630 new cases of coronavirus to take the countryside toll of confirmed cases to 291,588.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,223 cases in AJK, 12,424 in Balochistan, 2,604 in GB, 15,453 in Islamabad, 35,545 in KP, 95,958 in Punjab and 127,381 confirmed cases in Sindh.
The country also reported 10 more fatalities over the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 6,219.
Currently, there are 11,790 active cases in the country with 273,579 recovered patients.
2020-08-21 09:46:50
Federal Minister Asad Umar quoted American poet Robert Frost to tell people that the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) continues to lead the fight against COVID-19 despite a reduction in cases.
Umar, who also heads the NCOC, said that the operations centre plans for every occasion with provincial support.
2020-08-21 09:29:20
MUMBAI: India hurtled toward the 3 million mark for coronavirus cases on Friday, reporting 68,898 new infections in the last 24 hours, data from the federal health ministry showed.
The total number of cases in the country now stands at 2.9 million.
Deaths in the same period jumped by 983, with the total now at 54,849. India is the worst-hit country in Asia, and third behind the United States and Brazil in terms of total cases of the coronavirus.
2020-08-21 09:03:01
Still in shock and reeling from a horrible blast that killed more than 100 in Lebanon a few weeks ago, the nation braces itself for a strict lockdown that will begin across the country on Friday.
"What now? On top of this disaster, a coronavirus catastrophe?" said 55-year-old Roxane Moukarzel, as she waved towards the devastated port from the balcony of her gutted home.
Lebanon is to partially close down for two weeks from Friday to stem a string of record daily infection rates that have brought the number of COVID-19 cases to 10,952, including 113 deaths.
Moukarzel said she supported the decision, especially after the massive blast at Beirut's port on August 4 that killed 181 people, wounded thousands and laid waste to windows and doors across swathes of the city.
"Economically closing up the country is not good, as people want to sell, but let them lose out a little instead of getting sick and having to be carted off to hospital," said the mother of one, who trained as an architect.
"There's no more space in the hospitals. If people suddenly start burning up, where will they put them?"
Authorities fear Lebanon's fragile health sector would struggle to cope with a further spike in COVID-19 cases, especially after some hospitals near the port were damaged in the explosion.
Read more here.
2020-08-21 08:55:48
LONDON: Britain recorded 1,182 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the second-highest daily total since June 21, government figures showed, in part reflecting the higher number of tests being processed.
Thursday’s official data showed 190,434 tests were processed, compared to 117,971 on June 21.
Britain also reported a further six deaths of people who died within 28 days of receiving a positive coronavirus test result, taking the total number of fatalities on this measure to 41,403.
2020-08-21 08:43:13
MONTEVIDEO: Latin America and the Caribbean surpassed 250,000 deaths from the coronavirus on Thursday, according to an AFP tally based on official national statistics.
The region recorded 6,463,245 infections and 250,969 deaths by 2200 GMT.
Brazil is the region's worst-affected country with 3.5 million cases and more than 112,000 deaths. The South American giant is second only to the United States as the world's worst-hit country.
Peru, where figures released Thursday showed a 30% fall in GDP in the second quarter, has registered more than 26,000 deaths.
Mexico had recorded 58,481 deaths from nearly 540,000 COVID-19 infections by late Wednesday. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced Thursday that at least 2,000 Mexican volunteers would take part in final-phase trials of a Russian vaccine against the virus.
2020-08-20 23:55:38
The Balochistan health department says 21 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 12,424.
2020-08-20 23:42:00
Madagascar said it had fired its health minister as part of a government reshuffle, a move that came a month after he butted heads with the president for seeking outside help for coronavirus.
The Indian Ocean island-nation saw COVID-19 cases surge in July despite an official campaign to promote a controversial herbal drink touted as a remedy for the virus.
As hospitals raised concern about lack of beds, Health Minister Ahmad Ahmad wrote a letter in July asking international agencies to send medical equipment.
His appeal sparked anger in President Andry Rajoelina´s administration, which said Ahmad had acted "without consulting" either the government or head of state.
2020-08-20 23:23:09
Italy has recorded its highest number of coronavirus infections since May 23, with 845 new cases reported over the last day, health ministry officials said.
The new high comes after the health ministry on Wednesday counted 642 new cases, confirming an upward curve.
2020-08-20 23:09:04
Britain recorded 1,182 new coronavirus cases, the second-highest daily total since June 21, government figures showed, in part reflecting the higher number of tests being processed.
Thursday’s official data showed 190,434 tests were processed, compared to 117,971 on June 21.
Britain also reported a further six deaths of people who died within 28 days of receiving a positive coronavirus test result, taking the total number of fatalities on this measure to 41,403.
2020-08-20 22:44:11
Britain removed Portugal from its COVID-19 quarantine list, but said rising infections elsewhere meant travellers arriving from Croatia, Austria and Trinidad and Tobago would have to quarantine themselves for two weeks.
Transport minister Grant Shapps announced the changes on Twitter - the latest in a series of adjustments on quarantine policy as Britain tries to prevent importing new infections from hotspots overseas.
“Data ... shows we can now add Portugal to those countries INCLUDED in Travel Corridors,” he said.
Shapps said Britain’s whole travel policy was constantly under review and could change quickly, warning that people should only travel if they were content to quarantine themselves should the rules change during their holiday.
Emphasising that point, he also announced Croatia, Austria and Trinidad & Tobago were being added to the quarantine list, and incoming passengers would need to self-isolate for 14-days after they arrive, starting from 0300 GMT on Saturday.
2020-08-20 22:28:31
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department says 77 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 35,545.
The department also reported one more death, taking the death toll to 1,243.
2020-08-20 22:12:17
Uber Technologies and Lyft are preparing to suspend their ride-hailing services in California beginning on Friday morning unless an appeals court rules at the last minute they cannot be forced to treat their drivers as employees, rather than independent contractors.
Lyft in a blog post on Thursday said it would suspend its California operations at midnight.
Uber in a blogpost said it would have to temporarily shut down unless the appeals court intervenes.
Lyft shares dropped 6.2% to $26.41, while Uber shares were down 2.3% to $28.74.
The companies have sought the intervention of an appeals court to block an injunction order issued by a judge last week. That ruling forced the companies to treat their drivers as employees starting Thursday after midnight, but Uber and Lyft have said it would take them months to implement the mandate.
The appeals court has not yet intervened.
The threat to suspend service in the most populous U.S. state marks an unprecedented escalation in a long-running fight between U.S. regulators, labor groups and gig economy companies that have upended traditional employment models.
2020-08-20 21:45:21
The World Cup alpine skiing circuit will skip its traditional swing through North America in late November because of the coronavirus pandemic, the international ski federation (FIS) announced.
Two weeks of competition scheduled November 25-December 6 included men and women racing speed events in Lake Louise, Canada, before going on to the American resorts of Killington (women's technical races) and Beaver Creek (mens technical and speed races).
The events will now be staged in the French resorts of Val d'Isere and Courchevel, and St Moritz in Switzerland.
2020-08-20 21:28:34
Johnson & Johnson aims to test its experimental coronavirus vaccine in up to 60,000 volunteers in a late-stage trial scheduled to start in September, according to a US government database of clinical trials.
The trial would be conducted in nearly 180 sites across the United States and other countries including Brazil and Mexico, according to the information posted on clinicaltrials.gov on Aug. 10.
Rival coronavirus vaccine makers such as Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) and Pfizer (PFE.N) are targeting recruitment of up to 30,000 volunteers for their late-stage studies.
J&J did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.
Shares of the company rose marginally on Thursday, paring their earlier losses, after the Wall Street Journal first reported the trial size.
2020-08-20 21:15:47
Citing public health concerns amid the coronavirus, home-sharing company Airbnb imposed a worldwide party ban at its rental properties and capped occupancy at larger homes to 16.
The ban on parties and events will be "in effect indefinitely until further notice," the company said on its website, adding that guests "may be legally pursued by Airbnb if they violate our policy."
Airbnb began cracking down last year as rowdy parties were causing problems with neighbors in some communities.
In November, the company banned "party houses" after a deadly shooting at a Halloween party with more than 100 guests at a California rental.
Airbnb said Thursday that 73 percent of its global listings already banned parties and unauthorized festivities were always prohibited. The company has historically allowed hosts to permit guests to host smaller gatherings such as birthday parties.
After the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic, Airbnb removed "event-friendly" from its search and required users to adhere to local restrictions on gatherings in light of social distancing protocols.
But as local officials have cracked down on bars and social clubs, some activities have migrated to Airbnb homes, the platform said.
"We think such conduct is incredibly irresponsible — we do not want that type of business and anyone engaged in or allowing that behavior does not belong on our platform," the company said.
Airbnb recently said it had seen bookings begin to "bounce back" and unveiled an initiative to promote short-range travel amid a broad slowdown in tourism.
Amid the signs of an uptick in demand, the company on Wednesday said it has confidentially filed with US regulators for an initial public stock offering.
2020-08-20 20:49:33
Moroccan authorities slapped tight controls on movement in Casablanca and Marrakesh, the North African country's economic and touristic capitals, following a spike in coronavirus cases.
Several districts of the two cities were to be sealed off, and opening hours shortened for restaurants, coffeehouses, businesses and public parks.
Several beaches were closed in Casablanca, Morocco's largest city with 3.3 million inhabitants, following similar measures imposed on Tuesday near the capital Rabat.
Partial lockdowns were ordered Tuesday in Rabat and the port city of Tangiers, with armoured vehicles deployed on the streets and police manning checkpoints.
COVID-19 infections have been on the rise since the start of August, reaching a rate of 1,000 new cases a day in the country of 35 million.
Wednesday's tally was more than 1,500 cases and 29 deaths.
Morocco has confirmed a total of over 46,000 cases of novel coronavirus, including more than 740 deaths.
Health Minister Khalid Ait Taleb, who has come under fire on social media, acknowledges the sector needs another 62,000 paramedics and 30,000 medical staff.
2020-08-20 20:30:57
Thailand sought to allay fears of a second wave of coronavirus infections, after a woman tested positive having cleared quarantine nearly two months ago on returning from overseas.
Thailand has gone 87 days without domestic transmission but news that a woman tested positive for COVID-19 in Bangkok on Tuesday, having returned from abroad on June 24, has triggered concern of a fresh outbreak in a country so far spared the level of contagion elsewhere.
Authorities said the woman was unlikely to be contagious and may have caught the virus in the United Arab Emirates or her home province of Loei, bordering Laos.
“She may have been infected in the past three months, probably in Dubai or Loei, but not Bangkok,” Taweesin Wisanuyothin, spokesman for the government’s COVID-19 task force, told a briefing.
He said the woman, 35, had tested negative twice since Tuesday and 24 people in contact with her in Loei and Bangkok would also be tested.
“There is nothing to worry about. She wears a mask all the time and is not sick anymore,” Taweesin added.
Surasak Leelaudomlipi, head of Bangkok’s Ramathibodi Hospital, said only traces of the virus were found in the woman and experts were “pretty sure” she was not infectious.
“To make society at ease, we found the genetic material of the virus, not a virus,” Surasak said.
2020-08-20 19:45:30
Nigeria is considering partnerships between state governments and private firms to ramp up testing and tracing of coronavirus cases after international flights resume this month, the head of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said.
Nigeria will reopen its airports for international flights from Aug. 29. They have been closed since March 23 to all but essential overseas flights to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa’s most populous country.
NCDC Director General Chikwe Ihekweazu said talks had been held with private companies over possible partnerships on testing and tracing in some states.
“Private-public models are being looked at. Lagos and Abuja are the primary locations, and from that we’ll learn what to do for the other three international airports,” Ihekweazu told Reuters in a telephone interview. He did not disclose the companies involved.
2020-08-20 19:26:19
With coronavirus cases surging and less than two weeks of the school holidays left, parents, teachers and opposition politicians in Spain are angry and critical about the government’s plans for reopening classrooms.
Latest government data showed daily infections peaked at 7,609 on Friday - the highest level since late March - before dropping to 3,715 on Wednesday. However, the fall may not represent a trend as similar declines have persistently been followed by new peaks in recent weeks.
“Not a single Spanish family knows what will happen to their children when the school year starts,” said Pablo Casado, leader of the conservative opposition People’s Party, accusing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s leftist government of keeping the country guessing.
“We cannot let a whole generation of children have their education held back because of a lack of planning,” he said.
“We have to be a bit careful about the date of reopening the schools,” deputy health chief Antonio Zapatero told Reuters. “Perhaps, due to the level of positives, we will have to rethink about if we open (schools) by ages.”
Still, deputy regional leader Ignacio Aguado said he was in favour of bringing children back to the classroom.
Frustrated with what they described as a lack of resources and a failure to deploy adequate safety measures, teachers unions in the capital have called a series of strikes for the first weeks of September.
2020-08-20 19:15:32
Africa is beginning to slowly “bend the curve” of COVID-19 infections as measures like mask-wearing and social distancing slow down the spread of the pandemic on the continent, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Although the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak was slow in Africa in the early stages of the pandemic, the rate of infection gradually accelerated especially in South Africa, which now accounts for more than half of its case load of more than 1.1 million.
On average, there were signs of a decline in new infections across Africa over the last two weeks, said John Nkengasong, head of Africa CDC.
“So I think that is really some sign of hope that we are beginning to bend the curve slowly. We take this news with cautious optimism,” he said.
“It’s very, very early, we’re dealing with a very delicate virus that spreads very quickly but it’s important to recognise those slight tendencies that are positive.”
2020-08-20 20:17:24
Singing is no more risky than speaking when it comes to the possibility of spreading the new coronavirus, British scientists said, adding that volume is the most important risk factor.
Last week, the British government changed its guidance to allow professionals and non-professionals to resume singing rehearsals and performance, bringing the required social distancing into line with usual COVID-19 rules and removing the need for extra mitigations.
That decision was informed by a study by scientists based at the University of Bristol, who examined the amount of aerosols and droplets generated by 25 professional singers who did singing, speaking, breathing and coughing exercises.
The researchers found that the aerosol mass produced rose steeply with an increase in volume of singing or speaking, by as much as 20 to 30 times.
However, singing did not produce substantially more aerosol than speaking at a similar volume, and there was not a significant difference in aerosol production between different genres such as choral, musical theatre, opera, jazz, gospel rock or pop.
“The study has shown the transmission of viruses in small aerosol particles generated when someone sings or speaks are equally possible with both activities generating similar numbers of particles,” said Jonathan Reid, director of the ESPRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Aerosol Science.
“Our research has provided a rigorous scientific basis for COVID-19 recommendations for arts venues to operate safely for both the performers and audience by ensuring tha
2020-08-20 18:55:49
The number of Americans filing a new claim for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly back above the 1 million mark last week, a setback for a struggling US job market crippled by the coronavirus pandemic.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 1.106 million for the week ended Aug. 15, from an upwardly revised 971,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 925,000 applications in the latest week.
The previous week’s level had marked the first time since March that new claims had registered below the 1 million level.
The extra $600 a week unemployment benefit lapsed on July 31. While President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that includes a provision extending the supplement at a reduced rate of $400 a week, there has been confusion over its implementation.
States are required to cover $100 of the benefits, but many governors have indicated they don’t have the financial capacity after revenues were decimated in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The remaining $300 will be funded from a limited emergency disaster relief program, which economists estimated could be depleted as early as September.
2020-08-20 18:43:09
The Polish government has accepted a revision to the country’s 2020 budget that forecasts a deficit of 109.3 billion zlotys ($29.4 billion), it said on Thursday, highlighting the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the public finances.
“The spread of the coronavirus contributed to the greatest economic crisis of recent years, which dramatically slowed economic activity in Poland and other countries affected by the pandemic,” the government said in a statement.
2020-08-20 18:20:42
Jeannine Cook had only opened her Philadelphia bookstore for a few weeks when the coronavirus forced its closure, the latest in a string of obstacles for the Black business owner.
Landlords refused to rent to her, and, like many Black-owned businesses, her Harriett’s Bookshop was too new and small to be eligible for a U.S. government Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan to help small businesses weather the COVID-19 setbacks.
“The fact I’m a woman, the fact that I’m young, the fact that I’m Black, the fact that I’m urban ... I would be silly not to think those things don’t play a part,” said Cook, who has renewed her lease while worrying about reopening too soon.
“Do I think there’s prejudice and institutional racism? I think that’s 100% sure we know that,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “The thing about racism is that it hides, and it’s very covert, and so it’s able to live in the shadows.”
Often unwelcomed by mainstream financial institutions and facing racist practices in business, Black Americans have suffered financial inequality for decades.
Confronted by racist hiring practices, Black Americans historically have been shunned from the best paying jobs and lack the generational wealth often available to white Americans.
And the inequality is worsening. According to U.S. think tank the Brookings Institute, the gap between white and Black family wealth is higher today than it was at the start of the century.
“Being Black in America is hard,” said Dexter George, who turned to online fundraising to keep his Source of Knowledge bookstore in Newark, New Jersey, from closing due to the pandemic after more than two decades.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-20 18:15:38
Chinese state newspapers threw their support behind an amusement park in the central city of Wuhan after pictures of a densely packed pool party at the park went viral overseas amid concerns about the spread of COVID-19.
Videos and photos of an electronic music festival at the Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park on July 11 raised eyebrows overseas, but reflected life returning to normal in the city where the virus causing COVID-19 was first detected, the official English-language China Daily newspaper said in a front-page story.
Another story in the Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily, cited Wuhan residents as saying the pool party reflected the city’s success in its virus-control efforts.
While the coronavirus was first reported in Wuhan, strict lockdown measures that paralysed the Chinese economy earlier this year have kept its spread in check.
2020-08-20 17:59:29
Almost 30% of the population in India’s capital of New Delhi likely have been infected by the novel coronavirus, according to a serological survey of 15,000 people conducted by the local government, a figure that indicates infection numbers are much higher than those recorded.
The survey, which tested a sample of the population for the presence of antibodies, was done in the national capital territory in the first week of August, its health minister Satyendra Jain told a news conference on Thursday.
“We found that 29.1% of the population of Delhi had antibodies, which means that they were infected and have been cured,” Jain said.
Delhi has a population of 20 million and has recorded a total of 140,767 cases of COVID-19, out of India’s total of 2.84 million.
The findings of the survey are in line with what other cities like Mumbai and Pune have discovered, that a significant number of their people have been infected.
2020-08-20 17:45:03
China’s Alibaba Group Holding beat quarterly revenue and profit estimates, as its core commerce and cloud computing businesses continued to grow following China’s emergence from the coronavirus lockdown.
Sales from the commerce business alone jumped 34% to 133.32 billion yuan ($19.27 billion) in the quarter ending in June, slightly slower than a year earlier but still enough to prod its shares higher after the results.
The company’s stock has soared 23% this year as investors globally poured money into technology businesses seen as “stay-at-home” winners from the pandemic, and Alibaba said it had bounced back from a hit to Chinese consumer spending at the start of this year.
“Our domestic core commerce business has fully recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels across the board, while cloud computing revenue grew 59% year-over-year,” Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu said in a statement.
Alibaba is one of the big businesses seen as a potential target if President Donald Trump makes further moves against Chinese companies, following restrictions on Chinese-owned video platform TikTok and Tencent’s WeChat.
“Today, we face uncertainties from not only the global pandemic but also increasing tensions between US and China,” Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang said.
2020-08-20 17:28:55
Armenia’s economy contracted 13.7% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020 after a 3.9% growth in the first quarter, taking a hit from the novel coronavirus pandemic, preliminary official data showed.
The decline from April to June was the result of the contraction in almost all sectors of the economy besides mining, communication services and government expenditures, Armenia’s Statistical Committee said.
The former Soviet republic’s economy had expanded 7.6% in 2019 and 5.2% in 2018.
The central bank has forecast the economy to contract by 4% in 2020 due to the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic, but it is expected to recover and grow 5.5% next year.
International financial institutions have pledged support to Armenia to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus on the economy and support the healthcare system.
2020-08-20 17:15:47
The European Commission and German biotech firm CureVac said they had concluded a first round of talks for the supply of at least 225 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine to EU states.
The European Union’s executive arm is also in talks with Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi for their vaccines under development, and agreed last week an advanced purchase deal with AstraZeneca for at least 300 million doses of the shot it is developing with Oxford University.
“Each round of talks that we conclude with the pharmaceutical industry brings us closer to beating this virus. We will soon have an agreement with CureVac,” the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, confirming a Reuters report in July.
The EU will now begin negotiating a contract with CureVac, which could be the company’s first bilateral supply deal, aimed at securing the vaccine for all 27 EU member states should the shot prove safe and effective.
CureVac said on Thursday the talks included an option to supply 180 million additional doses.
The company’s shares rose almost 8% in premarket trade on Thursday, having soared as much as 222% after its Nasdaq debut last Friday, the first by a company developing a COVID-19 vaccine.
2020-08-20 16:59:48
A bar in Tokyo’s upscale Ginza district has installed fish bowl-like screens designed to protect against coronavirus transmission, aiming to lure back clients worried about the risks of COVID-19.
The Jazz Lounge En Counter bar reopened in late June, having shut down for several weeks after the government declared a nationwide state of emergency in April.
But with revenues down 70% to 80% compared with pre-pandemic levels, the bar decided to step up efforts to ensure customers feel safer.
“If we don’t take firm steps we wouldn’t be responding to customers’ requests. And they wouldn’t visit us because they’re worried,” said manager Katsutoshi Iwazaki.
The conical, clear acrylic screens - which were demonstrated to Reuters by bar staff on a recent visit - hang from the ceiling and envelop the customers’ head and shoulders, acting as a barrier between them and other drinkers, as well as servers. Employees said they, too, felt more protected.
“I can’t talk to them (customers) safely if there’s a risk of droplet infection. But I feel very safe now with this measure,” said 27 year-old staff member Mako Aoki.
2020-08-20 16:46:06
Estee Lauder Cos forecast first-quarter profit below Wall Street estimates on Thursday after posting a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss as travel restrictions and store closures put in place to contain the spread of coronavirus dampened demand for its premium make-up brands.
The MAC brand owner also said it would cut about 1,500 to 2,000 jobs globally, including point of sale employees. It also estimated closure of 10%-15% of its freestanding stores.
Cosmetics makers, including Estee Lauder, that rake in millions from sales at duty-free stores at airports, cruises and downtown locations have seen sales plummeting in its travel retail channel, as tourist spending has dried up due to restrictions on overseas travel and COVID-19 flare-ups in some tourist attractions.
Estee Lauder projected first-quarter adjusted profit per share to be between 80 and 85 cents. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of $1.22 per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
2020-08-20 16:14:34
Health authorities of the Republic of Peru have approved a Phase 3 clinical trial for a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed by China National Biotec Group (CNBG), the company said in Chinese social media platform Weibo.
The experimental vaccine of CNBG, a unit of state-owned pharmaceutical giant China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), has already entered Phase 3 testing in United Arab Emirates.
Phase 3 trials, which usually involve several thousand participants, allow researchers to gather data on the efficacy of potential vaccines for final regulatory approvals.
2020-08-20 16:37:52
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that the province had recorded 321 more infections of coronavirus and another seven had succumbed to the pandemic.
The overall cases in the province stand at127,381, while the death toll has reached 2,350.
2020-08-20 15:55:56
Ukraine on Thursday reported a record daily increase in coronavirus infections, exceeding 2,000 new cases for the first time.
Health authorities recorded 2,134 new infections in the past 24 hours, bringing Ukraine´s total to 98,537.
Heath Minister Maksym Stepanov told a briefing that there had also been a record death toll of 40 deaths over the past day, taking the total number of fatalities to 2,184.
2020-08-20 15:30:52
2020-08-20 14:45:42
South Korea’s coronavirus infections are back “in full swing” and spreading nationwide after members of a church attended a political demonstration, authorities said on Thursday, threatening one of the world’s COVID-19 success stories.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 288 new cases as of midnight on Wednesday, marking a week of triple-digit daily increases.
The latest outbreak is driven by hundreds of infections among members of a church run by a far-right preacher.
2020-08-20 14:10:57
New Zealand on Thursday reported five new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours compared with six a day earlier, as the Pacific nation battles a fresh outbreak in its biggest city of Auckland.
An abrupt resurgence of infections last week in Auckland prompted the government to reimpose some lockdown restrictions on the city's 1.7 million residents.
New Zealand so far has reported just over 1,300 confirmed cases and 22 deaths from the virus. There are 101 active cases in the country
2020-08-20 13:10:49
Germany has recorded 1,707 new cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the highest daily toll since April, official figures showed Thursday.
The toll brings to 228,621 the number of infections in the country since the start of the pandemic, and reflects a trend of rising numbers of cases observed in other countries in recent weeks.
2020-08-20 12:50:21
Australia's second-most populous state of Victoria on Thursday reported 13 COVID-19 deaths in the last 24 hours and 240 new coronavirus cases.
The state reported 12 deaths and 216 cases a day earlier.
A flare-up in infections in Victoria forced authorities two weeks ago to impose a nightly curfew and shut large parts of the state's economy. It has seen a slowdown in new cases in recent days, allaying fears of a nationwide second wave.
2020-08-20 11:20:57
Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) leader Akhtar Mengal announced on Wednesday he had tested positive for coronavirus.
The BNP leader took to Twitter to say that he is advising everyone who interacted with him in the last few days to get tested for the virus immediately.
Read more here.
2020-08-20 11:00:12
Pakistan on Thursday reported 513 new cases of coronavirus to take the countryside toll of confirmed cases to 290,968.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,219 cases in AJK, 12,403 in Balochistan, 2,583 in GB, 15,425 in Islamabad, 35,468 in KP, 95,800 in Punjab and 127,060 confirmed cases in Sindh.
The country also reported eight more fatalities over the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 6,208.
Currently, there are 11,945 active cases in the country with 272,804 recovered patients.
2020-08-20 10:30:15
India reported a record daily jump of 69,652 coronavirus infections on Thursday, taking the total number of cases to 2.84 million, data from the federal health ministry showed.
It reported 977 new deaths, taking the total to 53,866.
India is the worst-hit country in Asia and third only behind the United States and Brazil in terms of number of cases.
2020-08-20 09:50:30
Brazil reported 49,298 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 1,212 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
Brazil has now registered 3,456,652 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 111,100, according to ministry data, marking the world's worst coronavirus outbreak after the United States
2020-08-19 23:56:00
The Balochistan health department says 33 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 12403.
2020-08-19 23:32:09
Spain reported 3,715 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Wednesday, marking a new daily record since the country came out of a strict lockdown in late June.
Madrid bore the brunt of the increase, logging 1,535 new cases, followed by the Basque Country and Aragon regions with around 470 new infections each.
Fourteen people died across Spain in the same period, down from 21 the previous day. In the past seven days, 131 people have died from the virus, the ministry said.
Cumulative cases, which include antibody tests on patients who may have already recovered, rose to 370,867.
Despite mandatory use of masks across the country, EU data show Spain has the highest total tally of cases in western Europe as well as the highest incidence of cases per 100,000 people in the past 14 days.
Scrambling to control the outbreak, regional authorities have begun to reimpose restrictions on nightlife and public transport that had been lifted weeks ago when infections had slowed to a trickle.
2020-08-19 23:15:02
Norway said it will impose a 10-day quarantine on all people arriving from Britain, Austria, Greece and Ireland from Aug. 22 due to rising numbers of COVID-19 cases in those countries.
Similar restrictions will also be imposed on those coming from the Danish capital Copenhagen, the Norwegian foreign ministry said in a statement.
To try to prevent a domestic resurgence of the coronavirus, Norway quarantines all travellers from countries with more than 20 confirmed new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population during the past two weeks.
2020-08-19 22:59:23
Zambia’s vice president Inonge Mutukwa tested positive for the coronavirus, the presidency said in a statement, which also said her condition was stable and she was in self isolation at home.
“The vice president has some mild symptoms that are being managed appropriately ... She is in high spirits and working virtually ...” the statement said.
2020-08-19 22:45:23
The French health ministry reported 3,776 new confirmed coronavirus infections, bringing the total to 225,043, with the daily tally going beyond the 3,000 threshold for the third time in five days.
The seven-day moving average of the case count, which smoothes out daily reporting irregularities, is now at 2,621, going beyond the 2,500 threshold for the first time since April 19, when France was in the midst of a strict lockdown to contain the virus.
2020-08-19 22:30:50
Germany and France want to give more money and power to the World Health Organisation after the COVID-19 pandemic underscored long-standing financial and legal weaknesses at the UN agency, an internal document seen by Reuters shows.
The proposed reforms could already be discussed at the WHO in mid-September, three officials familiar with the talks told Reuters, in a fast timeline that would confirm the two European powers’ growing concerns about the organisation, which they also see as excessively subject to external influences.
In a joint paper circulated among diplomats involved in the reform talks, Berlin and Paris said the WHO’s mandate, which includes preventing outbreaks across the world and helping governments tackle them, was not backed up by sufficient financial resources and legal powers.
“Not only during the current pandemic, it has become clear that the WHO partly lacks the abilities to fulfil this mandate,” the document seen by Reuters said.
A Western diplomat in Geneva, referring to member states’ contributions based on their GDP, said: “The key point is the mismatch between WHO mandate and financing. It’s very much pro-WHO, it should have more money and (they are) asking for an increase in assessed contributions.”
2020-08-19 22:17:06
A staggered reopening from lockdowns, supported by fiscal stimulus, is likely paying off for Canada’s economy, with activity forecast to rebound in the current quarter twice as fast as in the United States, its biggest trading partner by far.
Canada’s economy is set to grow at an annualized rate of 36% in the third quarter, compared to 20% for the United States, the average forecasts of Canada’s six largest banks showed. That reflects some catch-up for Canada after an estimated deeper slump in the second quarter, but also greater success at controlling the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
The number of daily new cases in Canada has slowed to less than 400, using a 7-day moving average, from about 1,800 at its peak in May, according to Canada’s Public Health Agency. A spike in U.S. infections last month led to some states making a U-turn on reopening their economies.
Helped by a surge in employment, surging housing sales and gains in credit card spending, Canadian economic activity recovered in July to about 95% of pre-pandemic levels, BMO Capital Markets estimated.
2020-08-19 21:39:00
Slovenia urged its citizens to return from Croatia by the end of the week or face an obligatory two-week quarantine after the number of COVID-19 cases continued to rise there, the government spokesman said on Tuesday.
"The situation is so bad that we have no choice but to urge citizens to return from the dangerous country as soon as possible," Jelko Kacin said.
Slovenian vacationers already in neighbouring Croatia will be able to return until the end of this week, while those travelling to Croatia from Aug. 21 onward will have to go into obligatory quarantine, he said.
2020-08-19 21:27:00
Toulouse has become the first French city to declare face masks compulsory outdoors, in a bid to halt the quickening spread of the coronavirus.
Toulouse is France's fourth-largest city and officials there fear that a mass movement of people as the summer break draws to a close will lead to a spike in infections.
Face masks are already compulsory on public transport in France and indoors in public places.
Additionally, many French towns and cities, including Paris and Toulouse, have used discretionary powers to make masks obligatory in certain areas — often busy streets, near tourist hotspots and at outdoor food markets.
Toulouse officials said masks would be compulsory outdoors across the city starting Friday, from 7am to 3am the next day, for all people aged 12 and over, including those on bikes and kick-scooters.
2020-08-19 21:28:00
The Czech Republic will not take part in the World Health Organization-led COVAX plan to develop and distribute a vaccine against COVID-19, Health Minister Adam Vojtech said on Wednesday.
"We will not join the WHO initiative for various reasons, the rules are less favourable for us than being part of the European initiative," he told reporters. “We are going with the initiative by the European Commission, which is negotiating with producers, and the negotiations are very advanced, we will very soon take part in (an agreement) with AstraZeneca.”
2020-08-19 21:12:00
Egypt will require all people entering the country to present Polymerase Chain Reaction test results for the new coronavirus on arrival from Sept. 1, the prime minister said in a televised address on Wednesday.
Egypt will also allow Friday prayers to resume in mosques from Aug. 28 under strict health and safety protocols to be issued by the Ministry of Endowments, Mostafa Madbouly added.
2020-08-19 21:50:06
Lufthansa has raised the possibility of redundancies for some of its pilots in 2021, as the slump in world travel due to the coronavirus looks set to last.
The warning came after the German flag carrier said it had concluded a short-term agreement with the pilots' Cockpit union (VC) to cut wage costs.
The deal means the airline will hold back from implementing redundancies until the second quarter of 2021.
However, "the significant overcapacity of pilots will last considerably beyond March 2021," Lufthansa said.
"The number of redundancies for operational reasons can therefore only be limited by concluding a long-term crisis agreement," the company added.
The deal with VC cuts short-time work compensation and pension benefits from September to the end of the year, and wage increases planned for 2020 will be postponed until January 2021, the airline said.
2020-08-19 20:38:55
Sweden, which has stood out among European countries for its low-key approach to fighting the coronavirus pandemic, recorded its highest tally of deaths in the first half of 2020 for 150 years, the Statistics Office said on Wednesday.
COVID-19 claimed about 4,500 lives in the period to the end of June - a number which has now risen to 5,800 - a much higher percentage of the population than in other Nordic nations, though lower than in some others including Britain and Spain.
In total, 51,405 Swedes died in the January to June period, a higher number than any year since 1869 when 55,431 died, partly as a result of a famine. The population of Sweden was around 4.1 million then, compared to 10.3 million now.
COVID-19 meant that deaths were some 10 percent higher than the average for the period over the last five years, the Statistics Office said. In April the number of deaths was almost 40% higher than average due to a surge in COVID-related fatalities.
Sweden has taken a different approach to most European countries in dealing with the pandemic, relying to a greater extent on voluntary measures focused on social distancing and opting against a strict lockdown.
2020-08-19 20:53:27
Winter sports' governing body, the FIS, has made testing for coronavirus mandatory for all athletes, team officials and organisers before any event, and to be repeated every three-to-four days thereafter.
FIS' World Cup Risk Management COVID-19 Testing Protocol calls on "all participating stakeholders to facilitate all parties' work with four months before the competition season to prepare effectively with the respective health authorities".
Should an athlete test positive during an event, FIS said, they would immediately be put in quarantine, while anyone they came into contact with over the previous 72 hours would also be put into isolation until a test came back negative.
2020-08-19 20:27:55
The United Kingdom recorded 812 new positive cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, down from 1,089, government figures showed.
A further 16 people died after testing positive for the coronavirus within 28 days.
2020-08-19 20:14:42
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department says 67 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 35,468.
2020-08-19 19:59:35
Slovenia is urging its citizens to return from Croatia by the end of the week or face an obligatory two-week quarantine after the number of COVID-19 cases continued to rise there, a government spokesman said on Wednesday.
“The situation is so bad that we have no choice but to urge citizens to return from the dangerous country as soon as possible,” Jelko Kacin said.
Slovenian holidaymakers already in Croatia will be able to return freely until the end of this week, while those travelling to the neighbouring country from Aug. 21 onwards will have to go into quarantine when they come back, Kacin said.
Croatia escaped the worst of the first wave of the pandemic owing to swift lockdowns and a lack of tourist arrivals at the tail-end of winter, and during the reopening of its economy promoted itself as a safe destination for tourists.
2020-08-19 19:47:33
Roche is adding its manufacturing muscle and global development expertise to Regeneron’s bid to create an antibody cocktail for COVID-19 that the Swiss and US companies hope can be used to slow the pandemic.
Regeneron, which expects data from REGN-COV2 in humans next month after it prevented and treated the disease in rhesus macaques and hamsters, would handle US sales and Roche worldwide distribution should it win approval, the companies said on Wednesday.
Roche has one of the world’s largest antibody production operations, including US facilities in San Francisco, and will boost overall capacity for REGN-COV2 by at least three and a half times, a feat Regeneron would have been hard pressed to accomplish going it alone.
“This major collaboration with Roche provides important scale and global expertise to bring REGN-COV2 to many more patients in the United States and around the globe,” Regeneron Chief Executive Leonard Schleifer said.
2020-08-19 19:37:24
Islamabad recorded 11 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Bahria Town, the district health officer said.
2020-08-19 19:21:02
Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin said her COVID-19 test taken a day earlier was negative, but she would continue to work remotely due to respiratory symptoms.
“It is important not to go to work if showing symptoms and thus expose others. The condition is good and the symptoms are mild,” Marin said on Twitter.
Last week, Finland recommended the use of face masks in public for the first time as the number of coronavirus cases rises.
2020-08-19 19:03:00
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that the province had reported seven deaths from coronavirus and 317 new cases.
The death toll now stands at2,342 and overall infections have reached127,070.
2020-08-19 18:53:00
Shipping group Maersk issued full-year earnings guidance above its forecast at the beginning of the year and said it expects demand for moving containers at sea to return to pre-COVID levels in the first half of next year.
The company’s share price jumped more than 7% in early trade to an eight-month high, and has doubled in value since March, as cost cuts and the prospect of a global economic recovery outweighed the present impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our expectation is that some time during the first half next year we will have volumes back at the level we had in 2019,” Chief Executive Soren Skou told a press conference.
Maersk, which handles one in every five containers shipped by sea worldwide, posted second-quarter revenue and earnings above expectations, as a sharp drop in volumes was partly offset by higher freight rates, lower fuel prices and lower costs.
“With a strong result and a strong balance sheet we are well positioned to financially and strategically come out stronger of the crisis,” Skou said.
2020-08-19 18:34:47
British inflation jumped unexpectedly last month to its highest since March, as clothes shops did not hold their usual summer sales when they reopened after the coronavirus lockdown, but most economists expect it to fall again soon.
Annual consumer price inflation rose to 1.0% in July from 0.6% in June, the Office for National Statistics said, above all forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists.
Most economists expect the rise to prove temporary — especially as the impact of the government’s “Eat Out to Help Out” restaurant discount kicks in during August.
ING said “the only way is down”. “While ongoing supply-chain disruption will inevitably cause price spikes in certain areas, the more dominant factor will be the widely predicted rise in unemployment,” ING economist James Smith said.
The consensus of economists polled by Reuters shows inflation remaining below the Bank of England’s 2% target at least until the end of next year.
Nonetheless two-year inflation-linked bonds GBIL1S22= priced in a higher rate of inflation at 2.675% on Wednesday, up from Tuesday’s four-week low of 2.629%.
2020-08-19 18:14:44
South African authorities are investigating government departments for graft over irregularities in coronavirus-related tenders worth 5 billion rand ($290 million), the head of its Special Investigating Unit (SIU) told lawmakers.
The figure is likely to add to pressure on President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ruling African National Congress, who have struggled to deflect criticism from alliance partners and opposition parties as allegations of corruption implicated senior ANC politicians.
Ramaphosa, who replaced his scandal-prone predecessor Jacob Zuma in 2017 with promises to eradicate corruption, has battled to root out criminality linked to the fight against COVID-19 in South Africa, which has the world’s fifth highest number of coronavirus infections at 592,144.
In a presentation to a parliamentary committee, Andy Mothibi, head of the SIU, which investigates allegations against public sector figures or institutions, said it was working on 658 cases nationwide involving just over 5 billion rand - the first time a number has been put on the alleged graft.
The provincial health department of the central Gauteng province, an economic hub and home to Johannesburg, alone accounted for just under half of the total, at 2.2 billion rand, Mothibi added.
“The allegations reported to the SIU involved the procurement of PPEs (personal protective equipment), hospital and quarantine sites, catering services (food parcels), ventilators, disinfecting equipment and motorised wheelchairs,” he said.
2020-08-19 17:59:14
Hong Kong’s banking regulator said on Wednesday it would relax commercial property mortgage rules, in a move to boost liquidity in a market that has been hit hard by US-China trade tensions, violent street protests last year and the coronavirus crisis.
The change lifts the cap on the loan-to-value ratio for banks providing mortgages for non-residential properties to 50% from 40%, effective Thursday.
Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) deputy chief executive Arthur Yuen told a press conference the change was designed to make it easier for the commercial sector to obtain mortgages.
2020-08-19 17:41:25
The Czech Republic will not take part in the World Health Organization-led COVAX plan to develop and distribute a vaccine against COVID-19 and will opt instead for an initiative of the European Union, Health Minister Adam Vojtech said.
The WHO has struggled to bring wealthier countries on board for a global vaccine pact, saying on Tuesday that nations that hoard possible COVID-19 vaccines while excluding others will deepen the pandemic.
The European Union, Britain, Switzerland and the United States are striking deals with companies testing prospective vaccines. Russia and China are also working on vaccines, and the WHO fears national interests could impede global efforts.
“We will not join the WHO initiative for various reasons, the rules are less favourable for us than being part of the European initiative,” he told reporters.
“We are going with the initiative by the European Commission, which is negotiating with producers, and the negotiations are very advanced, we will very soon take part in (an agreement) with AstraZeneca.”
2020-08-19 17:29:15
Medication costs for COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the United States have dropped sharply since May, reflecting advances in treatment, shorter stays and use of cheaper generic drugs.
But costs may rise again as hospitals start to pay for Gilead Sciences Inc’s remdesivir.
Research by the health data firm IllumiCare and exclusively shared with Reuters found that hospitals spent $1,090 per COVID-19 patient on medication in July. That was down from $3,011 in May among more than 50 hospitals in 10 states that were analyzed.
Several factors drove down the number. The average length of stay for COVID-19 patients declined by nearly 30%, from 9.6 days in April to 6.8 days in July, the hospital data show. And the number of medications used dropped by 22%, from nearly 20 individual drugs in April to 15.4 drugs in July.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-19 17:13:51
Greece will extend restrictions in the popular holiday island of Mykonos and the coastal area of Chalkidiki in northern Greece to contain the spread of COVID-19 infections, Civil Protection authorities said.
The measures include a complete ban on live parties and festivities, a limit of nine people in all public and private gatherings and compulsory mask wearing in closed and open spaces.
No more than four people can be seated at the same table in restaurants unless they are very close relatives, in which case the limit is increased to six people.
The restrictions will go into effect from August 21 to 31.
2020-08-19 17:00:09
Rich countries should not hoard a coronavirus vaccine and should only give pandemic-related bailouts to companies committed to protecting the environment, helping the most needy and the ‘common good’, Pope Francis said.
“It would be sad if the rich are given priority for the Covid-19 vaccine. It would be sad if the vaccine becomes property of this or that nation, if it is not universal and for everyone,” Francis said at his weekly general audience.
“The pandemic is a crisis and one never exits from a crisis returning to the way it was before,” Francis said.
“Either we leave better, or we leave worse. We have to leave better in order to tackle social injustices and environmental degradation.”
2020-08-19 16:48:33
China and the United States will each allow air carriers to double current flights to eight per week between the world’s two largest economies, the US Transportation Department said.
The department said it will allow four Chinese passenger airlines currently flying to the United States to double flights to eight weekly round-trips, as China has agreed to allow US carriers to double flights to China.
US carriers voluntary halted flights to China after the coronavirus outbreak. President Donald Trump on January 31 barred nearly all non-US citizens from traveling to the United States from China.
2020-08-19 16:36:35
Italy is working on identifying investment and reform projects to tie in with European Union financial support and will present its recovery plan by mid-October, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told a newspaper on Wednesday.
“We will pay great attention to material and immaterial infrastructure and aim to invest in schools, universities and research. We will also use the opportunity to improve the efficiency of public administration and justice,” he told the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano.
Conte said he also backed calls from former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi to strengthen instruments aimed at bringing greater stability to the euro area.
2020-08-19 16:21:16
Authorities in Indonesia’s capital are experimenting with some shock tactics to fight COVID-19, by displaying an empty coffin at a busy intersection as a reminder of the dangers of the highly contagious virus.
The words “COVID-19 victim” are painted red on the casket on display in one district of Jakarta, which is the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in Indonesia.
A manikin wearing a protective suit, mask and face-shield, stands by the faux coffin, while a board underneath displays the latest local district’s infection and death tally.
“Maybe the action taken by the leadership is a bit extreme but this is how we hope to raise awareness,” said Djaharuddin, chief of Jakarta’s Mampang Prapatan subdistrict.
“Infection cases increase day by day, but people still ignore the health protocols,” added Djaharuddin, who uses one name.
“Setting up the coffin helps people to stay alert of the situation so that they can change their behaviour.”
2020-08-19 15:55:30
Russia reported 4,828 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, pushing its nationwide tally to 937,321, the fourth largest in the world.
Russia's coronavirus taskforce said 117 people had died over the last 24 hours, bringing its official death toll to 15,989.
2020-08-19 15:35:57
India reported more than 64,000 new cases of the novel coronavirus in a single day, with more than 1,000 deaths in the same period, federal health ministry data showed on Wednesday.
The world’s second-most populous country had 64,531 new infections, which took the virus tally to 2.8 million. The number of deaths rose 1,092 to 52,889.
India is third behind Brazil and the United States in terms of total number of cases and the outbreak has been spreading steadily from urban areas to smaller towns, where health infrastructure is rickety.
2020-08-19 15:15:34
Australia has signed a deal with drugmaker AstraZeneca to secure a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the prime minister said, joining a growing list of countries lining up supplies of the drug.
AstraZeneca’s candidate is seen as a frontrunner in the global race to deliver an effective vaccine against the coronavirus that has killed more than 770,000 people and infected nearly 22 million, according to a Reuters tally.
“Under this deal we have secured early access for every Australian,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in an emailed statement.
“If this vaccine proves successful we will manufacture and supply vaccines straight away under our own steam and make it free for 25 million Australians.”
Read more here.
2020-08-19 14:40:11
The British government has said it would expand its COVID-19 national testing study, with an aim of reaching 400,000 people to provide weekly data on the spread of the infection and better locate future local outbreaks.
The Department of Health and Social Care said in a statement on Wednesday that it would initially test 150,000 people in England per fortnight by October, up from 28,000 people now, aiming to eventually reach 400,000 across the United Kingdom.
The testing survey, undertaken by the Office for National Statistics, would also be extended to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
2020-08-19 14:15:15
Ukraine registered 1,967 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, officials said on Wednesday, a new daily record for infections in the country.
The data given by the national council of security and defence surpassed the previous single-day record of 1,847, reported last week.
Total cases are at 96,403, with 2,144 deaths.
Infections have risen sharply in August prompting authorities to reimpose some restrictions
2020-08-19 13:20:00
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,510 to 226,914, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by seven to 9,243, the tally showed
2020-08-19 12:40:03
South Korea reported its highest daily rise in novel coronavirus cases since early March as outbreaks from churches around the capital spread, prompting a warning of a nationwide wave of infections.
The 297 new infections mark the sixth straight day of triple-digit increases in a country that has managed to blunt several previous outbreaks.
Nearly 90% of the new cases appeared in the capital, Seoul, and surrounding areas, raising concern of the rapid spread of the virus in a metropolitan area of more than 25 million people.
At least 166 of the new infections are linked to the Sarang Jeil Church, taking the number of cases from it to 623.
Authorities have mobilised some 8,500 police to trace another 600 members of the church’s congregation who should be in isolation, and they are trying to test all of its 4,000 members.
2020-08-19 11:45:40
Australia's second most populous state of Victoria on Wednesday said 12 people had died from the new coronavirus in the last 24 hours and reported 216 new cases.
Victoria reported 222 cases a day earlier, its lowest one-day rise in a month, and 17 deaths.
The state, which has become the epicentre of Australia's latest COVID-19 outbreak, has seen a slowdown in new cases in recent days after authorities two weeks ago imposed a nightly curfew and ordered large parts of the state's economy to close.
2020-08-19 10:40:28
Pakistan on Wednesday reported 613 new cases of the novel coronavirus taking the nationwide tally to 290,445.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,212 cases in AJK, 12,370 in Balochistan, 2,565 in GB, 15,412 in Islamabad, 35,401 in KP, 95,742 in Punjab and 12,6743 cases in Sindh.
The country also reported 11 more fatalities from the virus, taking the death toll to 6,201.
So far 272,128 patients have recovered from coronavirus in Pakistan with the total number of active COVID-19 cases in the country currently stand at 12,116.
2020-08-19 10:10:22
Brazil reported 47,784 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 1,352 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Tuesday.
Brazil has now registered 3,407,354 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 109,888, according to ministry data, marking the world's worst coronavirus outbreak after the United States.
2020-08-19 09:35:04
Coronavirus cases in the Americas have reached almost 11.5 million and over 400,000 people have died as a result of the pandemic, the WHO regional director Carissa Etienne said on Tuesday.
Speaking in a virtual briefing from Washington with other Pan American Health Organization directors, Etienne said the region continues to carry the highest burden of the disease, with 64% of officially reported global deaths despite having 13% of the world's population. The biggest drivers of the case counts are the United States and Brazil, she said.
2020-08-18 23:59:09
Ireland significantly tightened its nationwide coronavirus restrictions to try to rein in a surge in cases, urging everyone to restrict visitors to their homes, avoid public transport and older people to limit their contacts.
A spike in cases over the last three weeks, after Ireland had one of Europe’s lowest infection rates for several weeks, pushed its 14-day cumulative cases per 100,000 of population to 26, and led to the first local lockdown last week.
The 190 new cases on Tuesday, the second highest daily rise since early May, took the rate of growth in the last two weeks to the fourth highest in Europe and meant infections would inevitably spread to the most vulnerable if it continued, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said.
“We are at another critical moment,” Martin told a news conference, saying the new measures would stay in place until at least Sept. 13.
Ireland has adopted one of the most cautious approaches in Europe in fighting the virus, reopening its economy at a slower pace and keeping many restrictions in place for longer.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-18 23:45:11
Ireland will reopen schools for the first time since March and the aim of new restrictions to slow the spread of coronavirus is to make sure key parts of the economy remain open, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Tuesday.
Ireland significantly tightened its nationwide coronavirus restrictions on Tuesday to rein in an increase in cases, urging everyone to restrict visitors to their homes, avoid public transport and for older people to limit their contacts.
“Schools are so important to children in general, to society, to the economy as well, that we want our schools to reopen, and our schools will reopen,” Martin told a news conference.
2020-08-18 23:36:27
In the latest wave of panic-buying triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, South African smokers on Tuesday snapped up all the cigarettes they could lay their hands on after the lifting of a five-month ban designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
As part of a broader easing of restrictions, President Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday announced the end of a ban on sales of tobacco products and alcohol, effective from midnight on Monday.
Customers, wary of shortages or future bans, bought whatever they could on Tuesday, in scenes reminiscent of panic-buying of groceries at the start of the country’s lockdown in March.
“People are not buying packets, they are buying cartons,” said an executive at a Pick N Pay Express store, who did not want to be named.
“I have a feeling that we may go back to level 3 (higher alert level), that is why I am buying a few packs,” a customer queuing at a tobacco store in Johannesburg’s Melville suburb said, again asking not to be named.
Many shoppers faced empty shelves as companies struggled to fulfil restocking orders.
2020-08-18 23:17:52
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of deaths due to the new coronavirus had risen by 520 to 169,870 and reported 5,422,242 cases, an increase of 40,117 cases from its previous count.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on Aug. 17 compared with its previous report a day earlier.
2020-08-18 22:59:20
The French health ministry reported 2,238 confirmed new coronavirus infections, less than recent daily highs but still at levels last seen during the March-May lockdown imposed to stem the spread of the disease.
On Monday, when the number of reported cases typically falls sharply due to a lag in weekend test results, the ministry had reported just 493 new cases, after over 3,000 each on Sunday and Saturday and over 2,500 per day last Wednesday through Friday.
The seven-day moving average of the case count, which smooths out daily reporting irregularities, has now been above 2,000 for five consecutive days, a level that was last seen around the middle of April.
2020-08-18 22:48:19
Turkey’s death toll from the coronavirus rose by 20 on Tuesday to 6,016, health ministry data showed, with the total number of identified cases rising to 251,805.
The data showed that 1,263 new cases were identified in the last 24 hours, rising from 1,233 a day earlier.
2020-08-18 22:31:37
Federal Minister for Science and Technology Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said the federal cabinet today granted permission to export N-95 and surgical masks.
In a tweet, the minister stated that these were the last items in the list of Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) that were earlier banned for export.
Hussain said when the first COVID-19 case appeared in Pakistan on February 26, we were importing all PPE items.
But, today, Pakistan has become a major exporter of COVID-19 related items, he added.
2020-08-18 22:16:32
Lebanon’s interior ministry ordered businesses across the country to shut down for two weeks and enforced an overnight curfew from Friday after a rise in coronavirus infections.
Tuesday’s decision allows for clearing rubble, making repairs and giving out aid in neighbourhoods demolished by the August 4 blast in Beirut. The airport will remain open, with travelers having to take a PCR test before boarding.
Lebanon has registered record numbers of daily infections that have crossed 400, with its tally on Monday standing at 9,337 cases and 105 deaths since February.
Already deep in financial crisis, Lebanon was struggling with a COVID-19 spike before the huge blast at Beirut port killed at least 178 people and pushed the government to resign.
The warehouse explosion damaged many hospitals and overwhelmed them with more than 6,000 wounded. It put about half of 55 medical centres across Beirut out of service.
All markets, malls, gyms and pools - among other private businesses - will have to close during the lockdown, the ministry said on Tuesday. The curfew will extend from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. local time, exempting workers in the medical and food sectors, as well as the army, diplomats and journalists.
2020-08-18 21:59:45
Easing in with virtual classrooms would be better in parts of the country that have a coronavirus infection positivity rate of more than 10%, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert, said.
Fauci said that the default position should be to try and reopen schools for the psychological health of children, but added that a unilateral approach to reopening schools could not be taken.
“To make a statement on one side vs the other and take the country as a whole won’t work — we’re so heterogeneous with the infections,” Fauci said in a virtual conference hosted by health information website Healthline.
2020-08-18 21:45:15
France will make face masks compulsory in the workplace from next month, the government said Tuesday as it moved to add open-plan offices to a growing list of places where people must cover up to halt the quickening spread of the coronavirus.
By the time people in France return to work after the August summer holidays, masks will be required gear in all shared, indoor work spaces, including meeting rooms, corridors, change rooms and open-plan offices, Labour Minister Elisabeth Borne told AFP.
Borne met labour and business representatives Tuesday to discuss the new measure, which she said was based on the advice of the government's public health council.
It took into account a growing scientific consensus that the coronavirus is transmitted not only in large drops projected when a person coughs or sneezes, but also in smaller ones that can remain suspended in air breathed out by infected people, she said.
France has already made mask-wearing obligatory on public transport and in enclosed shared public spaces such as shops and government offices, but has left their use in offices to the discretion of employers until now.
This was criticised by a group of medical experts in an open letter in Liberation newspaper, in which they compared virus accumulation in enclosed spaces to "cigarette smoke".
"And the more the virus accumulates in the air — either because of a long exposure time or because of a large number of excreters — the more we risk contamination," they said.
2020-08-18 21:28:47
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department says 64 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 35,337.
The department also reported three more deaths, taking the death toll to 1,242.
2020-08-18 21:17:43
The United Kingdom recorded 1,089 new positive cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, up from 713, government figures showed.
A further 12 people died after testing positive for the coronavirus within 28 days.
The UK has recorded more than 1,000 daily cases on eight out of the last 10 days.
2020-08-18 20:59:57
Austria is expanding its travel warning for the Spanish mainland to include the Balearic islands, such as Mallorca and Ibiza, because of an increase in coronavirus infections there, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Tuesday.
The travel warning for the popular tourist region will take effect on Monday, meaning that people arriving in Austria from that day will have to present a negative coronavirus test or else go into quarantine until they are tested.
2020-08-18 20:44:20
2020-08-18 20:28:09
Dozens of doctors in at least two of Kenya’s 47 counties have gone on strike over delayed salaries, inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for handling COVID-19 patients and lack of medical insurance, a union official told Reuters.
Healthcare workers say they have not been given adequate PPE, but the government has said it has distributed enough to go round.
Doctors in western Homa Bay and central Embu had gone on strike over delayed or missing salary payments, lack of promotion, missing medical insurance and no hazard bonus, Allan Ochanji, vice chairman of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, told Reuters.
Doctors who contracted COVID-19 had been forced to pay out of pocket for their own treatment, he told Reuters in an interview.
“We have colleagues who have contracted COVID, they have been in isolation, they have had to foot the bills, despite the fact that they contracted COVID while on duty,” Ochanji said.
“We have tried to engage the health workers,” he said. “They have not heeded our pleas.”
“Many patients are now going to private hospitals, or doing over-the-counter medication,” he said.
2020-08-18 20:15:08
2020-08-18 19:59:14
Nations that hoard possible COVID-19 vaccines while excluding others will deepen the pandemic, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, issuing a last-ditch call for countries to join a global vaccine pact.
“We need to prevent vaccine nationalism,” Tedros told a virtual briefing. “Sharing finite supplies strategically and globally is actually in each country’s national interest.”
2020-08-18 19:47:53
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's education department issued SOPs for reopening schools as Pakistan begins to ease coronavirus restrictions after a drop in infections.
The department, in a notification, said that the teachers have been assigned the task for the implementation of SOPs after reopening. "In the schools, social distancing will be observed."
Mask has been made compulsory for students and teachers, the department said, adding that it would be better if assemblies were avoided.
The department said that in case a student exhibited symptoms of COVID-19, they should be sent on leave for seven days, meanwhile, students who test positive should be sent on a 14 day leave.
2020-08-18 19:31:16
Surveys done by the Institute for Public Opinion Research (IPOR) and Pulse Consultant (PC) have revealed that a majority of respondents are satisfied overall with the government's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, The News reported.
According to The News, the sample size surveyed by both companies was around 4,000.
The survey questions revolved around national challenges, economic problems, the budget and which leader respondents think can address the many issues faced by the country as a result of the pandemic.
For PC's survey, about 47% said they are satisfied with the federal government's COVID-19 response, while 37% thought "it left much to be desired", according to The News. The rest gave a mixed opinion on the matter.
For the survey conducted by IPOR, 51% provided positive feedback for the government's handling, whereas 42% felt negatively about it. The remaining 7% did not respond to the question.
As far as provincial performance goes, respondents to the surveys gave a 31% disapproval rating to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 39% to Punjab, 41% to Sindh, and 45% to Balochistan.
The poll overall found that 63% were unhappy with the budget for FY2020-21, finding it inadequate and one that did not offer any relief.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-18 19:15:39
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday urged Germans to stick to rules aimed at controlling the coronavirus, such as wearing masks, to ensure schools can stay open and Europe’s biggest economy continues its recovery from lockdown.
A rise in cases in the last couple of weeks has caused alarm among some virologists and politicians in Germany, and Merkel made clear that now was not the time to let up.
“The good news is if we stick to the rules, a lot of public life is possible,” Merkel said on a trip to the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
“If the numbers go back down we can open up more. If they don’t, or rise, we must ask what is needed and in any case a further easing of measures cannot take place now,” she said.
“This is not optional regulation - it is a must,” she said.
2020-08-18 18:59:39
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said the province recorded 318 new infections and five deaths from coronavirus.
The province's overall cases have reached126,743 and death toll stands at2,336 he said.
2020-08-18 18:46:38
Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing handed over 1,000 ventilators to Chairman National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Lt Gen Muhammad Afzal.
Speaking on the occasion, Chairman NDMA Lt Gen Muhammad Afzal said China has extended unprecedented help to Pakistan to contain the pandemic.
2020-08-18 18:37:30
Clint Parry ransacked every kitchen cupboard and scoured all corners of his fridge during lockdown in Detroit, hunting for lost ingredients and leftovers to whip up meals.
The 33-year-old is one of many people across the world to have embraced thriftiness and cut down on food waste during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to experts. They say the new habits, if maintained, will provide a major boost in tackling another global crisis: climate change.
“We are using virtually all of our leftovers, where we used to waste food because we would forget to pack it and just pick up fast food on a lunch break,” said Parry, who is married and works as a master model builder at Legoland in Michigan.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that a third of the world’s food is wasted every year. Forests are cleared, fuel is burnt and packaging in produced just to provide food which is thrown away. Meanwhile, rotting food in landfills releases more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
As a result, food waste is responsible for around 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a similar amount to road transportation.
“The next crisis will be the climate crisis and the best thing you can do as a consumer is reduce food waste,” said Toine Timmermans, program manager for sustainable food chains at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-18 18:18:27
Connecticut will release the results of an independent review of its early approach to nursing homes ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, tackling the source of most of its deaths and the main blight on its COVID-19 response.
Unique in some ways, Connecticut’s experience could prove especially instructive. It adopted a novel approach to keeping discharged COVID-19 hospital patients from re-entering nursing homes and ousted its health commissioner in May, exposing bureaucratic infighting that may have hindered its response.
“By no means do we get the A grade,” said Sten H. Vermund, dean of the Yale School of Public Health. “I think most of us wished that we had been more aggressive and more savvy in predicting the inevitability of the wave through our state.”
Read complete story here.
2020-08-18 17:59:41
Australia has signed a deal with drugmaker AstraZeneca to secure a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the Prime Minister said, joining a growing list of countries lining up supplies of the drug.
AstraZeneca’s candidate is seen as a frontrunner in the global race to deliver an effective vaccine against the coronavirus that has killed more than 770,000 people and infected nearly 22 million, according to a Reuters tally.
With several countries moving to secure supplies that some fear may lead to a global shortage, Australia said it had signed a letter of intent with AstraZeneca to produce and distribute enough doses for its population.
“Under this deal we have secured early access for every Australian,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in an emailed statement.
“If this vaccine proves successful we will manufacture and supply vaccines straight away under our own steam and make it free for 25 million Australians.”
2020-08-18 17:46:39
National supply deals in the event of the development of a successful vaccine against the coronavirus should fit a global approach, World Health Organization senior adviser Bruce Aylward said.
World leaders pledged in late April to accelerate work on tests, drugs and vaccines against COVID-19 and to share them around the globe under a WHO-led initiative known as the ACT (Access to COVID-19 Tools) Accelerator.
2020-08-18 17:27:48
The proportion of people in Britain suffering with depression has almost doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic, official data showed.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said 19% of adults reported some form of depression during June, compared with 10% in the nine months to March 2020. Stress and anxiety were the most common types of depression listed by people, it said.
The data raises questions about the wider public health costs of a pandemic that has already left Britain with the highest excess mortality rate among major European countries, according to a recent ONS analysis.
Adults who were young, female, disabled or unable to afford an unexpected expense were most vulnerable to depression during the pandemic, the figures showed.
“This report from the ONS presents some worrying data on the rise of depressive symptoms during the pandemic,” said Elaine Fox, professor of cognitive and affective psychology at the University of Oxford.
Adults who told the ONS they would be unable to afford an unexpected expense of 850 pounds ($1,119) were more likely to experience some form of depression, the data showed.
“These economic factors are likely to play an important role in the nation’s mental health in the coming months and years,” Fox said.
2020-08-18 17:18:59
The religious scholars of different Islamic schools of thought and government have formed a consensus over SOPs to mitigate the spread of coronavirus during Muharram processions, Radio Pakistan reported.
The decision was made during a consultative meeting chaired by Minister for Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony, Noor-ul-Haq Qadri in Islamabad.
According to the SOPs, only licensed and traditional processions will be allowed and wearing of masks and use of hand sanitisers will be mandatory.
2020-08-18 16:59:34
Britain’s government said it had subsidised more than 35 million restaurant meals over the past two weeks as part of a temporary programme to encourage diners to support the hospitality industry as it reopened after the coronavirus pandemic.
Under the “Eat Out to Help Out” programme, restaurants, pubs and cafes can discount food prices by 50%, up to 10 pounds ($13) per diner, with the government paying the difference.
The discount applies on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays in August.
Around 80% of hospitality firms stopped trading in April, with 1.4 million workers furloughed, the highest of any sector, the finance ministry said.
The sector began to reopen to diners in England on July 4.
2020-08-18 16:43:13
Minister of Punjab for School Education Murad Ras met the owner of private schools where the latter presented SOPs and safety measures for reopening schools.
The minister stressed that the children must be kept safe as the province mulls reopening schools, Ras said, adding that schools will be allowed to open for five days to train teachers.
"We are considering to operate schools in shifts and alternate days," he said, adding that a meeting, in the first week of September will take place to mull over reopening schools.
2020-08-18 16:29:18
Hospitals in Lebanon are reaching maximum capacity to treat coronavirus patients, the health minister said after a deadly blast earlier this month overwhelmed clinics and triggered a spike in virus cases.
"Public and private hospitals in the capital in particular have a very limited capacity, whether in terms of beds in intensive care units or respirators," the minister, Hamad Hassan, told a press conference.
"We are on the brink, we don't have the luxury to take our time," he warned, urging authorities to take the "hard decision" to impose a new two-week lockdown to stem the spread of the virus.
Lebanon has seen a spike in coronavirus-related cases and deaths in recent weeks, and they have hit new records in the aftermath of the massive explosion that ripped through large parts of Beirut on August 4.
The disaster killed 177 people and wounded more than 6,500, many hit by falling debris and flying glass as windows shattered.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-18 16:17:31
Cases of type 1 diabetes among children in a small UK study almost doubled during the peak of Britain’s COVID-19 epidemic, suggesting a possible link between the two diseases that needs more investigation, scientists said.
While the study is based on only a handful of cases, it is the first to link COVID-19 and new-onset type 1 diabetes in children, and doctors should be on the look-out, the Imperial College London researchers said.
“Our analysis shows that during the peak of the pandemic the number of new cases of type 1 diabetes in children was unusually high in two of the hospitals (we studied) compared to previous years,” said Karen Logan, who co-led the study.
“When we investigated further, some of these children had active coronavirus or had previously been exposed to the virus.”
Logan said previous reports from China and Italy had noted that children were being diagnosed in hospitals with new-onset type 1 diabetes during the pandemic.
This study, published in the Diabetes Care journal, analysed data from 30 children in London hospitals diagnosed with new-onset type 1 diabetes during the first peak of the pandemic — around double the cases seen in this period in previous years.
2020-08-18 16:00:11
Russia reported 4,748 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, pushing its nationwide tally to 932,493, the fourth largest in the world.
The country's coronavirus crisis response centre said 132 people had died of the disease in the last 24 hours, bringing the official coronavirus death toll to 15,872
2020-08-18 15:40:10
India's interior minister Amit Shah was hospitalised again on Tuesday after complaining of fatigue and body ache, four days after he said he had recovered from COVID-19.
Shah was admitted to the government-run All India Institute for Medical Sciences in the capital New Delhi, the hospital said in a statement.
"He is comfortable and continuing his work from the hospital," it said, adding he had tested negative for COVID-19.
2020-08-18 15:15:33
New Zealand reported 13 new confirmed cases of coronavirus on Tuesday compared with nine a day earlier as the Pacific nation battles to contain an outbreak in the biggest city of Auckland.
Twelve cases are linked to the existing virus cluster in Auckland, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said in a media briefing in Wellington.
Auckland, home to nearly a third of New Zealand's 5 million people, remains in lockdown due to a flare up in infections there. Social distancing rules are in place in other towns and cities.
New Zealand has so far recorded just under 1,300 confirmed cases and 22 deaths.
2020-08-18 14:40:32
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak has tested positive for the coronavirus, the country's prime minister said Tuesday.
The announcement comes on the eve of a videoconference by the ministerial monitoring committee of OPEC and its allies in which Novak was due to take part.
"Unfortunately, Alexander Valentinovich Novak has been taken ill with the coronavirus", Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told a government meeting in Blagoveshchensk, in Russia's Far East, the Interfax news agency said.
Several Russian political figures have been infected with the virus in recent months, including Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and some ministers and lawmakers.
2020-08-18 14:00:20
China reported 22 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, same as the tally a day earlier, the country's health authority said.
All of the new infections were imported cases, the National Health Commission said in a statement, making it the second straight day for zero new locally transmitted cases. There were no new deaths.
2020-08-18 12:50:13
Australia's second most populous state of Victoria on Tuesday reported 17 deaths from the new coronavirus in the last 24 hours, a day after recording its deadliest day of the pandemic with 25 casualties.
The state reported 222 new daily coronavirus cases compared with 282 on Monday.
2020-08-18 12:10:37
Brazil reported 19,373 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 684 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Monday.
Brazil has now registered 3,359,570 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 108,536, according to ministry data, marking the world's worst coronavirus outbreak after the United States.
2020-08-18 11:00:10
Pakistan on Tuesday reported 617 new cases, taking the nationwide tally of confirmed cases to 289,832.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,199 cases in AJK, 12,321 in Balochistan, 2,538 cases in GB, 15,401 in Islamabad, 35,337 in KP, 95,611 in Punjab and 12,6425 cases in Sindh.
The country also reported 15 new fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the tally to 6,190.
As of now, there are 270,009 recovered patients in the country with 13,633 active cases.
2020-08-18 10:45:09
The spread of the coronavirus is being increasingly driven by people aged in their 20s, 30s and 40s and many are not aware that they have been infected, the World Health Organisation’s regional director for the Western Pacific said on Tuesday.
“This increases the risk of spillovers to the more vulnerable: the elderly, the sick people in long-term care, people who live in densely populated areas and underserved areas,” Takeshi Kasai told a virtual briefing.
2020-08-17 23:59:34
The Balochistan health department says 26 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 12,321.
2020-08-17 23:46:22
Turkey’s total number of coronavirus cases rose to more than 250,000, with 1,233 new cases identified in the past 24 hours, health ministry data showed, as the death toll from the virus neared 6,000.
The data showed 22 people had died in the past 24 hours in Turkey, bringing the death toll to 5,996, while the total number of recoveries rose to 231,971.
“The majority of new patients can be easily treated. But the spread increases the number of seriously ill patients whose treatment is difficult,” Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter.
2020-08-17 23:36:26
Spain diagnosed 1,833 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said, below Friday’s post-lockdown record of 2,987 but more than three times the average seen in July.
Daily infection statistics tend to dip on Mondays due to fewer diagnoses taking place on Sunday.
Cumulative cases, which include results from antibody tests on patients who may have already recovered, rose to 359,082, with 32,389 detected in the past seven days, the ministry said.
Since lifting its strict lockdown at the end of June, Spain has struggled to contain a spiralling infection rate, despite mandatory mask-wearing enforced across the country and other restrictions.
The government’s most senior coronavirus expert, Fernando Simon, said more testing was part of the reason for the surge.
“We are detecting much of what is out there. I wouldn’t say 100% ... but between 60% and 70%,” he told a news conference, adding that the figure was slightly below 10% during the epidemic’s March-April peak.
2020-08-17 23:10:40
France reported 493 new COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours, sharply down from a caseload of above 3,000 each on the two previous days, but hospitalisations for the respiratory disease rose for a third day in a row.
New case figures published on Mondays have consistently been lower than weekend tallies since the start of the outbreak as fewer coronavirus tests are conducted on Sundays, so the dip in infections does not necessarily signal a change of trend.
The seven-day moving average of new infections, which smoothes out reporting irregularities, stood at 2,322, above the 2,000 threshold for the fourth day in a row - a sequence unseen since April 20, when France was in the midst of one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns to contain the spread of the virus.
France’s cumulative total of infections has reached 219,029.
With infections increasing anew, French authorities are scrambling to avoid a second, economically damaging nationwide lockdown. The government is set to propose on Tuesday that masks be worn in shared indoor workspaces while Paris and Marseille, France’s two biggest cities again declared “red zones” of infection, have expanded areas where mask-wearing is mandatory.
2020-08-17 22:55:07
Nigeria will reopen its airports for international flights beginning on Aug. 29, its aviation minister said on Monday.
The airports have been closed since March 23 to all but essential international flights as part of the country’s efforts to combat the new coronavirus.
2020-08-17 22:38:11
The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) has green-signalled the Phase III clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine to be conducted by the National Institute of Health (NIH).
According to a statement from the NIH, the medical facility has obtained "the formal approval from DRAP for Phase III Clinical Trial of Recombinant Novel Coronavirus Vaccine Adenovirus Type 5 vector (Ad5-nCoV) developed by CanSinoBio and Beijing Institute of Biotechnology China [BIB]".
“This will be the first ever phase III clinical trial for any vaccine in Pakistan.”
The Chinese biopharmaceutical, CanSino Biologics Inc, has already been conducting the trial in various countries, including China, Russia, Chile, Argentina, and shortly in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
The Phase III clinical trial of CanSinoBIO Ad5-nCoV, the coronavirus vaccine, in Pakistan would be carried out under NIH Executive Director Maj Gen Aamer Ikram after AJM Pharma Pvt Ltd CEO Adnan Hussain signed an agreement to collaborate with the Islamabad-based facility.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-17 22:25:01
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department says 122 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 35,337.
2020-08-17 22:06:53
Global equities edged higher and perceived safe havens such as US Treasuries gained Monday as investors weighed further financial stimulus in China against tightening economic restrictions in Italy after a resurgence of coronavirus cases among young people.
Chinese blue chips led the way with gains of 2.35% as the country's central bank provided more medium-term loans to the financial system. Beijing also granted a patent for a CanSino Biologics COVID-19 vaccine candidate, Ad5-nCOV.
Coronavirus cases in Italy have doubled over the past two weeks, prompting the country to reimpose restrictions on bars and nightclubs.
Rabobank strategist Bas Van Geffen said the past few months had seen optimism build about a strong economic bounce-back, but the reimposition of restrictions was an indication of challenges.
“We have already cautioned that this is not going to be a V- shaped recovery ... and perhaps this is a sort of a sign to the markets that it is not going to be (a quick recovery)”, Van Geffen said.
2020-08-17 21:51:07
US drug developer Novavax said it started a mid-stage study of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa, as the country experiences a surge in coronavirus cases.
South Africa is the fifth worst affected country with 583,653 coronavirus cases and 11,677 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.
“Because South Africa is experiencing a winter surge of COVID-19 disease, this important Phase 2b clinical trial has the potential to provide an early indication of efficacy,” Novavax research chief Gregory Glenn said.
The trial of Novavax’s NVX-CoV2373, backed by a $15 million grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was being conducted in two separate groups, one comprising 2,665 healthy volunteers and the other, 240 HIV-positive adults.
Novavax expects its vaccine, once approved, would be supplied to South Africa through a deal signed earlier this year with the Serum Institute of India to develop and commercialize NVX-CoV2373.
The vaccine candidate is one of nearly 30 globally being tested in human clinical trials.
2020-08-17 21:36:44
As coronavirus cases surge in Libya, medics and officials working with a health system wrecked by years of division and war are warning that the pandemic could be slipping out of their control.
The conflict has also restricted movement within Libya, and confirmed cases remained low during the first months of the outbreak. Now, infections are jumping by up to several hundred per day to reach a total of nearly 8,200, including more than 150 deaths.
Hotspots include the capital Tripoli and the large port city of Misrata in the west, and the city of Sabha in the south.
Medics say the virus is spreading because people have carried on attending large gatherings including weddings and funerals, and are not practising physical distancing.
Ahmed al-Hasi, spokesman for the state medical committee responsible for countering the virus in eastern Libya, said the public needed to take precautions, or else medical staff with limited resources would become overwhelmed.
“They need to know that the virus is real, the casualties are real, the deaths are real,” Hasi said.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-17 21:16:19
World number two Simona Halep of Romania will not travel to New York to play in the US Open due to COVID-19 concerns, she said on Monday, leaving the women’s draw at the Grand Slam tournament without six of the world’s top-10 players.
Romanian Halep joined world number one Ash Barty, defending champion Bianca Andreescu, Elina Svitolina, Kiki Bertens and Belinda Bencic in skipping the event at Flushing Meadows.
"After weighing up all the factors involved and with the exceptional circumstances in which we are living, I have decided that I will not travel to New York to play the US Open," Halep, the reigning Wimbledon champion, wrote on Twitter here
“I always said I would put my health at the heart of my decision and I therefore prefer to stay and train in Europe. I know the USTA and WTA have worked tirelessly to put on a safe event and I wish everyone there a successful tournament.”
2020-08-17 20:59:18
British Airways said the retirement of its jumbo jet fleet will start on Tuesday when the first of its 31 remaining Boeing 747s takes off from Heathrow and heads to Spain to be scrapped.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced BA to bring forward the retirement of the 747, which with its humped fuselage and four engines is the world’s most easily recognized jetliner. The airline said in July they would all go with immediate effect. [nL3N2EO1EX]
BA’s first jumbo to face the scrapyard, registration G-CIVD, first entered service in 1994 and last flew in April, when mid-lockdown it flew back from Lagos, Nigeria as part of the UK’s repatriation efforts.
The 747 democratised global air travel in the 1970s, but fell behind modern twin-engine aircraft and now trails newer planes in fuel efficiency, making it expensive to run, particularly during the current travel slump.
2020-08-17 20:45:43
2020-08-17 20:44:40
US home builder confidence rose for a third straight month in August to match a record high as record-low interest rates spur a surge in customer traffic, especially in suburban markets that are growing in appeal as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, data released on Monday showed.
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index rose 6 points to 78, matching a series record set in 1998. The median expectation among 30 economists in a Reuters poll was for a rise to 73 from July’s reading of 72.
NAHB’s measures of both current and future home sales improved.
“Housing has clearly been a bright spot during the pandemic and the sharp rebound in builder confidence over the summer has led NAHB to upgrade its forecast for single-family starts, which are now projected to show only a slight decline for 2020,” said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz. “Single-family construction is benefiting from low interest rates and a noticeable suburban shift in housing demand to suburbs, exurbs and rural markets as renters and buyers seek out more affordable, lower density markets.”
2020-08-17 20:29:23
Nightclubs closed their doors in four more regions of Spain as new measures to curb a rise in COVID-19 infections came into effect, a day after a noisy Madrid protest against virus restrictions.
Spain's most populous region, Andalusia, along with Galicia and Cantabria in the north and Castilla and Leon in the centre were the latest Spanish regions to begin enforcing 11 measures the government unveiled Friday to curb one of the fastest virus growth rates in Europe.
Two other regions, La Rioja and Murcia, began applying the measures on Sunday.
They include the closure of all discos, night clubs and dancing halls while restaurants and bars are required to close by one am, with no new guests allowed in from midnight in a country known for late-night partying.
All of Spain's 17 regional governments, which are responsible for healthcare, agreed to enforce the measures which also include a ban on smoking outdoors in public places when a distance of two metres cannot be maintained and limits on visits to retirement homes.
2020-08-17 20:23:01
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he would volunteer to be among the first to try a Russian vaccine for the novel coronavirus if it proved effective.
Moscow's decision to approve the vaccine and produce the first batches after less than two months of human testing has raised concerns among some scientists considering only about 10% of clinical trials are successful.
Some scientists have said they fear Russia may be putting prestige before safety.
“I’d be the first to be vaccinated,” Lopez Obrador said at his regular morning news conference.
2020-08-17 20:11:49
Sindh recorded 243 infections and nine deaths, taking the overall cases to126,425 and death toll to2,331, the province's chief minister said.
2020-08-17 18:59:15
Islamabad recorded 12 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Bahria Town, the district health officer said.
2020-08-17 19:49:01
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that a plan to reactivate the economy would be presented in two weeks, as the government seeks to bring the country back from a sharp recession sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.
2020-08-17 19:32:43
As home-bound audiences eagerly await new programming during the coronavirus pandemic, Hollywood has been slow to get cameras rolling again, even with quarantined sets and innovations such as love scenes using mannequins.
Only a fraction of movie and TV productions have resumed filming in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States, where coronavirus cases are rising. Actors and crew members are unsure when projects might resume, and some expect they will not return to work until 2021.
Los Angeles County, home to the biggest movie and TV studios, gave a greenlight in June for filming to resume with safeguards. Major unions issued a 36-page report outlining safety measures. Producers had hoped to have many sets working again in August.
The number of film permit requests in the Los Angeles area since mid-June ran about 34 percent of normal. Most of those were for commercials or still photography, according to local organization FilmLA, which said it expected scripted TV and feature film production to pick up in September.
Actor Seth Rogen, who produces TV series and movies with partner Evan Goldberg, said he is exploring international locations, including Bulgaria, for some projects.
“I am not ambitious that any filming is going to be happening in America anytime soon in a way that I’m comfortable with,” Rogen said in an interview this month. “I look to other countries who have dealt with this whole thing much better and think maybe, if they’ll let us in, maybe we can film there.”
Read complete story here.
2020-08-17 19:15:47
Britain urged elderly people and volunteers from Black and Asian minority groups to sign up to a COVID-19 vaccine trial registry to boost efforts to find a working vaccine against the disease that offers protection for higher risk groups.
No COVID-19 vaccine candidate has yet been proven effective against the disease, but around 20 are in clinical trials.
Over 100,000 people have volunteered to take part in vaccine trials, Britain’s business ministry said, but more volunteers are needed to make sure candidate shots work for everyone.
“Protecting those at risk is the only way we will end this pandemic,” said Kate Bingham, chair of the UK Vaccines Taskforce.
“Getting 100,000 volunteers on board is a great start but we need many more people from many different backgrounds that we can call on for future studies if we are to find a vaccine quickly to protect those who need it.”
2020-08-17 18:59:14
The British government is working with regulators on how to resolve an escalating row over the way pupils in England were awarded grades after their exams were cancelled due to COVID-19, with media reports suggesting a change in policy was imminent.
The government has faced days of criticism after its exam regulator used an algorithm to assess grade predictions made by teachers, and lowered those grades for almost 40% of students taking their main school-leaving exams.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government was continuing to work on a solution, and that Johnson had spoken with education minister Gavin Williamson and other officials on Monday morning from his holiday in Scotland.
“The whole of government has been, and continues to work hard to come up with the fairest system possible for pupils,” the spokesman said.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-17 18:46:41
British airline easyJet confirmed it would close three of its bases in the United Kingdom resulting in the loss of up to 670 jobs as the coronavirus pandemic continues to squeeze the travel industry.
EasyJet said in May that it would need to axe 4,500 jobs across Europe to prepare for a smaller travel market due to the pandemic, and is starting that contraction by closing bases at London Stansted, London Southend and Newcastle airports.
The outlook for airlines darkened last week after France joined Spain on Britain’s quarantine list, deterring travel to the two most popular destinations for Britons and dashing hopes for an August recovery.
2020-08-17 18:28:15
2020-08-17 18:15:13
India’s COVID-19 death toll topped the 50,000 mark and the total number of recorded cases neared 2.65 million as the outbreak spread further into smaller towns and rural areas, the latest government data showed.
The world’s second-most populous country recorded 57,981 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, raising the total to 2,647,663, while an additional 941 deaths raised the overall death toll to 50,921.
India is only the third country, behind Brazil and the United States, to record more than 2 million infections, but it has a relatively lower death rate of 1.9 per cent, compared to the world average of 3.5 per cent.
India conducted more than 730,000 tests for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, the Indian Council for Medical Research, the government-run clinical research agency, said on Monday as the country inches toward Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stated goal of 1 million tests a day.
Experts have said India’s testing rates are far too low, and this could obscure the true extent of the coronavirus outbreak.
India has been posting at least 50,000 new cases per day since July 30 as the disease has spread from major cities like Mumbai and Delhi into the impoverished hinterlands of densely populated states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
2020-08-17 17:59:22
2020-08-17 17:45:27
Japan was hit by its biggest economic slump on record in the second quarter as the coronavirus pandemic emptied shopping malls and crushed demand for cars and other exports, bolstering the case for bolder policy action to prevent a deeper recession.
The third straight quarter of declines knocked the size of real gross domestic product (GDP) to decade-low levels, wiping out the benefits brought by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” stimulus policies deployed in late 2012.
While the economy is emerging from the doldrums after lockdowns were lifted in late May, many analysts expect any rebound in the current quarter to be modest as a renewed rise in infections keep consumers’ purse-strings tight.
“The big decline can be explained by the decrease in consumption and exports,” said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.
“I expect growth to turn positive in the July-September quarter. But globally, the rebound is sluggish everywhere except for China.”
2020-08-17 17:27:45
Remittances from Pakistani workers employed abroad hit the highest level for a single month in July, officials said, increasing 36.5% year on year, mostly thanks to less spending on Hajj because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The global economic slowdown had raised fears that remittances, key to Pakistan’s dwindling foreign exchange reserves, would decline given falling employment in countries from where most of the money is sent - particularly Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
But July remittances rose to $2.768 billion, the State Bank of Pakistan said, adding the increase was up 12.2% from June, when remittance numbers were also high.
“More good news for Pakistan economy,” Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted. “Remittances from overseas Pakistanis reached $2768 million in July 2020, highest ever amount in one month in the history of Pakistan.”
Remittances from Saudi Arabia in July amounted to $821.6 million, the United Arab Emirates $538.2 million, the United Kingdom $393.9 million and the United States, $250.6 million.
“Given the impact of COVID-19 globally, this increase in workers remittance is encouraging,” Pakistan’s central bank said in a statement.
2020-08-17 17:14:24
Domino’s Pizza Inc (DPZ.N) and its franchisees would hire more than 20,000 people, including delivery experts and pizza makers, in the United States, the restaurant chain said.
The pizza chain’s move follows those of its peers, including McDonald’s, Chipotle Mexican Grill and Dunkin Brands Group, which have added tens of thousands of workers in recent weeks.
Domino’s said both part-time and full-time positions would also include customer service representatives, managers, and assistant managers.
The company, one of the few food chains to post a sales rise in the latest quarterly results, introduced contactless delivery and ‘carside’ delivery options for carry-out orders to strengthen sales at a time most restaurants have shuttered dine-in areas.
2020-08-17 16:59:12
Almost a week after the discovery of New Zealand’s first locally transmitted coronavirus outbreak in more than three months, its origin remains a mystery.
The Pacific island nation had benefited from its remoteness early in the pandemic, when Ardern swiftly closed off the international border and imposed one of the world’s toughest lockdowns. Those measures stamped out local transmission for 102 days.
Genome testing of the latest batch of infections has confirmed it is a new strain, officials have said, probably from Australia or Britain.
With the clock ticking to get the latest outbreak under control, that has raised the tricky question of how it entered a country that has been largely closed off for months.
Here are some details on what authorities have called the ‘Auckland August cluster’.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-17 16:46:12
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan said the danger of coronavirus was still there and if the people do not follow SOPs it could spread again.
"There is a drop in COVID-19 cases to a huge extent," he said, adding that we keep on using masks.
2020-08-17 16:35:56
Britons bought and sold a record number of homes between mid July and early August as pent-up demand from the coronavirus lockdown and a desire to leave London bucked the usual summer slowdown, industry data showed on Monday.
Property website Rightmove, which says it is used by 90% of British estate agents, reported the highest number of home sales agreed since it began tracking the data more than 10 years ago, with transactions more than 20% higher than the previous record.
“Rather than just a release of existing pent-up demand due to the suspension of the housing market during lockdown, there’s an added layer of additional demand due to people’s changed housing priorities after the experience of lockdown,” Rightmove director Miles Shipside said.
Average asking prices for August - based on data collected from July 12 to Aug. 8 - were 4.6% higher than a year earlier as the normal summer softening in demand failed to materialise.
Only in London was there the typical 2% monthly fall in asking prices, with prices up almost everywhere else in Britain other than London’s commuter belt.
“The out-of-city exodus has helped push prices to record levels in Devon and Cornwall, for example, where working from home means a different lifestyle much closer to your new doorstep,” Shipside said.
2020-08-17 16:22:13
A French theme park has caused an outcry by staging a show attended by 9,000 people, skirting a legal limit on gatherings of over 5,000 imposed to help curb the spread of coronavirus.
Puy du Fou, which organizes re-enactments of French historical events, was permitted to fill 9,000 of its 13,000 seats on Saturday by arranging its open-air stands into three separate blocks divided by Plexiglas screens.
“There are social distancing rules and there are dispensations for the friends of the president. Macron had brought forward the (re-)opening of Puy du Fou (after coronavirus lockdown). Now they are allowed to create coronavirus clusters,” Greens party national secretary Julien Bayou wrote on his Twitter feed.
2020-08-17 16:00:53
Auqaf Department Government of Sindh said that the shrine of Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar has been opened for the general public.
The department said that the shrine had been closed on March 14 due to coronavirus.
The Auqaf department said that no one would be allowed to enter in the shrine without wearing a mask.
2020-08-17 15:34:15
JAKARTA: Indonesia reported 1,821 new coronavirus cases on Monday, bringing its infection total to 141,370, data from government’s COVID-19 task force showed.
The Southeast Asian country also added 57 new deaths, taking its fatalities to 6,207, the highest coronavirus death toll in Southeast Asia.
2020-08-17 15:05:45
MANILA: The Philippines has recorded 3,314 new coronavirus cases and 18 additional deaths from the disease, the health ministry said on Monday.
The country has so far registered a total of 164,474 infections and the death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 2,681, according to ministry data.
2020-08-17 15:02:56
HONG KONG: Hong Kong reported 44 new coronavirus cases on Monday as the government announced an extension to social distancing measures aimed at controlling further spreading of the virus, which has seen a resurgence in the Asian financial hub since early July.
While the number of daily cases have come down from triple digits in recent weeks, authorities have cautioned residents from becoming complacent, warning that the situation remained “severe”.
Restrictions including a ban on dining at restaurants from 6pm and the mandating of masks in all outdoor public areas are set to remain in force for a further seven days until August 25, the government said in a statement on Monday.
Out of the 44 cases recorded on Monday, 31 of them were local transmissions.
Since late January, over 4500 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 69 of whom have died. Monday’s figure was down from Sunday’s 74 cases.
2020-08-17 14:49:16
LA PAZ: Bolivia surpassed 100,000 coronavirus cases on Sunday, the country’s Ministry of Health reported, predicting that the virus would reach its peak there in September.
Bolivia’s confirmed coronavirus infections reached 100,344, the ministry said, and there have been 4,058 deaths since the virus first emerged in the country in early March.
“Cases are climbing steadily, at least in the western side of the country. By the end of the month, we will reach ... 130,000 to 150,000,” Rene Sahonero, the ministry’s director general of hospitals, told state television.
Sahonero said cases had accelerated among Bolivia’s population of 11.6 million after recent protests linked to the postponement of general elections.
The Electoral Court decided in July to postpone the vote until Oct. 18 due to the spread of the coronavirus.
In recent weeks, thousands of people including supporters of unseated former leftist leader Evo Morales have taken part in demonstrations and blocked roads around the country to demand that the polls take place as originally planned on September 6.
The election is being fought between Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS) party and a fragmented conservative opposition, including interim President Jeanine Anez, who took over in a power vacuum last year promising swift new elections.
Bolivia’s government has ordered police and military onto the streets to protect key installations and the transport of medical supplies after more than 30 COVID patients died during the protests due to lack of oxygen.
Among those confirmed to have died of COVID in recent days is the sister of Morales.
The former president, who is in Argentina, said in a tweet that Esther Morales was “like a mother to me” and lamented being unable to return to attend her funeral.
2020-08-17 14:44:11
BEIRUT: Lebanon must shut down for two weeks after a surge in coronavirus infections, the caretaker health minister said on Monday, as the country reels from the massive Beirut port blast.
“We declare today a state of general alert and we need a brave decision to close (the country) for two weeks,” Hamad Hassan told Voice of Lebanon radio.
Lebanon on Sunday registered a record 439 new infections and six more deaths from the virus in 24 hours.
The country, already deep in financial crisis, was struggling with a COVID-19 spike before the August 4 blast that killed at least 178 people, wrecked swathes of the capital and pushed the government to resign.
The warehouse explosion damaged many hospitals and overwhelmed them with more than 6,000 wounded. It put about half of 55 medical centres across Beirut out of service, the World Health Organization (WHO) said last week.
“We are all facing a real challenge and the numbers that were recorded in the last period are shocking,” Hassan said. “The matter requires decisive measures.” Intensive care beds at state and private hospitals were now full, he added.
In comments to Reuters, Hassan said authorities would not close the country’s airport so far, with the rise stemming mostly from within the country.
“The real danger is the spread within society,” he said. “Everyone must be on high alert and take the strictest prevention measures.”
Still, after the blast uprooted nearly a quarter of a million people, the risk of the virus spreading has grown, the WHO has said. The country’s tally now stands at 8,881 cases and 103 deaths since February, according to health ministry data.
2020-08-17 14:06:27
BERLIN: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 561 to 224,014, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The reported death toll rose by one to 9,232, the tally showed.
2020-08-17 13:40:43
2020-08-17 13:32:51
Deputy Commissioner of Islamabad Hamza Shafqat held a meeting with organisers of Majalis in the federal capital.
According to the DC, the the participants of the conference vowed to follow the standard operating procedures during Muharram.
2020-08-17 13:16:17
SHANGHAI: China reported no new local coronavirus cases in the western region of Xinjiang on August 16, according to national data, marking the first time the area’s case count was zero since mid-July.
It marks a new low number for Xinjiang, which had become a hotbed for the virus as cases surged.
China reported on Monday 22 new coronavirus cases in the mainland for August 16, compared with 19 cases a day earlier, the health authority said.
All of the new infections were imported cases, the National Health Commission said in a statement. There were no new deaths.
China also reported 37 new asymptomatic patients, compared with 16 a day earlier.
As of August 16, mainland China had a total of 84,849 confirmed coronavirus cases, it said.
China’s death toll from the coronavirus remained unchanged at 4,634.
2020-08-17 13:06:20
MOSCOW: Russia reported 4,892 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday, pushing its tally so far to 927,745, the fourth largest in the world.
Authorities said 55 people had died across the country in the last 24 hours, increasing Russia’s official coronavirus death toll to 15,740.
2020-08-17 12:44:24
PRAGUE: The Czech Republic’s overall number of coronavirus cases rose above 20,000, as the country tries to contain regional hotspots of the virus.
As of August 16, there were 20,012 cases in the country of 10.7 million, with 121 new cases found on Sunday, the Health Ministry data showed on Monday.
Of the total number of cases identified since the outbreak in March, 13,799 have recovered, while 397 people have died in connection with the COVID-19 illness.
The country has relaxed almost all of the measures implemented to curb the virus, but epidemiologists warned that another wave may arrive in the autumn.
Should that happen, the government has said that it would seek targeted measures in order to avoid the strict lockdown from this spring which brought the economy almost to a halt.
2020-08-17 11:56:46
SEOUL: South Korea warned on Monday of a looming novel coronavirus crisis as new outbreaks flared, including one linked to a church where more than 300 members of the congregation have been infected but hundreds more are reluctant to get tested.
The outbreak linked to the Sarang Jeil Church in Seoul is the country’s biggest in nearly six months and led to a tightening of social distancing rules on Sunday.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 197 new cases as of midnight on Saturday, mostly in the Seoul metropolitan area, marking the fourth day of a three-digit tally.
South Korea has been one of the world’s coronavirus mitigation success stories but it has nevertheless battled persistent spikes in infections. The latest cases brought its total infections to 15,515 including 305 deaths.
“We’re seeing the current situation as an initial stage of a large-scale transmission,” KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong told a briefing.
“We’re facing a crisis where if the current spread isn’t controlled, it would bring an exponential rise in cases, which could in turn lead to the collapse of our medical system and enormous economic damage.”
The outbreak at the Seoul church has revived fears seen in February when authorities struggled to contain an outbreak that emerged in a secretive Christian sect in the city of Daegu and became the country’s deadliest cluster.
As in the earlier case, authorities are facing some reluctance to cooperate and difficulty in tracking some of the members of the congregation.
Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip told reporters earlier the Presbyterian church had provided inaccurate lists of its 4,000 members. While 319 of them had tested positive, more than 600 who authorities want to see in isolation were unaccounted for.
“We’re very concerned,” Kim said, dismissing rumours that authorities wanted to round up church members and would record every test as positive regardless of the truth.
“That’s impossible. We can’t fabricate test results,” he said.
The church is led by a conservative activist, Reverend Jun Kwang-hoon, who has also been organising anti-government rallies calling for the ouster of liberal President Moon Jae-in, raising worry that the virus has been spreading at his protests too.
2020-08-17 11:40:08
Infectious disease expert Faheem Younus dismissed the use of disinfection tunnels and urged people to give free face mask to the people instead.
2020-08-17 11:02:00
Tourists returned to Brazil's iconic spot Christ the Redeemer after it was closed for moths due to the coronavirus pandemic.
2020-08-17 10:45:01
BEIJING: China’s vaccine specialist CanSino Biologics Inc has won a patent approval from Beijing for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate Ad5-nCOV, state media reported, citing documents from the country’s intellectual property regulator.
It is the first COVID-19 vaccine patent granted by China, state-owned newspaper People’s Daily reported on Sunday.
The paper cited documents published by China’s National Intellectual Property Administration saying that the patent was issued on August 11.
Saudi Arabia said this month it plans to begin Phase III clinical trials for the CanSino vaccine. CanSino has said it is also in talks with Russia, Brazil and Chile to launch Phase III trials in those countries.
CanSino’s Hong Kong shares rose around 14% in Monday’s morning session. Its Shanghai shares rose by 6.6% as of midday.
2020-08-17 10:29:49
SYDNEY: The leader of Australia’s New South Wales state apologised on Monday for failing to stop people carrying the novel coronavirus from disembarking from a cruise ship in Sydney in March, triggering what was at the time Australia’s worst outbreak.
The apology from NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian for her government’s poor handling of the outbreak aboard the Ruby Princess came as the number of deaths from a second wave of infection in Victoria state hit a record 25.
Australia has reported 23,500 COVID-19 cases and 421 deaths, far fewer than many other developed nations, but missteps in the handling of the Ruby Princess and possibly also with hotel quarantine in Victoria have proven costly.
“The lessons weren’t learnt soon enough and again I apologise unreservedly on behalf all of those individuals and agencies who made those mistakes,” Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.
A public inquiry in the Ruby Princess outbreak concluded last week that NSW health officials made “inexcusable” mistakes when they allowed about 2,700 passengers, 120 of whom were feeling unwell, to leave the Carnival Corp-owned ship on March 19.
The inquiry found 914 infections could be traced back to the Ruby Princess, mostly among passengers. The outbreak led to 28 deaths.
Berejiklian apologised particularly to the 62 people who contracted the virus from a passenger.
“I can’t imagine what it would be like having a loved one or being someone yourself who continues to suffer and experience trauma as a result,” she said.
The inquiry commissioned by Berejiklian’s government found that NSW health officials failed to ensure the ship knew of heightened screening for the virus, or ensure that sick passengers were isolated in their cabins.
They also failed get quick test results for unwell passengers before they disembarked.
2020-08-17 09:50:06
As coronavirus cases resurfaced in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday postponed the looming election in the country by four weeks to October 17.
She said the return of the virus after 102 days without community transmission had rattled Kiwis and could have discouraged some from casting ballots in a September election.
The centre-left leader, who is riding high in opinion polls, also acknowledged concerns from rivals that curbs on campaigning would unfairly weigh the election in favour of her government.
After spending the weekend consulting party leaders and the Electoral Commission, she chose October 17, the earliest delayed date available to her.
Ardern said the change meant all parties would be campaigning under the same conditions and she would not move the election´s timing again regardless of the situation.
Read more here.
2020-08-17 09:36:15
Pakistan recorded 488 cases and seven new coronavirus deaths, the National Command and Control said on Monday.
So far there are 2,184 cases in AJK, 12,295 in Balochistan, 2,502 in GB, 15,390 in Islamabad, 35,215 in KP, 95,447 in Punjab and 126,182 cases in Sindh.
The country now has 6,175 deaths and of 289,215 confirmed cases of coronavirus
2020-08-17 09:12:26
ROME: Italy is to shut discos and clubs and make it compulsory to wear a mask outdoors in some areas during the night-time in the first reimposition of restrictions as cases of coronavirus pick up across the country, especially among younger people.
New cases in the past week in Italy, the first European country to be hit hard by the coronavirus, were more than double those registered three weeks ago and the median age of people contracting the virus has dropped below 40, data showed.
The new rules will start on Monday — two days after an Italian holiday when many young Italians go out dancing — and will run until early September.
Masks will be required between 6 pm and 6 am in areas close to bars and pubs and where gatherings are more likely.
“We cannot nullify the sacrifices made in past months. Our priority must be that of opening schools in September, in full safety,” Health Minister Roberto Speranza said on Facebook.
Speranza on Saturday urged young people to be as cautious as possible as “if they infect their parents and their grandparents, they risk creating real damage”.
The government had kept clubs open despite mounting criticism that they attracted large crowds, that social distancing was not being respected and masks were not being worn.
The industry has yearly revenues of 4 billion euros, the sector’s lobby group Silb said, calling on the government for support.
Industry Minister Stefano Patuanelli conceded there would be economic damage, but said he saw no alternative.
On Sunday, 479 new cases were confirmed, down from 629 on Saturday, with nightlife, the return of holidaymakers, and younger generations flouting social distancing rules being blamed by medical experts for the recent hike.
2020-08-17 08:50:15
LONDON: Britain on Monday urged elderly people and volunteers from Black and Asian minority groups to sign up to a COVID-19 vaccine trial registry to boost efforts to find a working vaccine against the disease that offers protection against higher risk groups.
No COVID-19 vaccine candidate has yet been proven effective against the disease, but around 20 are in clinical trials.
Over 100,000 people have volunteered to take part in vaccine trials, Britain’s business ministry said, but more volunteers are needed to make sure candidate shots work for everyone.
“Protecting those at risk is the only way we will end this pandemic,” said Kate Bingham, chair of the UK Vaccines Taskforce.
“Getting 100,000 volunteers on board is a great start but we need many more people from many different backgrounds that we can call on for future studies if we are to find a vaccine quickly to protect those who need it.”
The government said it was particularly keen for over 65s, frontline health and care workers and people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds to sign up.
A study last week showed that minority ethnic groups were two to three times more likely to have had COVID-19 compared to white people in England. Disproportionate numbers of people from minority groups have also died from the disease.
2020-08-16 23:33:53
The Balochistan health department has reported 61 more infections in the province, taking the tally to 12,295.
No more deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.
2020-08-16 23:08:23
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department says 62 new cases have been recorded in the province, taking the total number of infections to 35,215.
One more death was also reported in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 1,239.
2020-08-16 22:38:00
The UN Palestinian refugee agency has confirmed four new COVID-19 deaths in camps in Lebanon, calling for vigilance in observing hygiene measures as infections rise across the country.
"During the past 24 hours, four deaths have been recorded among Palestine refugees" in Lebanon, UNRWA said in a statement.
This brings to eight the total number of Palestinian refugees who have died from the COVID-19 illness since Lebanon first recorded an outbreak of the virus in February.
Over 200,000 Palestinian refugees reside in Lebanon, the majority living below the poverty line while their right to work and own property is restricted, according to UNRWA.
The UN agency, which provides health and education services to the Palestinians, called for vigilance in observing measures to combat the spread of the virus in the densely populated camps.
2020-08-16 22:00:00
Japan's Kei Nishikori, the 2014 US Open runner-up, says he has contracted COVID-19 and has withdrawn from an ATP event in New York with this year´'s US Open only two weeks away.
World number 31 Nishikori said he took the test and received the positive result on Sunday in Florida and will isolate himself despite few symptoms. He and his team plan more tests on Friday.
2020-08-16 21:21:00
A new coronavirus outbreak in New Zealand is still growing, health officials say, with the country that had an early triumph over the pandemic recording 13 new cases and putting the September general election in question.
After stifling the virus earlier this year before it became a public health crisis and after 102 days without new infections, an abrupt resurgence last week in Auckland prompted an immediate lockdown of the country’s largest city.
Sunday’s numbers bring New Zealand’s total active cases to 69, providing more ammunition to a conservative opposition that wants to delay a Sept. 19 general election, which opinion polls show Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party winning.
Ardern is expected to resist a delay but has said she will decide by Monday.
2020-08-16 20:50:00
Michelle Bolsonaro, wife of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, says she has tested negative for the novel coronavirus, roughly two weeks after first contracting the disease.
Several members of the Bolsonaro family have gotten sick with COVID-19 as Brazil has the second highest number of cases in the world after the United States.
Michelle’s grandmother died of the disease earlier this week, Jair himself got sick in July and his fourth son, Jair Renan, has now tested positive.
“Thank you for your prayers and for all your acts of love,” Michelle Bolsonaro said on social media announcing her test result.
As of Saturday, Brazil had 107,232 deaths attributed to coronavirus and 3.3 million confirmed cases.
2020-08-16 20:33:00
Israel has said that citizens, residents and foreign workers returning from 20 countries would be exempted from a 14-day coronavirus quarantine period, but kept its borders closed to tourists.
The health ministry's list of 20 "green" countries deemed to present a lower novel coronavirus risk includes the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Greece and Cyprus, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Rwanda, Jordan and Hong Kong.
"As of today, people returning from green countries are exempted from quarantine," the ministry said in a statement.
The measure only applies to Israeli citizens and foreigners with residency status or work visas, as the country's borders have yet to be reopened for regular tourism.
Israel has over 92,000 COVID-19 cases to its nine million population, with fewer than 700 deaths.
2020-08-16 20:05:00
Faced with an uptick in coronavirus cases blamed in part on young partygoers, Italy has ordered the three-week closure of all dance venues.
In a decree signed by Health Minister Roberto Speranza, the government also said that from 6 pm to 6 am, the wearing of masks would be mandatory in public areas where groups could form.
Closed establishments had already been barred from operating.
The new measure, to take effect on Monday and last through September 7, comes after wrangling between the government and regions over the nightlife sector, which employs nearly 50,000 people in 3,000 clubs across the country, according to the nightclub operators´ union SILB.
The decision coincides with the "Ferragosto" weekend, a major holiday when most Italians go to the beach.
Italian newspapers have splashed images of throngs of young holidaymakers celebrating at open-air discos in recent days, as health authorities have voiced increasing worries over the possible spread infections.
Some regions, like Calabria in the south, had already ordered all dance venues shut, while others such as Sardinia have kept them open.
Italy, the first country to be hit by the coronavirus crisis in Europe, has seen nearly 254,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 35,000 deaths.
2020-08-16 19:47:36
Nurses in Brazil have posed for photographs to show how the constant use of protection gear has left their faces bruised but they wear them anyway for their own safety and that of patients.
2020-08-16 19:27:00
Firms from the United Arab Emirates and Israel have signed an agreement to jointly develop research and studies on the novel coronavirus, the UAE's state WAM agency reports.
The UAE's APEX National Investment and Israel's TeraGroup signed the "strategic commercial agreement" late Saturday in Abu Dhabi, WAM said in a statement.
"We are delighted with this cooperation with TeraGroup, which is considered the first business to inaugurate trade, economy and effective partnerships between the Emirati and Israeli business sectors," APEX chairman Khalifa Yousef Khouri said.
APEX is an investment company with a particular focus on the healthcare sector.
The deal would be "serving humanity by strengthening research and studies on the novel coronavirus," Khouri added.
The two companies hope to develop a rapid test for coronavirus.
2020-08-16 18:55:33
PORT OF SPAIN: Trinidad and Tobago’s government will implement tougher measures aimed at reducing the spread of the coronavirus after the number of infections increased in August, the prime minister said on Saturday.
The Caribbean nation registered a jump in COVID-19 cases in August after a gradual rise in July, and has now recorded 474 cases and ten fatalities. Two of the deaths were reported on Friday.
“Given how the virus has been behaving in other populations worldwide... we expect that we will be able to control the level of infection in a situation where our parallel (health) system would be able to cope,” Prime Minister Keith Rowley told reporters.
The new measures, which will go into effect on Monday and last 28 days, include the closure of beaches and places of worship, as well as a ban on dining at restaurants and bars.
No more than five people will be able to gather at a time, and schools will no longer re-open in September as planned. As well, the Attorney General will consider legislation to make face masks mandatory.
“The time for persuasion has now passed and we will take such action,” Rowley said.
2020-08-16 18:45:01
MADRID: New restrictions to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, including the closure of discos and a partial ban on smoking outdoors, went into effect Sunday in two Spanish regions.
The small, northern wine-growing region of La Rioja and the southeastern region of Murcia are the first Spanish regions to implement a raft of new measures which Spain’s Health Minister Salvador Illa unveiled Friday to be enforced nationwide as the country battles a surge in the disease.
The measures include the closure of all discos, night clubs and dancing halls, while restaurants and bars are required to close by 1:00 am, with no new guests allowed in from midnight.
Visits in retirement homes will be limited, while smoking outdoors in public places is banned when a distance of two meters cannot be maintained.
The ban on smoking on the streets is already in place in two of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions, Galicia and the Canary Islands.
Spain’s remaining regional governments are expected to start implementing the new measures in the coming days.
The Basque Region, which neighbors La Rioja, plans to go a step further and will on Monday declare and “health emergency” which will allow it to impose greater restrictions on the size of public gatherings and establish selective confinement in areas where there is a high risk of transmission of the disease.
Nearly 29,000 people have died so far from COVID-19 in Spain, which declared a state of emergency between March 14 and June 21 that allowed the central government to impose restrictions nationwide.
With the state of emergency subsequently lifted, autonomy has been handed back to the regional authorities.
The health ministry has had to negotiate with them to impose the new measures on a nationwide basis.
Spain has a population of 47 million and its infection rate of 110 cases per 100,000 inhabitants is higher than in other European countries.
2020-08-16 18:35:45
NEW DELHI: Former India Test opener Chetan Chauhan, who forged a prolific opening partnership with Sunil Gavaskar, has died aged 73 from coronavirus, his brother told AFP Sunday.
Chauhan, who tested positive last month, was put on ventilator support at a hospital in Gurgaon, but his condition worsened after he suffered multiple organ failure.
He is one of the highest-profile figures to die from the disease in India, which is the world's third-most infected nation with more than 2.5 million cases and almost 50,000 deaths.
"He had tested negative but then the reports came positive again," brother Pushpendra Chauhan told AFP.
After playing 40 Tests for India, Chauhan switched to politics and was a minister in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh as a member of the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
2020-08-16 18:00:39
SEOUL: South Korea and the United States will start their annual joint military drills on Tuesday, in what local media said was a two-day delay after a South Korean officer tested positive for the new coronavirus.
The drills will start on Tuesday, “considering the COVID-19 situation,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Sunday.
The training, which had been scheduled to begin on Sunday, was pushed back after the positive test on Friday of the Army officer, who was to have taken part, Yonhap News Agency said.
The combined drills are closely monitored by North Korea, which calls them a “rehearsal for war.” They have been reduced in recent years to facilitate US negotiations aimed at dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear programmes.
This year’s exercises will be scaled down, not mobilising US-based troops amid COVID-19 restrictions on the travel of US personnel to South Korea.
2020-08-16 17:49:53
WELLINGTON: New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters called on Sunday for a delay to the planned September general election, given an abrupt reappearance of COVID-19 in the country, increasing pressure on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to postpone the vote.
Last week’s resurgence of the infections in Auckland - after the country had been free of infections of the new coronavirus for 102 days - was compromising the ability to hold a “free and fair election” on Sept. 19, Peters, the leader of the New Zealand First party, wrote in a letter to Ardern.
Peters, who delivered government to Ardern’s Labour party through a coalition deal after a 2017 election failed to result in a majority for the National or Labour parties, suggested Oct. 17 and Nov. 21 as alternative dates.
On Sunday, New Zealand recorded 13 confirmed infections, bringing the number of active cases to 69. Ardern put Auckland, the country’s largest city with a population of 1.7 million, under a two-week lockdown last week.
The opposition National Party also wants a delay, hoping that Ardern, who had garnered much praise for crushing the pandemic, would lose some of her lustre once hardships caused by the Auckland lockdown begin to bite.
Ardern, who has been seen as largely resisting the calls for a delay, is set to decide by Monday.
“The prime minister has proactively sought the views of the leaders of every political party represented in parliament this afternoon about the election date,” said a representative for Ardern. “A range of views have been expressed that the prime minister has taken on board.”
The source of the recent outbreak remains under investigation.
Peters said that “the border remains the likely source of the outbreak,” suggesting a breach in quarantine procedures of people returning from abroad.
2020-08-16 17:32:40
PARIS: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 766,228 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT on Sunday.
At least 21,500,350 cases have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 13,205,100 are now considered recovered.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organisation (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
On Saturday, 5,663 new deaths and 264,102 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were United States with 1,105 new deaths, followed by India with 944, and Brazil with 709.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 169,489 deaths from 5,361,613 cases. At least 1,818,527 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 107,232 deaths from 3,317,096 cases, Mexico with 56,543 deaths from 517,714 cases, India with 49,980 deaths from 2,589,682 cases, and United Kingdom with 41,361 deaths from 317,379 cases.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 86 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Peru (79), Spain 61, United Kingdom 61, and Italy 59.
China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 84,808 cases, including 4,634 deaths, and 79,519 recoveries.
Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 240,071 deaths from 6,111,270 cases, Europe 210,374 deaths from 3,509,567 infections, and the United States and Canada 178,549 deaths from 5,483,457 cases.
Asia has reported 79,406 deaths from 3,940,731 cases, Middle East 32,068 deaths from 1,319,087 cases, Africa 25,331 deaths from 1,110,768 cases, and Oceania 429 deaths from 25,476 cases.
As a result of corrections by national authorities or late publication of data, the figures updated over the past 24 hours may not correspond exactly to the previous day's tallies.
2020-08-16 17:12:15
The National Institute of Health on Sunday carried out its "Testing, Tracing and Quarantine" training for the officials in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, as the country opens up after a steady decline in coronavirus cases.
2020-08-16 16:57:31
SEOUL: South Korea accused a conservative pastor on Sunday of violating self-isolation rules and obstructing contact tracing at a church where 240 infections have fuelled the country’s worst outbreak in over five months.
The focus on the Sarang Jeil Church, led by Rev Jun Kwang-hoon, revived bad memories of the country’s biggest outbreak, among followers of a secretive Christian sect back in February.
South Korea on Sunday reported 279 new cases, more than double the 103 reported on Friday, with most of the new infections found in and around Seoul.
Aside from the infections linked to the church, there were also smaller clusters, including some 30 cases linked to a Starbucks outlet in the city of Paju, north of Seoul.
The surge in COVID-19 cases prompted authorities on Sunday to reimpose tighter social distancing curbs in the Seoul metropolitan area.
The health ministry said it had filed a complaint against Jun, an outspoken government critic, for violating self-isolation rules by participating in a rally on Saturday, and for “obstructing” a medical investigation into the outbreak by failing to provide a full list of church members for testing and tracing.
Jun’s church, Sarang Jeil Church, did not respond to telephone calls from Reuters seeking comment.
2020-08-16 16:30:22
Coronavirus has claimed five more lives in Sindh taking the death toll to 2322 and infected 278 others raising the tally to 126,182.
This was stated by Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah in a statement issued here on Sunday.
According to the CM, 4288 patients are currently under treatment, including 3888 in home isolation, eight at isolation centres and 392 in different hospitals.
The condition of 216 patients is stated to be critical while 34 are on ventilators.
2020-08-16 16:24:44
Islamabad's district health officer urged the country to 'act responsibly' to avoid another second wave of coronavirus.
The DHO urged the people to avoid large gatherings and other public events.
2020-08-16 16:00:17
The Philippines has recorded 3,420 new cases of the coronavirus and 65 additional deaths, the health ministry said on Sunday.
The country has so far registered a total of 161,253 infections and the death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 2,665 according to ministry data.
2020-08-16 15:45:20
2020-08-16 15:20:52
The UK has recorded more than 1,000 coronavirus cases for the fifth day running, Sky News reported.
According to the latest figures, there were 1,012 lab-confirmed cases on Saturday, which was the highest daily rise for two months but marks the fifth day in a row that more than 1,000 new cases have been recorded.
The UK has recorded 317,379 cases of coronavirus.
2020-08-16 15:00:09
More than 21.45 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 764,062 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-08-16 14:35:24
Indonesia on Sunday reported 2,081 cases of the new coronavirus and 79 COVID-19 deaths, according to data from Indonesia's COVID-19 governmental task force.
The data takes the total number of infections in the world's fourth-most populous country at least to 139,549 cases.
2020-08-16 14:00:01
Russia reported 4,969 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, bringing its nationwide tally to 922,853, the fourth highest caseload in the world.
Russia's coronavirus crisis response centre said that 68 people had died over the past 24 hours, pushing its official coronavirus death toll to 15,685, adding that 732,968 people have recovered
2020-08-16 13:30:24
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 625 to 223,453, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.
The reported death toll remained unchanged at 9,231, the tally showed
2020-08-16 12:45:48
China's new locally transmitted cases of the novel coronavirus fell to a one-month low as a cluster in the western region of Xinjiang receded, data released by the country's health authority on Sunday showed.
The number of locally transmitted cases in China dropped to four on August 15, all of which were in Xinjiang, the National Health Commission said in a statement.
As of August 15, mainland China had 84,827 confirmed coronavirus cases. The death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
2020-08-16 12:00:11
South Korea on Sunday reported 279 cases of the new coronavirus, the most cases since early March, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said.
The new cases bring the country's tally to 15,318 infections, with COVID-19 305 deaths.
2020-08-16 11:25:06
New Zealand reported 13 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus as the country’s first outbreak in months continues to grow.
All but one of the new cases were community transmissions and appeared to be linked to a cluster in Auckland where the most recent outbreak started, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told a media briefing in Wellington.
The new cases bring the number of active cases in New Zealand to 69.
2020-08-16 11:00:30
Pakistan recorded 670 cases and six new coronavirus deaths, the National Command and Control said on Sunday.
So far there are 2,181 cases in AJK, 12,224 in Balochistan, 2,486 in GB, 15,378 in Islamabad, 35,153 in KP, 95,391 in Punjab and 125,904 cases in Sindh.
The country now has 6,168 deaths and of 288,717 confirmed cases of coronavirus
2020-08-16 10:25:26
France is to propose that masks be worn in shared workspaces as the country grapples with a rebound in coronavirus cases that rose again in the past 24 hours to over 3,000.
The health ministry reported 3,310 new coronavirus infections, marking a post-lockdown high for the fourth day in a row.
The resurgence prompted Britain to impose a 14-day quarantine for people arriving from France, and led the authorities in Paris to expand zones in the capital where wearing a mask is mandatory outdoors.
2020-08-16 09:50:38
Brazil registered 41,576 cases and 709 deaths due to the novel coronavirus, the health ministry said Saturday.
Overall, the country now has 107,232 deaths and 3,317,096 confirmed cases.
2020-08-15 23:59:55
Students in Saudi Arabian public schools will be educated via distance learning for the first seven weeks of the new school year, the country’s minister of education said on Saturday, as a precaution against the spread of coronavirus.
During that time the situation for the remainder of the school year will be evaluated, Dr Hamad bin Mohammed Al Shaikh said in remarks carried on state-run al-Ekhbariya TV.
University and technical schools will be online for theory-based curriculums and in person for practical curriculums, he added.
2020-08-15 23:45:19
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that all indications were that South Africa had reached the peak of COVID-19 infections, as he announced a sweeping removal of lockdown restrictions on the economy.
In a televised address, Ramaphosa said the government would end the ban on alcohol and tobacco, allow restaurants and taverns to return to normal business, subject to strict hygiene regulations, and remove the ban on travel between provinces.
He said a fall in the infection rates, as well as people recovering, were "significantly reducing the pressure on our health facilities", but he cautioned that cases could easily surge if people fail to maintain vigilance. Restrictions on international travel remained in place, he said.
South Africa has more than half a million cases, but the rate of infections has declined over the past two weeks.
2020-08-15 23:35:37
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 5,285,546 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 56,729 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 1,229 to 167,546.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on August 14 versus its previous report a day earlier.
The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
2020-08-15 23:28:21
Turkey's new coronavirus cases rose to their highest since June at 1,256, with 21 deaths in the last 24 hours, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter.
The country has seen cases edge higher in recent weeks and has now recorded a total of 278,117, with 5,955 deaths. Turkey lifted a partial lockdown on June 1 and plans to re-open schools next month.
2020-08-15 23:14:18
The French Health Ministry reported 3,310 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, setting a new post-lockdown high for the fourth day in a row and taking the country’s cumulative cases to 215,521.
A total of 252 clusters were being investigated, up 17 compared with 24 hours earlier, the ministry said in a website update.
2020-08-15 22:59:30
reland reported 200 new COVID-19 cases arising from multiple clusters across the country, the highest daily amount since the beginning of May that the country’s chief medical officer described as “deeply concerning”.
Ireland has reopened its economy at a slower pace than most European Union countries but that did not stop a rise in cases over the last two weeks that led to the first localised reimposition of some restrictions last week.
“We now have multiple clusters with secondary spread of disease and rising numbers of cases in many parts of the country. This is deeply concerning. NPHET (Ireland’s public health team) will monitor this extremely closely over the coming days,” Ronan Glynn said in statement.
2020-08-15 22:45:51
Russia said that it has produced the first batch of its coronavirus vaccine, after President Vladimir Putin announced it had been first in the world to approve a vaccine.
Putin's announcement on Tuesday about the vaccine was met with caution from scientists and the World Health Organization who said it still needed a rigorous safety review.
"The first batch of the novel coronavirus vaccine developed by the Gamaleya research institute has been produced," the health ministry said in a statement quoted by Russian news agencies.
Putin said the vaccine was safe and that one of his own daughters had been inoculated, though clinical trials were not yet complete and final stage testing involving more than 2,000 people only started this week.
2020-08-15 22:34:32
Health Department of Balochistan reported 80 new coronavirus infections, bumping the overall cases to 12,224.
2020-08-15 22:15:11
2020-08-15 21:57:55
2020-08-15 21:29:55
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 62 new cases, taking the tally of infections to 35,153.
2020-08-15 21:13:06
Peru’s economy contracted 18.06% in June versus the same period a year earlier, the South American country’s government said on Saturday, the fourth straight month of contraction due to the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Peru, the world’s no. 2 copper producer, imposed a strict lockdown in March, though has recently looked to reopen key sectors of the economy.
The June drop is less severe than the 18.15% contraction analysts had estimated in a Reuters poll, and a step up from the 32.75% GDP decline in May.
In the first half of the year, the economy contracted 17.37% compared with the same period last year, Peru’s official INEI statistics body said, while it dropped 7.25% in the 12 months to June.
2020-08-15 20:59:19
The chairman of Ireland’s tourism authority, former Ryanair Chief Operating Officer Michael Cawley, resigned after going on holiday to Italy, contrary to government advice to avoid non-essential travel abroad.
Cawley, a Ryanair director who also served as finance chief and deputy CEO at the airline, faced calls from opposition parties to quit after he confirmed to the Irish Independent newspaper on Saturday that he was holidaying in Italy.
Cawley is the first senior official in Ireland to resign for flouting coronavirus guidance. Scotland’s chief medical officer resigned in April after she ignored her own advice to stay at home during its COVID-19 lockdown.
2020-08-15 20:29:17
Almost half of Brazilians think President Jair Bolsonaro bears “no responsibility at all” for the country’s more than 100,000 dead from the coronavirus pandemic, the world’s second highest death toll, according to a new Datafolha poll.
The poll was published on Saturday in Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper and says 47% of Brazilians do not assign him any blame for the body count, whereas 11% do.
Brazil has the world’s worst outbreak outside of the United States and Bolsonaro’s response to the pandemic has been widely condemned by health experts. Right-wing Bolsonaro has pushed for the use of an unproven anti-malarial drug to fight the disease, replaced health ministers who opposed his agenda, encouraged Brazilians to oppose lockdown measures and shown indifference to the rising death toll.
Results from the same polling sample released on Friday showed that Bolsonaro currently enjoys the highest popularity rating of his administration, which began in 2019. Thirty-seven percent of Brazilians rated his term as great or good, compared with 32% in June.
2020-08-15 20:48:45
The United Kingdom recorded 1,012 new positive tests for COVID-19, the government said on Saturday, the fifth day in a row there have been more than 1,000 infections reported in daily figures.
Britain has now recorded 317,379 COVID-19 cases. A further three people were reported to have died within 28 days after testing positive for the coronavirus.
2020-08-15 20:11:48
British holidaymakers returning home from parts of Europe began having to quarantine on Saturday under new restrictions, as a second wave of virus infections threatened more disruption and economic chaos on the continent.
The UK opted to remove France, the Netherlands, Malta and several other countries from its list of places exempt from self-isolation rules, sparking a rush for plane, train and ferry tickets by Britons desperate to get back before the 4am (0300 GMT) change.
All travellers arriving from the three countries — as well as Monaco, and Caribbean island states Turks & Caicos and Aruba — after the deadline must quarantine for 14 days.
French student Antoine, 23, cut short his holiday to rush back to Bristol, in southwestern England, where he is at university.
"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 arriving on a Eurostar train.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-15 19:55:00
Germany's health minister on Saturday criticised "party holidays" and defended a decision to declare nearly all of Spain, including the tourist island of Mallorca, a coronavirus risk region following a spike in cases there.
"I know how much the Germans love Spain ... But unfortunately the infection rates there are rising sharply, too sharply," Jens Spahn told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
"Whoever goes to Spain despite the warning should protect themselves and others while on holiday. Party holidays are irresponsible in this pandemic."
People returning to Germany from designated risk regions face a coronavirus test or two weeks' compulsory quarantine.
Bar owners in Mallorca, a popular destination for German holidaymakers, feared the news would be the death knell for their already-struggling businesses.
"We live in fear here. We don't know what tomorrow will bring," said Gelinde, from Munich who owns Casa Baviera bar. "We are not afraid of the virus, but we are afraid of what our livelihood will be like."
Spahn's comments came as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany rose by 1,415 to 222,828, the biggest increase since late April, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.
2020-08-15 19:46:02
The government and prime minister of Equatorial Guinea tendered their resignation on Friday to President Teodoro Obiang, who said they had not done enough to help the country at a time of crisis, authorities said in a statement.
The Central African oil producer is suffering a double economic shock linked to the coronavirus pandemic and a drop in the price of crude, which provides around three-quarters of state revenue.
"The head of state regretted that the outgoing government did not fulfil its policy objectives, which undoubtedly led to this crisis situation," a statement on the government website said.
Obiang, 78, has ruled the former Spanish colony since overthrowing his uncle in a 1979 coup, relying on repression of political opponents and the country's offshore oil riches.
He dissolved the last government in February 2018, before reappointing Francisco Asue as prime minister, who had served as premier since 2016.
A new government is expected to be announced soon, said Tutu Alicante, the head of EG Justice, a U.S.-based organisation, working to promote human rights and rule of law in Equatorial Guinea.
2020-08-15 19:12:00
Coronavirus has claimed four more lives in Sindh taking the death toll to 2317 and infected 272 others raising the tally to 125904.
This was stated by Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah in a statement issued here on Saturday.
According to the CM, 4162 patients are currently under treatment, including 3766 in home isolation, eight at isolation centres and 388 in different hospitals.
The condition of 254 patients is stated to be critical while 36 are on ventilators.
2020-08-15 18:41:00
Denmark will make the wearing of facemasks mandatory on public transport across the country from August 22 to try to contain the coronavirus, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Saturday.
He called on Danes not to let down their guard and to respect social distancing and hygiene rules.
Danish authorities currently recommend masks on public transport during peak times, while they are obligatory in six areas including the country´s second city of Aarhus, where the outbreak of the virus is greater.
"We have witnessed a rise in the number of people infected in Denmark, with several local clusters," said Tyra Grove Krause, an official from the infectious diseases control authority.
"Some (outbreaks) are under control and others are about to be."
Denmark has registered a total of 15,859 cases of COVID-19 with 621 deaths.
2020-08-15 18:38:00
LONDON: As the number of cases climbed past 21 million, hardest hot countries by the pandemic countries unveiled further measures to battle rising infections.
The US Department of Homeland Security 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.
Meanwhile Britain added France to its list of countries hit with a mandatory two-week quarantine for returning holidaymakers from Saturday, as Paris confronts a resurgent second wave of infections.
Confirmed cases in France reached levels not seen since May on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, at over 2,500 new cases per day.
The rising threat prompted Paris police to announce Friday that compulsory mask-wearing outside would be extended to more areas of the French capital, including the famed Louvre museum and Champs-Elysee avenue.
2020-08-15 18:21:00
RAWALPINDI: Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa spoke to Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, on Saturday to discuss the coronavirus situation and the resumption of the polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan,
Gates in his phone call conveyed his appreciation for the Pakistan Army for supporting the national polio drive and ensuring proper reach and coverage.
The army chief said it was a national cause and national effort for a polio-free Pakistan. “Credit goes to grassroots workers including mobile teams, Law Enforcement Agencies and healthcare representatives,” the army chief was quoted as saying by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).
2020-08-15 17:47:00
Opposition politicians and journalists caught up in recent mass arrests in Ethiopia have been denied access to lawyers while being held in conditions that make them vulnerable to the coronavirus, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Saturday.
The allegations play into concerns that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won last year's Nobel Peace Prize in part for domestic political reforms, is embracing repressive measures to silence critics.
"The actions of Ethiopia's investigative authorities raise concerns that they have not moved on from past practices of arresting first, and investigating later," HRW's Horn of Africa director Laetitia Bader said in a statement.
"The authorities should promptly bring credible charges based on clear facts and evidence against the detainees or ensure their release."
More than 9,000 people have been rounded up in connection with violence that erupted in late June following the killing of Hachalu Hundessa, a popular singer from the Oromo ethnic group, leaving more than 200 people dead.
2020-08-15 17:39:00
Indonesia on Saturday reported 2,345 new coronavirus cases, taking the total number of infections to 137,468, according to data from Indonesia's COVID-19 task force.
The data showed 50 more coronavirus-related deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities to 6,071.
2020-08-15 17:18:00
Vietnam's health ministry reported 21 new coronavirus infections and two deaths on Saturday, bringing the total number of cases in the Southeast Asian country to 950, with 23 fatalities.
More than 470 of the cases are linked to the central city of Danang, where a new outbreak began late last month.
The ministry said 115,858 people are being quarantined, including 4,182 at hospitals, 25,952 at centralised quarantine centres and the rest at home.
2020-08-15 16:59:10
The German health minister said party holidays were irresponsible as he defended a decision to declare nearly all of Spain, including the tourist island of Mallorca, a coronavirus risk region following a spike in cases there.
“I know how much the Germans love Spain ... But unfortunately the infection rates there are rising sharply, too sharply,” Jens Spahn told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
“Whoever goes to Spain despite the warning should protect themselves and others while on holiday. Party holidays are irresponsible in this pandemic.”
2020-08-15 16:43:35
An Arizona school district that ignored state safety guidelines and voted to begin in-person learning on August 17 has had to cancel classes after staff said it was unsafe to return and called in sick.
Greater Phoenix’s JO Combs Unified School District cancelled all instruction for Monday due to “insufficient staffing,” days after its board disregarded state benchmarks on when students can safely return to classes during the pandemic.
The “sick out” underlined the difficulties in returning to in-person learning in the United States after schools in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama closed this week as students and staff were infected with COVID-19 or forced to self-isolate from exposure.
“We have received an overwhelming response from staff indicating that they do not feel safe returning to classrooms with students,” J.O. Combs District Superintendent Gregory Wyman said in a statement, adding that he did not know when in-person learning would resume.
2020-08-15 16:21:51
Brandon Vergel stood outside his new student dormitory at Texas Tech University, grappling with the bittersweet nature of yet another American rite of passage warped by the COVID pandemic -parents dropping their kids off at college.
Under a scorching afternoon sun, Vergel lugged his earthly belongings into the Hulen Hall residence he would now call home, nervously excited at the freedom of college life that awaited, but confronting an age-old conundrum: a mom that doesn’t want to let go.
“My parents are being a little overbearing,” Vergel said in a hushed voice as his father, Arturo, unloaded items from his black pick-up truck, and his mom, Nancy, stood nearby. “They don’t think we can protect ourselves in a pandemic. But we do know how to take care of ourselves and we would like to start. Like, now.”
How to safely and productively conduct courses is a challenge that university administrators, parents and students are trying to wrap their heads around.
Nearly a quarter of American universities will have classes either fully or primarily in person this fall, according to data collected by the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College, which tracks how colleges are changing amid the pandemic.
But another quarter of universities have not yet determined what they will do, while 32% are either primarily or fully online, 15% will have a hybrid of in-person and online course work, and the rest planning some alternative form of instruction.
2020-08-15 16:00:01
Russia reported 5,061 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Saturday, bringing its nationwide tally to 917,884, the fourth highest caseload in the world.
Russia's coronavirus crisis response centre said 119 people had also died over the last 24 hours, pushing its official death toll to 15,617. It added that 729,411 people have recovered
2020-08-15 15:35:43
Russia has started manufacturing its new vaccine for COVID-19, the Interfax news agency reported on Saturday, citing the health ministry.
Russia has said the vaccine, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute and the first for the coronavirus to go into production, will be rolled out by the end of this month. Some scientists said they fear Moscow may be putting national prestige before safety.
2020-08-15 14:55:31
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,415 to 222,828, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday.
The reported death toll rose by 6 to 9,231, the tally showed.
2020-08-15 14:10:46
China reported 22 new coronavirus cases in the mainland for Aug. 14, compared to 30 cases a day earlier, the health commission said on Saturday.
Of the new infections, 14 were imported, down from 22 a day earlier, according to a statement by the National Health Commission. China also reported 20 new asymptomatic patients, compared to 28 a day earlier.
China has 84,808 confirmed coronavirus cases, the health authority said.
2020-08-15 13:30:48
New Zealand on Saturday reported seven cases of the new coronavirus for the last 24 hours as a lockdown in the country's biggest city, Auckland, was extended on Friday in response to the country's first coronavirus outbreak in months.
Six of the seven new cases have been linked to the cluster responsible for all the previous community cases, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told a media briefing in Wellington.
The lockdown in Auckland, home to 1.7 million people, was extended for nearly two weeks, after New Zealand reported 12 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Friday.
2020-08-15 13:00:06
South Korea reported 166 new coronavirus cases as of Friday, of which 155 were domestic, prompting the reimposition of tighter social distancing curbs in Seoul area as authorities worried about the spectre of a fresh wave of the disease.
For the second day in a row in over four months, the country has reported a sudden jump in locally transmitted cases, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said.
The new cases took South Korea’s tally to 15,039 with 305 deaths by Friday midnight.
2020-08-15 12:30:20
Coronavirus cases in South America, the region of the world worst-affected by the pandemic, exceeded 6 million on Friday and continued to accelerate, according to a Reuters tally, as most of its nations begin to relax lockdown measures.
The region, which has reported an average of more than 86,000 daily infections of the new coronavirus in the last seven days and more than 2,600 COVID-19 deaths, reached 6,000,005 confirmed cases by Friday evening and 237,360 deaths.
2020-08-15 11:45:45
Brazil on Friday reported 50,644 new cases of coronavirus and 1,060 new deaths, the health ministry said.
Overall, Brazil has reported 3,275,520 confirmed cases and 106,523 deaths
2020-08-15 11:15:19
Pakistan recorded 747 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours as the nationwide tally climbed to 288,047 on Saturday.
The death toll rose to 6,162 after nine more deaths were reported in the country.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,179 cases in AJK, 12,144 in Balochistan, 2,452 in GB, 15,346 in Islamabad, 35,091 in KP, 95,203 in Punjab and 125,632 cases in Sindh.
There are now 16,261 active cases in the country with the number of recoveries standing at 265,624.
2020-08-15 10:40:11
Countries among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic unveiled further measures to battle rising infections, as the number of cases worldwide passed 21 million.
The US Department of Homeland Security 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.
Meanwhile Britain added France to its list of countries hit with a mandatory two-week quarantine for returning holidaymakers from Saturday, as Paris confronts a resurgent second wave of infections.
Read more here.
2020-08-15 10:15:06
The French health ministry reported 2,846 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours on Friday, setting a new post-lockdown daily high for the third day in a row and taking the country's cumulative total of cases to 212,211.
The seven-day moving average of new infections, which averages out weekly data reporting irregularities, increased to 2,041, doubling over the last two weeks, and going beyond the 2,000 threshold for the first time since April 20.
2020-08-15 00:05:43
Health Department ofBalochistan reported82 new coronavirus infections, bumping the overall cases to12,144.
2020-08-14 23:59:24
Moscow’s health department said it had recorded 1,706 deaths related to the novel coronavirus in July, a toll it said helped account for a rise of about 7% in the city’s mortality rate compared to the same month last year.
Moscow, the area worst hit by the pandemic in Russia, said it had recorded 10,773 deaths in July, including 1,706 linked to the coronavirus.
The department identified 742 cases in which the coronavirus had been the main cause of death and said 964 others had died of other causes while testing positive for the virus.
The authorities said last month the deaths of 3,408 people were linked to the coronavirus in June.
2020-08-14 23:45:58
British travellers rushed home from summer holidays in France, booking planes, trains, boats and even private jets to get home before a 14-day quarantine comes into force in response to rising coronavirus infections there.
The government announced late on Thursday that it would impose a quarantine from 0300 GMT on Saturday on arrivals from France, giving an estimated 160,000 UK holidaymakers there just over 24 hours to get home or face self-isolation on return.
The sudden rule change dealt a fresh blow to tourists, airlines and tour operators. The pandemic has left many travel groups cash-strapped and fighting for survival.
“We’ve changed our plans when we heard the news last night. We decided to head back home a day early to miss the quarantine,” one British woman at a service station on the motorway to Calais said after her week in southern France.
“We’ve also had a number of enquiries from clients booked to travel to these destinations in the coming weeks to change their travel plans in order to avoid quarantine zones,” PrivateFly CEO Adam Twidell said.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-14 23:30:50
Argentina extended until August 30 restrictions taken against the coronavirus, President Alberto Fernandez said, affirming that the country’s lockdown would continue in its current form in an around capital city Buenos Aires.
The measures, which are more relaxed in less densely populated areas, had been scheduled to expire on Sunday.
“The only medicine we have found so far is to limit the movement of people and the face-to-face meeting of people as much as possible,” Fernandez said.
“The plan worked and it is working, but the risk always exists.”
2020-08-14 23:13:44
France declared its capital Paris and the port city of Marseille high-risk zones for coronavirus as the government reported more than 2,500 new infections for the third day in a row.
The seven-day moving average of new infections, which smoothes out reporting irregularities, increased to 2,041, doubling over the last two weeks.
This went beyond the 2,000 threshold for the first time since April 20, when France was in the middle of one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns.
Despite the rise in cases, which prompted Britain to remove France from its list of safe travel destinations, the number of people hospitalised due to the disease continued to fall, having dipped below 5,000 for the first time since mid-March on Wednesday.
2020-08-14 22:59:39
Designed to combat summer heat, monsoon rain and the coronavirus, the smart bus shelter has arrived on the streets of the South Korean capital.
The glass cube “Smart Shelter” has air-conditioning and ultraviolet light sterilisers to clean and cool the air, surveillance cameras and digital screens to warn when your bus approaches. It is equipped with hand sanitiser and you can charge a laptop or mobile phone while using the free Wi-Fi.
“I felt uncomfortable at first as I had to take my temperature before I entered, but it didn’t take that long,” said 25-year-old university student Park Sung-yeon. “I hope we can have more of these so that we can overcome the coronavirus.”
A thermal imaging camera on the doors allows entry only to those with temperatures lower than 37.5 degrees Celsius (99.5 degrees Fahrenheit). A separate camera is installed at a lower height for children.
A solar panel on the roof provides back-up power.
But it comes with a hefty price tag of $84,000 (100 million won) for each shelter.
“We also share real-time updates of the situation with police and fire station by using intelligent CCTV, alert bell and AI noise sensor, so that we can respond to an emergency immediately,” said Kim Hwan-gyun, the Seongdong district official in charge of the shelter.
2020-08-14 22:44:57
Canada is planning for a “reasonable worst case scenario” in which new waves of the coronavirus would intermittently swamp the public health system and send the death toll soaring, officials said.
Under the scenario, there would be a large peak later this year followed by a number of smaller peaks and valleys stretching to January 2022. Each peak would exceed the health system’s capacity.
The system has so far managed to deal with the outbreak but evidence shows that if it does suffer breakdowns, “the mortality goes up really really high”, chief public health officer Theresa Tam told a briefing.
“We are planning for a reasonable worst case scenario comprised of a large ‘Fall Peak’ followed by ongoing ‘Peak and Valleys’ in which resource demands intermittently exceed the ... health system’s capacity to manage,” federal health officials said in a modeling forecast.
“Increases in infection rates are expected as we continue to support economic and social activities, even with appropriate controls in place.”
2020-08-14 22:25:41
Germany declared nearly all of Spain, including the tourist island of Mallorca, a coronavirus risk region following a spike in cases there.
The move deals a blow to hopes for a swift revival of mass tourism after months of lockdown all but wiped out this year’s high season in Europe.
The Bild daily had reported earlier that Mallorca had been added to the list of high-risk regions published by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s public health agency.
The latest version of the RKI’s list on its website said the whole of mainland Spain and the Balearic islands were risk regions.
Designations as risk regions are typically followed by the German Foreign Ministry warning against tourist travel to those areas and mean people returning from there face a coronavirus test or two weeks’ compulsory quarantine.
2020-08-14 22:13:45
President Donald Trump in a series tweets announced the White House is preparing to provide relief for the economic pain of the coronavirus as legislation stalls in Congress, saying his administration is ramping up to send money to families, state and local governments, and businesses.
He wrote that he directed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to get ready to send direct payments to all Americans, and that he was ready to have Treasury and the Small Business Administration send out more Payroll Protection Program funds authorized in previous legislation.
He also said he was ready to send “more money to states and local governments,” but did not identify an agency or mechanism. At the end of each tweet he wrote “Democrats are holding this up!”
2020-08-14 21:59:09
Greece set a temporary 50-person limit on public gatherings and said restaurants and bars in Athens and other areas must close by midnight, as the country seeks to contain a recent spike in COVID-19 infections.
The deputy civil protection minister said the limit on public gatherings would last until Aug. 24 and be imposed in parts of the country where infection numbers have risen.
“No measures can substitute for personal responsibility, particularly that of young people to protect their parents and grandparents,” Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias said.
Hardalias said restaurants and bars would not be allowed to operate after midnight in the greater Athens area and in other parts of the country including Crete, the islands of Paros, Santorini, Rhodes, Kos, Antiparos and Zakynthos.
Mask wearing will also be mandatory at refugee camps and military facilities.
2020-08-14 21:40:51
Shares of German biotechnology firm CureVac BV soared 175% in their Nasdaq debut, marking the first stock market listing of a company developing a potential vaccine to combat the coronavirus.
2020-08-14 20:05:20
US government scientists have begun efforts to manufacture a strain of the novel coronavirus that could be used in human challenge trials of vaccines, a controversial type of study in which healthy volunteers would be vaccinated and then intentionally infected with the virus, Reuters has learned.
The work is preliminary and such trials would not replace large-scale, Phase 3 trials such as those now under way in the United States testing experimental COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, according to a statement emailed to Reuters by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.
US officials organizing the fight against the pandemic have been under pressure from advocacy groups such as 1 Day Sooner and others that see challenge trials as a way to speed up tests of a COVID-19 vaccine. Most vaccine trials rely on inadvertent infection, which can take time to occur.
Some drugmakers, including AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, have said they would consider human challenge trials to test COVID-19 vaccines if needed.
“Should there be a need for human challenge studies to fully assess candidate vaccines or therapeutics for SARS-CoV-2, NIAID has begun investigations of the technical and ethical considerations of conducting human challenge studies,” the agency statement said.
2020-08-14 20:17:45
British Airways fulfilled its promise to resume operations in Pakistan from August 14 after the first flight took off from Islamabad for London today, said the British High Commission in Islamabad.
The British flag carrier had halted operations for Pakistan after restrictions were imposed in a bid to stem the spread of coronavirus.
British Airways' direct flights resumed in June 2019 after a break of 10 years. The carrier first flew to Islamabad in 1976.
Global curbs imposed to fight the pandemic have drastically impacted air travel, placing the future of many airline companies in doubt.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-14 20:37:19
2020-08-14 20:52:03
2020-08-14 21:06:21
Spanish authorities ordered the closure of nightclubs, banned drinking in outdoor public areas and smoking when keeping a safe distance from people is impossible, among other measures imposed to try to stem a coronavirus resurgence.
Infections have spiked in recent days following the end of Spain’s tough lockdown seven weeks ago. Thursday’s almost 3,000 new cases brought the cumulative total to 337,334 - the highest number in Western Europe.
Bars and restaurants will also have to close by 1am as part of the new restrictions, Health Minister Salvador Illa told a news conference.
“We cannot afford not to be disciplined,” Illa said. “We cannot ignore the virus circulating among us.”
“The situation is not comparable with March and April,” the minister said, remarking that more young people were now becoming infected, many of them showing no symptoms, and patients in general were getting less severely ill.
2020-08-14 21:21:21
The United States is tying payments for COVID-19 vaccines to timing milestones for production and approval, according to public documents and a Trump administration official, putting pressure on drugmakers including Moderna to meet ambitious targets.
In a deal with Moderna announced this week, federal agencies negotiated a sliding scale of payments. The Cambridge, Massachusetts, biotech’s $1.5-billion deal pays out in full if its vaccine receives regulatory clearance by January 31, 2021, according to filings. It receives $1.2 billion, if it falls short of that timing goal.
Moderna also receives $600 million when it can demonstrate it has built out industrial-scale manufacturing capabilities for its vaccine, even if that happens before the drug is authorized by regulators, the filings show.
US government payments to other drugmakers are also conditional on launching clinical trials no later than early fall and building out manufacturing capabilities by the end of the year, two senior administration officials told Reuters, adding that terms varied by company.
2020-08-14 19:52:56
Thousands of Albanians have formed an enormous queue of cars at the Greek border as they rush to re-enter the country for work ahead of new virus rules, police say.
Around 4,000 cars were jammed in a 20-kilometre-long (12-mile-long) line at the Kakavia border crossing in southern Albania, in a build up that has been growing since Greece announced tougher entry requirements at the start of the week to contain a surge in infections.
The changes came as thousands of Albanians who live and work in Greece, mainly in the agriculture sector, were preparing to return after summer holidays at home.
Under Athens' new rules, daily arrivals from Albania will be capped at 750 after August 16.
Albanians will also have to have to present a negative COVID-19 test carried out within 72 hours of their arrival and self-isolate for seven days.
Currently, those entering from Albania take virus tests at the border and provide contact information in case they are positive.
2020-08-14 19:36:56
Greece has set a temporary 50-person limit on public gatherings on Friday and says restaurants and bars in Athens and other areas must close by midnight, as the country seeks to contain a recent spike in COVID-19 infections.
The deputy civil protection minister said the limit on public gatherings would last until August 24 and be imposed in parts of the country where infection numbers have risen.
Greece reported 262 new infections on Wednesday, its highest daily tally since the start of the outbreak in the country. Another 204 cases were reported on Thursday.
That brings the total number of infections in Greece to 6,381 since late February, with 216 deaths.
The jump in infections has led the authorities gradually to introduce more restrictions at the peak of the tourism season.
Restaurants and bars will not be allowed to operate after midnight in the greater Athens area and in other parts of the country including Crete, the islands of Paros, Santorini, Rhodes, Kos, Antiparos and Zakynthos.
Mask wearing will also be mandatory at refugee camps and military facilities.
Greece has also said visitors arriving from Sweden, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic must show proof that they have tested negative for the coronavirus before they can enter the country.
2020-08-14 19:19:00
A majority of Russian doctors would not feel comfortable being injected with Russia’s new COVID-19 vaccine due to the lack of sufficient data about it and its super-fast approval, a survey of more than 3,000 medical professionals shows.
A survey of 3,040 doctors and health specialists, conducted by the “Doctor’s Handbook” mobile application and quoted on Friday by the RBC daily, showed 52% were not ready to be vaccinated, while 24.5% said they would agree to be given the vaccine.
Just a fifth of respondents said they would recommend the vaccine to patients, colleagues or friends.
Their misgivings are shared by some Russians who say they are too scared to try the vaccine, while others agree with their government that scepticism expressed by foreign experts is driven by jealousy.
2020-08-14 18:55:00
The IBC Mall in Shenzhen’s Luohu district has been sealed off and is under police supervision, with around 200 people queuing outside waiting for COVID-19 tests from medical personnel in protective suits.
An official Guangdong Health Commission WeChat account channel said the alert was prompted by a COVID-19 case at the mall.
The confirmed case was a 41-year-old woman who had been working inside the Alibaba-owned supermarket Freshippo as a temporary brand promotor until Aug. 2, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The worker was diagnosed in her home city of Lufeng, in Guangdong, the commission said. Three of her family members also tested positive.
An outbreak in the city of Urumqi in the far western region of Xinjiang in July was thought to have originated with a mall worker.
On Monday, Shenzhen authorities announced three Chinese citizens returning to the southern city from Russia had tested positive for the virus while in quarantine.
2020-08-14 18:37:00
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 754,649 people since it emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT.
At least 20,962,510 cases have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 12,789,500 are now considered recovered.
On Thursday, 9,933 new deaths and 291,893 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Brazil with 1,262 and the United States 1,120.
Peru reported 3,935 deaths after a sharp upward revision to its figures but most of these did not occur in the 24-hour period.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 167,253 deaths from 5,254,878 cases. At least 1,774,648 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 105,463 deaths from 3,224,463 cases, Mexico with 55,293 deaths from 505,751 cases and India with 48,040 deaths from 2,461,190 cases.
The United Kingdom stood at 41,347 deaths from 313,798 cases after a sharp downward revision of 5,429 in its death toll.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 86 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Peru 78, Spain 61, the United Kingdom 61 and Italy 58.
China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 85,786 cases, including 4,634 deaths, and 79,462 recoveries.
Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 235,152 deaths from 5,929,075 cases, Europe 209,561 deaths from 3,459,589 infections, the United States and Canada 176,303 deaths from 5,375,906 cases, Asia 77,067 deaths from 3,789,725 cases, Middle East 31,479 deaths from 1,296,500 cases, Africa 24,679 deaths from 1,086,549 cases, and Oceania 408 deaths from 25,172 cases.
2020-08-14 18:13:00
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 70 new cases, taking the tally of infections to 35,091.
Two more deaths were also reported, in Mardan and North Waziristan, bringing the death toll to 1,238.
2020-08-14 17:47:00
European nations among the hardest hit by the coronavirus have unveiled further control moves to battle rising cases, hitting summer tourism and aspects of everyday life on the continent.
Britain added France to its list of countries hit with a mandatory two-week quarantine for returning holidaymakers from Saturday, as Paris confronts a resurgent second wave of infections.
Neighbouring Spain said it would close all discos 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.
And Austria added popular Mediterranean destination Croatia to its list of at-risk countries, urging citizens to return home ahead of mandatory tests or quarantine for returnees starting Monday.
2020-08-14 17:27:27
Finland's Rovio has reported that quarterly game revenue climbed to a record 66.9 million euros ($79 million) as people stuck in coronavirus lockdowns spent more time playing its leading title Angry Birds.
That helped drive a nearly three-fold increase in second quarter operating profit to 14.1 million euros at the developer of mobile games centred on belligerent fowl.
Rovio's most popular game, Angry Birds 2, saw a 15% increase in revenue on the previous quarter to 28.8 million euros, up 9% year-on-year, as the pandemic confined millions of people around the world to their homes in spring.
"The overall impact of Covid-19, which was visible in a higher level of downloads, daily active users and player engagement, peaked late April," CEO Kati Levoranta said in a statement, adding that these levels started returning to normal from May onwards.
2020-08-14 16:48:00
Vietnam's health ministry is looking to buy a bulk order of Russia's coronavirus vaccine, state media says, despite global scepticism over its effectiveness and safety.
The communist nation of 95 million people has been widely praised for its effective handling of the pandemic and went nearly 100 days without recording a locally transmitted infection until last month.
But an outbreak in the beach resort of Danang has put the country back on high alert and several towns are under virtual lockdown.
Vietnam could receive up to 150 million doses with a fraction of them donated by Russia, state newspaper Tuoi Tre reported, adding that acting health minister Nguyen Thanh Long had approved the purchase.
But state news website VNExpress said officials were still deliberating over a health ministry plan to buy the vaccine doses.
Vietnam has reported just 911 coronavirus cases and 21 deaths after an aggressive public health response involving mass quarantines and a robust track-and-trace regime.
The country has maintained a strong relationship with Russia since the days of the Soviet Union.
2020-08-14 16:21:00
Spain says it is closing discos and banning smoking in the street without social distancing, as it steps up restrictions to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.
Health Minister Salvador Illa unveiled a raft of new measures to be enforced nationwide after an emergency meeting of regional health authorities as the country battles a surge in the disease, with nearly 3,000 new cases in 24 hours reported Thursday.
2020-08-14 16:04:27
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan shared on Friday the the government was using artificial intelligence to to carry out video-based risk detection of the coronavirus.
Dr Sultan said Pakistani company Love For Data assisted the National Command and Operations Centre and army to conduct video-based risk detection, to measure COVID-19 risk at shops and cattle markets.
"Mask adherence, social distancing, gender detection, along with 10 other variables used for area based risk ratings to assist district authorities strengthen their SOP implementation and adopt localised strategy to prevent COVID spread," tweeted Dr Sultan
2020-08-14 15:02:41
SYDNEY/MELBOURNE: Health officials in Australia’s most populous state made “unjustifiable” and “inexcusable” mistakes which allowed cruise ship passengers with COVID-19 to disembark in central Sydney, an inquiry said on Friday.
The Carnival Corp-owned Ruby Princess was for a time Australia’s biggest single source of infection, with more than 600 cases and over 20 deaths directly linked to those passengers.
Some 2,700 passengers, 120 of whom were feeling unwell, were allowed to leave the ship on March 19, helping spread the virus across the country and internationally.
New South Wales Health failed to ensure the ship knew of heightened screening for the virus or ensure that sick passengers were isolated in their cabins, a report by the inquiry concluded.
It also failed get quick test results for unwell passengers before they disembarked.
“The delay in obtaining test results for the swabs taken from the Ruby Princess on the morning of 19 March is inexcusable. Those swabs should have been tested immediately,” the inquiry, led by high-profile lawyer Bret Walker, said in the report.
The “decision to assess the risk as ‘low risk’, meaning in effect ‘do nothing’, is as inexplicable as it is unjustifiable,” it added.
NSW Health directed media inquiries to the state premier, Gladys Berejiklian, who said in a statement she would read the report over the weekend before responding.
The 315-page report did not make formal recommendations and stopped short of calling for government resignations.
Carnival Corp said the report confirmed that none of its employees misled Australian authorities, which was “of great importance to us because it goes to the integrity of our people”.
“In our more than 20 years in Australia, we have always sought to cooperate honestly and professionally with officials in accordance with the regulatory environment,” Jan Swartz, president of Carnival’s Princess Cruises unit, said in a statement.
The Ruby Princess had completed a Sydney-New Zealand round trip. Around two thirds of the passengers were Australian.
2020-08-14 14:48:08
SRINAGAR: One in five prisoners at the largest jail in Indian occupied Kashmir has tested positive for the coronavirus, authorities said on Friday, as the health ministry reported a daily nationwide rise of more than 60,000 cases for the third straight day.
India is the world’s third worst-hit country, behind only the United States and Brazil, with more than 2.4 million confirmed coronavirus cases, according to a Reuters tally.
And numbers are expected to rise in coming weeks, as infections move deeper into the vast hinterland.
Authorities at the central jail in Srinagar said they were preparing to shift some prisoners after 102 of the 480 tested positive.
“We are taking extra care and all new entrants are being tested and then quarantined for two weeks,” VK Singh, Kashmir’s Additional Director General of Prisons, told Reuters.
The Kashmir valley has reported more than 20,000 cases, of which nearly 5,500 people remain currently infected.
Indian occupied Kashmir has been put under a cycle of coronavirus-related lockdowns since late March. But cases are continuing to rise, putting pressure on medical infrastructure, doctors said.
Dr Nisarul Hassan, an associate professor at Srinagar’s Government Medical College that has around 2,200 beds, of which some 350 are for COVID-19 patients, said resources were stretched.
“Our hospitals are full with COVID-19 patients. We are running out of oxygen beds,” he said, “Patients have to wait for ventilators as there are not enough of them.”
Srinagar’s administration has also converted some buildings into temporary coronavirus facilities adding 3,000 beds, with another 2,000 beds in the pipeline.
2020-08-14 14:32:16
SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has lifted a three-week lockdown in the city of Kaesong after a suspected case of the novel coronavirus there, state media reported on Friday, without saying if it had been confirmed or was a false alarm.
North Korea has not reported any cases of the coronavirus and Kim told a ruling party politburo meeting on Thursday the country had to be vigilant and decline any offer of foreign aid to battle flooding to keep the virus at bay.
“The worsening global situation on the malignant virus requires us not to allow any outside aid for the flood damage but shut the border tighter and carry out strict anti-epidemic work,” Kim said in comments carried by the KCNA.
Authorities locked down Kaesong, on the border with South Korea, and declared an emergency in the area last month after a North Korean who had defected to the South slipped back into the town.
State media said the man had shown coronavirus symptoms. The World Health Organization said later test results on him were inconclusive.
Kim told the politburo that coronavirus prevention measures had stabilised the risk in the area but the border had to remain shut to any help in response to hardships brought by unusually long monsoon rains.
2020-08-14 14:12:06
HONG KONG: Hong Kong reported 48 new coronavirus cases on Friday as authorities advised residents in the global financial hub to remain vigilant in curbing the further spread of the virus, which has seen a resurgence in the city since early July.
Out of the 48 cases, 46 were locally transmitted.
Since late January, over 4,300 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 63 of whom have died. Friday’s figure was down from Thursday’s 69 cases.
2020-08-14 13:56:40
TAIPEI: Taiwan’s economy is expected to grow 1.56% in 2020, the statistics agency said on Friday, downgrading a previous forecast of 1.67% predicted in May due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, but saw a strong rebound next year.
Second-quarter annual GDP growth was revised slightly higher to a 0.58% contraction from a preliminary 0.73% decline, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said.
For 2021, the statistics office said it saw GDP growing a strong 3.92%.
2020-08-14 13:43:01
JAKARTA: Indonesia reported 2,307 new coronavirus infections on Friday, taking the total number of cases in the Southeast country to 135,123, data from Indonesia’s COVID-19 task force showed.
The data also showed 53 new deaths, taking the total number to 6,021, the highest number of fatalities in Southeast Asia.
2020-08-14 13:32:03
BRUSSELS: Belgian hospitals are stockpiling drugs and protective kits and putting in place contingency plans amid a continuing spike in new COVID-19 infections that has forced the capital Brussels to make face masks compulsory in public spaces.
With nearly 10,000 deaths linked to the coronavirus so far, Belgium with a population of 11 million has one of the world’s highest death rates from COVID-19 per head.
New infections have risen steadily in recent weeks, with Belgium now reporting one of the highest number of cases per inhabitants of any European country and prompting fears of a second wave.
In March and April when the pandemic accelerated, Belgian hospitals struggled with a shortage of equipment and with administrative hurdles.
They have learned their lesson since then, said chief physician Michel Dewever at the Delta Hospital in Brussels, which has 500 doctors and 500 beds and is part of the Chirec Hospital Group.
“We have stocked up on curare, anesthetics and antibiotics that allow us to last for two or three months during any second wave that might arise,” he said.
“We have built up a stock of protective equipment for all the staff, whether it be gloves, gowns or masks. We received part of this inventory from the government. We also bought part of it,” Dewever said.
The Group has amassed 20,000 masks, 700,000 gloves, 50,000 single use aprons and 5,000 reusable aprons.
Delta Hospital’s contingency plan includes making more beds in the intensive care unit available for COVID-19 patients.
2020-08-14 13:04:39
China has agreed to supply coronavirus vaccine to Pakistan, which in turn, will test the vaccine and if it proves effective, will ensure its most vulnerable segment of the population — elderly, health-care workers and people with medical conditions associated with serious cases of COVID-19 — are vaccinated, as per a report in The Wall Street Journal.
According to the publication, government officials said that the supplies, once proven effective and safe, will be used to vaccinate close to one-fifth of the country’s population according to the agreement.
The WSJ said that it is one of the first agreements China has reached with any country to test its coronavirus vaccine in populations outside its borders.
Officials also said that Pakistan was also negotiating with a second Chinese company to conduct trials of its vaccine in the country.
Read more here.
2020-08-14 12:41:10
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s economy plunged into its first contraction since the 2009 global financial crisis in the second quarter as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged business activity, prompting the central bank to sharply cut its GDP forecast for this year.
The central bank said on Friday gross domestic product shrank by 17.1% in April-June from the same period a year earlier — its worst slump in over 20 years and a much deeper contraction than the 10% decline forecast in a Reuters poll.
The downturn comes as the government imposed strict curbs on movement and businesses for most of the second quarter to contain the spread of the coronavirus which has infected more than 9,000 people in the Southeast Asian country.
It was Malaysia’s worst economic slump since the Asian financial crisis in 1998 and marked a sharp decline from the 0.7% year-on-year growth seen in the first quarter. Economies have slumped throughout Southeast Asia due to the coronavirus fallout, with Singapore and Philippines both now in recession.
The central bank cut its GDP forecast for this year, expecting the economy to shrink by between 3.5% and 5.5% in 2020. It previously said the economy could contract as much as 2% this year in the worst case scenario.
The data showed a broad-based fall in economic activity, but there were signs of recovery in June especially in the manufacturing and agriculture sectors.
2020-08-14 12:33:00
US drug developer Novavax Inc said on Friday the UK would buy 60 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine candidate, NVX-CoV2373, for a phase 3 clinical trial in the country.
The company and the UK government will collaborate for the trial to assess the efficacy of the vaccine in the UK population, Novavax said in a statement, but did not disclose any financial details of the agreement.
The trial will be a study in about 9,000 adults between 18 years and 85 years of age.
Novavax would partner with Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies for manufacturing the antigen component of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in the UK, it added.
The company is also gearing up to deliver 100 million doses to the United States by January after it was awarded $1.6 billion to cover testing and manufacturing of its potential vaccine in the country.
2020-08-14 12:28:47
WELLINGTON: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern extended a lockdown in the country’s biggest city on Friday in response to the first national coronavirus outbreak in months, sticking with a “go early, go hard” approach she said has proven effective.
Ardern said genomic testing has shown the latest outbreak is a different strain to the original outbreak in New Zealand earlier in the year, suggesting it was new to the country.
The New Zealand leader said lockdown measures in Auckland, home to about 1.7 million people, and social distancing measures across the country that were imposed on Wednesday would remain in place for another 12 days.
Her swift action followed the discovery on Tuesday of the country’s first COVID-19 infections in 102 days, in a family in Auckland. Since then, officials have identified a total of 29 cases, all linked to the same cluster.
“As we have said from the start, our overall Covid-19 strategy remains elimination,” Ardern said in a televised media conference. “Together, we have got rid of Covid before. We have kept it out for 102 days, longer than any other country. We can do all of that again.”
Ardern is under pressure ahead of a upcoming general election, with the main opposition National Party accusing the government of failing to secure quarantine facilities and withholding information.
Ardern said contact tracing and genomic testing had found no links with the current outbreak to the country’s border entry points or managed quarantine facilities. She said genome sequencing disproved the theory from some health experts that the virus could have been quietly moving through community since the original outbreak.
“This suggests this is not a case of the virus being dormant or of a burning ember in our community,” she said. “It appears to be new to New Zealand.”
Health Minister Chris Hipkins said earlier that genome testing suggested the new virus outbreak had originated in Britain or Australia.
Ardern cautioned that more cases were likely in the coming days but said she was confident officials would successfully identify the “perimeter” of the cluster — if not its source — allowing them to isolate cases and remove restrictions.
2020-08-14 12:25:39
LONDON: Britain has no choice but to impose a 14-day quarantine on all travellers arriving from France after 0300 GMT on Saturday due to rising infection rates there, transport minister Grant Shapps said on Friday.
Britain’s government announced late on Thursday that it would impose a quarantine on arrivals from France, the Netherlands and Malta because COVID-19 infection rates there are too high.
France warned that it would reciprocate the measures.
On Friday Shapps said he sympathised with travellers but that they should not be entirely surprised, given the fluid situation around the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a dynamic situation, and I don’t think that anybody... would want us to do anything other than protect public health and public safety,” Shapps told Sky News.
“That does mean where we see countries breach a certain level of cases ... then we have no real choice but to act,” he added.
2020-08-14 12:09:28
Singer turned social activist said patriotism required the people to wear masks as he shared a video of him and other singing the naitonal anthem with COVID-19 SOPs.
"Morning assembly from my school days-till today, I get goosebumps whenever I hear our National anthem .Today I felt proud,singing the National Anthem through a mask to convey,this is what patriotism requires from us COVID-19," tweeted Roy.
Roy said the country will be free of COVID-19 when everyone wears a mask.
2020-08-14 11:02:33
WILMINGTON: Democratic US presidential candidate Joe Biden on Thursday called for a nationwide mask-wearing mandate for the next three months, in vivid contrast with President Donald Trump as the challenger makes coronavirus pandemic recovery a focal point of his campaign.
Declaring that "every single American should be wearing a mask" while outside their home, Biden called on governors of all 50 states to institute a national mask mandate "starting immediately" as a way to halt the virus´s spread and save tens of thousands of lives.
"Look, this is America. Be a patriot," Biden, with his newly named running mate Kamala Harris standing nearby and wearing a face covering, told reporters near his home in Delaware.
"Protect your fellow citizens, step up, do the right thing," Biden added.
Health experts remain adamant about the need for people to wear masks and maintain social distance to defeat a pandemic that has already infected 20 million people and killed 750,000 worldwide.
Read more here.
2020-08-14 10:49:23
Pakistan reported 626 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 287,300.
According to the nation dashboard 265,215 patients have recovered from the virus in the country, with 15,932 active cases.
The country also recorded 14 fatalities over the past 24 hours with the death toll climbing to 6,153.
2020-08-14 10:10:25
MEXICO CITY: Mexico, having hit over half a million official coronavirus cases and 55,000 deaths as the pandemic rages across Latin America, will help produce a vaccine that could be distributed in the region next year, authorities said on Thursday.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said the pandemic is losing force in Mexico, though the death toll of 55,293 stands as the world’s third highest, behind the United States and Brazil.
Mexico’s health ministry on Thursday reported 7,371 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, bringing the total in the country to 505,751.
The government has said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
In partnership with the Mexican and Argentine governments, pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca Plc said it plans to initially produce 150 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine in early 2021 and eventually make at least 400 million for distribution throughout the region.
Lopez Obrador hailed the agreement as “good news” for Mexico and said he expected the country to still be suffering from the pandemic by the time the vaccine goes into production.
2020-08-14 09:56:47
MELBOURNE: The findings of a public inquiry into how passengers infected with the coronavirus were allowed to disembark a cruise ship in Sydney in March, triggering a major outbreak of more than 600 cases and 20 deaths, are set to be handed down on Friday.
The government of New South Wales (NSW) state commissioned the probe into the events leading up to the disembarkation of 2,700 passengers from the Carnival Corp-owned Ruby Princess on March 17 without proper screening for the virus.
Passengers spread the virus across the country and internationally, resulting in more than 600 cases and 20 deaths in what was at the time Australia’s largest outbreak of the disease.
NSW officials rated the liner as “low risk” since it had only visited New Zealand, although some passengers had flown in from countries including the United States, the inquiry heard.
The inquiry’s findings could put pressure on senior officials in the state and federal governments to take responsibility for failures in handling the Ruby Princess.
“The special commission will hand down its report later today and we will...see what they have to say. I’m sure they will touch on all of those issues,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told a media conference.
Australia was quick to bring the first wave of infection under control but a second wave since June in the state of Victoria has proven far deadlier.
2020-08-14 09:36:39
2020-08-14 09:16:10
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in a public service message advised people to "stay safe" as they celebrate Independence Day.
2020-08-14 09:07:33
BEIJING/SHANGHAI/BRASILIA: Two cities in China have found traces of the new coronavirus in cargoes of imported frozen food, local authorities said on Thursday, although the World Health Organization downplayed the risk of the virus entering the food chain.
A sample taken from the surface of frozen chicken wings imported into the southern city of Shenzhen from Brazil, as well as samples of outer packaging of frozen Ecuadorian shrimp sold in the northwestern city of Xian, have tested positive for the virus, local Chinese authorities said.
Shenzhen authorities identified the chicken as originating from a plant owned by Aurora, Brazil’s third-largest poultry and pork exporter.
As confirmed COVID-19 cases continue to rise globally, the discoveries raise fresh concerns that the coronavirus that causes the disease can spread on surfaces and enter the foodchain. A day earlier, officials started investigating whether the first COVID-19 cases in New Zealand in more than three months were imported by freight.
Viruses can survive up to two years at temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius, but scientists and officials say there is no strong evidence so far the coronavirus can spread via frozen food.
2020-08-14 08:48:04
WASHINGTON: If a COVID-19 vaccine is proven effective, the US will ensure it's distributed for free to all Americans, officials said on Thursday, underscoring there will be no shortcuts on safety.
"We are not at all reducing the regulatory rigor with which we will evaluate and hopefully approve vaccines," Paul Mango, a senior health department official, told reporters.
Washington has invested more than $10 billion in six vaccine projects and signed contracts guaranteeing the delivery of hundreds of millions of doses should they be approved following clinical trials.
The vaccine doses themselves will be paid for by the government.
Doctors or clinics that administer them will have to be paid but these costs should mostly be covered by private and public insurers.
"Most" commercial insurers have agreed to waive any out-of-pocket costs to their customers, said Mango.
"We are on track to deliver hundreds of millions of doses by January 2021," he added.
2020-08-14 08:33:27
AUCKLAND: New Zealand's resurgent coronavirus outbreak has spread beyond Auckland, health officials said on Friday, in a major blow to efforts to contain the disease.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins said there were 12 more cases of community transmission, and one probable, following the shock re-emergence of the virus in Auckland this week.
He said two of the infections were found in the North Island town of Tokoroa, around 210 kilometres (130 miles) south of Auckland.
The infections outside Auckland come despite a strict lockdown in New Zealand's largest city, including masked police blocking roads to seal its borders.
2020-08-13 23:55:18
French health authorities warn that new coronavirus cases are rising fastest among younger people, as the number of confirmed infections per day continued to tick up.
In mainland France, the pace of growth in cases in the week of August 3-9 was fastest among people aged 15-44, the health ministry's DGS public health arm said, calling it a "troubling situation".
In total 2,669 tests had come back positive in the past 24 hours, it added, pointing to "regular growth" in daily new cases.
The figure was higher than Wednesday's 2,524, which itself had been the highest since May.
Among the new infections were 50 gendarmes based in Tarbes, southwest France, out of a group of 82 who had just returned from a deployment in Polynesia, the prefecture in the Hautes-Pyrenees department said.
Richard Peabody, an epidemiologist leading the High Threat Pathogens Team at the World Health Organisation Regional Office for Europe, warned that laxer respect for infection control measures was leading to increased case numbers across the continent.
"If you take... the pressure off the virus, then it will come back," he said, calling on European governments to be mindful of the lessons learnt in the first months of the pandemic.
So far almost 30,400 people have died of coronavirus in France — 17 in the past 24 hours — and 374 are presently in intensive care.
2020-08-13 23:39:34
The leader of the state of Bavaria, a possible successor to Angela Merkel as the conservative candidate for chancellor, apologised for a coronavirus bungle that meant some 900 people who had tested positive were not told about it.
Problems with data entry meant that 44,000 travellers returning to Bavaria had been waiting for their test results for days. Around 900 of those were positive.
State health authorities said on Thursday they were now in the process of informing people, but were still having problems tracking some down.
The tests had been carried out up to two weeks ago at special centres, opened with great fanfare in the southern state.
“It is really extremely galling. We can only apologise,” state premier Markus Soeder told reporters, promising to fix the mistakes by adding extra staff. He also said he supported his health minister who had offered to resign.
2020-08-13 23:26:00
France reported more than 2,500 new COVID-19 infections for the second day in a row, levels last seen in mid-April when the country was in the middle of one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns.
Despite the rise in cases, which could prompt Britain to remove France from its list of safe travel destinations, the number of people hospitalised due to the disease continued to fall, having dipped below 5,000 for the first time since mid-March on Wednesday.
Experts say this is because more young people are being infected, who are less likely to need hospital care.
2020-08-13 23:11:02
The Kuwaiti cabinet said it will start implementing the fourth stage of the gradual go-to-normality plan on Aug. 18 and some activities that were set to open during the fifth stage including gyms, sport clubs, beauty salons and tailors will now be open as a part of the fourth stage.
The cabinet also decided to keep the nationwide partial curfew and to resume football activity in the gulf country without the presence of fans.
Kuwait decided in May on a five-phase plan to go back to normal life after restrictions the coronavirus outbreak brought to the country.
2020-08-13 22:59:20
Production of a COVID-19 vaccine under an agreement between the Mexican and Argentine governments and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca could begin in the first quarter of 2021, an AstraZeneca executive said.
Sylvia Varela, head of AstraZeneca Mexico, said at the Mexican president’s daily news conference that Phase III trials were expected to conclude by November or December.
The company plans to initially produce 150 million doses for distribution in Latin America, and eventually make at least 400 million doses for the region, she added.
“We’ll be prioritizing the vulnerable populations,” she said, noting that the cost, while still not final, was not expected to exceed $4 per dose.
2020-08-13 22:45:21
Some countries are toughening safety measures to curb the spread of coronavirus after the pandemic took the lives of more than 750,000 people on Thursday
The Latin America and the Caribbean region remains the global epicentre, accounting for almost one-third of all deaths and housing two of the worst-affected countries — Mexico and Brazil.
However, fear is growing in other regions of new spikes, with countries including New Zealand and Italy tightening measures in a bid to secure hard-won gains in fighting the virus, which has now infected more than 20 million worldwide.
New Zealand, which earlier this week broke a streak of more than 100 days without a new infection, is scrambling to find the source of 17 new cases in its biggest city Auckland — which faces the prospect of a three-day lockdown being extended.
"As with our first outbreak, things will get worse before they get better," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a televised address.
2020-08-13 22:27:01
The World Health Organization downplayed the danger of the coronavirus latching on to food packaging and urged people not to be afraid of the virus entering the food chain.
Two cities in China said they had found traces of the coronavirus in imported frozen food and on food packaging, raising fears that contaminated food shipments might cause new outbreaks.
“People should not fear food, or food packaging or processing or delivery of food,” WHO head of emergencies programme Mike Ryan told a briefing in Geneva. “There is no evidence that food or the food chain is participating in transmission of this virus. And people should feel comfortable and safe.”
2020-08-13 22:12:54
2020-08-13 21:32:04
The world needs to spend at least $100 billion on new tools to address the coronavirus pandemic, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday.
More than 20.69 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and almost 750,000 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
2020-08-13 21:52:32
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 74 new cases, taking the total to 35,021 in the province.
One more fatality was also recorded in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 1,236.
2020-08-13 21:11:28
2020-08-13 20:59:49
Novavax said South Korea’s SK bioscience would manufacture a component of the US drug developer’s experimental coronavirus vaccine in a bid to boost its supply.
Shares of Maryland-based Novavax rose nearly 7% in morning trade.
Novavax has received $2 billion in funding so far for its coronavirus vaccine, including $384 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
As part of that deal, Novavax has committed to supply its vaccine to COVAX, a scheme that aims to provide equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines across the globe.
The deal with SK bioscience would help it increase the supply to meet those commitments, Novavax said.
SK bioscience will start producing the antigen at its vaccine plant in South Korea this month, the two companies said, adding that they had also signed a letter of intent with the country’s Ministry of Health and Welfare to make the vaccine available for its people.
Novavax is also gearing up to deliver 100 million doses to the United States by January after it was awarded $1.6 billion to cover testing and manufacturing of its potential vaccine in the country.
2020-08-13 20:45:09
Indonesia’s capital Jakarta extended its social restrictions to stem surging coronavirus transmission as the country reported 2,098 new cases, its governor said.
Indonesia has reported 132,816 coronavirus infections and 5,968 deaths. Jakarta logged 608 new cases on Thursday, bringing the total to 27,761, the most in Indonesia’s 34 provinces, according to central government data.
Governor Anies Baswedan extended restrictions which see restaurants, places of worship and public transportation operate at limited capacity, to Aug. 27.
“Through this extension, we, along with the police and the military, will focus on law enforcement, especially on the use of masks among the people,” Baswedan said in a statement.
Baswedan said 65% of Jakarta’s 4,456 isolation beds had been filled.
2020-08-13 20:28:43
A newly developed saliva test aims to determine in less than a second whether or not you are infected with the novel coronavirus, Israel’s largest medical center said.
Patients rinse their mouth with a saline wash and spit into a vial. This is then examined by a small spectral device that, in simple terms, shines light on the specimen and analyses the reaction to see if it is consistent with COVID-19.
With machine learning it gets more accurate over time.
Eli Schwartz of the Center for Geographic Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba Medical Center, who is leading the trial, said it was easier to use than PCR swabs commonly used to detect COVID-19.
“So far we have very promising results in this new method which will be much more convenient and much cheaper,” he said.
2020-08-13 20:11:44
Peshawar Zoo will reopen for the general public from August 18, authorities said.
2020-08-13 19:59:46
Seven African countries will start administering coronavirus antibody tests from next week, a regional body said on Thursday, as part of efforts to understand the extent of the outbreak on the continent.
“Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Nigeria, Morocco are the first set of countries that committed to it,” said John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, based in Addis Ababa.
Western governments are using antibody tests to find out how many of their citizens have been infected, in the hope that will help them reopen their economies.
2020-08-13 19:44:33
Funding for the US Postal Service and to shore up election infrastructure became a major sticking point in congressional talks on coronavirus relief, as President Donald Trump vowed to block any money to facilitate mail-in voting.
The Republican president has been railing against mail-in ballots for months as a possible source of fraud, although there is little evidence it takes place and millions of Americans - including much of the military - have used the post office to cast absentee ballots for years.
Trump said his negotiators have resisted Democrats’ calls for additional money to help prepare for presidential, congressional and local voting during a pandemic that has killed more than 165,000 Americans and presented severe logistical challenges to organizing large events like the Nov. 3 election.
“The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting,” Trump told Fox Business Network, saying Democrats want to give the post office $25 billion. “If we don’t make the deal, that means they can’t have the money, that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. It just can’t happen.”
2020-08-13 19:32:10
The Insurance Council of Australia began legal action to seek formal clarification on whether they need to pay insurance claims to small businesses hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
The ICA, whose members represent about 95% total premium income written by private sector general insurers, submitted pleadings to the New South Wales Supreme Court for a test case.
The industry is turning to the courts following numerous complaints to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) by small businesses whose claims on business interruption policies because of the pandemic have been denied by their insurers.
The ICA said the Australian units of Hollard Insurance Group and HDI Global Specialty had offered two rejected claims from a caravan park and a food distribution business for the test case. The industry has agreed to pay the legal costs of the two businesses.
“We remain of the clear view that business interruption coverages do not cover pandemics,” Hollard Insurance Company Chief Executive Richard Enthoven said in a statement. “However, we volunteered to be part of the test case process so that the courtsystemcan clarify for our policyholders, Hollard and the industry how to handle this important issue.”
2020-08-13 19:25:33
The number of Americans seeking jobless benefits dropped below one million last week for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, though at least 28 million people are still receiving unemployment checks, indicating the labor market was far from healing.
The expiration of a $600 weekly jobless supplement at the end of July likely contributed to the decline in claims reported by the Labor Department on Thursday. Reports from payroll scheduling and workforce management firms suggested a decline in employment in early August due to the spread of new COVID-19 cases across the United States.
“Unemployment remains a huge problem for the US economy,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial in Pittsburgh. “It could also be that the expiration of bonus unemployment payments of $600 per week at the end of July has discouraged some potential beneficiaries from applying for unemployment insurance, the expiration may also have encouraged some beneficiaries to leave unemployment and take a job.”
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits decreased 228,000 to a seasonally adjusted 963,000 for the week ended Aug. 8. That was the lowest level since mid-March when authorities started shutting down non-essential business to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 1.12 million applications in the latest week.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-13 19:12:21
The local government in the Chinese city of Shenzhen identified a Brazilian meat plant owned by Aurora, the country’s third largest processor of chicken and pork, as the source of chicken wings that tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
The Shenzhen government identified the plant by its registration number in a posting on its website, that when checked against Brazilian records linked it to an Aurora facility in Brazil’s Southern state of Santa Catarina.
Aurora, an unlisted company, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Brazil’s agriculture ministry said it was consulting with its technical team on the matter, without elaborating.
2020-08-13 18:59:24
England launched a new version of its delayed COVID-19 smartphone app using Google and Apple contact tracing technology, as well as providing local infection data and QR code check-ins at venues.
The app was supposed to be the linchpin in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan for a “world beating” COVID-19 test-and-trace system that would control local flare-ups of the virus and allow the economy to reopen.
But it has been dogged by problems.
An earlier version developed by the National Health Service missed its May target, and in June the government abandoned the centralised technology it was pursuing in favour of a decentralised system developed by Apple and Google.
The revamped app will be trialled on the Isle of Wight off southern England, where a previous version was also tested, and by health workers before being rolled out in the east London borough of Newham to assess how it works at scale.
2020-08-13 18:48:30
Thousands of students at a Belgian university will collect weekly from September a sample of their saliva for a rapid COVID-19 test replacing more commonly used swabs - one of Europe’s largest experiments with the new testing method.
The pilot scheme could be applied in other universities, schools or companies if it proves successful in faster identifying clusters of infections among students, Belgian researchers and government officials told Reuters.
Around 30,000 students and academic staff at the Belgian University of Liege will use the self-tests at home and take the tube with the saliva sample to the university labs every week through December.
“They will have the results in the evening,” Fabrice Bureau, deputy director for research at the university, told Reuters.
Saliva at-home tests could vastly increase testing capacity, as they are simpler and faster than common nasopharyngeal swabs, which some people find unpleasant.
2020-08-13 18:29:00
Coronavirus is making it more difficult for indigenous Wayuu people in Colombia to survive and putting children at risk of malnutrition, advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
Travel restrictions to contain the spread of COVID-19 have severely their limited access to food, HRW said in a report with the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health. The majority of the 270,000 Wayuu live in Colombia’s impoverished and arid La Guajira province in the north of the country.
“Rural indigenous communities in La Guajira can’t get sufficient food or enough water for basic hygiene, such as hand-washing, and access to healthcare and information is very poor,” HRW’s Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco said in a statement.
“This situation has for years contributed to one of the highest levels of child malnutrition in Colombia, and raises critical concerns in the current context of COVID-19,” Vivanco added.
2020-08-13 18:11:03
Prosecutors have investigated Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and six members of his government over how they handled the coronavirus crisis, but have recommended the case be dropped, Conte’s office said.
Judicial sources confirmed the prosecutors had investigated the ministers following lawsuits filed in recent months in various cities on accusations including manslaughter, creating a pandemic and curbing Italians’ political rights.
The Rome-based prosecutors concluded that the accusations were groundless and the case should be dropped, the premier’s office said in a statement.
Under a standard procedure, the prosecutors sent the files to the Ministers Tribunal, a special court which is called to rule on cases involving the prime minister and other ministers and which could still order Conte and his ministers to face trial. However this is considered unlikely following the prosecutors’ recommendation.
The ministers involved along with Conte are Health Minister Roberto Speranza, Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri, Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini and Justice Minister Alfonso Bonafede.
2020-08-13 17:59:20
England’s exam authority awarded lower grades than teachers had predicted to almost 40% of pupils studying for their main school-leaving exams, results showed on Thursday, after the government cancelled the exams due to COVID-19.
Overall results were up on a year ago, but many teachers said their pupils had been unfairly treated while others raised concerns that the system adopted by the Ofqual exam board regulator favoured students at private schools.
The stakes are high for school leavers, whose places at the universities or training colleges of their choice hang on their grades.
Education minister Gavin Williamson defended the process and said he would not follow Scotland’s lead in cancelling the results in favour of teachers’ assessments. The Scottish government did so on Tuesday after a huge outcry.
“The majority of young people will have received a calculated grade today that enables them to progress to the destination they deserve,” said Williamson, who had hastily introduced an appeals process on Wednesday after the Scottish debacle.
2020-08-13 17:40:36
Finland recommended the use of face masks in public for the first time as the number of coronavirus cases rises.
Prime Minister Sanna Marin said masks should be worn in situations where social distancing is not possible, such as on public transport.
People aged 15 or over who will stay for more than 15 minutes in crowded places should wear them, excluding regions where no new cases have been found in two weeks, the public health authority also recommended.
2020-08-13 17:25:42
Lockdowns and social distancing measures introduced around the world to try and curb the COVID-19 pandemic are reshaping lives, legislating activities that were once everyday freedoms and creating new social norms.
But there are always some people who don’t play by the rules.
Rule-breaking is not a new phenomenon, but behavioural scientists say it is being exacerbated in the coronavirus pandemic by cultural, demographic and psychological factors that can make the flouters seem more selfish and dangerous.
Here are some questions and answers on the science of human behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic:
Read complete story here.
2020-08-13 17:11:34
Two cities in China have found traces of the new coronavirus in imported frozen food and on food packaging, local authorities said, raising fears that contaminated food shipments might cause new outbreaks.
A sample taken from the surface of frozen chicken wings imported into the southern city of Shenzhen from Brazil, as well as samples of outer packaging of frozen Ecuadorian shrimp sold in the northwestern Xi’An city, have tested positive for the virus, local authorities said on Thursday.
The discoveries came a day after traces of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 were found on the packaging of frozen shrimp from Ecuador in a city in eastern Anhui province. China has been stepping up screenings at ports amid the concerns over food imports.
Shenzhen’s health authorities traced and tested everyone who might have come into contact with potentially contaminated food products, and all results were negative, the city’s notice said.
The Brazilian embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters could not immediately reach the Ecuadorean embassy in Beijing.
“It is hard to say at which stage the frozen chicken got infected,” said a China-based official at a Brazilian meat exporter.
2020-08-13 16:59:31
Sindh recorded 360 infections in the past 24 hours, bumping the province's tally to 125,289, the province's chief minister Murad Ali Shah said.
The province recorded 10 more deaths, taking the death toll to2,307, Shah said.
2020-08-13 16:25:00
The Punjab disaster management authority has warned people that the "threat of COVID-19 is not over yet".
While noting that "significant success" has been achieved in reducing the spread of the disease, it stressed that we all must continue to wear a mask, ensure social distancing, wash our hands regularly.
The authority said these precautions must be doubly ensured on August 14, when people are expected to mingle about more than usual.
2020-08-13 16:00:31
Russia reported 5,057 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Thursday, bringing its nationwide tally to 907,758, the fourth largest caseload in the world.
Russia's coronavirus taskforce said 124 people had died over the last 24 hours, pushing its official death toll to 15,384.
2020-08-13 15:45:35
German Health Minister Jens Spahn on Thursday told ZDF television that he expected there would be a COVID-19 vaccine in the coming months and definitely next year.
"I'm optimistic that in the next months, and certainly in the next year, there can be a vaccine," Spahn said.
He declined to give a specific month and said it was not yet possible to say how often people would need to be vaccinated or how long-lasting the immunity it conferred would be.
2020-08-13 15:30:18
Nearly 6% of people in England were likely infected with COVID-19 during the peak of the pandemic, researchers studying the prevalence of infections said on Thursday, millions more people than have tested positive for the disease.
A total of 313,798 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Britain, 270,971 of which have been in England, or just 0.5% of the English population.
However, a study which tested more than 100,000 people across England for antibodies to the coronavirus showed that nearly 6% of people had them, suggesting that 3.4 million people had previously contracted COVID-19 by the end of the June.
2020-08-13 15:00:06
Ukraine recorded a record daily jump of 1,592 coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the national council of security and defence said on Thursday.
The number of infections has increased sharply in Ukraine in the past two months as authorities have eased some restrictions, allowing cafes, churches and public transport to reopen.
2020-08-13 14:30:48
2020-08-13 13:50:51
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,445 to 219,964, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday.
The reported death toll rose by 4 to 9,211, the tally showed.
2020-08-13 13:20:08
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said she expects the coronavirus cluster in the country to grow further before slowing down, as the Pacific nation reported an additional 13 new cases from domestic transmission.
"As we all learnt from our first experience with COVID, once you identify a cluster, it grows before it slows. We should expect that to be the case here," Ardern told a media briefing in Wellington.
The discovery of four infected family members in Auckland two days ago shocked a country that had not recorded a case of COVID-19 for more than three months.
2020-08-13 12:50:35
Australia's virus-hit Victoria state reported a major drop in new coronavirus cases Thursday, but officials warned against complacency amid a "worrying" spread of the disease in regional areas outside Melbourne.
Just 278 new cases and eight deaths were detected in Victoria Thursday— a low not seen in weeks— while a smaller outbreak in neighbouring New South Wales produced 12 additional cases and one death.
The surge in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria and Australia's second-biggest city, had pushed daily infection rates over 700 in recent weeks.
Dozens have died during a second wave that struck after Australia appeared to have the epidemic in check.
2020-08-13 12:20:55
China reported 19 new coronavirus cases on the mainland, down from 25 on the previous day, the country's health authority said on Thursday.
The National Health Commission said in its daily bulletin that 11 of the new cases were imported, versus 16 a day earlier.
China's total number of cases now stands at 84,756. The official death toll is unchanged at 4,634
2020-08-13 11:55:14
The National Command and Control Centre in its latest data has said the country’s testing capacity has dropped from 68,470 to 67,290.
The number of labs performing the tests remains the same – 138, it added.
2020-08-13 11:20:40
India reported another record daily rise in novel coronavirus infections on Thursday, while the death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 47,000.
Infections grew by 66,999 on Thursday from a day earlier to reach a total of nearly 2.4 million to date, India’s health ministry said.
The country, with the world’s biggest case load behind the United States and Brazil, has now reported a jump of 50,000 cases or more each day for 15 straight days.
2020-08-13 10:40:05
Pakistan reported 753 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 286, 674.
According to the nation dashboard 264,060 patients have recovered from the virus in the country, with 16,475 active cases.
The country also recorded 10 fatalities over the past 24 hours with the death toll climbing to 6,139.
2020-08-13 10:15:20
A coronavirus cluster in Auckland has risen to 17 cases, New Zealand health officials said Wednesday, raising the prospect of an extended lockdown in the country's biggest city to battle the resurgent virus.
National health chief Ashley Bloomfield said there were 13 new confirmed infections, all linked to four family members found on Tuesday, ending New Zealand's record of 102 days without community transmission of the disease.
Police have been helping to implement a three-day lockdown in Auckland since midday Wednesday as teams of health workers raced to find the cluster's origin and ramped up testing in the city.
Read more here.
2020-08-13 09:35:17
Brazil registered 55,155 new confirmed cases of coronavirus and 1,175 deaths, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
Brazil now has 3,164,785 confirmed cases and 104,201 deaths.
2020-08-12 23:44:26
Students will return to classrooms in Turkey in late September nearly a month after the start of the new academic year, the government has announced, as daily coronavirus cases remain above 1,000.
Turkish officials are worried as the daily figures rose from around 900 to over 1,000 confirmed cases on August 4 and have not dropped below four digits since then.
But the number is well below the peak of more than 5,000 daily cases in April.
"Schools will re-open with distance learning on August 31," Education Minister Ziya Selcuk told reporters in Ankara.
It is hoped that a gradual return to classrooms will be possible from September 21, he added.
Selcuk said the decision is based on advice from the scientific committee advising the government, which met on Wednesday before the minister´s formal announcement.
Schools and universities were shut down in March along with most public spaces as Turkish authorities rushed to prevent the virus outbreak crippling the country's health system.
Officials then decided to keep them shut for the rest of the academic year.
So far a total of 243,180 people have been infected with COVID-19 in Turkey, 5,873 of whom have died, according to government data published Tuesday.
2020-08-12 23:34:23
Britain has revised down its death toll from the coronavirus pandemic by more than 5,000 to 41,329 following a review into the way fatalities are recorded.
In England, a person who died at any point following a positive test would previously have been counted in the toll, regardless of the cause of death.
But only those dying within 28 days of a positive test will now be included in the figures, bringing England into line with the rest of the United Kingdom.
The official number of people who have died from the virus in Britain has fallen from 46,706 to 41,329 under the new system, a 12% fall.
"The way we count deaths in people with Covid-19 in England was originally chosen to avoid underestimating deaths caused by the virus in the early stages of the pandemic," said John Newton, director of health improvement at Public Health England.
The new figure means that Britain now has fewer deaths than India, but is still one of the worst affected countries in the world, and the worst in Europe.
2020-08-12 23:13:13
With coronavirus cases in Spain jumping by nearly 1,700, the construction of a military field hospital in the hard-hit Aragon region has been prompted and led authorities in Galicia to practically ban smoking in public places.
Health ministry data showed 1,690 new coronavirus cases were diagnosed in the 24 hours to Wednesday, up from the 1,418 reported on Tuesday and bringing the cumulative total to 329,784. The new daily number excluded Madrid, which did not provide fresh data due to technical difficulties.
In scenes reminiscent of the epidemic’s March-April peak, TV footage showed air force personnel setting up dark green tents to serve as a field hospital in Zaragoza, Aragon’s regional capital in northeastern Spain.
Set to open on Friday, the facility attached to Zaragoza’s University Clinic hospital will be used as a triage centre and temporary ward, the air force said in a statement.
With 571 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, Aragon has the highest prevalence of the virus in Spain. Navarre, with the second-highest rate, has just 159 cases per 100,000 people.
Despite having some of the lowest levels of the virus, northwestern Galicia issued a blanket ban on smoking on the street and on restaurant terraces when social-distancing cannot be guaranteed.
Under Spain’s decentralised government, each region is largely in charge of its own response to the virus, leading to a patchwork of different restrictions and preventative measures.
Wealthy northeastern Catalonia is set to expand a mass-testing program in the coming days to include several neighbourhoods of its capital, Barcelona.
2020-08-12 22:38:58
The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) has cleared four footballers who tested positive for the new coronavirus to play a match tonight against reigning Brazil and South American champions Flamengo, saying they were no longer contagious.
The four players from Atletico Goianiense were initially barred after testing positive Sunday, but the club successfully appealed the decision to the CBF´s medical committee.
The committee reversed the players' medical suspension late Tuesday, saying their infections were more than 10 days old, that they had observed the necessary quarantine and that they were no longer contagious.
The ruling came just in time for Goianiense's season debut against Flamengo, the current holders of the Copa Libertadores and Brazilian league titles.
The head of the CBF medical committee, Jorge Pagura, said the decision was based on recommendations from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that have been endorsed by the World Health Organization.
"After a positive PCR test result, 10 days is sufficient to release the patient" from quarantine, Pagura told news site Globoesporte.
The CBF did not say when the four players were initially diagnosed.
Pagura said they did not need to undergo another test.
2020-08-12 22:16:55
South Korea has opened a high-tech new front in the battle against coronavirus, fortifying bus shelters with temperature-checking doors and ultraviolet disinfection lamps.
Ten advanced facilities have been installed in a northeastern district of Seoul, offering protection from monsoon rains, summer heat, and the novel coronavirus.
To enter, passengers must stand in front of an automated thermal-imaging camera, and the door will only slide open if their temperature is below 37.5 degrees Celsius (99.5 Fahrenheit).
A separate camera is installed lower down to test children.
Inside the glass-walled booths — which cost about 100 million won ($84,000) each — the air-conditioning systems have ultraviolet lamps installed to kill viruses at the same time as cooling the air.
A dispenser provides hand sanitiser, and users are advised to wear face masks at all times, while keeping at least one metre apart from others.
"We have installed all the available anti-coronavirus measures we can think of into this booth," Kim Hwang-yun, a district official in charge of the Smart Shelter project, told AFP.
Free Wi-Fi is also included.
2020-08-12 21:50:35
Argentina has surpassed 5,000 deaths from the novel coronavirus after registering a record 325 new fatalities over the last 24 hours, according to the health ministry.
The South American country of 44 million has also recorded more than 260,000 infections.
More than 90% of those have been in the greater Buenos Aires area, where intensive care units (ITC) are running at more than 68% occupancy.
Other focal points are in Jujuy in the north and Tierra del Fuego in the far south.
ITC beds throughout the country are running at 58% occupancy.
2020-08-12 21:22:09
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department says 88 new cases were recorded in the last 24 hours, taking the total to 34,947 in the province.
No new deaths were reported in this time, so the death toll remains at 1,235.
2020-08-12 20:59:21
The Economic Coordination Committee approved additional funds of $3 million to be contributed to the SAARC COVID-19 Emergency Fund, a statement from the Press Information Department read.
2020-08-12 20:43:53
Russia said on Wednesday the first batch of its Covid-19 vaccine would be ready for some medics within two weeks and rejected as “groundless” safety concerns aired by some experts over Moscow’s rapid approval of the drug.
President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia had become the first country to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine, after less than two months of human testing.
The vaccine has not yet completed its final trials. Only about 10% of clinical trials are successful and some scientists fear Moscow may be putting national prestige before safety.
“It seems our foreign colleagues are sensing the specific competitive advantages of the Russian drug and are trying to express opinions that in our opinion are completely groundless,” Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Wednesday.
He said the vaccine developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute would be administered to people, including doctors, on a voluntary basis, and would be ready soon.
“The first packages of the medical vaccine against the coronavirus infection will be received within the next two weeks, primarily for doctors,” he said.
2020-08-12 20:31:45
The team management has sent batsman Mohammad Hafeez into self-isolation for violating the two-metre social distancing protocol, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) said in a statement on Wednesday.
The batsman had posted a photo on his Twitter with a woman earlier today, who he said was above 90 years of age.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-12 20:13:49
2020-08-12 19:59:50
A city in China’s eastern Anhui province found the novel coronavirus on the packaging of shrimps from Ecuador, state media reported, in the latest instance of the virus being detected on imported products.
The coronavirus was found on the outer packaging of frozen shrimps bought by a restaurant in Wuhu city when local authorities carried out a routine inspection, CCTV, China’s state television, said.
The news broke a day after a port city in eastern Shandong province said it found the virus on the packaging of imported frozen seafood, although it did not say where it originated.
Since July, several other Chinese cities have also reported cases, including the port cities of Xiamen and Dalian, prompting China to suspend imports from three Ecuadorean shrimp producers.
CCTV said on Wednesday the Wuhu restaurant had stored the contaminated products in a freezer since purchase and that all related products in the city had been sealed off.
2020-08-12 19:45:58
Shares of Moderna rose more than 5% after analysts said a $1.5 billion coronavirus vaccine supply agreement with the US government could lead to similar deals with other countries.
The United States and Moderna announced the agreement for 100 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine late on Tuesday.
The company’s vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, is one of the few that have already advanced to the final stage of testing.
The deal confirms Moderna’s experimental vaccine is one of the leading contenders, said BMO analyst George Farmer, who has an “outperform” rating on the stock.
With the US contract now signed, other deals could follow, said Jefferies analyst Michael Yee, who has a “buy” rating.
“We assume other countries ... will want to secure deals out of sheer responsibility before the capacity of the major 3-4 players is locked up.”
2020-08-12 19:26:05
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday that the White House and top Democrats in Congress may not be able to reach a deal on coronavirus aid, in the fifth day without talks on the stalemate blocking relief to tens of millions of Americans.
Mnuchin, who spent nearly two weeks trying to broker a deal in talks with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, also described the potential outcome of negotiations in terms of President Donald Trump’s reelection prospects.
“I can’t speculate. If the Democrats are willing to be reasonable, there’s a compromise. If the Democrats are focused on politics and don’t want to do anything that’s going to succeed for the president, there won’t be a deal,” he told Fox Business Network in an interview.
2020-08-12 19:09:34
Romanian Prime Minister Ludovic Orban pledged schools would re-open in September under strict hygiene rules, as the country continues to fight a spike in the number of coronavirus cases.
"Our decision is clear, schools will start on 14 September", Orban said during a speech in parliament.
He mentioned that students, teachers and other school staff will have to wear masks and that disinfectants should be available at all times.
Romania closed schools, kindergartens and universities in March to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus and subsequently decided to keep them shut for the rest of the academic year.
Orban clarified that local authorities could decide to keep some schools shut if there were more then three new infections per 1,000 inhabitants in a particular area.
In that scenario students would then have to attend lessons online from home.
2020-08-12 18:59:10
Brazil is amassing a record debt that has evoked memories of crises past in South America’s largest economy, but some economists say rock-bottom interest rates and low foreign debt mean the government can continue to spend its way out of recession.
The debate in Brazil about getting the public finances in order is cranking up, with a key government fiscal rule looking set to be broken.
“Just as the market has learned to live with an 800 billion reais deficit, it can learn to live with a conversation about modifying the spending cap. It’s inevitable it will be changed in some way,” said Jose Francisco Goncalves, chief economist at Banco Fator in Sao Paulo.
2020-08-12 18:39:44
2020-08-12 18:22:12
Australia recorded its deadliest day of the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday and the biggest daily rise in infections in three days, denting hopes that a second wave gripping the state of Victoria may be stabilising.
Victoria reported 21 deaths - two more than the previous deadliest days earlier this week - and 410 new cases in the past 24 hours, ending a run of three consecutive days with new infections below 400.
A cluster of infections in Melbourne, the Victorian capital and Australia’s second-largest city, forced authorities last week to impose a night curfew, tighten restrictions on people’s daily movements and order large parts of state economy to close.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said that while the number of cases were trending down, the impact of the strict new lockdown measures was yet to show up in the case numbers.
“We all know that a week is not the life cycle of this virus ... and our experts remain firm in the view that this will drive the numbers down,” he told reporters.
2020-08-12 18:09:12
New Zealand officials are investigating the possibility that its first COVID-19 cases in more than three months were imported by freight, as the country’s biggest city plunged back into lockdown on Wednesday.
“We are working hard to put together pieces of the puzzle on how this family got infected,” said Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield.
Investigations were zeroing in on the potential the virus was imported by freight. Bloomfield said surface testing was underway at an Auckland cool store where a man from the infected family worked.
“We know the virus can survive within refrigerated environments for quite some time,” Bloomfield said during a televised media conference.
2020-08-12 17:26:49
Norway is reimposing quarantine on more travellers from foreign countries, the government said on Wednesday, and reiterated its advice that Norwegians should avoid travelling abroad amid a jump in the number of new coronavirus cases.
Norway diagnosed 357 people with COVID-19 last week, the highest since April, but still well below the record 1,733 cases found in a single week in late March, data from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health showed.
“We’re doing this now so that everyone as soon as possible will be able to live their lives as freely as possible,” Prime Minister Erna Solberg told a news conference.
“All foreign travel is associated with a risk of infection,” Solberg said.
2020-08-12 17:38:00
Britain’s NatWest is cutting at least 500 jobs across its retail business and closing one of its remaining offices in London as banks press on with cost-cutting in the face of a wave of expected loan losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The state-backed bank is finalising a voluntary redundancy round targeting cutting 550 full-time equivalent roles across its branches and ‘premier banking’ premium service, union Unite told Reuters. A NatWest spokesman confirmed the redundancy process.
“We have taken the decision to invite applications for voluntary redundancy and will support those colleagues who apply with a comprehensive support package. There will be no compulsory redundancy as a result of this announcement,” the spokesman said.
2020-08-12 17:54:13
Jordan will close for a week its only land trade border crossing with Syria after a spike in COVID-19 cases coming from its northern neighbour, officials said.
They said the interior minister’s decision to close the main Jaber border crossing would come into effect on Thursday morning.
2020-08-12 17:13:15
Analysis by Imperial College London and the University of Sussex shows that certain countries have done better than others to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Chile, Iran, Russia, France and Sweden, the outbreak is said to be "on course to fade out" as the Rt value which is the "effective" reproduction rate is below 1.
Many others, such as Britain, Iraq, India, South Africa, Mexico, Poland, and Italy, all have Rt values above 1 and are said to have an "ongoing outbreak or epidemic".
2020-08-12 16:42:00
Italian regions have begun to order new periods of quarantines for people returning from higher-risk European countries such as Spain and Greece in a bid to stem the latest outbreaks of coronavirus.
Health authorities worry that Italians returning from vacations abroad may be bringing home the virus and passing it on during the summer when people are crowding outdoors, on beaches, at festivals or parties.
As the national government studies whether to reissue more stringent anti-Covid restrictions, such as making the wearing of masks mandatory in public, regions are already clamping down.
The president of Emilia Romagna on Wednesday was expected to sign an order mandating coronavirus tests for anyone returning to the region from Spain, Greece and Malta, all Schengen area countries where travel with Italy is unrestricted.
Those returning from Croatia will also be ordered to quarantine.
A mandatory 14-day quarantine also begins today in the southern regions of Puglia and Campania for people returning from Spain, Greece and Malta.
Sicily is prepared to follow suit, its regional president said.
2020-08-12 16:27:00
Sindh has recorded 373 new cases, according to a statement by the Chief Minister House, taking the tally to 124,929.
Seven more fatalities were also reported, taking the death toll to 2,297.
2020-08-12 16:00:02
Germany recorded the biggest daily increase in new coronavirus cases in more than three months, data showed on Wednesday, with the health minister warning of outbreaks in nearly all parts of the country due to holiday returnees and party-goers.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose by 1,226 to 218,519, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) showed. That was the biggest daily increase since May 9.
The number of coronavirus deaths remained relatively low, edging up by six to a total of 9,207.
2020-08-12 15:40:56
Russia's confirmed coronavirus case tally, the fourth largest in the world, rose to 902,701 on Wednesday after officials reported 5,102 new infections.
Authorities said 129 people had died in the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 15,260.
2020-08-12 15:20:31
Britain’s economy shrank by a record 20.4% between April and June when the coronavirus lockdown was tightest, the largest contraction reported by any major economy so far, with a wave of job losses set to hit later in 2020.
Official figures published on Wednesday also showed the world’s sixth-biggest economy entered a recession as it shrank for a second quarter in a row.
2020-08-12 14:50:07
Governments can test, isolate and treat patients, trace and quarantine their contacts; inform, empower and listen to communities.
Individuals should keep and physical distance. They should also wear a mask, clean hands regularly and cough safely away from others.
2020-08-12 14:05:26
Jingzhou city in China's central province of Hubei reported on Wednesday a coronavirus case where the person turned positive again after recovering months ago, the Jingzhou government said.
The 68-year-old woman, who had tested positive for coronavirus on Feburary 8 but recovered a few months ago, tested positive again on August 9, the government said.
She is now under quarantine and treatment, and people who have contacted her have tested negative for the coronavirus, it said.
There is no evidence of a risk of transmission from relapsed cases, it added
2020-08-12 13:35:46
Just seven weeks after bringing its first coronavirus wave under control, experts say Spain is once again in a "critical" situation with the worst infection rate in Western Europe.
The country reported an average of 4,923 new daily cases of the respiratory disease during the last seven days. It counts 95 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people, compared to 24 in France, 17 in Britain, 13 in Germany and just eight in Italy.
The spike has led a growing list of countries to impose restrictions on travel to Spain, which has nearly 323,000 confirmed cases of the disease, the highest number in Western Europe and 11th highest in the world.
2020-08-12 13:00:06
German Health Minister Jens Spahn on Wednesday said he was sceptical about Russia becoming the first country to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine, saying it was key to have a safe, tested product rather than just being first.
"It's not about being first somehow— it's about having an effective, tested and therefore safe vaccine," Spahn told Deutschlandfunk radio.
"In order to have trust in such a vaccine, I think it is very, very important, even during a pandemic, to properly do studies, the relevant tests and especially to make them public. The problem is that we know very little about it as the Russian authorities are not being very transparent," he said.
2020-08-12 12:35:58
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,226 to 218,519, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by 6 to 9,207, the tally showed
2020-08-12 12:00:44
More than 20.34 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 741,097 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-08-12 11:40:57
The United States has penned an agreement with drugmaker Moderna Inc to acquire 100 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine, US president Donald Trump said in a press conference.
The United States has made several deals to acquire doses of potential COVID-19 vaccines in advance of their approval by regulators, part of its Operation Warp Speed program that aims to deliver a vaccine in the US by the end of the year.
2020-08-12 11:15:07
Pakistan on Wednesday recorded 730 new cases of the coronavirus taking the nationwide tally 285,921.
The country also recorded 17 new fatalities, with the death toll climbing to 6,129.
According to the national dashboard, the number of recovered patients in the country have risen to 263,193 with 16,599 active cases.
2020-08-12 10:35:40
Australia recorded its deadliest day of the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday and the biggest daily rise in infections in three days, denting hopes that a second wave gripping the state of Victoria may be stabilising.
Victoria reported 21 deaths— two more than the previous deadliest days earlier this week— and 410 new cases in the past 24 hours, ending a run of three consecutive days with new infections below 400.
2020-08-12 09:55:04
Brazil on Tuesday registered 1,274 new coronavirus deaths, bringing the total death toll to 103,026, the health ministry said.
Overall, confirmed cases rose by 52,160 to 3,109,630.
2020-08-12 09:20:25
New Zealand locked down nursing homes nationwide after a 102-day streak without the coronavirus ended on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said authorities were scrambling to trace anyone who had been in contact with four Auckland residents who tested positive Tuesday, ending the dream run in which the virus had been contained at New Zealand's borders.
A three-day stay-at-home order for Auckland, New Zealand's biggest city with a population of 1.5 million, was announced on Tuesday night and went into force at lunchtime on Wednesday.
2020-08-11 23:59:28
The Dutch government plans to order mandatory quarantine for people who are known to have been exposed to the coronavirus, national broadcaster NOS reported, citing a letter to parliament.
The decision follows a 55% jump in the number of positive cases in the country to 4,036 in the past week from 2,588 cases the week before.
2020-08-11 23:45:58
US electricity consumption will drop 3.4% in 2020 as coronavirus lockdowns caused businesses to close, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO).
EIA projected retail power sales will drop to 3,623 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2020 from 3,750 billion kWh in 2019 before rising to 3,655 billion kWh in 2021.
That would be the biggest annual percentage decline since 2009 when sales fell 3.7% and compares with an all-time high of 3,859 billion kWh in 2018, according to data going back to 1949.
If power consumption falls as expected in 2020, it would be the first time since 2012 that demand declines for two consecutive years.
2020-08-11 23:30:14
Nursing home residents on kidney dialysis had roughly three times the rate of COVID-19 compared to those not receiving treatment, US health researchers found in a study of a Maryland facility.
The study is based on data during an active coronavirus outbreak in April, when the nursing home reported its first positive COVID-19 case. At the time, around half the nursing homes in the state had active outbreaks.
Some 47% of residents receiving dialysis had positive test results for COVID-19, compared to 16% not receiving dialysis, researchers reported in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Tuesday.
The 30-day hospitalization rate and mortality were significantly higher among COVID-19 patients receiving dialysis.
The researchers, including those from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and CDC’s COVID-19 response team, said residents on dialysis might be at greater risk as they regularly leave the facility for treatment and could be exposed to other dialysis patients and staff members at dialysis centers.
2020-08-11 23:12:44
Facebook said it removed 7 million posts in the second quarter for sharing false information about the novel coronavirus, including content that promoted fake preventative measures and exaggerated cures.
Facebook released the data as part of its sixth Community Standards Enforcement Report, which it introduced in 2018 along with more stringent decorum rules in response to a backlash over its lax approach to policing content on its platforms.
The company said it would invite external experts to independently audit the metrics used in the report, beginning 2021.
The world’s biggest social media company removed about 22.5 million posts containing hate speech on its flagship app in the second quarter, up from 9.6 million in the first quarter. It also deleted 8.7 million posts connected to extremist organizations, compared with 6.3 million in the prior period.
2020-08-11 22:59:00
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 104 new infections, taking the province's tally to 34,859.
Four more deaths were also reported, bringing the death toll to 1,235.
2020-08-11 22:45:53
Molecular Partners is getting a payment in the “high single digit millions” of Swiss francs from the Swiss government to reserve doses of an early-stage drug candidate that the Zurich-area biotechnology company is developing for COVID-19.
Fresh off the failure of its eye drug abicipar in the United States, Molecular Partners is seeking to rebound with the experimental drug, called MP0420, against COVID-19.
The Swiss government is upping efforts against the new coronavirus, having last week struck an early access deal for a potential vaccine from US-based Moderna that has entered large trials.
Molecular Partners’ drug has yet to start clinical trials, with the company saying it hopes to initiate those later this year.
“The initial supply agreement secures the right to purchase 200,000 doses, with the potential to purchase up to an additional 3 million doses,” Molecular Partners said on Tuesday.
2020-08-11 22:29:10
Yannis Yovanos scans the waters of the Ambracian Gulf with his binoculars for dolphins shooting into the air before curving back down into the sea.
His early warnings prompt just a dozen tourists on the deck of Yovanos' small boat to scramble for their smartphones, hoping to secure a snap of the aquatic mammals' aerial acrobatics.
Officials in his home town of Preveza hope that it's just this kind of small, family-run business that will help them overcome the coronavirus' impact on travel — while sparing the region the environmental impact and economic distortions of the mass tourism more common on Crete or the Ionian islands.
"We don't want to stay all day on a beach, we're looking for a different experience," said Dutch tourist Frederika Janssen.
"The pandemic is an opportunity to promote alternative tourism, fishing tourism," as well as local life and culture "directly related to the natural resources that date from Antiquity," said Constantin Koutsikopoulos, who heads the agency charged with managing the Ambracian Gulf.
2020-08-11 22:14:56
Standing outside the high cemetery walls as a sharp breeze blows down from the Andes, Mauricio Castiblanco pulls on a disposable cover-all, adjusts his mask under a face shield, and snaps on latex gloves.
He adds extras to his personal protective equipment (PPE), befitting his role as a Catholic deacon: a purple sash decorated with an embroidered red cross, a plastic bottle of holy water, and a book of funeral rites.
Castiblanco, who works at a Bogota funeral home, is getting ready to receive four hearses bearing the bodies of presumed or confirmed COVID-19 victims.
As Latin America becomes the new global hotspot for the pandemic, Colombia is set to pass 400,000 confirmed coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the eighth highest total in the world. That is despite five months of nationwide lockdown.
“This goodbye is even more painful,” says Castiblanco, as mourners sob behind him. “This doesn’t give us time, it’s against the clock.”
The health ministry has banned the embalming of remains from confirmed and suspected COVID-19 patients. Instead, they must be cremated or buried quickly in individual tombs.
“It’s really impacted me because we did have a gentle rhythm, unhurried, but we’ve gotten to the point where we have to abandon our usual locations, our wake rooms, our chapels,” says Castiblanco. “The (number of) services is incalculable, there are so many.”
2020-08-11 21:58:59
2020-08-11 21:39:10
2020-08-11 21:26:03
The coronavirus pandemic chalked up another horrific milestone Monday as the world surpassed 20 million recorded cases of infection from the tiny killer that has upended life just about everywhere.
The number as of 2215 GMT was 20,002,577 cases, with 733,842 deaths recorded, according to an AFP tally of official sources.
In yet another staggering landmark, the death toll is expected to surpass 750,000 in a matter of days as the global health crisis that began late last year in China rages on.
As more things once unthinkable became harsh reality — having to wear a facemask in touristy spots in Paris, or reserve a spot on Copacabana beach in Rio via an app and then social distance on the sand — the World Health Organization urged people not to despair.
"Behind these statistics is a great deal of pain and suffering... But I want to be clear: there are green shoots of hope," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
"It´s never too late to turn the outbreak around," he said.
He gave examples of countries that had successfully clamped down on COVID-19, such as Rwanda and New Zealand, which said Monday it plans to open a virus-free "travel bubble" with the Cook Islands.
2020-08-11 21:13:12
Brazil’s Paraná state is in talks with Russia to produce a COVID-19 vaccine, the state research institute said on Tuesday, hours after President Vladimir Putin declared his country to be the world’s first to grant regulatory approval for a vaccine.
João Pedro Schonarth, spokesman for the Parana Technology Institute (Tecpar), told Reuters talks were underway. The state government said Governor Ratinho Júnior was set to meet the Russian ambassador to Brazil on Wednesday, but a spokesperson did not say if a production deal would be signed at the meeting.
With the world’s biggest coronavirus outbreak outside the United States, Brazil has become a hub for mass clinical trials of potential vaccines, with candidates from the UK and China already being tested.
Brazilian officials have also vowed to start making vaccines developed by British and Chinese researchers within a year, but experts have warned it will likely take at least twice as long.
2020-08-11 20:59:45
Moderna said there was a possibility it was not the first company to make breakthroughs claimed in its patent applications, including those for its experimental coronavirus vaccine, according to a recent regulatory filing.
The statement by the US drug developer was made in a quarterly filing on August 6 under mandatory disclosures of risks to its business.
"For this and other reasons, we may be unable to secure desired patent rights, thereby losing exclusivity," the company said. (bit.ly/2PISREC)
“We cannot be certain that we were the first to make the inventions claimed in our patents or pending patent applications, or that we were the first to file for patent protection of such inventions, including mRNA-1273,” the company said.
2020-08-11 20:40:55
Scottish students will have downgraded examination results used to secure university places raised back to original levels set by teachers, as Edinburgh faces anger at a problem caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which could also play out in England.
With almost no examinations taking place, teachers graded pupils in key subjects and the marks were then moderated by examination boards. To the dismay of pupils and parents, 75,000 young people saw their grades revised down.
Similar issues could begin to emerge on Thursday when students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive their A level results, on which many university places are based.
“All downgraded awards will be withdrawn,” said Scotland’s education minister John Swinney.
“In exceptional times, truly difficult decisions have to be made. It is deeply regrettable that we got this wrong and I am sorry for that.”
2020-08-11 20:28:50
France is extending a ban on public gatherings of more than 5,000 people to October 30 as coronavirus infections rise sharply, Prime Minister Jean Castex said.
Castex told a news conference that the coronavirus situation in France had been going “the wrong way” for two weeks.
On Monday, France reported the first significant daily rise in the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 since the end of its strict lockdown.
2020-08-11 20:13:47
Johnson & Johnson could produce 1 billion doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine next year if it proves successful and would consider injecting healthy volunteers with the novel coronavirus if there are not enough patients for final trials, a company executive said.
J&J kicked off in July early-stage human safety trials for its potential COVID-19 vaccine after releasing details of a study in monkeys that showed its best-performing candidate offered strong protection in a single dose.
It is developing the vaccine in collaboration with its Belgian subsidiary, Janssen.
Large-scale trials are set to start by the beginning of October and J&J aims to have results on the vaccine’s efficacy between the end of this year and mid-2021, Johan Van Hoof, head of vaccines at Janssen, told Reuters on Tuesday in a telephone interview.
2020-08-11 19:59:25
Fans dancing at an electronic music festival, long lines at breakfast stands, gridlocked traffic — the scenes in coronavirus ground zero Wuhan these days would have been unthinkable in January.
The central Chinese city's recovery after a 76-day lockdown was lifted in April has brought life back onto its streets.
The queues snaking outside breakfast stands are a far cry from the terrified crowds that lined up at the city's hospitals in the first weeks after the city was quarantined in January to curb the spread of COVID-19.
The hazmat suits and safety goggles that were once the norm have given way to umbrellas and sun hats as tourists shield themselves from the scorching summer sun, posing for photos in front of the city's historic Yellow Crane Tower.
2020-08-11 19:44:21
2020-08-11 19:27:49
Dental patients and staff need to be protected from any potential infection by aerosol-generating procedures, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, as dentists return to work in areas where the COVID-19 pandemic is easing.
There is currently no data on the spread of coronavirus from the dentist’s chair, it said, calling for more research into common procedures that produce tiny floating particles that may cause infection if inhaled.
These include three-way air/water spray, ultrasonic cleaning equipment that removes deposits from the tooth surface, and polishing, the WHO said in new guidance.
“WHO guidance recommends in case of community transmission to give priority to urgent or emergency oral cases, to avoid or minimise procedures that may generate aerosol, prioritise a set of clinical interventions that are performed using an instrument and of course to delay routine non-essential oral health care,” Benoit Varenne, a WHO dental officer, told a news briefing.
He added: “The likelihood of COVID-19 being transmitted through aerosol, micro-particles or airborne particles ... today I think is unknown, it’s open to question at least. This means that more research is needed.”
2020-08-11 19:10:14
Rental prices in Spain’s major cities fell in July, data from one of the biggest property portals showed on Tuesday, as the coronavirus pandemic drove up interest in less densely-populated areas.
Between June and July, rents dropped by an average of 2.5% in Barcelona and 1.7% in Madrid, according to Fotocasa, although they remain Spain’s most expensive locations.
“Many Spaniards are considering leaving the big cities and going to live in outlying areas where they can find bigger, brighter and more spacious homes,” said Fotocasa’s communications director Anais Lopez.
2020-08-11 18:51:08
Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings said the first group of participants had been dosed in an early-stage trial testing its COVID-19 vaccine candidate and that results from the trial were expected in the fourth quarter.
Shares of the San Diego, California-based company rose about 4% in trading before the bell.
The company is among several drugmakers racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine for the new coronavirus that has killed more than 735,000 people globally.
Arcturus in April said preclinical data testing its experimental vaccine, ARCT-021, which is being developed jointly with Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School, showed the vaccine candidate could trigger an immune response to the virus.
“Based on preclinical immunogenicity data, our self-replicating mRNA-based investigational vaccine could have a highly differentiated safety and efficacy profile, and may potentially allow vaccination at very low doses, and with a single administration,” Arcturus Chief Executive Officer Joseph Payne said in a statement.
2020-08-11 18:37:08
US President Donald Trump said his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping has frayed in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic and that he has not spoken to his Chinese counterpart in a long time.
“I used to have a very good relationship with him,” Trump told Fox Sports Radio in an interview, citing their Phase One trade deal last year. “I had a great relationship with President Xi. I like him, but I don’t feel the same way now.”
Trump said his feelings changed amid COVID-19.
“I certainly feel differently. I had a very, very good relationship, and I haven’t spoken to him in a long time.”
2020-08-11 18:19:20
The number of people in work in Britain has suffered the biggest drop since 2009 and signs are growing that the coronavirus will take a heavier toll on the labour market as the government winds down its huge job-protection scheme.
Led by a record plunge in the self-employed, 220,000 fewer people were working in the three months through June, official figures showed on Tuesday.
Separate tax data for July showed that the number of staff on company payrolls had fallen by 730,000 since March, sounding the alarm about a potentially much bigger rise in joblessness.
Mounting job losses are expected as Britain winds down its job-retention scheme, which has covered around one in three private-sector jobs. It is due to close at the end of October.
“A real concern is that this is just the first wave of bad news for the jobs market,” said Gerwyn Davies, senior labour market adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development.
“The fact that reduced hiring rather than increased firing of permanent staff is the main cause of the jobs slowdown to date bodes ill for the coming months if more employers turn to redundancies as a last resort.”
2020-08-11 16:52:49
India’s ability to rein in a surging coronavirus outbreak hinges on its 10 most populous states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday, urging regional leaders to ramp up testing and contact tracing.
“If we can defeat corona in these 10 states, the country will win,” Modi said in a video conference with state chief ministers.
The 10 states accounted for 80 percent of its 639,929 active cases and 82 percent of its 45,257 deaths, Modi said.
Modi said five states, including the two poor northern provinces of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that have a combined population of more than 300 million, need to ramp up testing.
2020-08-11 16:40:02
US President Donald Trump will be briefed on US COVID-19 vaccine efforts later on Tuesday and will likely give a public update, White House Adviser Kellyanne Conaway said, after Russia announced it had approved a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
“The president is getting a vaccine update here at the White House today, and I’m sure he will announce that in an open press event and also probably his press briefing later today,” Conway told Fox News interview.
2020-08-11 16:20:56
Struggling British department store chain Debenhams is to cut a further 2,500 jobs, dealing the latest blow to the country’s battered retail sector from the COVID-19 crisis.
Debenhams shed hundreds of head office jobs in May and its latest round of redundancies adds to thousands already announced by major British retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Boots, John Lewis and WH Smith.
Official data, also published on Tuesday, showed the number of people in work in Britain has suffered the biggest drop since 2009 and signs are growing that the coronavirus will take a heavier toll on the labour market as the government winds down its huge job-protection scheme.
“We have successfully reopened 124 stores, post-lockdown, and these are currently trading ahead of management expectations,” Debenhams said in a statement.
2020-08-11 17:03:57
British consumers spent the most last month since the country went into a coronavirus lockdown in March, as pubs, restaurants, barbers and beauty salons reopened, according to industry figures.
Data from Barclaycard and the British Retail Consortium showed spending was close to getting back to normal levels though not all sectors were benefiting.
Barclaycard said consumer spending was 2.6% lower than in July 2019, the smallest shortfall since the lockdown began.
Official figures due on Wednesday are expected to show Britain suffered the biggest economic hit from COVID-19 of any major economy between April and June with output expected to be down by about 20%.
Reopening businesses, as well as warm weather, boosted consumer spending in July. But sales at pubs and restaurants, which reopened for on-premises consumption on July 4, remained well below year-ago levels.
2020-08-11 17:20:16
Normally, the magnificent plains of Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve are crowded with international tourists hoping to see a lion hunt during the annual wildebeest migration - but this year COVID-19 means Kenyans had it all to themselves.
That’s good news for animal watchers but bad for conservationists who rely on the funds to pay for rangers and protection. By June, Kenya had already lost 80 billion Kenyan shillings ($740 million)in tourism revenue, about half of last year’s total, due to the coronavirus crisis.
This weekend, thousands of mostly Kenyan visitors travelled to the park to witness the migration. There were few foreigners - Kenya shut down international flights in March and only resumed them on Aug. 1.
“Once I came here, my thought and my view about everything has changed. I am actually embarrassed that I have not come here the 29 years I have been alive,” tourist Patience Mumo said.
“We are trying to revive the sector through the domestic tourism strategy. And that is why we ask Kenyans ... to support tourism,” Tourism and Wildlife Minister Najib Balala said.
2020-08-11 17:35:12
Around the world, politicians, drugmakers and regulators offer contradictory outlooks on when a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready. Much depends on what ‘ready’ means and for what group of people. Some key questions around the timeline are:
When will we know a vaccine works?
More than half a dozen drugmakers around the world are conducting advanced clinical trials, each with tens of thousands of participants, and several expect to know if their COVID-19 vaccines work and are safe by the end of this year.
The most optimistic timeline comes from AstraZeneca, which is running a study in Britain that it says could be completed as early as August.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious diseases expert, told Reuters last week that a trial by Moderna could produce decisive results by November or December. Others will come later, some much later.
Some experts are skeptical that the trials, which must study potential side effects on different types of people, can be completed that quickly. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, says that collecting enough data to prove a vaccine is safe for the world could take until mid-2021.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-11 17:50:13
New Zealand announced it was shutting down its largest city, Auckland, after four new cases of COVID-19 were discovered in the city, the first evidence of domestic transmission after being coronavirus-free for 102 days.
New Zealand’s successful fight against COVID-19 was hailed globally and the Pacific island nation of 5 million was seen as one of the safest places, as the pandemic raged globally.
Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the four cases were within one family in South Auckland. One person is in their 50s. They had no history of international travel. Family members have been tested and contact tracing is under way.
News of the cases sent panic across the country with media reporting people rushing to supermarkets to stock up, and businesses preparing to shut.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Auckland would move to level 3 restriction from noon on Wednesday as a “precautionary approach”, which would mean people should stay away from work and school, and gatherings or more than 10 people would again be restricted.
2020-08-11 18:01:25
Renowned Indian poet and lyricist Rahat Indori, 70, passed away on Tuesday hours after testing positive for the coronavirus.
According to Times Now, the veteran poet was under treatment at a local hospital in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore.
"He (Indori) suffered two heart attacks today and could not be saved... he had 60% pneumonia," ANI reported citing Dr Vinod Bhandari.
2020-08-11 16:00:38
WHO says it is discussing the process for possible WHO prequalification for Russia's newly approved COVID-19 vaccine, a WHO spokesman said on Tuesday.
"We are in close contact with Russian health authorities and discussions are ongoing with respect to possible WHO prequalification of the vaccine, but again prequalification of any vaccine includes the rigorous review and assessment of all required safety and efficacy data," WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.
2020-08-11 15:10:15
New Zealand announced its first locally transmitted coronavirus infections in 102 days on Tuesday, prompting the country's prime minister to issue a stay-at-home lockdown order for the country´s largest city.
Jacinda Ardern said four cases had been detected in a single family in Auckland from an unknown source.
"After 102 days, we have our first cases of COVID-19 outside of managed isolation or quarantine facilities... While we have all worked incredibly hard to prevent this scenario, we have also planned and prepared for it," she said.
2020-08-11 14:45:24
Singapore on Tuesday reported 61 new COVID-19 cases, its lowest daily count in more than four months.
The city-state went into a lockdown in mid-April after mass outbreaks in cramped migrant worker dormitories pushed its caseload to one of the highest in Asia.
Last week, it said it had cleared infections from all of the dormitories— housing around 300,000 workers— barring some blocks which continue to serve as isolation zones.
2020-08-11 14:20:48
Russia has developed the first vaccine offering "sustainable immunity" against the coronavirus, President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday.
“I know that it works quite effectively, forms strong immunity, and I repeat, it has passed all the needed checks,” said Putin.
He said he hoped the country would soon start mass producing the vaccine.
2020-08-11 14:10:47
Former Indian president Pranab Mukherjee was put on ventilator support after undergoing surgery having contracted COVID-19, local media reported on Tuesday, quoting unidentified sources at the military hospital in New Delhi where he is admitted.
Mukherjee said in a Twitter posting on Monday that he had tested positive for COVID-19 while visiting the hospital for a separate procedure.
“I request the people who came in contact with me in the last week, to please self isolate and get tested for COVID-19,” he said, without disclosing further details of his condition.
2020-08-11 13:40:22
Russian registered 4,945 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, pushing its national case tally to 897,599, the fourth largest in the world.
The official death toll rose to 15,131 after authorities said in their daily coronavirus report that 130 people had died in the previous 24 hours.
2020-08-11 13:10:47
Australia's second-most populous state of Victoria on Tuesday reported 19 deaths from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours and 331 new cases.
The state reported 322 infections and 19 deaths, its biggest one-day rise in casualties, a day earlier.
Victoria last week began a six-week total lockdown, closing down shops and businesses to contain a second wave of infections requiring its five million residents to stay home.
2020-08-11 12:40:56
Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar has credited the people of Pakistan for the decline in COVID-19 cases, saying that they were the "real heroes" whose cooperation with the government had led to the drastic reduction in the infection.
"Whatever the steps taken by the state and the government could not have been effective if the public had not cooperated with us," he said. "A large part of the society helped the government. I would like to thank the media as well for sending our message to the public on what to do [to ward off the coronavirus]," he added.
The minister said that the government and the people had taken the right decisions and actions when it came to tackling the pandemic. He praised the smart lockdown initiative, stating that developed countries could also not shut down the economy for a longer period of time.
Read more here.
2020-08-11 12:05:53
China reported 44 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, compared with 49 cases a day earlier, the health authority said.
The National Health Commission said in a statement 31 of the new infections were imported cases, and the balance 13 were locally transmitted cases reported from Xinjiang region. There were no new deaths.
2020-08-11 11:50:10
The Trump administration is considering a measure to block US citizens and permanent residents from returning home if they are suspected of being infected with the new coronavirus, a senior US official confirmed to Reuters.
The official said a draft regulation, which has not been finalized and could change, would give the government authorization to block individuals who could “reasonably” be believed to have contracted COVID-19 or other diseases.
2020-08-11 11:20:22
The number of laboratories for testing coronavirus samples has increased from 136 to 138, according to the National Command and Control Centre.
As of now, there are five labs in AJK, six in Balochistan, three in GB, 18 in Islamabad, 18 in KP, 35 in Punjab, 27 in Sindh and 25 and three labs under the armed forces and National Disaster Management Authority.
2020-08-11 10:55:30
Confirmed coronavirus cases in Pakistan climbed to 285,191 on Tuesday after the country reported 531 new cases in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,150 cases in AJK, 11,921 cases in Balochistan, 2,371 cases in GB, 15,281 in Islamabad, 34,755 in KP, 94,586 in Punjab and 124,127 cases in Sindh.
The country also reported 15 fatalities over the last 24 hours, taking the nationwide death toll to 6,112.
Recovered patients in the country stand at 261,246, with 17,833 active cases in Pakistan.
2020-08-11 10:30:52
Mexico’s coronavirus death toll passed the 53,000 mark on Monday as the health ministry reported 705 additional fatalities and 5,558 new cases of infection, pushing the country closer to the government’s most negative scenarios.
Mexico, which has the third-highest death toll worldwide from the virus after the United States and Brazil, has now reported 485,836 cases and 53,003 deaths, with fatalities rising nearly 5,000 over the past week.
2020-08-11 10:10:07
Cuba reported a record 93 coronavirus cases on Monday as a surge of the disease in the Havana area threatened to stall the re-opening of the country after a partial lockdown beginning in March.
Most of the cases were in Havana, where a partial lockdown was re-imposed on Monday, and in neighboring Artemisa province. The area has been isolated from the rest of the country where with but few exceptions no cases have been reported in more than two months.
Cuba has been hailed as a rare success story in Latin America for its textbook handling and containment of its coronavirus outbreak through contact tracing and isolation of potential asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19.
2020-08-11 09:35:01
Brazil on Monday registered 22,048 new cases of coronavirus and 703 deaths, the health ministry said.
Overall, Brazil now has 3,057,470 confirmed cases, while the death toll has risen to 101,752.
2020-08-10 00:59:00
One creature’s droppings can be another’s treasure, as Germany’s Krone Circus is finding out during the new coronavirus pandemic.
Home to 26 lions and tigers, the circus has found an unusual side income and raised money despite coronavirus-related restrictions: selling jars of big cats’ droppings.
Customers have told lion tamer Martin Lacey they swear by the stuff.
“I am told it keeps cats away from the garden, and since then we have learned that also it keeps the animals away from the car, where they eat all the electric cables,” Lacey said.
The circus’ pop-up shop is also a way to give people a few laughs, says Lacey as the circus waits to be allowed to perform again.
The jars sell for 5 euros each, with some of the money going towards a charity to improve the living conditions of captive animals.
And if you don’t have a garden pest problem but find your neighbours pesky? - “Put some in the garden, and the neighbours will go away,” Lacey chuckles.
2020-08-10 23:45:53
Former US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova has joined a growing list of players who have decided not to play in this year’s tournament due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Russian world number 32 on Monday announced her decision on Instagram where she also said she would skip the Western & Southern Open which is being held in New York this year instead of Cincinnati as a lead-up to the August 31-September 13 US Open.
“Due to an unfavourable situation caused by coronavirus, and therefore the inability get together all my team, I made a difficult decision to refuse to participate in Cincinnati and the US Open,” said Kuznetsova.
“I feel very sad, because I have been waiting for these tournaments so much, but the pandemic changes all plans. I hope the situation will be more positive by the next tournaments.”
2020-08-10 23:35:01
The Balochistan health department has reported 15 new infections, taking the province's tally to 11,921.
2020-08-10 23:29:59
KARACHI/ISLAMABAD: As Pakistan lifted the coronavirus lockdown on Monday, citizens were seen completely disregarding the precautionary measures the government had clearly advised the nation to follow on the first day and markets were overcrowded with women and children
No one in the bazaars across the country was found to be pracitising social distancing and only a scant number of people wore face masks.
While social distancing was followed at tables at various restaurants and in food courts inside shopping malls, many people at the dhaabas — roadside restaurants — did not observe any of the coronavirus-related standard operating procedures (SOPs) as their indulged their love for halwa puri, nihari, and tea.
Read more
2020-08-10 23:21:38
US President Donald Trump still wants to see coronavirus aid legislation pass that would include stimulus payments to individuals and school funding, the White House said on Monday after talks with congressional Democrats collapsed last week.
"The White House is still motivated," White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters at a briefing. "The president would love to see the direct payments to Americans, the president would love to see the school funding. There are several items we would like to see happen."
2020-08-10 23:21:05
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday reported 5,023,649 cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 48,690 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 558 to 161,842.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on Aug. 9 versus its previous report a day earlier.
The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
2020-08-10 22:55:30
Global coronavirus cases pushed past 20 million, according to a Reuters tally, with the United States, Brazil and India accounting for more than half of all known infections.
The death toll from COVID-19, meanwhile, at more than 728,000 has outpaced the upper range of annual deaths from the flu.
The Reuters tally, which is based on government reports, shows the disease is accelerating. It took almost six months to reach 10 million cases after the first infection was reported in Wuhan, China, in early January. It took just 43 days to double that tally to 20 million.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-10 22:39:41
Finland will introduce mandatory coronavirus tests and quarantines for travellers arriving from certain high-risk countries, the minister in charge said.
The announcement came after 24 of 157 passengers who arrived on a flight from Skopje in North Macedonia to Turku in Finland on Saturday tested positive for COVID-19 following voluntary tests.
2020-08-10 22:24:10
After two months of feeling slightly better about their odds in the labor market, Americans grew more pessimistic in July, according to a survey by the New York Federal Reserve.
The shift reflects the effects of fresh restrictions enacted by state and local governments to combat a resurgence in coronavirus infections. U.S. employment growth slowed considerably in July, reflecting a potential slowdown in the economic rebound. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.8 million jobs last month, compared to the record 4.8 million jobs added in June, the Labor Department said on Friday.
Consumers said the mean perceived probability of losing their job over the next year increased to 16% in July from 15% in June, above the 2019 average of 14.3%, according to the New York Fed survey.
The mean expectation that the U.S. unemployment rate will be higher in a year started rising again in July after falling for three straight months from the series high of 50.9% reached in March. Consumers put the odds at 39.3% in July, up from 35.1% in June.
2020-08-10 22:07:50
2020-08-10 21:55:54
Royal Caribbean Group said testing passengers for COVID-19 was “very likely” going to be part of a new set of safety measures planned to get its ships to resume sailing after months of being docked.
The company’s shares rose as much as 11% in early trading.
“We have not yet reached a point in our protocols where we’re ready to publish and release for discussion. But it’s very likely that testing will occur,” said Michael Bayley, chief executive officer of Royal Caribbean International.
2020-08-10 21:42:36
The health ministers of Germany’s federal and state governments have agreed to extend a ban for spectators in stadiums at Bundesliga soccer matches until at least the end of October due to the coronavirus pandemic, a source told Reuters.
The Bundesliga season restarted in mid-May after a suspension of more than two months, becoming the first European league to resume under strict rules to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
2020-08-10 21:28:09
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department reported no deaths from coronavirus from the first time since March.
The death toll stands at1,231 and the overall infections have reached 34,755, the department said, adding that the number of recovered patients had reached31,691 in the province.
2020-08-10 21:13:27
Oil rose, supported by an improvement in Chinese factory data, rising energy demand and hopes for an agreement in the United States on more coronavirus-related economic stimulus.
Brent crude LCOc1 rose 45 cents, or 1%, to $44.85 a barrel by 11:20 EDT (1520 GMT), and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) U.S. crude CLc1 was up 60 cents, or 1.5%, to $41.16 a barrel.
Prices found support after U.S. President Donald Trump said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, top Democrat in that chamber of congress, wanted to meet with him to make a deal on coronavirus-related economic relief.
The talks between Democrats and members of Republican Trump’s administration broke down last week.
“The oil complex is heavily reliant on that aid. We need people to be able to boost economic activity to spur demand,” said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital in New York.
2020-08-10 20:59:45
US hotel operator Marriott International posted a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss, as the coronavirus crisis curbed global travel and led to a plunge in room bookings.
Marriott’s shares, down 40.3% this year, fell 3% in premarket trading as the company also reported an 84.4% plunge in revenue per available room (RevPAR) - a key performance measure for the hotel industry.
However, Marriott echoed smaller rival Hilton’s comments from last week, saying it now expects a gradual rise in occupancy rates across the world although it may take a few years for them to return to pre-COVID period demand levels.
“While our business continues to be profoundly impacted by COVID-19, we are seeing steady signs of demand returning”, Chief Executive Officer Arne Sorenson said in a statement, adding that Greater China continued to lead the recovery.
2020-08-10 20:45:09
Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm has begun Phase III clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine in Bahrain, after launching similar trials in the United Arab Emirates last month, Bahrain’s health ministry said on Monday.
The human trial, which launched in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi in mid-July, is a partnership between Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group (CNBG) and Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence and cloud computing company Group 42 (G42).
G42 Healthcare CEO Ashish Koshy said expanding the trial to the small island state of Bahrain will increase the numbers of participants on a par with trials underway in nations with much larger populations.
The study, which uses an inactivated vaccine, will include around 6,000 citizens and resident volunteers in Bahrain over 12 months, the health ministry said.
2020-08-10 20:27:41
Britain on Monday recorded 816 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in its latest daily statistics, falling back from the previous day’s total which had been the highest daily rise in infections since late June.
A total of 311,641 have now tested positive for COVID-19, official data showed.
On Sunday there were 1,062 new positive tests for the coronavirus, at a time of new local lockdowns in some areas and worries over a second wave of infections.
2020-08-10 20:12:00
2020-08-10 19:56:56
Islamabad recorded 20 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Sector I-8, the district health officer said.
2020-08-10 19:43:59
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 436 to 216,327, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.
The reported death toll rose by one to 9,197, the tally showed.
2020-08-10 19:22:32
State oil giant Saudi Aramco’s profit plunged 73% in the second quarter of the year, as a slump in energy demand and prices due to the coronavirus crisis hit sales at the world’s biggest oil exporter.
But the company stuck with plans to pay $75 billion in dividends this year and CEO Amin Nasser said global oil demand was recovering.
All major oil companies have taken a hit in the second quarter as lockdowns to contain the coronavirus limited travel, which reduced oil consumption and sent prices tumbling to levels not seen in nearly two decades.
Aramco, which listed in Riyadh last year in a record $29.4 billion flotation, said the rapid spread of COVID-19 globally had significantly reduced demand for crude oil, natural gas and petroleum products.
Nasser told reporters he had seen a partial recovery in the energy market and a pick up in demand as economies gradually open after the easing of coronavirus lockdowns.
“Look at China, their gasoline and diesel demand is almost at pre-COVID 19 levels. We are seeing that Asia is picking up and other markets (too),” he told reporters after announcing the company’s quarterly results.
2020-08-10 19:07:51
The wearing of masks in some crowded areas around Paris became compulsory on Monday as part of a drive to stem a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections, but some tourists appeared perplexed about where the new rule is meant to apply.
A detailed list of more than 100 mandatory mask-wearing zones includes the popular Montmartre district, with its narrow streets, and the banks of the River Seine but excludes other famous tourist destinations such as the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysees and the huge shopping area of Les Halles.
“It’s not clear at all. We’re tourists so we don’t know in which zones we’re required to wear a mask,” said Dominico Ditoma, a French tourist visiting Montmartre with his family.
“We assume it’s for tourist spots but there are no signs so it’s quite unclear.”
A foreign tourist who gave her name as Angelica was also uncertain: “I’ve heard about it, it starts this morning, but I don’t know about the zones, I don’t know how to get informed.”
Anybody aged 11 and over faces a 135 euro ($159) fine if caught without a mask where one is required. City hall official Audrey Pulvar defended the complex mask map - which is available on the city’s website - saying that it was “evolving” and was based on criteria such as people’s ability in a given space to comply with social distancing rules.
“That’s why, in certain streets, parts are affected by the measure and parts are not,” Pulvar said on BFM TV.
2020-08-10 18:56:47
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday said the Trump administration and Congress could reach an agreement on further economic relief amid the novel coronavirus pandemic as soon as this week if Democrats are “reasonable.”
Mnuchin, in an interview on CNBC, said there was room for compromise on a deal for more aid and that legislation should get passed, but he declined to say when talks could resume.
2020-08-10 18:41:04
Britain will act quickly to reimpose quarantine conditions on arrivals from specific countries if data supports such a move, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said.
“We can and we will act quickly if we judge that there is a risk to public health,” the spokesman said.
He added that Britain was working toward resuming daily publication of data on the country’s COVID-19 death toll, and that a review of the methodology behind existing data was due to be concluded later this week.
2020-08-10 18:28:03
Ten Franciscan monks and eight trainees in Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis, have tested positive for coronavirus and gone into isolation, the Catholic order said on Monday.
Father Enzo Fortunato, a spokesman, said the 18 were not in the main convent complex, which includes the basilica where the saint is buried, but housed in a separate structure for trainee monks, known as novices, and their immediate superiors.
The newly-arrived novices were from France, Malta and Croatia, Fortunato said, adding that they were all in good condition and the outbreak was not affecting visits by pilgrims and tourists to the basilica and main convent.
Visits take place with social distancing and masks.
2020-08-10 18:12:10
Sindh coronavirus recovery rate reached 93% after another243 patients recovered, the province's chief minister Murad Ali Shah said.
The province's total cases now stand at124,127 and the death toll has reached2,282.
2020-08-10 17:59:26
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Africa CDC, has revealed that the number of COVID-19 cases across the African continent surged to 1,036,564 after registering about 14,480 new cases across the continent on Sunday.
In its latest situation update, Africa CDC said the death toll due to the pandemic also rose to 22,966 on Sunday, registering about 505 new COVID-19 deaths across the continent from Saturday’s 22,461 report.
2020-08-10 17:47:51
Kuwait announced 687 new coronavirus, COVID-19, cases, bringing the total infections to 72,400.
Health Ministry spokesperson Dr. Abdullah Al-Sanad was quoted by Kuwait News Agency, KUNA, as saying that four additional fatalities were also reported in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 482.
2020-08-10 17:35:47
CureVac, one of Germany’s leading contenders to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, said it aims to raise up to $245 million in an initial public stock offering (IPO) on the US Nasdaq.
The biotech firm said on Monday it plans to offer a total of up to 15.33 million new shares, adding the shares will likely be priced at between $14.00 and $16.00 apiece.
Bank of America, Jefferies and Credit Suisse are acting as joint book-runners, with Berenberg and Kempen & Co acting as passive book-running managers, it added.
The proceeds will fund the development of an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, the ramp-up of manufacturing capabilities, its oncology drug development and the development of a rabies vaccine, among other ventures, according to the statement.
The group, which is controlled by Software firm SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp and also backed by the foundation of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, initially flagged plans to go public on July 24.
2020-08-10 16:54:18
The World Health Organization trusts powerful nations such as the Group of Seven to reach a consensus on how to approach health crises such as the coronavirus, Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies programme, said.
France and Germany have quit talks on reforming the WHO in frustration at attempts by the United States to lead the negotiations, despite its decision to leave the WHO, three officials told Reuters.
The move is a setback for President Donald Trump as Washington, which holds the rotating chair of the G7, had hoped to issue a joint roadmap for a sweeping overhaul of the WHO in September, two months before the U.S. presidential election.
“We are all vulnerable to risks, we need to find global solutions,” Ryan said. “...We trust the G7 will play a major part in that in the months and years to come.”
2020-08-10 16:40:54
Shopper numbers, or footfall, across all British retail destinations rose 3.8% last week from the previous week, with the start of a state-funded eating out scheme helping evening traffic more than lunchtimes, industry data showed.
Britain’s retail and hospitality sectors, already struggling with high rents and business taxes, were hit particularly hard by the coronavirus lockdown and thousands of job losses have been announced.
To get the country spending again the 500 million pound ($653 million) “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme offers 50% off the bill for eat-in food and drink - up to 10 pounds per person, excluding alcohol - on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays in August.
The government hopes the unprecedented subsidy, along with cuts to value-added tax for the hospitality sector, will help to reduce job losses at restaurants, cafes, bars and pubs, which employ 1.8 million people.
Official data published last month showed that UK retail sales excluding fuel were back to year-ago levels in June, but the recovery was driven by a boom in online shopping and extra spending at supermarkets as people ate out less.
2020-08-10 17:00:57
Australia recorded its biggest one-day rise in COVID-19 deaths on Monday although a slowdown in new cases gave hope that a second wave of new infections in the state of Victoria may have peaked.
Nineteen people had died from the virus, all in Victoria, in the past 24 hours, a national daily record. However only 337 people had been diagnosed with COVID-19 across the country, the lowest one-day rise since July 29, officials said.
“This is an agonising day for the members for the 19 families who have lost a loved one to COVID-19 today,” Michael Kidd, Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, told reporters.
“We are now seeing the first promising signs of a significant decline in the number of cases.”
2020-08-10 17:21:00
The Red Cross has trained 43,000 North Korean volunteers to help communities, including the locked-down city of Kaesong, fight the novel coronavirus and provide flood assistance, an official with the relief organisation said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared an emergency last month and imposed a lockdown on Kaesong, near the inter-Korean border, after a man who defected to the South in 2017 returned to the city showing coronavirus symptoms.
Heavy rain and flooding in recent days have also sparked concern about crop damage and food supplies in the isolated country.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has built an extensive network of North Korean volunteers to help residents in all nine provinces to avoid the virus and reduce damage from floods and landslides, spokesman Antony Balmain said.
“Hundreds of homes have been damaged and large areas of rice fields have been submerged due to heavy rain and some flash flooding,” Balmain said.
2020-08-10 16:26:18
There is a huge gap between the funds needed to fight the coronavirus pandemic and funds committed worldwide, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“For the vaccines alone, over $100 billion will be needed,” Tedros told a briefing in Geneva.
Referring to an international initiative to accelerate healthcare access, Tedros said the “...coming three weeks represent crucial period for ACT (Access to COVID-19 Tools). However (we) have to scale up financing.”
He said he saw “green shoots of hope”.
“It is never too late to turn the pandemic around,” Tedros said. The message is to “suppress, suppress, suppress”.
2020-08-10 16:00:09
Hong Kong reported 69 new coronavirus cases on Monday, of which 67 were locally transmitted, as authorities battled to contain a resurgence of the virus over the last six weeks.
Since late January, over 4,000 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 55 of whom have died. On Sunday, Hong Kong reported 72 new cases.
2020-08-10 15:40:10
Russian authorities confirmed 5,118 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday, pushing the national case tally to 892,654, the fourth largest in the world.
The official death toll rose to 15,001 after authorities said in their daily coronavirus report that 70 people had died in the last 24 hours.
2020-08-10 14:25:24
The National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) has warned of a potential spike in coronavirus cases in the country during Muharram if the SOPs were not strictly followed.
The meeting under Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar also deliberated at length on upcoming Muharram processions and measures to ensure public health and safety, reported Radio Pakistan.
Religious Affairs Minister Noorul Haq Qadri while briefing the meeting said assistance is being sought from Ulema for formulating comprehensive protocols and health guidelines during Muharram procession.
2020-08-10 13:45:30
German companies expect public life to be restricted for a further 8.5 months due to coronavirus, a survey by the Ifo economic institute showed on Monday, as Europe’s largest economy battles to recover from a pandemic-induced downturn.
Leisure firms, hit hard by the coronavirus crisis, are particularly pessimistic, expecting restrictions to last another 13 months while the beverage sector is more optimistic, foreseeing an end to restrictions in 6.4 months.
2020-08-10 13:15:28
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 436 to 216,327, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The reported death toll rose by one to 9,197, the tally showed.
2020-08-10 12:35:53
China reported 49 new coronavirus cases compared with 23 cases a day earlier, the health authority said.
The National Health Commission said in a statement 35 of the new infections were imported cases. There were no new deaths.
China has reported a total of 84,668 confirmed coronavirus cases since the outbreak in December last year.
2020-08-10 12:00:04
The UK’s official COVID-19 daily death count could be scrapped following an investigation into Public Health England’s method of counting the toll, The Telegraph newspaper reported.
The conclusions of the investigation, which was ordered by Health Secretary Matt Hancock after it emerged officials were “exaggerating” virus deaths, are expected this week, the newspaper said.
Britain paused its daily update of the death toll last month and the government ordered a review into how Public Health England reports coronavirus deaths, after academics said the daily figures may include people who died of other causes.
2020-08-10 11:30:51
Dine-in restaurants, salons, gyms and other businesses which were shuttered during the novel coronavirus reopen today as the country limps back to normalcy after its efforts to contain the pandemic seem to be bearing fruit.
The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) had announced on Thursday that cinemas, theatres, gyms, public points and dine-in restaurants will reopen across the country from Monday, August 10 subject to implementation of coronavirus safety guidelines and SOPs.
Shopping malls and other businesses are set to remain open as per the pre-lockdown timings.
Read more here.
2020-08-10 10:55:32
The number of confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 284,660 on Monday after 539 new cases were recorded in the country in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,141 cases in AJK, 11,906 in Balochistan, 2,334 in GB, 15,261 in Islamabad, 34,692 in KP, 94,477 in Punjab and 123,849 in Sindh.
The country also reported 15 fatalities in the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll 6,097.
2020-08-10 10:35:32
Australia's second-most populous state has recorded 322 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, the state's health department said on Monday.
Victoria state said there were 19 fatalities from the virus in the last day.
2020-08-10 09:50:46
Brazil reported 23,010 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 572 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Sunday.
Brazil has registered 3,035,422 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, and the official death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 101,049, according to ministry data. Brazil's coronavirus outbreak is the world's worst after the United States.
2020-08-10 09:20:18
Britain reported 1,062 new positive tests for coronavirus, the highest daily rise in new COVID-19 infections since late June, at a time of new local lockdowns in some areas and worries over a second wave of infections.
Official data showed 1,062 people tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, going over the 1,000 new daily cases mark for the first time since June, and 304 higher than the 758 new cases reported on Saturday.
2020-08-09 22:47:00
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin say they are open to restarting COVID-19 aid talks, after weeks of failed negotiations prompted President Donald Trump to take executive actions that Democrats argued would do little to ease Americans’ financial distress.
Both Pelosi and Mnuchin appeared willing to consider a narrower deal that would extend some aid until the end of the year and then revisit the need for more federal assistance in January, after November’s election that could rebalance power in Washington.
“Let’s pass legislation on things that we agree on,” Mnuchin told Fox News in an interview. “We don’t have to get everything done at once ... What we should do is get things done for the American public now, come back for another bill afterwards.”
Pelosi, in a separate interview on “Fox News Sunday,” dismissed Trump’s orders on Saturday as unconstitutional and “illusions” that would not quickly or directly help Americans, saying a deal between congressional Democrats and the White House was still needed.
“Right now, we need to come to agreement,” she said, adding that Democrats could shorten the length of time aid is provided in order to bring the bill’s costs down closer to the Trump administration’s proposal.
“We could talk about how long our provisions would be in effect, so we can take things down — instead of the end of September of next year, a shorter period of time — and we’ll revisit all of it next year anyway,” said Pelosi, whose fellow Democrats controls the US House of Representatives.
Mnuchin appeared open to consider the idea, telling Fox: “Anytime they have a new proposal I am willing to listen.”
2020-08-09 22:20:00
The Balochistan health department has reported 22 new infections in the province, taking the total number to 11,906.
Another death was also recorded, taking the toll to 138.
2020-08-09 21:50:00
ATHENS: Greece reported 203 new cases of COVID 19 on Sunday, its highest daily tally since the start of the outbreak in the country, a government official said.
The latest jump in cases brings the total number of infections in the country to 5,623 since its first infection surfaced in late February.
2020-08-09 20:55:00
LONDON: Britain reported 1,062 new positive tests for coronavirus on Sunday, the highest daily rise in new COVID-19 infections since late June, at a time of new local lockdowns in some areas and worries over the second wave of infections.
Official data showed 1,062 people tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, going over the 1,000 new daily cases mark for the first time since June, and 304 higher than the 758 new cases reported on Saturday.
2020-08-09 20:33:00
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has reported 57 new cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total to 34,692 in the province.
With one more fatality, the death toll rose to 1,231.
According to the KP Health department, 70 more patients have recovered during the past 24 hours, taking the the number of recovered patients to 31,612.
2020-08-09 20:21:00
WELLINGTON: New Zealand marked 100 days without a domestic transmission of the coronavirus on Sunday, but warned against complacency as countries like Vietnam and Australia which once had the virus under control now battle a resurgence in infections.
New Zealand’s successful fight against COVID-19 has made the Pacific island nation of 5 million one of the safest places in the world right now.
New Zealanders have returned to normal life, but authorities are concerned that people were now refusing testing, not using the government contact tracing apps, and even ignoring basic hygiene rules.
2020-08-09 20:10:00
WASHINGTON: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday urged a restart of congressional talks on extending coronavirus aid, saying executive actions taken by President Donald Trump a day earlier would have a little immediate impact on Americans facing economic distress amid the pandemic.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, meanwhile, left the door open to resuming negotiations, saying he would consider any new proposal from Democrats and encouraged a compromise bill on areas of agreement such as food assistance.
Both sides appeared willing to consider a narrower deal that would extend aid until the end of the year and then revisit the need for more federal assistance in January, after November’s election.
“Let’s pass legislation on things that we agree on,” Mnuchin told Fox News in an interview.
“We don’t have to get everything done at once,” he added. “What we should do is get things done for the American public now, come back for another bill afterward.”
2020-08-09 19:55:00
DUBAI: Saudi Arabia will soon begin Phase III clinical trials on around 5,000 people for a COVID-19 vaccine developed by China’s CanSino Biologics Inc, a Saudi health ministry spokesman said on Sunday.
Last month, CanSino’s co-founder said the company was in talks with Russia, Brazil, Chile, and Saudi Arabia to launch a Phase III trial of the vaccine candidate, Ad5-nCOV.
The vaccine uses a harmless cold virus known as adenovirus type-5 (Ad5) to carry genetic material from the coronavirus into the body.
Researchers said last month that CanSino’s vaccine, co-developed with China’s military research unit, appeared to be safe and induced immune responses in most subjects.
Saudi Arabia plans to test the vaccine alongside a placebo on 5,000 volunteers and is currently preparing trials in the cities of Riyadh, Dammam, and Mecca, Saudi state news agency SPA said on Saturday.
No COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for commercial use.
2020-08-09 19:40:00
The novel coronavirus has claimed 10 more lives and has infected at least 303 more people during the past 24 hours in Sindh.
In a statement on the daily COVID-19 situation in the province, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said that ten more have succumbed to the virus during the past 24 hours, taking the death tally to 2,272 province-wide.
"Out of 303 new cases of coronavirus, about 103 patients are from Karachi," he said, adding that about 326 patients have recovered in the last 24 hours across the province.
The total number of coronavirus affected patients in the province stands at1,23,849.
2020-08-09 19:20:00
The United States has registered over five million cases in the coronavirus pandemic, Johns Hopkins University's real-time tally showed on Sunday, as well as over 162,000 deaths as the country struggles to control the disease.
The US tally reached 5,000,603 cases on Sunday morning and 162,441 deaths — both totals by far the highest of any country in the world.
"The United States just passed 5 million reported infections of COVID-19," his Democrat opponent Joe Biden tweeted on Sunday.
"It's a number that boggles the mind and breaks the heart. Each time the number goes up, it represents a life altered, a family stricken with anxiety, a community on edge. It shouldn't have gotten this bad."
2020-08-09 18:58:53
French regions have increased the compulsory use of protective masks against the coronavirus in busy public spaces where social distancing is more difficult. Paris adopts the same measure from Monday.
Anyone walking along the Seine in the heart of the city, visiting the tourist hub of Montmartre or shopping in some of the busier streets will all have to wear a mask, facing a fine of 135 euros if they refuse, as the number of cases edges up around the country.
2020-08-09 18:50:55
More than 10,000 people have died from coronavirus in South Africa.
The continent's most industrialised economy has registered 553,188 infections, more than half of the continental caseload, and the fifth biggest number of COVID-19 cases in the world.
2020-08-09 18:42:29
Malawi on Sunday shut bars and churches in new restrictions to limit the "alarming" spread of coronavirus, three months after a court blocked the government from imposing a full lockdown.
Since the first positive case was detected on April 2, confirmed cases have nearly doubled over the past four weeks to hit over 4,624, including 143 deaths as of Saturday.
Malawi had not been placed under a lockdown after a court in April blocked the government from enforcing a full lockdown because it had failed to announce any measures to cushion the vulnerable.
Attorney general Chikosa Silungwe on Sunday unveiled newly-gazetted regulations to curb the spread of the virus.
Wearing of face masks will now be mandatory.
All public gatherings, including at bars and religious centres have been banned.
Bars will only be allowed to sell take-out alcohol.
No groups of more than 10 people are allowed, except for funerals with a maximum of 50 people.
Silungwe said an "army of enforcement officers" had been hired to ensure the regulations were followed.
2020-08-09 17:57:06
2020-08-09 17:49:18
JAKARTA; Indonesia reported 1,893 more novel coronavirus infections on Sunday, taking the total tally to 125,396 infections, the country’s COVID-19 taskforce website showed.
The number of death rose 65 on Sunday, bringing the total number of deaths to 5,723.
2020-08-09 17:29:04
HONG KONG: Hong Kong reported 72 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, of which 63 were locally transmitted, as authorities continued efforts to contain a resurgence of infections in the global financial hub over the past month.
More than 4,000 people have been infected in Hong Kong since January, 51 of whom have died. Sunday’s figure was slightly up from Saturday’s 69 cases.
2020-08-09 17:12:51
MANILA: The Philippines on Sunday recorded 61 more coronavirus deaths, the highest daily increase in fatalities reported since July 18, taking the country’s death tally to 2,270.
A health ministry bulletin also reported 3,109 more infections, bringing the total confirmed cases to 129,913.
The Southeast Asian country leads the region in the most number of cases and is second to Indonesia in deaths.
2020-08-09 16:51:18
LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said reopening schools in September was a social, economic and moral imperative and insisted they would be able to operate safely despite the ongoing threat from the pandemic.
His comments follow a study earlier this month which warned that Britain risks a second wave of COVID-19 this winter twice as large as the initial outbreak if schools open without an improved test-and-trace system.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Johnson said restarting schools was a national priority. Schools would be the last places to close in future local lockdowns, he was quoted by another newspaper as telling a meeting on Thursday.
Schools in England closed in March during a national lockdown, except for the children of key workers, and reopened in June for a small number of pupils.
The government wants all pupils to return to school by early September in what Johnson has called a “national priority”.
“Keeping our schools closed a moment longer than absolutely necessary is socially intolerable, economically unsustainable and morally indefensible,” Johnson wrote.
The economic costs for parents who cannot work if schools are shut are spiralling, and the country faces big problems if children miss out on education, the prime minister warned.
“This pandemic isn’t over, and the last thing any of us can afford to do is become complacent. But now that we know enough to reopen schools to all pupils safely, we have a moral duty to do so,” he wrote.
2020-08-09 16:33:13
HANOI: Vietnam’s health ministry on Sunday reported 31 new COVID-19 cases and an additional death, taking the country’s total tally to 841, with 11 fatalities.
All of the new cases are linked to the central city of Danang, where the new outbreak began late last month, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
There have been 355 cases since the virus resurfaced in Danang, with 11 deaths. Coronavirus infections have since been detected in at least 15 locations in Vietnam.
2020-08-09 16:00:10
2020-08-09 15:35:02
Australia’s second-most populous state, Victoria, reported its deadliest day of the COVID-19 outbreak on Sunday, with 17 people dying, as police thwarted a planned anti-mask rally in the capital of Melbourne.
Victoria, at the centre of a second wave of infections in Australia, reported 394 cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, compared with a daily average of 400-500 over the past week. The new deaths bring the state’s total to 210.
The southeastern state, with infections concentrated in Melbourne, accounts for a lion’s share of the national tally of more than 21,000 and 295 deaths.
2020-08-09 15:00:52
Russia reported 5,189 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, bringing its nationwide tally to 887,536, the fourth largest caseload in the world.
Russia's coronavirus taskforce said 77 people had died over the last 24 hours, pushing its official death toll to 14,931
2020-08-09 14:25:13
At least seven people died after a massive fire broke out at a hotel that was being used as a COVID-19 facility in India's southern Andhra Pradesh state early on Sunday, police said.
"Several people who were trapped and injured have been rescued and moved to a government hopsital. Fire is under control but rescue and fire-fighting operations are still underway," said Lakshmi, a constable at the police control room.
Read more here.
2020-08-09 13:55:11
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 555 to 215,891, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.
The reported death toll rose by one to 9,196, the tally showed.
2020-08-09 13:25:47
China reported 23 new coronavirus cases, down from 31 a day earlier, the country’s health authority said on Sunday.
Among the new cases, 15 were locally transmitted and eight were imported infections, the National Health Commission said in a statement published on its website.
The total number of infections in mainland China now stands at 84,619, with the death toll unchanged at 4,634.
2020-08-09 12:50:58
More than 19.65 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 725,334 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-08-09 12:15:46
New Zealand marked 100 days on Sunday with no recorded cases of the coronavirus in the community but health officials warned there was no room for complacency.
There are still 23 active cases but all were detected at the border when entering the country and are being held in managed isolation facilities.
New Zealand, with a population of five million, has won widespread praise for its effective handling of the coronavirus since closing its borders on March 19.
WHO has hailed the country as an example to others for having "successfully eliminated community transmission".
2020-08-09 11:40:23
Mexico's health ministry on Saturday reported 6,495 new confirmed coronavirus infections and 695 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 475,902 cases and 52,006 deaths.
Mexico has the third highest coronavirus death tally globally, behind the United States and Brazil.
2020-08-09 11:15:49
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 284,121 on Sunday after the country reported 634 new coronavirus cases during the last 24 hours.
The country also reported eight fatalities over the last 24 hours to take the nationwide death toll to 6,082.
Recoveries in the country stand at 260,248 with 17,791 active cases in Pakistan.
2020-08-09 10:40:28
The US set a record for coronavirus cases on Saturday, with more than 5 million people now infected, according to a Reuters tally.
With one out of every 66 residents infected, the US leads the world in COVID-19 cases, according to a Reuters analysis. The country has recorded more than 160,000 deaths, nearly a quarter of the world’s total.
Read more here.
2020-08-09 10:05:23
Brazil surpassed 100,000 coronavirus deaths and three million infection on Saturday, crossing the grim milestone after President Jair Bolsonaro said he had a "clear conscience" on his response to the outbreak.
With 100,477 fatalities and 3,012,412 confirmed cases, the South American nation of 212 million people is the second hardest-hit country in the global pandemic, after the United States.
Brazil has seen 478 deaths per million people, a figure roughly equivalent to that of the United States (487), but lower than that of Spain (609) or Italy (583).
2020-08-09 00:13:00
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 96 new infections, taking the province's tally to 34,635.
Eight more deaths were also reported, bringing the death toll to 1,230. Of these, two were reported in the last 24 hours and the others two were added to the tally after previously not being counted in the total.
2020-08-09 00:09:47
The Balochistan health department has reported 49 new infections, taking the province's tally to 11,884.
2020-08-08 23:59:40
Indonesia reported 2,277 new coronavirus infections and 65 more deaths, data from its health ministry website showed.
This brings the country’s total to 123,503 coronavirus infections and 5,658 deaths, the data showed.
2020-08-08 23:46:01
Thousands of Israelis rallied outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem as anger mounted against him over alleged corruption and an economic crisis fuelled by the coronavirus.
“Your time is up” read the giant letters projected onto a building at the protest site as demonstrators waved Israeli flags and called on Netanyahu to resign.
2020-08-08 23:30:45
Face masks must be worn outdoors in Paris along the banks of the River Seine and along the Canal St Martin as well as in open-air markets and other places where social distancing is difficult, the Paris prefecture.
Masks will be mandatory from 0600 GMT on Monday and the order will remain in place for one month, the prefecture said.
2020-08-08 23:11:22
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 4,920,369 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 62,042 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 1,340 to 160,220.
2020-08-08 23:00:40
Islamabad recorded 32 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in IHITC, the district health officer said.
2020-08-08 22:47:56
President Donald Trump on Saturday intends to sign an executive order intended to provide economic relief to Americans hurt by the coronavirus pandemic after the White House failed to reach a deal with Congress, a White House source said.
“Amid congressional inaction, POTUS will be taking action to help Americans in need,” the official told Reuters. Trump is due to give a news conference at 3:30pm ET (1930 GMT).
Nearly two weeks of talks between White House officials and congressional Democrats ended on Friday with the two sides still about $2 trillion apart on next steps to address the heavy human and economic toll the coronavirus pandemic has taken on the United States.
2020-08-08 22:30:10
As COVID-19 cases spike and hospital bed space dwindles in Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage officials on Friday won a key ruling in favor of a ban on indoor restaurant dining after a standoff over the issue moved to court.
Anchorage city officials this week sued to halt indoor dining at Kriner’s Diner, a popular eatery that defied an emergency ordinance issued on July 31 restricting restaurants to outdoor service and take-out due to a surge in coronavirus infections.
On Friday, following two days of court hearings, state Superior Court Judge Eric Aarseth sided with city officials and issued a temporary restraining order against the restaurant.
The city demonstrated the risks of indoor dining and showed that “the potential harm to the Anchorage public is of such significant importance that the closure of a business would be warranted,” Aarseth said in his order. “A property interest cannot outweigh a person’s interest in life.”
The diner, however, remained open on Friday afternoon, its tables packed with customers two hours after the judge issued his order. Owner Andy Kriner and at least one server were seen working without masks or gloves.
The diner’s earlier defiance of the city’s directive had won them hundreds of supporters. Customers filled the restaurant for days, rallied outside the eatery and distributed “We Support Kriner’s Diner” bumper stickers.
“We have so much support we are absolutely blown away and we feel your love!” the diner said in a Facebook post on Thursday.
2020-08-08 22:17:57
2020-08-08 21:44:03
2020-08-08 21:33:52
Algeria said on Saturday it will further ease its coronavirus lockdown, including shortening an overnight curfew, lifting some travel curbs and allowing large mosques to reopen.
In June, it resumed some economic activity, mainly in the construction and public works sectors, and allowed the reopening of some businesses.
The new measures include lifting a travel ban on 29 provinces from August 9 until the end of the month. During that period, a curfew will be shortened and will run from 11pm to 6am from the current 8pm to 5am, the government said.
Mosques with a capacity of more than 1,000 worshipers can reopen from August 15, though weekly prayers on Fridays, which are usually attended by larger numbers of people, will remain banned throughout the country.
2020-08-08 21:21:58
Paris authorities imposed the mandatory wearing of face masks outdoors in busy areas of the French capital from Monday as the number of coronavirus infections there rose.
The order applies to people aged 11 and over, the Paris prefecture said in a statement.
“All the indicators show that since mid-July that virus has again begun circulating more actively,” the prefecture said.
The rate of positive tests in the greater Paris region now stood at 2.4% compared with a national average of 1.6%, it added.
The zones where masks must be worn will be detailed separately, and evaluated on a regular basis, the prefecture said. They will include some densely populated areas in the capital’s lower-income suburbs.
2020-08-08 20:59:00
The Provincial Task Force on Coronavirus (Sindh) has decided to resume educational, business, and social activities all over the province from September 15, if the coronavirus pandemic situation does not deteriorate.
According to a press release, the decision was proposed by the National Coordination Committee, but the provincial government decided to review the situation in the first week of next month to go ahead with the plan.
Shah said that in the first week of September "we will sit again to review the situation and decide the opening of the social, business and educational activities".
“Once it is allowed, the home department would issue notification of the opening of the activities and announce SOPs,” he said.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-08 20:46:32
Sindh will reopen restaurants, businesses, cinemas from August 10, Education Minister for Sindh Saeed Ghani said while speaking in Geo News programme "Naya Pakistan".
2020-08-08 20:27:01
Tens of thousands of female health workers on the frontline of India's battle against the coronavirus have gone on strike to demand better pay and protection.
With India now registering the world's third highest pandemic caseload at more than two million infections, the women in several states have gone on a two-day strike and plan a mass protest in Delhi on Sunday.
About one million of the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) across India have been given the responsibility of hunting for suspected coronavirus cases, especially in villages and slums.
Officially they are referred to as volunteers and the government gives them an allowance of 1,000 rupees ($13) a month.
The health workers went on strike Friday and Saturday, and are demanding a 21,000 rupee monthly salary as well as a pension and anti-virus protection equipment and testing.
The women, whose protests have been building over the past month, say they have faced attacks and harassment in some villages.
2020-08-08 19:59:36
Germany has added parts several areas of Bulgaria and Romania to a list of places considered a high risk for coronavirus infections, requiring compulsory tests for travellers returning from those places from today.
In its latest travel warning update, the foreign ministry put Bulgaria´s Blagoevgrad, Dobritch and Black Sea tourist hotspot Varna on its list of places where infections were rising rapidly.
Seven places in Romania — Arges, Bihor, Buzau, Neamt, Ialomita, Mehedinti and Timis — were also added.
This means that travellers entering Germany after visiting these sites must take a coronavirus test on arrival unless they can produce a test taken in the previous 48 hours.
Germany uses the yardstick of 50 new infections per 100,000 residents in the last seven days to determine if a country or region should go on its high-risk list.
It recently added three regions in Spain to the list in a blow to the fellow EU member state.
2020-08-08 19:41:06
The Punjab government issued standard operating procedures (SOPs) to be implemented by the restaurants and fast food businesses when they resume operations from Monday.
The Primary & Secondary Healthcare Department issued the SOPs on the recommendation of the Technical Working Group after the National Coordination Committee (NCC) decided to ease lockdown restrictions from restaurants, sports, tourism and entertainment sectors after seeing new cases drop for several weeks.
Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar had said on Thursday that dine-in restaurants and beauty salons would reopen across the country on August 10 as the efforts against the coronavirus pandemic seem to bear fruit.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-08 19:25:54
At least 17 participants of a major Afghan grand assembly tested positive for the new coronavirus, officials said, a day after the high-profile gathering began in Kabul to deliberate over the fate of Taliban prisoners and the beginning of the peace process in the war-torn country.
After being called by the Afghan government, the gathering, known as the Loya Jirga, began on Friday with over 3,600 participants amid tight security and the COVID-19 pandemic to debate whether hard-core Taliban prisoners should be freed, removing a major obstacle in the peace talks.
“Samples from all 3,620 participants were taken by our health team, and among them result of 17 were positive” for the virus that causes the disease, said Saeed Jami, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s ministry of public health. Some participants were tested twice, he said.
2020-08-08 19:11:35
Ukraine’s government said it had temporarily closed its border with Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, to prevent further spread of coronavirus.
All three crossing points between the mainland and Crimea, which is defined by Ukraine as an occupied territory, will be closed from August 9 to Aug. 30, a government statement said.
Only Crimean residents with Ukrainian citizenship will be allowed to enter Crimea.
Ukrainians who permanently live on the mainland will be able to return home during the three week closure.
Ukraine has registered a steady daily increase in new coronavirus infections since the end of July. The number of confirmed cases rose by 1,489 in the last 24 hours.
2020-08-08 18:53:14
Randox Laboratories, a Northern Ireland-based medical technology company, has been instructed by Britain’s medicines regulator to recall up to 741,000 coronavirus test kits from the national test and trace program as a precautionary measure.
The government had on July 15 instructed the program, run by the National Health Service (NHS), to stop using the kits, citing concerns that they may not meet required safety standards.
“The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has instructed Randox to recall all Randox test kits from NHS Test and Trace testing settings,” the ministry of health said in a statement on Friday.
The ministry said the decision had been taken as a "precautionary’’ measure. The risk to safety was low and test results from Randox kits were not affected, it said.
2020-08-08 18:33:45
Berkshire Hathaway on Saturday announced a $9.8 billion writedown for its Precision Castparts aircraft and industrial parts business, as the coronavirus pandemic punished Warren Buffett’s largest acquisition and caused 10,000 job losses.
Berkshire, which acquired Precision for $32.1 billion in 2016, said COVID-19 caused airlines to slash aircraft orders, resulting in significantly less demand for Precision’s products and causing revenue to fall by about one third.
It said Precision’s results may continue suffering as the unit undertakes an “aggressive restructuring” to shrink operations to meet lower expected future demand.
Berkshire said it also took a $513 million charge on its 26.6% stake in Kraft Heinz Co, which on July 30 took writedowns on several of its businesses, including its Maxwell House and Oscar Mayer brands.
The charges cut into Berkshire’s bottom line, though the Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate nevertheless posted an 87% increase in second-quarter net income because of unrealized gains in its common stock investments such as Apple Inc
2020-08-08 18:19:28
Hundreds of thousands of children walked through the streets of the Gaza Strip on Saturday to return to classes after five months of shutdown though authorities said they were ready to close schools again if coronavirus cases spike.
Pupils mingled freely before heading into playgrounds for roll call and filing into classrooms. At one school in the northern Jabalia refugee camp, teachers wearing face masks welcomed children and offered to sanitise their hands.
Gaza, mostly cut off from the world by an Israeli-led blockade, has not recorded any COVID-19 cases in the towns and refugee camps where around two million Palestinians live.
Just 78 infections and one death have been recorded in quarantine centres. But, fearing any outbreak would overwhelm the health system, the territory’s Islamist Hamas-run education ministry shut down schools in March and students completed the remainder of the school year online.
“We want everyone to realise that education amid (the) corona pandemic is different, and things don’t proceed as they normally would,” said Farid Abu-Athra, an education official with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza.
“So far in Gaza the situation is better, and it allows us to open schools normally,” he told Reuters.
2020-08-08 18:03:26
The Czech Republic recorded its biggest daily rise in new coronavirus cases since April 3 due to local outbreaks in a number of regions, the health ministry reported.
The central European country of 10.7 million recorded 323 new cases on Friday, Health Ministry data showed, bringing the total number of cases detected to 18,060. Of those, 12,749 have recovered and 389 have died of COVID-19.
Health officials have said the recent uptick in cases is due to local clusters and they say hospitalisations, at 116, are well below peaks of over 400 as the government seek to avoid a national lockdown again.
However, officials have cautioned that some measures taken to curb the illness are likely to return after the summer holidays when cities become more crowded again and the flu season arrives.
2020-08-08 17:51:44
Hong Kong reported 69 new coronavirus cases, of which 67 were locally transmitted, as authorities continued efforts to contain a resurgence of infections in the global financial hub over the past month.
More than 4,000 people have now been infected in Hong Kong since late January.
2020-08-08 17:37:59
An approved coronavirus vaccine could end up being effective only 50-60% of the time, meaning public health measures will still be needed to keep the pandemic under control, Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert, said.
“We don’t know yet what the efficacy might be. We don’t know if it will be 50% or 60%. I’d like it to be 75% or more,” Fauci said in a webinar hosted by Brown University. “But the chances of it being 98% effective is not great, which means you must never abandon the public health approach.”
Lockdown measures imposed to keep the virus from spreading have devastated the economy, which suffered its biggest blow since the Great Depression in the second quarter, with gross domestic product dropping at its steepest pace in at least 73 years.
As infections have spiked around the country after states started to open up, public health experts, including Fauci, have stressed the importance of steps that each American can take, including social distancing, washing hands and wearing masks.
2020-08-08 17:17:52
A statement from the Chief Minister House in Sindh says that the province saw a rise in cases by 300 in the last 24 hours.
The total infections now number 123,546.
Three more deaths were also reported, taking the death toll to 2,262.
Karachi remains the worst affected city with 201 new cases.
2020-08-08 16:49:00
The World Health Organisation has secured permission to conduct independent sampling in officially coronavirus-free Turkmenistan, after expressing "serious concern" over rising pneumonia cases there, a WHO says.
A Saturday state television report showing a teleconference involving Turkmenistan's leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made no mention of WHO concern over pneumonia cases or Berdymukhamedov's pledge over sampling.
But Hans Kluge, the WHO's Europe director, said the United Nations health body had "expressed serious concern about (a rise) in #COVID19 negative pneumonia" in Turkmenistan during the Friday call with Berdymukhamedov that he also participated in.
The WHO "urged for a WHO team to sample independently #COVID19 tests in-country & take to WHO reference labs. President agreed," Kluge tweeted on Friday, without offering further details.
A WHO mission visited the secretive gas-rich Central Asian state last month and advised the country to adopt measures including contact tracing "as if COVID-19 were already circulating" but stopped short of saying that it thought the government was covering up coronavirus cases.
Turkmenistan has since implemented a nationwide lockdown and warned citizens to wear masks, citing "dust" and "pathogens" carried by wind, rather than the virus.
2020-08-08 16:31:00
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 721,902 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT.
At least 19,419,370 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 11,514,500 are now considered recovered.
On Friday, 6,106 new deaths and 271,069 new cases were recorded worldwide.
Based on latest reports, the countries with the most deaths were Brazil with 1,079, followed by United States with 1,062, and India with 933.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 161,358 deaths from 4,942,008 cases. At least 1,623,870 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 99,572 deaths from 2,962,442 cases, Mexico with 51,311 deaths from 469,407 cases, United Kingdom with 46,511 deaths from 309,005 cases, and India with 42,518 deaths from 2,088,611 cases.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 85 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by United Kingdom (69), Peru 63, Spain 61, and Italy 58.
China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 84,596 cases (31 new since Thursday), including 4,634 deaths (0 new), and 79,123 recoveries.
Latin America and the Caribbean overall have 215,859 deaths from 5,412,752 cases, Europe 212,794 fatalities from 3,324,721 infections, the United States and Canada 170,362 from 5,060,783 cases, Asia 70,515 from 3,347,655 cases, Middle East 29,570 from 1,228,429 cases, Africa 22,491 from 1,022,418 cases, and Oceania 311 from 22,618 cases.
2020-08-08 16:05:08
Poland reported 843 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, according to the health ministry's Twitter account, the seventh daily record in two weeks.
Poland has reported 51,167 cases of the new coronavirus in all, and 1,800 deaths.
2020-08-08 15:40:14
The Philippines' health ministry on Saturday reported 4,226 new coronavirus infections and 41 additional deaths.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total confirmed infections have risen to 126,885 while deaths have reached 2,209, with bulk of cases and casualties reported in the capital.
The Philippines, with a population of 107 million, leads Southeast Asian nations in the most number of cases and is second to Indonesia in deaths.
2020-08-08 15:15:28
Russian authorities reported 5,212 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Saturday, pushing its national tally to 882,347, the fourth largest in the world.
The official death toll rose to 14,854 after officials said 129 people had died across the country in the last 24 hours.
2020-08-08 14:10:13
Australia’s second-most populous state, Victoria, recorded 466 cases of the new coronavirus on Saturday and 12 COVID-19 deaths, though authorities expressed hope for a stabilisation in new infections thanks to strict mobility restrictions.
The southeastern state, of which Melbourne is the capital, has recorded 181 deaths, almost 70% of the Australia’s fatalities from the pandemic.
Melbourne, the country’s second-biggest city, went under a strict Stage Four lockdown on Thursday, shuttering shops and business and requiring its five million inhabitants to stay home.
2020-08-08 13:05:39
DC Islamabad has said shops in the federal capital will be allowed to remain open on weekends with no time restrictions.
“However strict SOPs will be implemented. Notification will be issued soon. Please remember that COVID virus is still out there. We have to be very careful for the next few weeks,” he tweeted.
2020-08-08 12:35:54
Mexico received a donation of $3 million from the United States to help fight the novel coronavirus, which has claimed more than 50,000 lives, a health official said.
Mexico’s health ministry reported 6,717 new confirmed coronavirus infections and 794 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 469,407 cases and 51,311 deaths.
2020-08-08 11:50:53
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 283,487 on Saturday after the country reported 842 new cases in the last 24 hours.
The country also reported 14 new fatalities, taking the nationwide death toll to 6,068. Recoveries in the country stand at 259,604 with 17,815 active cases in the country.
2020-08-08 11:20:07
Mexico's health ministry on Friday reported 6,717 new confirmed coronavirus infections and 794 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 469,407 cases and 51,311 deaths.
Officials have said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
With the highly contagious virus spreading rapidly across the region, Mexican Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell told reporters "the pandemic will be prolonged."
2020-08-08 10:40:27
Brazil reported 50,230 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 1,079 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Friday.
Brazil has registered 2,962,442 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 99,572, according to ministry data, in the world's worst coronavirus outbreak after the United States.
2020-08-08 10:20:07
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,122 to 215,336, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday.
The reported death toll rose by twelve to 9,195, the tally showed
2020-08-07 23:45:43
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the United States had greater problems from the coronavirus than his country, a day after the US State Department urged citizens not to travel south of the border, citing high contagion rates.
“We have many fewer problems with the pandemic than the problems that, unfortunately, they are facing,” Lopez Obrador said during a Friday morning press conference.
“Our situation is better,” he said.
2020-08-07 23:35:42
Pfizer said it signed a multi-year agreement to make Gilead Sciences Inc’s antiviral drug remdesivir in a bid to ramp up supply of the COVID-19 treatment.
Gilead is aiming to supply enough of the drug by the end of the year to treat more than 2 million COVID-19 patients, and agreed to send nearly all of its remdesivir supply to the United States through September.
But hospital staffers and politicians have complained about difficulties getting access to the drug, which is one of only two to have demonstrated an ability to help hospitalized COVID-19 patients in formal clinical trials.
2020-08-07 23:23:09
The World Bank has approved $114 million to help Nigeria tackle its coronavirus pandemic, the global lender said.
The money comes in the form of a $100 million loan and a $14 million grant to be split between Nigeria’s 36 states and federal-level procurement of medical equipment, tests and medicine.
Africa’s most populous country has recorded more than 45,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 930 deaths, but low levels of testing have left a muddy picture of the outbreak’s severity.
“Nigeria has ramped up its efforts to contain the COVID-19 outbreak, but more needs to done at the state level, which are at the front line of the response,” Shubham Chaudhuri, the World Bank’s director for Nigeria, said in its statement on Friday.
2020-08-07 23:01:09
The National Command and Operations Centre says the country witnessed "only 782 COVID-19 cases" in the last 24 hours.
2020-08-07 22:23:32
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said more talks were expected between the White House and Democrats on further coronavirus relief aid after negotiations appeared to have stalled the day before.
“I’m sure there will be talks, whether formally or informally. I’ve no doubt about that,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Bloomberg Television in an interview.
“There’s a process here.”
2020-08-07 22:11:35
The Balochistan health department has reported 14 new infections, taking the province's tally to 11,835.
The death toll, 137, remains unchanged.
2020-08-07 21:12:14
France and Germany have quit talks on reforming the World Health Organization in frustration at attempts by the United States to lead the negotiations, despite its decision to leave the WHO, three officials told Reuters.
The move is a setback for President Donald Trump as Washington, which holds the rotating chair of the G7, had hoped to issue a common roadmap for a sweeping overhaul of the WHO in September, two months before the US presidential election.
The United States gave the WHO a year’s notice in July that it is leaving the U.N. agency - which was created to improve health globally - after Trump accused it of being too close to China and having mishandled the coronavirus pandemic.
The WHO has dismissed his accusations. European governments have also criticised the WHO but do not go as far as the United States in their criticism, and the decision by Paris and Berlin to leave the talks follows tensions over what they say are Washington’s attempts to dominate the negotiations.
“Nobody wants to be dragged into a reform process and getting an outline for it from a country which itself just left the WHO,” a senior European official involved in the talks said.ff
2020-08-07 21:51:02
Up to 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses could be made available for poorer countries by 2021 under a deal struck Friday for production at the Serum Institute of India.
The deal was announced by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for production of two different potential vaccines at SII, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer by volume.
The vaccines will be priced at a maximum $3 per dose and made available to up to 92 countries as part of Gavi's coronavirus vaccine advance market commitment programme.
The deal provides money upfront to SII to help them expand capacity.
Once the vaccines gain regulatory approval, the doses could be produced as early as the first half of 2021 for distribution to low- and middle-income countries.
2020-08-07 21:38:00
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 107 new infections, taking the province's total to 34,539.
Three more deaths were also reported, bringing the death toll to 1,222. Of these, one was reported in the last 24 hours and the other two were added to the tally after previously not being counted in the total.
2020-08-07 20:59:49
Planning minister Asad Umar has said there is no singular reason which can be attributed to the decline in the country's cases.
Umar said in the region, India's temperature is much like ours, and its the same with Bangladesh and Iran. The countries have similar economic conditions and society, as well.
"So the real reason is something else. It is the approach we applied, and of course divine help and other unquantifiable reasons."
He said the government launched the testing, tracing and quarantining strategy in April and "took it to the peak in June".
"We have a nerve centre in the form of the NCOC and have the army's support. And of course the provincial health departments have done their job well."
Umar said that scientific studies will continue and will release findings later.
2020-08-07 20:48:28
Planning minister Asad Umar has said that the safety measures to be adopted by sectors opening next week — such as restaurants, cinemas, salons — will be formulated in consensus with the provincial governments.
"The responsibility will lie with the businesses to have these enforced and there will be fines," warned Umar, in a conversation with Shahzad Iqbal on Geo News.
"But the most effective thing is the people's cooperation and their understanding that this must be done and is for their own good."
2020-08-07 20:25:43
US deaths from the coronavirus pandemic exceeded 160,000, nearly a quarter of the world’s total, according to a Reuters tally, as the country debates whether schools are ready to reopen their doors in the coming weeks.
The country with the most coronavirus cases, the United States recorded 160,003 deaths and 4.91 million cases. Coronavirus deaths are rising in 23 states and cases in 20 states, according to a Reuters analysis of data the past two weeks compared with the prior two weeks.
On a per-capita basis, the United States ranks 10th highest in the world for both cases and deaths.
The grim milestone marks an increase of 10,000 deaths in nine days in the United States.
Many of the new deaths have come from California, Florida and Texas, the top three US states for total cases. While infections appear to be declining in those states, new outbreaks are emerging coast to coast.
2020-08-07 20:10:34
In light of the downward trend of coronavirus infections reported from across the country, the government has decided to lift restrictions imposed to stem the spread of the virus, however medical experts have warn that the ease in curbs would cause another spike in cases, Arab News reported.
The varying restrictions, imposed in March, including the closure of schools, marriage halls, cinemas, international and domestic flights, helped the country bring down the death toll and the recovery rate to over 85%.
The government, on Thursday, decided to lift these curbs beginning next week and reopen educational institutions next month on September 15.
Head of infectious diseases at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) Islamabad, Dr Nasim Akhtar, talking to Arab News, said that patients had started coming into his facility's coronavirus ward after Eid-ul-Adha which was observed last week.
“Cases registered a sharp increase after Eid-ul-Fitr, and this can happen now again with the lifting of the lockdowns,” she said.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-07 19:51:41
The 2020 edition of the T20 World Cup — postponed by the coronavirus — will be staged by Australia in 2022, the International Cricket Council announced.
India will stage the 2021 edition as planned, the global governing body added.
2020-08-07 19:30:13
From lunch with the penguins to the translucent shimmer of jellyfish and gliding rays, all underwater life was on display at a new aquarium in Taiwan that opened on Friday despite the ravaging effects of coronavirus on global tourism.
It had planned to open at the end of last year, but the pandemic pushed back the launch until now, Xpark Aquarium director of sales Gu Yu said.
“(We) have been expecting Xpark to open for a long time, so we scrambled to get tickets when (we heard) it would open,” said visitor Jiang Liuyu, who was given a temperature check on arrival.
A Japanese bullhead shark is to be a star attraction of a collection of 30,000 fish, drawn from more than 300 species in 13 exhibition areas, the Kyodo news agency said.
The aquarium café, which features penguins swimming through a network of transparent pipes, is also set to delight visitors.
2020-08-07 19:15:47
The reproduction number of the coronavirus among people in the United Kingdom has risen to 0.8-1, Britain’s health ministry said.
Last week, the R rate stood at 0.8-0.9, itself up from 0.7-0.9 the previous week.
“We are starting to see early indications that these values may be increasing,” the health ministry said.
“This is not yet fully reflected in these estimates because the data used to calculate R and growth rate reflect the situation from a few weeks ago. It is also important to recognise that these are estimates, and there is a high degree of uncertainty with them.”
2020-08-07 19:00:37
Islamabad recorded 41 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Sector I-8, the district health officer said.
2020-08-07 18:45:53
Leading producers Italy and France are looking to slash premium wine output from the upcoming harvest to shore up prices after the coronavirus pandemic hammered sales and led to a glut of stock.
In Italy domestic demand for wine is expected to fall by almost a third after lockdown forced the closure of hotels, restaurants and wine bars for months, and with tourists still all but absent. Exports have also fallen and wine makers fear a loss of around 1 billion euros this year, or 9% of total sales.
Rome, aiming for a production cut of around 5% compared to last year, has earmarked 100 million euros ($119 million) to compensate vintners who throw away between 15% and 50% of their grapes, but wine makers’ associations say take-up is likely to exceed the available funds.
For bottles classified as higher quality, such as Chianti Classico and Prosecco, growers can get 1,100 euros per hectare of land on which the grape harvest is partly destroyed.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-07 18:31:59
Wearing face masks will be made compulsory outdoors from Aug 8 to Aug 30 in parts of Marseille, France’s second-largest city, to contain the spread of the coronavirus, local authorities said.
France has seen a surge in new COVID-19 cases over the past 10 days and Paris is expected to announce similar measures in coming days.
2020-08-07 18:15:13
Vietnam’s health ministry reported 37 new coronavirus cases on Friday, bringing the country’s total tally to 784 infections, with 10 deaths.
Most of the new cases are linked to the central city of Danang, where the new outbreak began late last month.
2020-08-07 17:59:56
Britain’s Hikma Pharmaceuticals said it has started manufacturing Gilead’s antiviral drug remdesivir under contract in Portugal, as the US company outsources to increase availability of the COVID-19 treatment.
Remdesivir is one of only two medicines to have shown to help hospitalised COVID-19 patients in clinical trials, making it a front-runner treatment for the illness caused by the new coronavirus.
Hikma’s Chief Executive Siggi Olafsson said the company will start supplying batches of the drug “soon,” and Gilead is expected to distribute it.
“The terms of the deal are confidential, we are simply a contract manufacturer for Gilead - they order products from us as they expect the sales to be,” Olafsson told Reuters in a telephone interview.
2020-08-07 17:45:30
US employment growth slowed considerably in July amid a resurgence in new COVID-19 infections, offering the clearest evidence yet that the economy’s recovery from the recession caused by the pandemic was faltering.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.763 million jobs last month after a record 4.791 million in June, the Labor Department said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 1.6 million jobs were added in July.
The unemployment rate fell to 10.2% from 11.1% in June, but it has been biased downward by people misclassifying themselves as being “employed but absent from work.” At least 31.3 million people were receiving unemployment checks in mid-July.
“The steam has gone out of the engine and the economy is beginning to slow,” said Sung Won Sohn, a finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “The loss of momentum will continue and my concern is that the combination of the virus resurgence and lack of action by Congress could really push employment into negative territory.”
2020-08-07 17:30:00
2020-08-07 17:17:12
The risk of COVID-19 spreading widely in Vietnam is “very high”, its prime minister said, after a new outbreak in the central city of Danang late last month ended a three month run of no new domestic cases.
Aggressive contact-tracing, targeted testing and strict quarantining had helped Vietnam halt an earlier contagion, but it is now racing to control infections in Danang and beyond after a new outbreak was detected there on July 25.
“The risk of community infection is very high, requiring more determination, solidarity and responsibility from the political system in order to take stronger and more determined measures over the next two weeks,” Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said, according a government statement.
2020-08-07 16:59:56
2020-08-07 16:45:56
2020-08-07 15:30:05
Uganda has recorded a 10% increase in the number of people in jail since March, a prison official told Reuters, with thousands jailed for alleged violations of coronavirus lockdown rules.
By imposing one of Africa’s strictest lockdowns, the country of 42 million has registered just 1,213 COVID-19 cases and five deaths from the disease, despite crumbling public hospitals, doctors’ strikes and corruption scandals.
But there have been at least three cases of the novel coronavirus in jails, fuelling concerns it could spread among prisoners. About 30 inmates who feared infection have escaped since the pandemic hit Uganda, though some have since been recaptured.
“Fear of contracting COVID-19 has been fuelling anxiety among inmates and we had mass escapes at two prisons,” said Frank Baine, spokesman for Prisons service.
2020-08-07 15:50:25
Poland plans no further restrictions aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus, despite the number of daily cases hitting record highs, Deputy Health Minister Janusz Cieszynski said.
On Thursday the government imposed stricter rules on a number of Polish counties, including compulsory wearing of face masks outside the home. On Friday the ministry said 809 new infections were registered, more than it had expected.
2020-08-07 16:00:25
The Philippines has seen a jump in coronavirus infections due to intensified testing, the presidential spokesman said, defending the country’s response to the pandemic after overtaking Indonesia to record the most cases in Southeast Asia.
Infections have surged nearly seven-fold to more than 122,000, while deaths have more than doubled since a strict lockdown was lifted in June. It prompted authorities to reimpose a lockdown in and around Manila earlier this week.
“While we do not want to see these numbers, this is a result of our intensified testing,” Harry Roque, spokesman of President Rodrigo Duterte, told a briefing.
“This means we know where our enemy COVID is,” Roque said, adding that it allowed health authorities to properly trace, isolate and treat patients.
2020-08-07 16:15:18
Russia is willing to supply a coronavirus vaccine to the Philippines, or team up with a local firm to mass produce it, its ambassador to Manila said, as infections in the Southeast Asian nation surge.
Russia is expecting regulatory approval for its first potential COVID-19 vaccine this month, with doses to be administered to frontline health workers first.
But the frenetic race globally to develop a COVID-19 vaccine is raising some concern that speed could compromise safety and that some countries could be putting national prestige before solid science.
“We are ready to supply vaccines to the Philippines,” Igor Khovaev, Russia’s ambassador to the Philippines, told a virtual news conference.
2020-08-07 16:30:14
Since the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus an international health emergency in January, Facebook has removed more than 7 million pieces of content with false claims about the virus that could pose an immediate health risk to people who believe them.
The social media giant, which has long been under fire from lawmakers over how it handles misinformation on its platforms, said it had in recent months banned such claims as ‘social distancing does not work’ because they pose a risk of ‘imminent’ harm. Under these rules, Facebook took down a video post on Wednesday by U.S. President Donald Trump in which he claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.
But in most instances, Facebook does not remove misinformation about the new COVID-19 vaccines that are still under development, according to the company’s vaccine policy lead Jason Hirsch, on the grounds that such claims do not meet its imminent harm threshold. Hirsch told Reuters the company is “grappling” with the dilemma of how to police claims about new vaccines that are as yet unproven.
“There’s a ceiling to how much we can do until the facts on the ground become more concrete,” Hirsch said in an interview with Reuters, talking publicly for the first time about how the company is trying to approach the coronavirus vaccine issue.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-07 15:13:29
The National Disaster Management Authority shared on Friday that it has distributed the second consignment of the 100 ventilators it received from the US Government.
According to the breakdown, Khyber-Pakthunkhwa has received the most number of ventilators, followed by Sindh.
2020-08-07 14:42:03
JAKARTA: Indonesia reported 2,473 new coronavirus infections on Friday, bringing the total tally in the country to 121,226, data from government’s COVID-19 task force website showed.
The Southeast Asian country also added 72 new deaths on Friday, taking the total number to 5,593, the data showed.
2020-08-07 14:07:02
HONG KONG: Hong Kong will offer free voluntary coronavirus testing for residents, leader Carrie Lam said on Friday, as the global financial hub races to contain a resurgence of the virus over the past month.
The plan, which will enable citywide testing for the first time, is likely to be implemented in two weeks at the earliest, Chief Executive Lam said.
The announcement comes less than a week after China sent a team of health officials to Hong Kong to carry out widespread testing for COVID-19. It is the first time mainland health officials have assisted Hong Kong in its battle to control the coronavirus.
“The situation in Hong Kong is still critical, with the number of cases remaining high,” Lam told reporters as she sat in front of a largescreen digital backdrop which read ‘Fight the virus with the central government’s full support’.
Lam said she had asked Beijing in late July to help increase Hong Kong’s virus testing capabilities and facilities. She also sought to dispel fears among some people that China may use it as an opportunity to collect DNA samples for surveillance purposes.
“It is a false accusation and smear to say DNA samples of Hong Kong citizens would be sent to the mainland,” Lam said, adding that all samples would be destroyed after testing.
The Chinese territory saw a surge in locally transmitted coronavirus cases at the start of July and introduced a raft of tightening measures including restricting gatherings to two people and making wearing masks mandatory in all outdoor public spaces.
Since January around 3,900 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 46 of whom have died. Hong Kong reported 89 new coronavirus cases on Friday, of which 81 were locally transmitted.
2020-08-07 13:38:36
Federal minister Asad Umar thanked Major General Asif Goraya for his services to the National Command and Operations Centre.
"Bid farewell today to a real hero of the national effort to combat COVID, Maj Gen Asif Goraya who was director general operations and plans NCOC," tweeted Umar. He added that the officer's contributions were "pivotal for the formulation and implementation of the national strategy against the coronavirus.
Umar also wished the major general best of luck as he will be going to command a division. in his next assignment.
2020-08-07 13:19:05
LONDON: British Airways said on Friday it was making progress with its plan to cut 12,000 jobs to help it shrink as a result of the pandemic, with more than 6,000 employees deciding to take voluntary redundancy.
The airline, which is owned by IAG, will send out letters to its remaining staff on Friday to tell them whether they still have a job or not, and if they do, whether they will be required to accept a new contract or stay on their old one.
The pandemic has hit air travel hard and British Airways says demand won’t recover for years. It is currently only flying about 20% of its schedule and burning through 20 million pounds per day.
“We are having to make difficult decisions and take every possible action now to protect as many jobs as possible,” a spokesman for BA said.
But trade union Unite, which represents cabin crew, argues that the airline has gone too far with the cuts it is proposing.
It has accused BA of trying to bring in big pay reductions for staff that it will keep on and has organised protests against the airline, tried to drum up political support for its cause and threatened strike action.
2020-08-07 12:49:29
KYIV: Ukraine has recorded a steady daily increase in coronavirus cases in recent weeks and the health ministry is urging people to observe safety measures to stop the epidemic getting out of control.
The ministry said new cases had risen to 1,453 as of August 6, a new daily high since the start of epidemic. Ukraine reported 1,318 cases on August 5 and 1,271 on August 4. It also reported an increase in the death toll.
“The numbers are impressive and every day we set records. We have increasing numbers of complex cases, numbers of deaths. What numbers do we need to reach in order to think about compliance with the rules?” health minister Maksym Stepanov told a televised briefing.
He said the total number of infections had reached 78,261, including 1,852 deaths and 43,055 recoveries. Most cases were recorded in western Ukraine and the capital, Kyiv.
Ukraine imposed tough restrictions in March, halting transport, closing cafes and restaurants and banning public events, but eased the curbs in May to allow the economy to recover from a lockdown-induced recession.
2020-08-07 12:19:57
2020-08-07 12:04:19
LONDON: British finance minister Rishi Sunak said on Friday that he was optimistic a lot of the emergency government-backed loans given to companies during the pandemic will be repaid.
“I remain optimistic that if we can actually drive our economic recovery forward then, we should be able to recover a lot of the loans,” Sunak told Sky News.
“Are some of those loans going to be written off? Absolutely. We’ve been very clear we won’t be able to say every single job, every single business.”
2020-08-07 11:42:07
The National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) said that a complete code of conduct has been finalised for post opening up of various sectors, Independence Day and Muharram.
According to a press release, the NCOC deliberated on the road map and measures post opening up various sectors and upcoming two major events. The session was chaired by federal minister Asad Umar.
The NCOC was informed that wearing of face masks including simple cloth masks can help in containing the spread of COVID-19.
"Opening up of various sectors must be followed with health guidelines. The COVID-19 threat is still there and if health guidelines will not be followed there is always a threat that disease can again spread," Umar told the NCOC.
The NCOC chair also said that the people of Pakistan have been "very responsive" and have shown "great patience and compliance" to the health guidelines.
"If the same spirit is followed up till Muharram it will help to mitigate health challenges," said the minister. He also urged federal and provincial administrations to ensure public safety and well being during Muharram.
2020-08-07 11:23:42
Federal Minister for Information Shibli Faraz says Prime Minister Imran Khan's "smart lockdown" strategy has been proven correct with time.
The minister claimed the world has lauded Pakistan for its coronavirus measures. He also said the reopening of tourism and businesses was welcome news for the country.
2020-08-07 11:11:23
WASHINGTON: Nearly 300,000 Americans could be dead from COVID-19 by December 1, University of Washington health experts forecast on Thursday, although they said 70,000 lives could be saved if people were scrupulous about wearing masks.
The latest predictions from the university’s widely cited Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) comes as top White House infectious disease advisers warned that major US cities could erupt as new coronavirus hot spots if officials there were not vigilant with counter-measures.
“We’re seeing a rollercoaster in the United States. It appears that people are wearing masks and socially distancing more frequently as infections increase, then after a while as infections drop, people let their guard down,” Dr Christopher Murray, director of the IHME, said in announcing the university’s revised forecast.
The US death toll from COVID-19 stands at more than 159,000, the most of any country in the world, with nearly 4.9 million known cases.
The IHME said infections were falling in the former epicenters of Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas, but rising in Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Virginia. Those findings are consistent with Reuters tallies.
2020-08-07 10:41:40
BENGALURU/MUMBAI: India, the country hardest hit in Asia by the coronavirus pandemic, reported on Friday a record daily jump in infections, taking its total number of cases over two million.
It is the third nation to pass that unwanted milestone, lagging behind only the United States and Brazil.
With infections spreading further to smaller towns and rural areas, experts say the epidemic in India is likely to be months away from hitting its peak, putting more strain on an already overburdened healthcare system.
And authorities are having to deal with multiple outbreaks across a nation of 1.3 billion people.
“A country of India’s size and diversity has multiple epidemics in different phases,” said Rajib Dasgupta, head of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
The health ministry said on Friday there were 62,538 new infections, taking the country’s total to 2.03 million.
India has been posting an average of around 50,000 new cases a day since mid-June, but experts say its testing rate at 16,035 per million people is far too low.
Still, the government has taken some solace from the relatively low death rate, at about 2%, with 41,585 deaths so far, though that figure will be understated as only deaths of people who have been tested for the virus are counted.
Epidemiologists say the epidemic in India is likely to be months away from hitting its peak, which will put an already overburdened healthcare system under more strain.
2020-08-07 10:29:26
GENEVA: The World Health Organisation on Thursday warned against "vaccine nationalism," saying vaccine-hogging richer countries would not be safe coronavirus havens if poor nations remained exposed.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it would be in wealthier nations' interests to ensure that any vaccines eventually produced to protect against the new coronavirus were shared globally.
"Vaccine nationalism is not good, it will not help us," Tedros told the Aspen Security Forum in the United States, via video-link from the WHO's headquarters in Geneva.
"For the world to recover faster, it has to recover together, because it's a globalised world: the economies are intertwined. Part of the world or a few countries cannot be a safe haven and recover. The damage from COVID-19 could be less when those countries who have the funding commit to this."
He said the existence of the deadly respiratory disease anywhere put lives and livelihoods at risk everywhere.
"They are not giving charity to others: they are doing it for themselves, because when the rest of the world recovers and opens up, they also benefit."
2020-08-07 10:07:53
People who are infected with the coronavirus carry similar levels of the pathogen in their nose, throat and lungs whether they have symptoms or not, a new study from South Korea showed Thursday.
The paper, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, is an important biological line of evidence in support of the idea that asymptomatic carriers can spread COVID-19.
Until now, experts have relied on inferring asymptomatic spread when people contract the virus without contact with a known carrier.
A team of researchers led by Seungjae Lee at Soonchunhyang University College of Medicine analyzed swabs taken between March 6 and March 26 from 303 people isolated at a center in Cheonan, following an outbreak among a religious group in another city.
The group ranged in age from 22 to 36 and two-thirds were women. Of the total, 193 were symptomatic and 110 were asymptomatic.
Among those who were initially asymptomatic, 89 never developed symptoms at all — about 30% of the total.
This finding itself helps gives a sense of what portion of infected people are truly asymptomatic rather than merely "presymptomatic," a subject of confusion.
All were sampled at regular intervals after day eight of isolation, and the samples returned comparable values of the virus' genetic material from the upper and lower airways.
The median time taken for the patients to return negative tests was marginally less for asymptomatic patients compared with symptomatic: 17 and 19.5 days, respectively.
The authors wrote their findings "offer biological plausibility" to reports of asymptomatic transmission.
But they added that their study only looked at the amount of viral genetic material present and did not attempt to follow the subjects to see if that translated to the spread of infectious virus.
2020-08-07 09:50:12
The health ministry announced 819 more deaths in its daily update, taking the total to 50,517 since the Latin American country's first case was detected in February.
The overall number of infections registered now stands at 462,690 in the nation of more than 128 million.
"Unfortunately, because it is always unfortunate even if it was only one, we have 50,517 deaths from COVID-19 in Mexico," deputy health minister Hugo Lopez Gatell told a news conference.
Mexico recently overtook Britain to become the third hardest-hit country in terms of virus deaths, after Brazil and the United States.
Its fatality toll far exceeds the range of between 6,000 and 30,000 that the government of leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador projected at the end of February.
2020-08-07 09:37:36
WASHINGTON: US employment growth likely slowed significantly in July amid a resurgence in new COVID-19 infections, which would provide the clearest evidence yet that the economy’s recovery from the recession caused by the pandemic was faltering.
The Labor Department’s closely watched employment report on Friday could pile pressure on the White House and Congress to speed up negotiations on another aid package. Talks have been dragging over differences on major issues including the size of a government benefit for tens of millions of unemployed workers.
A $600 weekly unemployment benefit supplement expired last Friday, while thousands of businesses have burned through loans offered by the government to help with wages.
A labor market relapse would be more bad news for President Donald Trump, who is lagging in opinion polls behind former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for the November 3 election.
2020-08-07 09:19:17
ISLAMABAD: Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 282,645 in Pakistan on Thursday after the country reported 782 new infections over the last 24 hours.
The country also reported 17 new fatalities taking the nation-wide death toll to 6,052.
The number of recoveries in the country stands at 258,099.
2020-08-07 08:51:01
More than 2,000 people succumbed to the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, as the global toll of the virus continues to soar across the world, going past the 19 million mark.
The world´s hardest-hit country, the United States, has seen a major coronavirus resurgence since the end of June, adding 2,060 deaths in 24 hours alone Thursday, a tracker by Johns Hopkins University showed.
But other corners of the globe were also marking grim milestones, with Mexico´s official toll soaring above 50,000 dead and the continent of Africa hitting one million confirmed cases.
More than half of Africa´s infections are in South Africa, which has the fifth highest number of infections in the world, after the US, Brazil, India and Russia.
Nevertheless the African continent remains one of the least affected, according to the official figures, with only Oceania registering fewer COVID-19 cases.
At least 19,000,553 cases and 712,315 deaths have been registered worldwide, figures compiled by AFP from official sources at 2300 GMT showed, driven by surges in Latin America and India.
The United States has recorded the most deaths with almost 160,000, followed by Brazil with nearly 100,000. Globally, 40 percent of all cases have been notched in the two countries.
Europe remains the hardest-hit region worldwide with more than 200,000 fatalities since the virus first emerged in China late last year.
As governments across the globe struggle to salvage economies ravaged by months of lockdown, many have been forced to look at new measures to curb outbreaks of COVID-19 since they lifted initial containment orders.
Such is the case in Europe where nations imposed new travel restrictions and containment measures with fears growing over a second wave of infections.
In Australia, the second-largest city Melbourne entered the country´s toughest lockdown yet on Thursday, closing non-essential businesses and requiring hundreds of thousands more people to stay home.
2020-08-06 23:59:42
The United States lifted a global health advisory imposed in March that advised US citizens to avoid all international travel because of the coronavirus pandemic, the State Department said.
“With health and safety conditions improving in some countries and potentially deteriorating in others, the department is returning to our previous system of country-specific levels of travel advice,” it said in a statement.
2020-08-06 23:50:45
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said he had tested positive for COVID-19 as part of a safety protocol to greet US President Donald Trump when he arrives in Cleveland.
A statement issued on DeWine’s Twitter feed said the governor, a Republican, had no symptoms at the present time and would return to the Ohio capital of Columbus to quarantine at home for the next 14 days. Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted also took the coronavirus test and tested negative, DeWine’s statement said.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said alternate arrangements were being made for greeting Trump and there would be no major changes to the president’s itinerary in Ohio.
“The President wishes Governor DeWine a speedy and full recovery and commends the job he’s doing for the great state of Ohio,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere.
2020-08-06 23:40:15
Denmark will not raise a limit on public gatherings, originally planned for this month, after seeing a spike in COVID-19 infections, the Danish health ministry said.
As part of the Denmark’s gradual reopening following a lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the government had planned to raise the limit on public gatherings to 200 people on August 8, up from the current limit of 100 people.
“It is crucial that we maintain the good position Denmark is in, where we have the epidemic under control,” health minister Magnus Heunicke said.
The Nordic country’s authority on infectious diseases, Statens Serum Institut, would not recommend lifting the limit, the ministry said, as any easing of public gatherings would increase infection risk.
2020-08-06 23:30:18
Nigeria will reopen for international air travel in a matter of weeks, the aviation minister said, without giving a specific date for the resumption after months of closure due to the global coronavirus pandemic.
“It will be in weeks rather than in months,” Minister of Aviation Hadi Sirika told a regular briefing in the capital Abuja on coronavirus.
Nigeria began to close its airports in March, a month after Africa’s most populous country confirmed its first coronavirus case. Domestic air travel restarted last month.
The country has 44,890 confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 900 deaths, figures from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control show.
2020-08-06 23:20:29
Northern Ireland halted its plan to reopen all pubs and ordered citizens to wear face masks indoors after reporting its highest daily number of coronavirus cases since May.
The British region reported 43 new cases on Thursday compared to a total of 18 in the previous five days, although it has not reported a death related to COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, since July 14.
“Because of the concern around the level of community transmission and the desire to frankly prioritise the reopening of our schools ... we have decided that it is prudent to pause the reopening of our public houses,” First Minister Arlene Foster told reporters.
While bars operating as restaurants are allowed to open, those serving only alcohol will likely have to wait until September at least, she said.
“Forty three people tested positive in this past 24 hours. People might say that’s not a huge number, but it’s indicative of a trend, and that’s why we have to take action now, because we want schools to open in September,” she said.
2020-08-06 23:10:24
Britain will remove Belgium from its safe travel list imminently, ITV correspondent Carl Dinnen said on Twitter, meaning that new arrivals into the UK from there will need to quarantine for 14 days.
Dinnen also said France and Malta would remain on the safe list and that Portugal was expected to be added to the safe list in the coming weeks.
The Department for Transport did not comment on the report.
Britain has already reimposed quarantine of arrivals from Spain and Luxembourg, citing concerns about the growing number of new coronavirus cases there and the need to limit any resurgence on home soil.
2020-08-06 23:00:03
The Netherlands’ Prime Minister said the country does not need to undergo a second lockdown, despite a sharp increase in the number of coronavirus cases.
“The virus is making a dangerous advance and we’re at risk of losing the gains we’ve made together in the past month,” Mark Rutte said after an abrupt return from summer vacation.
“We don’t want a second lockdown and we don’t have to have one, but that won’t happen by itself,” he said, asking tourists to avoid busy parts of Amsterdam and the country’s youth to obey social distancing rules.
The Netherlands’ National Institute for Health reported 601 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, up from 426 a day earlier.
2020-08-06 22:50:42
When the coronavirus epidemic began to intensify in Mexico at the end of March, Doctor Jose Garcia said his bosses at a public trauma hospital in Mexico City denied his request for masks, gloves and disinfectant.
They argued such protective equipment was only necessary for those working directly with coronavirus patients, Garcia said. Unconvinced, he bought it himself.
The hospital’s director disputes this, saying all staff received protective equipment. Either way, Garcia had already contracted the virus and infected his wife and one-year-old daughter.
Garcia is one of over 70,000 medical workers to catch the coronavirus in Mexico, where the pandemic death toll is now the third-highest worldwide, behind the United States and Brazil.
Government data indicates that healthcare workers’ risk of dying is four times higher than in the United States, and eight times higher than in Brazil.
“The coronavirus has hit healthworkers all over the world, but it’s been especially bad in Mexico,” said Alejandro Macias, an epidemiologist who spearheaded Mexico’s response to the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-06 22:41:19
Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products will produce AstraZeneca Plc’s potential COVID-19 vaccine in mainland China, the British drugmaker said on Thursday, its first deal to supply one of the world’s most populous countries.
The deal underscores Astra’s frontrunner position in a global race to deliver an effective vaccine, given that Chinese ventures are leading at least eight of the 26 global vaccine development projects currently testing on humans.
Under the agreement Shenzhen Kangtai, one of China’s top vaccine makers, will ensure it has annual production capacity of at least 100 million doses of the experimental shot AZD1222, which AstraZeneca co-developed with researchers at Oxford University, by the end of this year, AstraZeneca said.
The Shenzhen-based company must have capacity to produce at least 200 million doses by the end of next year as part of the exclusive framework agreement, its statement on the Chinese social media site WeChat said.
The two companies will also explore the possibility of cooperation on the vaccine candidate in other markets, AstraZeneca said.
2020-08-06 22:20:28
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has notified 73 new cases, taking the tally to 34,432.
Four more deaths were also reported, taking the total to 1,219.
2020-08-06 21:58:14
The Balochistan health department has reported 28 new infections, taking the province's tally to 11,821.
It also reported one more death, bringing the death toll to 137.
2020-08-06 21:50:32
Ten countries account for 80% of the new coronavirus testing taking place across Africa, a regional body has said, indicating that little testing is taking place in many countries around the vast continent.
COVID-19 confirmed cases across Africa have accelerated and are close to hitting a million this week, and experts say low levels of testing in many countries means infection rates are likely to be higher than reported.
Some governments across the continent are too poor or conflict-ridden to carry out widespread testing, while others are reluctant to share data or to expose their crumbling health systems to outside scrutiny.
South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and Mauritius have each conducted more than 200,000 tests, said John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
So far nearly 9 million tests have been conducted across the continent, up 9.4% from last week’s tally.
2020-08-06 21:35:00
Norway will on Saturday reimpose a 10-day quarantine for all travellers from France, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, due to the rising number of coronavirus cases in those countries, its public health institute said.
Norway will also reimpose quarantine for people travelling from Monaco and from certain regions in neighbouring Sweden, while lifting quarantine for other regions.
2020-08-06 21:20:51
Economic recovery around the world could come faster if any COVID-19 vaccine is made available to all as a public good, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
He was speaking in an online panel discussion with members of the Aspen Security Forum in the United States moderated by the NBC network.
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan, asked about a proposed Russian vaccine, told the panel that what was needed now was to ensure any vaccines are safe and effective.
Ryan also said authorities should be able to demonstrate the efficacy of a coronavirus vaccine via traditional clinical trials rather than “human challenge” studies.
He was referring to the intentional exposure of vaccinated volunteers to a virus to see whether the vaccine works.
2020-08-06 20:59:01
Becton Dickinson and Co said it was on track to make 1 billion syringes in the next 12-18 months to meet demand for COVID-19 vaccination when approved, as the medical device maker reported quarterly revenue below estimates, sending its shares down nearly 9%.
In recent months, Becton has received orders for millions of its syringes and needles from the United States, UK and Canada, as they prepare for their pandemic response, and the pipeline is growing further, the company said.
Becton has received a total order of 470 million syringes and needles, including US order for 190 million units, in anticipation of vaccine programs, Chief Executive Officer Thomas Polen said during a post-earnings call.
2020-08-06 20:42:17
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said the Nordic country would put on hold a planned ease of existing coronavirus restrictions and reimpose others to prevent a full lockdown of society as experienced earlier this year.
“We need to slow down now to avoid a full stop down the road,” Solberg told reporters.
The country of 5.4 million inhabitants has seen an uptick in the number of COVID-19 infections in recent days, with a total of 9,409 cases reported as of Thursday, up 12 cases from the day before.
2020-08-06 20:27:19
Austria’s foreign ministry warned against trips to Spain except for the Balearic and Canary Islands, as concerns grow that holidaymakers could catch the coronavirus and spread it once they return.
The measure will take effect from Monday, and people returning to Austria will be required to present a negative test for COVID-19, the ministry said.
Austria’s measures are the latest blow to Spain’s tourism-dependent economy after Britain, Germany and Switzerland recently warned their citizens against summer holidays on Spanish beaches or at least in certain regions of the country.
2020-08-06 20:17:24
Major League Baseball (MLB) has tightened its health and safety protocols in an attempt to salvage the season after a series of positive coronavirus tests in recent days, according to a memo from the league obtained by Reuters.
Teams will have to reduce the size of travelling parties “to only personnel who are absolutely essential to playing games”, players and staff must wear face coverings at all times unless alone in their rooms, and in all parts of the ballpark - including dugouts - except for on the field of play.
The new guidelines were distributed to teams and players on Wednesday.
The MLB’s truncated 60-game season started last month but games involving at least eight teams have had to be postponed after members of the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals tested positive for coronavirus.
2020-08-06 21:05:48
US President Donald Trump said it was possible the United States would have a coronavirus vaccine before the November 3 election, a more optimistic forecast than timing put forth by his own White House health experts.
Asked on the Geraldo Rivera radio program when a vaccine might be ready, Trump said, “Sooner than the end of the year, could be much sooner.”
“Sooner than November 3?” he was asked.
“I think in some cases, yes possible before, but right around that time,” Trump said.
2020-08-06 20:08:00
Switzerland has amended its list of countries at risk from high rates of infection with the new coronavirus which covers all nations outside Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone barring a score of exceptions.
The list covers countries from which tourists cannot enter for short stays.
Exceptions include Australia, Ireland, Japan, Canada, South Korea, and New Zealand.
The amended list, which aims to curb the spread of the coronavirus, takes effect on Saturday. Switzerland expanded a list of countries from which people must enter a 10-day quarantine only on Wednesday when mainland Spain was added.
2020-08-06 19:44:00
The spread of the novel coronavirus is accelerating in Finland, health officials warn, as the country introduces new controls on arrivals from some EU countries.
Belgium, the Netherlands and Andorra were removed from Finland's green travel list, putting a stop to tourists arriving from those countries and imposing a 14-day quarantine on other returnees.
Further containment measures within Finland would be unveiled next week, officials said.
According to new estimates, the reproduction rate of the virus has now risen above 1, to between 1.1 and 1.4, the health ministry's strategic director Liisa-Maria Voipio-Pulkki told a press conference.
"The situation is extremely delicate," Voipio-Pulkki said, adding that "some sort of second stage has begun."
"Whether we can expect a smaller wave or a larger wave depends on how we respond."
2020-08-06 19:22:00
Infectious diseases chief at the Maryland Hospital in the US, Dr Faheem Younus, has warned people against placing their stock in "short-cuts" to boost immunity and using garlic, ginger and sana makki to guard against the virus.
He said that if one maintains a healthy body weight, exercises for half an hour daily and gets ample sleep, their focus should be to wash their hands, wear a mask and avoid crowds.
"There is no short-cut to boosting immunity with garlic, ginger, sana makki, etc," he said.
2020-08-06 18:59:59
As more people wear face masks in public due to the coronavirus pandemic, smiles are disappearing from our lives, a lack a French firm aims to address by printing them on the masks it sells.
Tcheezebox based near Lyon in eastern France is targeting companies which want to "humanise their relations" with customers by having their employees wear a smile.
"We launched this at the beginning of the lockdowns and companies weren´t very receptive but now they have begun to realise that we must live with masks and there is more demand," said Ludovic Bonhomme, the company´s cofounder.
He said the washable masks appeared to have the desired side effect. "I have gone out shopping with them and people smiled," said Bonhomme.
2020-08-06 18:44:54
Beware, Singaporeans standing too close, automated drones might be keeping an eye on you from above.
Singapore’s police have been trialling two pilotless drones developed by Israel’s Airobotics to help enforce social distancing measures aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19.
The small machines weigh 10 kg (22 pounds) and are programmed to track anomalies such as gatherings and stream footage to the police.
The three-and-a-half-month trial, over an industrial estate in the west of the city, is the first time automated commercial drones have been approved to fly over a major metropolis, according to Airobotics.
“Specifically for COVID, what we are doing is helping them maintain normal operations,” CEO Ran Krauss told Reuters. “The pandemic created a situation where it might be difficult for police to maintain operations.”
Singapore government’s Home Team Science & Technology Agency (HTX) said it had trialled the drones with police.
2020-08-06 18:28:54
Here's a list of dates that various businesses and establishments would be allowed to reopen:
Educational institutes: Sept 15, subject to review meeting on Sept 7
Hotels at tourist destinations: Aug 8
Restaurants & cafes (dine-in): Aug 10
Cinemas & theatres: Aug 10
Public points: August 10
Gyms: August 10
Marriage halls: May be opened by Sept 15
Read the complete story here.
2020-08-06 18:19:47
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 708,236 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT.
At least 18,843,580 cases have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 11,159,300 are now considered recovered.
On Wednesday, 6,863 new deaths and 262,116 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Brazil with 1,437 new deaths, followed by United States with 1,262 and India with 904.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 158,268 deaths from 4,824,175 cases. At least 1,577,851 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 97,256 deaths from 2,859,073 cases, Mexico with 49,698 deaths from 456,100 cases, United Kingdom with 46,364 deaths from 307,184 cases, and India with 40,699 deaths from 1,964,536 cases.
2020-08-06 18:08:00
KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Thursday said that coronavirus has claimed five more lives, taking the death toll to 2,250 province-wide, whereas, about 386 new cases have emerged in the province as of today.
The provincial minister said that the death rate stood at 1.8% of the total coronavirus patients across the province.
2020-08-06 17:48:00
FRANKFURT AM MAIN: German industrial conglomerate Siemens on Thursday reported a better-than-expected third-quarter profit, as the company proved broadly resilient to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Net profit for the three months to June reached 539 million euros ($639 million), around half of the 1.1 billion euros in the same period of the previous year, but soundly beating expectations of 273 million euros predicted by analysts surveyed by FactSet.
Revenue came in at 13.5 billion euros, 5% lower than the same quarter a year ago, according to the group.
Looking ahead, the conglomerate acknowledged that the economic impact of the pandemic will make itself felt in its fourth-quarter results, but said it continued to "expect a moderate decline in comparable revenue in the fiscal year 2020".
"Despite the severe global crisis, we delivered strong operating performance and rigorously drove our realignment forward," Siemens chief executive Joe Kaeser said.
The Munich-based company said earnings at its digital industries segment were boosted by a strong performance in its software business and a positive 211 million euro effect from the revaluation of the stake in US software development firm Bentley Systems. This "more than offset declines at other industrial businesses," Siemens said.
2020-08-06 17:35:00
BEIRUT: Three health workers in a displaced persons´ camp in northeastern Syria have contracted the novel coronavirus, the United Nations said on Thursday, the first reported infections in the vast tent city.
The Al-Hol camp is home to tens of thousands of people, including the relatives of Islamic State group militants.
It is run by the autonomous Kurdish administration that holds most of the northeast and has reported 54 cases of COVID-19 in areas under its control.
"On 3 August, three health workers reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 at the Al-Hol IDP camp," said a spokesperson for the UN Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
"The contact tracing process is ongoing. As a precautionary measure, only critical staff, with personal protective equipment, are allowed to operate inside the camp," David Swanson told AFP.
A health official at the camp said the three staff infected work with the Kurdish Red Crescent in Al-Hol.
"We fear that the virus could have spread to camp residents visiting health clinics," he said, asking not to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to the media on the issue.
2020-08-06 17:25:00
BERLIN: Germany will introduce mandatory coronavirus tests for travellers returning from designated risk zones from Saturday, the country´s health minister said.
Having announced the measure last week, minister Jens Spahn said it would take effect from this weekend, as fears grow over rising case numbers blamed on summer holidays and local outbreaks.
"It is already the case that travellers from risk zones are obliged to either go into a two-week quarantine or provide an up-to-date negative test result," he said at a press conference Thursday.
From Saturday, "travellers entering Germany will have to bring a test result with them or be tested on arrival", he added, confirming once again that the tests would be paid for by the government.
Germany´s list of "risk zones" currently includes most non-EU countries, as well as certain provinces in Belgium and Spain.
The country´s 16 states agreed last month on free tests for all returning travellers, but had stopped short of making the tests mandatory.
Spahn said however that that imposing tests was "the safe option".
"I appreciate that this is an infringement on individual freedom, but I think it is a justifiable one," he said.
2020-08-06 17:12:09
The United States added 1,262 more deaths to its COVID-19 toll in the 24 hours ending at 8:30 pm Wednesday (0030 GMT), according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
The world´s largest economy also added 53,158 new cases of the virus, the Baltimore-based institution´s tracker showed.
The US has now recorded 4,818,328 cases in total, which have resulted in 157,930 deaths, making it by far the worst-hit country in the world.
President Donald Trump nonetheless remained optimistic Wednesday, saying: "This thing´s going away. It will go away like things go away and my view is that schools should be open."
The pandemic has seen a resurgence since June in many states, particularly in the south and west.
One of them, Florida, on Wednesday surpassed half a million cases since the start of the crisis.
In Arizona, another badly-hit state, more than 500 inmates in a Tucson jail -- more than half the facility´s population -- tested positive for coronavirus, local prison officials said.
2020-08-06 05:00:00
The spread of the novel coronavirus in England slowed in June and early July, according to an Imperial College study of 150,000 volunteers.
"As the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in England transitioned out of its initial lockdown phase, the prevalence of swab-positivity continued to decrease," the so-called Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission study found.
The study, which will be peer-reviewed before a final report is published, also found that the risk of infection was higher in London than in other areas of England. It found there was an increased risk of infection among those with Black and Asian (mainly South Asian) ethnicities.
2020-08-06 16:47:27
Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar said Thursday dine-in restaurants and beauty salons would reopen across Pakistan on August 10 as the efforts against the coronavirus pandemic seem to bear fruit.
Umar added that a review on the decision to reopen educational institutes on September 15 would be done on September 7. "We are seeing the fruit of our efforts and receiving international praise," he added.
2020-08-06 16:00:16
The Philippines recorded another jump in coronavirus cases to overtake neighbouring Indonesia as the country with the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in East Asia.
A recent surge in cases of the virus in and around the capital Manila has pushed authorities to reimpose a lockdown affecting around a quarter of the country’s 107 million people.
The Philippines recorded 3,561 new infections on Thursday, taking its total confirmed cases to 119,460. That is higher than Indonesia’s 118,753 infection cases.
2020-08-06 15:40:07
Russian authorities reported 5,267 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Thursday, pushing its national tally to 871,894, the fourth largest in the world.
The official death toll rose to 14,606 after officials said 116 people had died across the country in the last 24 hours.
2020-08-06 15:10:32
Poland will re-impose compulsory face masks in all public spaces in nine districts, the health minister said, as the number of coronavirus infections hit a new record.
Face masks are currently obligatory in Poland in enclosed spaces such as shops and public transport, but not outdoors as long as distancing of at least 1.5 metres (five feet) is possible.
The biggest increase in infections has been in Silesia, an industrial region in southern Poland where coal mines have been particularly hard hit by the virus because of the difficulties in enforcing distancing measures.
2020-08-06 14:50:23
Human trials on a potential coronavirus vaccine are due to start in Indonesia next week as part of a collaboration between state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma and China’s Sinovac Biotech, a senior researcher said.
The phase 3 clinical trial is set to begin on Aug. 11 and will involve 1,620 volunteers aged between 18 and 59, Professor Kusnandi Rusmil, head researcher at Bandung’s Padjadjaran University, told reporters.
Half of the participants will receive the vaccine over a six-month period, while the rest will receive a placebo, he said, noting 800 volunteers had been signed up so far.
2020-08-06 14:10:06
2020-08-06 13:50:21
Eight coronavirus patients died in a fire that broke out in the intensive care ward of a private hospital in Ahmedabad, officials said.
Police stopped angry relatives from entering the Shrey Hospital in Gujarat state’s largest city after the tragedy which, according to emergency services, was caused by a medical staff member’s personal protective equipment (PPE) catching alight.
“A staffer whose PPE caught fire ran out of the ward to douse it but the fire spread rapidly to the whole ward,” said Rajesh Bhatt, additional chief fire officer of the Ahmedabad Fire and Emergency Services.
2020-08-06 13:20:46
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 1,045 to 213,067, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday.
The reported death toll rose by seven to 9,175, the tally showed.
2020-08-06 12:55:16
Australia's second most populous state of Victoria said on Thursday eight people have died from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, after reporting its deadliest day of the pandemic on Wednesday with 15 deaths.
The state reported 471 new cases of the virus compared with a record 725 a day earlier.
2020-08-06 12:10:51
Mexico reported 6,139 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 829 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 456,100 cases and 49,698 deaths.
The new numbers put Mexico on track to surpass 50,000 deaths this week. Mexico currently has the world’s third-highest coronavirus death toll, after the United States and Brazil.
2020-08-06 11:45:57
The National Command Operation Center (NCOC) has decided to intensify public awareness campaign at large scale to curb the spread of coronavirus in the country, reported Radio Pakistan.
The decision was taken at an NCOC meeting under Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar on Thursday.
The forum was informed that despite a significant reduction in the spread of the virus, SOPs are strictly not being followed.
2020-08-06 11:20:35
Brazil reported 57,152 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 1,437 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said.
Brazil has registered 2,859,073 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 97,256, according to ministry data, in the world's worst coronavirus outbreak after the United States
2020-08-06 11:00:04
Facebook and Twitter took aim at US President Donald Trump and his campaign over a video post in which he contended that children are "almost immune" to the coronavirus, a claim they said amounted to "misinformation."
In an extraordinary move, Facebook removed the clip from the president's account— the first time it has taken down one of his posts for violating its content rules.
The video— an excerpt from a Fox News interview— "includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation," a Facebook spokesperson told AFP.
Twitter meanwhile said it had blocked Trump's official campaign account over a tweet containing the same video, in which Trump made the case for reopening US schools come September.
Read more here.
2020-08-06 10:40:48
Confirmed cases in Pakistan jumped to 281,863 on Thursday after the country recorded 727 new cases in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,116 cases in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 11,793 in Balochistan, 2,234 cases in Gilgit Baltistan, 15,141 in Islamabad, 34,359 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 93,847 in Punjab and 122,373 cases in Sindh.
The country also recorded 21 new fatalities over the last the 24 hours taking the death toll to 6,035.
The number of recoveries in the country currently stands at 256,058, with 19,770 active cases.
2020-08-06 10:15:24
The United States added 1,262 more deaths to its COVID-19 toll in the 24 hours, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
The world's largest economy also added 53,158 new cases of the virus, the Baltimore-based institution's tracker showed.
The US has now recorded 4,818,328 total cases, which have resulted in 157,930 deaths, making it by far the worst-hit country in the world.
2020-08-06 09:30:38
China reported 37 new coronavirus cases up from 27 a day earlier, the country’s health commission said on Thursday.
Seven of the new infections were imported cases, versus five a day earlier, according to a statement by the National Health Commission.
China has recorded 84,528 confirmed coronavirus cases and 4,634 fatalities from the virus.
2020-08-05 23:59:34
All Spanish and foreign tourists visiting the Canary Islands will have any potential coronavirus-related costs covered by the regional government, it said on Wednesday, in an attempt to rescue the tourist season after a new spike in infections in Spain.
Such costs include health expenses or the extension of holidays in case of a compulsory quarantine while on the islands.
The move will take effect this week and is the first of its kind in Spain as the tourism-dependent nation seeks to reassure visitors after Britain dealt a blow to the sector by imposing a compulsory quarantine for anyone coming from Spain.
The travel policy will be managed by French insurer AXA and will include health-related repatriations, the Canary Islands regional government said in a statement. It will last for one year and will exclude health conditions that were known of before the traveller concerned came to the islands.
“It will help the economic recovery of the archipelago,” Yaiza Castilla, the regional official in charge of tourism, said in a video published on Twitter.
In a relief for the Canary Islands, Swiss health authorities on Wednesday excluded the archipelago, as well as the Balearic Islands, from its decision to add Spain to its list of countries from which arriving passengers must enter a 10-day quarantine.
2020-08-05 23:42:16
The Balochistan health department has reported 13 more infections in the province, taking the total to 11,793.
The death toll remains unchanged as deaths stand at 136.
2020-08-05 23:29:05
Teladoc Health has agreed to buy chronic care provider Livongo Health in a deal valuing the company at $18.5 billion, betting on a boom in online care and consultations spurred by the coronavirus crisis.
The merger is by far Teladoc’s biggest investment in a campaign of smaller acquisitions since 2017 that have made it the leading U.S. provider of a range of phone and online-based healthcare services.
Analysts said the latest deal should make the combined company the undisputed leader in both online acute care and the management of chronic conditions, following President Donald Trump’s order on Monday to expand telehealth access to 57 million Americans.
Teladoc’s shares fell, however, as analysts questioned whether the company has massively overpaid for Livongo, shares in which are up 477% this year.
“The Street views the price being paid as fairly high,” said David Larsen, an analyst with research firm Verity Research.
2020-08-05 23:10:16
US services industry activity gained momentum in July as new orders jumped to a record high, but hiring declined, supporting views that the labor market recovery was faltering amid a resurgence in new COVID-19 infections across the country.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said on Wednesday its non-manufacturing activity index increased to a reading of 58.1 last month, the highest since March 2019, from 57.1 in June. The index slumped to 41.8 in April, which was the lowest reading since March 2009.
A reading above 50 indicates growth in the services sector, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index increasing to a reading of 55 in July.
The report followed the ISM’s manufacturing survey on Monday showing factory activity racing to a 16-month high in July. The upbeat ISM surveys are, however, at odds with high frequency data such as weekly applications for unemployment benefits that have suggested the economic recovery that started in May, with the reopening of businesses, was slowing.
2020-08-05 22:57:08
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was confident lawmakers and the Trump administration could reach an agreement on another coronavirus aid plan, but she declined to say whether that could happen this week.
“I’m confident that we will have an agreement. The timing of it I can’t say, because I don’t know,” Pelosi said in an interview with MSNBC. She added that President Trump cannot use executive orders - instead of relying on legislation - to implement coronavirus aid, although a moratorium on evictions may be able to be extended that way.
2020-08-05 22:45:13
Ana Carolina Xavier was helping as many as six coronavirus patients a day to slowly recover lung capacity when she began worrying about her own breathing.
As the 33-year-old physical therapist was working a holiday shift in a Rio de Janeiro field hospital, she felt her heart pumping, head throbbing and lungs struggling to expand.
A scan of her lungs showed the kind of damage she had seen wreaking havoc on her patients, many of them young and otherwise healthy - but now struggling for months to catch their breath.
“This disease – I’ve never seen something that destroys the lungs in the same way. There’s no point of comparison,” Xavier said. “Even talking can become a struggle.”
Weeks after her recovery, Xavier still takes pauses during interviews to rest and recover. She complains of endless headaches, and the oxygen levels in her blood occasionally dip.
Frontline health workers such as Xavier are sounding the alarm about lingering respiratory issues that may come to haunt a generation of COVID-19 patients.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-05 22:26:19
Greeks must stick to rules aimed at containing the coronavirus more closely than ever, the country’s prime minister said on Wednesday, warning of new restrictions if a worrying rise in daily cases does not abate.
Greece reported 124 new cases on Wednesday, part of a surge of what appears to be mainly domestic infections.
“Any form of complacency is unjustified,” Kyriakos Mitsotakis said. “We still don’t know how ...many months we will be forced to live with the virus.”
2020-08-05 22:15:44
New York City will put up COVID-19 quarantine checkpoints at key entry points to ensure that incoming travelers from 35 states with outbreaks comply with the state’s 14-day quarantine mandate, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
The measure underscores the determination in what was once the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak to prevent a resurgence of cases emerging elsewhere. While cases are down 5% nationally, they soared last week in Oklahoma, Montana, Missouri and 17 other states.
“Travelers coming in from those states will be given information about the quarantine and will be reminded that it is required, not optional,” de Blasio told a news briefing. He added that, under certain circumstances, fines for not observing the quarantine order could be as high as $10,000.
“This is serious stuff and it’s time for everyone to realize that if we’re going to hold at this level of health and safety in this city, and get better, we have to deal with the fact that the quarantine must be applied consistently to anyone who’s traveled,” de Blasio said.
2020-08-05 21:59:03
Islamabad recorded 27 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Sector G-8, the district health officer said.
2020-08-05 21:45:07
World number two Rafa Nadal confirmed that he will not defend his US Open crown this year at Flushing Meadows as organisers released the singles entry list for the Grand Slam.
Spain’s Nadal had said in June that he had reservations about travelling to the US amid the COVID-19 pandemic and he joins women’s world number one Australian Ash Barty in skipping the tournament due to COVID-19 concerns.
"After many thoughts I have decided not to play this year's US Open," Nadal said on Twitter here "The situation is very complicated worldwide, the COVID-19 cases are increasing, it looks like we still don't have control of it.
“We know that the reduced tennis calendar is barbaric this year after 4 months stopped with no play, I understand and thank (everyone) for the efforts they are putting in to make it happen. We have just seen the announcement of Madrid not being played this year.
2020-08-05 21:36:29
Spain reported 1,772 new coronavirus infections, marking the biggest jump since a national lockdown was lifted in June and beating the previous day’s record rise.
The rate of increase in new cases, which does not include data from two regions, sharply rose from the previous day, while one more death was registered, bringing the total to 28,499.
Cumulative cases, which include results from antibody tests on people who may have recovered, increased to 305,767 from 302,814, the health ministry said in a statement.
2020-08-05 21:23:11
Canada has signed separate deals with Pfizer and Moderna to supply millions of doses of their experimental coronavirus vaccines, a top official said.
Procurement Minister Anita Anand said Ottawa was “very, very intensely negotiating” multiple deals with a number of other potential domestic and international vaccine suppliers, but did not give details.
There are no approved vaccines for COVID-19, but 19 vaccines are being tested in humans around the world.
“We all want a silver bullet but unfortunately that’s not the case,” Anand told a news conference. Other measures would be needed, such as buying more protective equipment and investing in medicines to alleviate the symptoms of sufferers.
Moderna will provide its mRNA-1273 vaccine candidate. Pfizer - working with German biotech firm BioNTech SE - said separately it planned deliveries of the BNT162 mRNA-based vaccine candidate over the course of 2021.
2020-08-05 21:08:17
The French government was under fire over its free-for-all COVID-19 testing policy as queues snaked out of some testing centres in Paris and at sites across the country amid a flare-up in infections.
One leading federation of laboratories said an abrupt July 25 decree to make testing free-of-charge and without prescription piled pressure on at a time many staff go on holiday. Political opponents lampooned a policy in disarray.
“Testing anyone achieves nothing. You have to be targeted,” epidemiologist Didier Pittet, who heads a government-appointed task force monitoring the handling of COVID-19, told Europe 1 radio.
The strategy is working, health minister Olivier Veran said over the weekend. “The virus is no longer tracking us, we are tracking it,” he told Le Parisien.
The ministry’s spokesman acknowledged “localized problems” but was adamant that France had chosen the right strategy.
2020-08-05 20:51:57
The City of Amsterdam began ordering use of face masks in crowded areas such as its “Red Light” prostitution district, in a drive against the coronavirus that stands in contrast with national policy.
Last week the national Dutch government decided not to advise the public to wear masks, saying their effectiveness against the disease has not been proven and they may weaken adherence to social distancing rules.
The World Health Organization has recommended using masks in areas where it is impossible to maintain social distancing since June.
Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema ordered the measure, in agreement with health authorities, as part of an experiment to see whether they may be effective after all, as some scientific studies have found, her spokesman said.
“We do think it can have an immediate effect,” Sebastiaan Meijer said. “We want people to wear masks and be aware of the pandemic, so we do think it’s going to help stop the virus from spreading.”
2020-08-05 20:40:32
Poland intends to fully reopen its schools on September 1, the education minister said on Wednesday, despite a recent renewed spike in coronavirus infections.
Poland was initially successful in containing the outbreak, but cases started rising after restrictions on public gatherings were eased. On Tuesday authorities reported the fourth record daily increase in a week, with 680 new infections.
Poland, a nation of 38 million people, had recorded a total of 48,789 cases and 1,756 deaths as of Wednesday.
“We want students to come back to normal education in schools from September,” said Education Minister Dariusz Piontkowski.
2020-08-05 20:26:00
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 35 more infections in the province, taking the total to 34,359.
It also reported two more deaths, taking the death toll to 1,215 in the province.
2020-08-05 20:10:54
Walt Disney avoided the unmitigated disaster some investors feared as it eked out an adjusted profit amid the coronavirus pandemic that shut down parks, movie theaters and sporting events across the globe.
Disney’s quarterly profit of 8 cents per share on an adjusted basis beat expectations for a loss of 64 cents, sending the stock up 5% in after-market trade.
The company took a nearly $5 billion charge due to the pandemic and shifting media habits. COVID-19 wiped out $3.5 billion in operating profit in the parks division.
“The majority of businesses worldwide have experienced unprecedented disruption as a result of the pandemic,” Disney Chief Executive Bob Chapek told analysts. “Most of our businesses were shut down, and this had a huge impact.”
2020-08-05 19:59:04
A new coronavirus outbreak in Vietnam spread to two more provinces, the country’s health minister said, as the COVID-19 task force declared the contagion “under control” in the central city where the outbreak began.
Aggressive contact-tracing, targeted testing and strict quarantining had helped Vietnam contain earlier outbreaks, but it is now battling infections in at least 10 cities and provinces, after going more than three months without domestic transmission.
The health ministry confirmed 43 new cases on Wednesday, bringing Vietnam’s total infections to 713, with 8 deaths.
The new outbreak was first reported on July 25 in the tourist resort city of Danang and has spread to major urban centres like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, which have since closed entertainment venues, restricted gatherings and tested tens of thousands of people.
Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long told state media on Wednesday the outbreak had expanded to the provinces of Bac Giang near Hanoi and Lang Son, bordering China, both linked to the Danang infections.
State media and government officials have made strong statements against illegal immigration since the new outbreak, but no official links have been made.
The outbreak in Danang, currently under lockdown alongside Quang Nam province, was “under control”, the government’s COVID-19 steering committee said late Tuesday. Deputy health minister Nguyen Truong Son said he expected the current outbreak to peak in the next 10 days, state media reported late on Wednesday.
2020-08-05 19:45:03
Finland plans to reintroduce a recommendation to work from home whenever possible just days after dropping it, due to a rise in COVID-19 cases, the minister in charge of managing the epidemic said.
Health authorities said earlier on Wednesday that 29 new cases had been recorded over 24 hours, raising the seven-day total to 98 from 52 in the previous seven days.
“The rise in infections gives reason to consider continuing remote working ...where it is possible,” Minister of Social Affairs and Health Aino-Kaisa Pekonen wrote on Twitter, adding she had asked for official guidelines to be updated accordingly.
The recommendation in favour of remote working had ended at the end of July.
2020-08-05 19:30:01
The United States government will pay Johnson & Johnson over $1 billion for 100 million doses of its potential coronavirus vaccine, its latest such arrangement as the race to tame the pandemic intensifies, the drugmaker said.
It said it would deliver the vaccine to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) on a not-for-profit basis to be used after approval or emergency use authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
J&J has already received $1 billion in funding from the US government - BARDA agreed in March to provide that money for the company to build manufacturing capacity for more than 1 billion doses of the experimental vaccine.
The latest contract equates to roughly $10 per vaccine dose produced by J&J. Including the first $1 billion deal with the U.S government, the price would be slightly higher than the $19.50 per dose that the United States is paying for the vaccine being developed by Pfizer and German biotech BioNTech SE.
The US government may also purchase an additional 200 million doses under a subsequent agreement. J&J did not disclose that deal’s value.
J&J plans to study a one- or two-dose regimen of the vaccine in parallel later this year. A single-shot regimen could allow more people to be vaccinated with the same number of doses and would sidestep issues around getting people to come back for their second dose.
2020-08-05 19:15:23
South Africa’s diamond industry, famed for sales the world over and supplying gems for the British crown jewels, is looking closer to home to revive its fortunes following the coronavirus slump.
Some of the many small players who polish the rough diamonds that De Beers and other miners unearth say they have been pleasantly surprised by the extent of lockdown jewellery-buying as enforced proximity kindled romance and feel-good spending.
South African cutting and polishing firm Nungu Diamonds said its custom-made jewellery sales have grown 60% since South Africa imposed a strict lockdown in March.
Customers used their weeks at home for online consulations and were lining up for their purchases when stores reopened in June, the company’s founder Kealeboga Pule said.
“We remain resilient. We fight on,” Pule said at his shop in a Johannesburg suburb. June was the best month in a year, he said, with sales including engagement and wedding rings.
Bucking the trend of rising unemployment, Nungu has hired an in-house jewellery designer - joining a team of 5 polishers and 9 jewellers.
Nungu says jewellery prices have held steady. Profit margins, however, could improve as lower global demand has depressed the prices of uncut, unpolished rough stones bought from the mines.
2020-08-05 19:00:50
Young people must curb their party instincts to help prevent new outbreaks of the COVID-19 disease, officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) pleaded on Wednesday.
Tired of lockdowns and eager to enjoy the northern hemisphere summer, young people in some countries have been contributing to resurgences by gathering again for parties, barbecues and holidays.
Even in Geneva, where the global U.N. health body is based, cabarets and clubs were closed last week after evidence that nearly half of new cases were coming from there.
“Younger people also need to take on board that they have a responsibility,” said WHO emergencies chief and father-of-three Mike Ryan in an online discussion. “Ask yourself the question: do I really need to go to that party?”
Young people are less likely to suffer a severe form of the respiratory disease than their parents or grandparents, but the proportion of those infected aged 15-24 has risen three-fold in about five months, WHO data shows.
Ryan said young people were often reticent in giving their details or disclosing friends’ names to contact tracers. “It’s tough but it is what is needed to stop the virus,” he said.
2020-08-05 18:50:26
Swiss health authorities have added mainland Spain to its list of countries from which people arriving must enter a 10-day quarantine that aims to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus, they said.
Patrick Mathys, head of crisis management for the federal public health office, told a briefing in Bern the measure would take effect from Saturday.
The measure excludes Spain’s Balearic and Canary Islands.
“For the first time we did not put an entire country on the list, but rather those areas where we can say the geographical separation and above all the passenger flows — and that is decisive — can really be differentiated,” Mathys said.
2020-08-05 18:35:06
All educational institutes will reopen on September 15 across the country, said the spokesperson from the education ministry.
Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood chaired a conference of education ministers in Islamabad where the decision was taken.
In the light of a unanimous decision, schools in Sindh will open from September 15.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-05 18:20:30
Nearly a third of Afghanistan's population — or 10 million people — has been infected with the coronavirus, according to health ministry estimates.
The figure comes from a survey based on antibody tests on around 9,500 people across the country, with technical support from the World Health Organization, health minister Ahmad Jawad Osmani said at a press briefing.
The survey estimated that 31.5% of the population had contracted the virus, with the highest infection rate in Kabul where more than half of the city's five million population were thought to have been infected.
But the country of around 32 million people has only limited testing capacity and has officially declared just 36,000 cases and more than 1,200 deaths.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-05 18:06:22
Some 24,000 health workers in South Africa have contracted the coronavirus, 181 of whom have died, since the pandemic hit the country in March, the health minister announced on Wednesday.
South Africa is the hardest-hit country in Africa with at least 521,318 infections diagnosed so far, accounting for more than half the continent's cases.
Health Minister Zweli Mkwize told a news conference that the numbers of health workers who tested positive for coronavirus stood at 24,104 with 181 deaths.
The numbers of infected health care workers translates to around five percent of the country's total caseload, compared to the global rate of some 10%, he said.
The country's caseload has been rising rapidly in recent weeks.
2020-08-05 17:55:39
Three South African provinces considered coronavirus hotspots have seen new infections slow in recent weeks, though it is too early to say whether the country’s peak has passed, the health minister said.
“The number of new infections is increasing at a lower rate than what had been happening in the whole of June and up to the middle of July. That clearly indicates to us that there is a declining trend,” Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told a news conference, referring to Gauteng.
Mkhize noted a presentation showing the average number of new cases in the country’s nine provinces and said that in Gauteng, Western Cape and Eastern Cape, surges in infections might have peaked.
Despite signs of progress, Mkhize warned that two other provinces, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State, had seen high rates, and that a failure to follow containment measures such as wearing masks could see infections rebound.
2020-08-05 17:40:09
Multiple posts shared hundreds of times on Facebook and Twitter claim that four Ukrainian soldiers died after participating in American COVID-19 vaccine trials in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. The claim, published in several languages across different posts, was attributed to a police spokesperson in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic. The claim is false; Ukraine military and Kharkiv medical officials said the posts were “fake news”.
2020-08-05 17:25:46
2020-08-05 16:59:15
BMW expects to make a profit this year if demand continues to recover, despite posting a record loss for its car division in the second quarter after sales slumped 25% because of coronavirus lockdowns, it said on Wednesday.
The German manufacturer of BMWs, Minis and Rolls-Royces said sales had started to recover during the latest three-month period, including a 17% jump in deliveries in China, but the rebound would not fully make up for sales lost to COVID-19.
As a result of the sales slide, and higher costs for developing low-emission cars, BMW posted a pretax loss of 498 million euros, its first in over 11 years, and an operating loss of 666 million euros ($790 million) for the quarter.
Shares in BMW fell 3% following the results, with some analysts saying they had not expected such a big loss in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT).
“What matters now is how robust this upward trend is and when individual markets will follow suit,” said Chief Executive Oliver Zipse, adding that its overall cars sales in July were higher than last year.
2020-08-05 16:46:48
Thomson Reuters Corp reported higher-than-expected second quarter profit on Wednesday and reaffirmed its 2020 forecast in the face of global market uncertainty.
The news and information provider, which owns Reuters News, said sales in the company’s legal, tax and corporate businesses are expected to rise in the current quarter.
“Results in the second quarter illustrate the resilience in our business,” Chief Executive Steve Hasker, who joined Thomson Reuters this year, said in an interview.
The company was about two-thirds through a 2020 cost-cutting program, which is focused on external costs, such as consultants and travel and entertainment, and targets $100 million in savings, Chief Financial Officer Michael Eastwood added.
“We will achieve it on discretionary expenses,” Eastwood said.
Thomson Reuters said it has seen no significant disruptions from the coronavirus crisis, adding that its 500,000 legal, tax and other professional clients were able to access its services online, working from home.
2020-08-05 16:30:17
Telehealth market leader Teladoc Health said it would buy Livongo Health in a cash-and-stock deal, valuing the company at $18.5 billion, to cash in on a rise in demand for online consultations amid the coronavirus crisis.
The pandemic has thrust the US telehealth industry into the spotlight this year, spurring huge demand for virtual care and doctors visits from Americans stuck at home or unable to visit hospitals.
Under the terms of the agreement, each Livongo share will be exchanged for 0.5920x shares of Teladoc plus cash consideration of $11.33, amounting to $158.98, a 10% premium to Livongo’s closing price on Tuesday.
“This merger firmly establishes Teladoc Health at the forefront of the next-generation of healthcare,” Teladoc Health Chief Executive Officer Jason Gorevic said.
2020-08-05 16:17:44
The bloom is back at Lee’s Flower and Card Shop in Washington’s historic U Street neighborhood, with an added touch: Blue, green, yellow and white origami cranes spelling out the words “Black Lives Matter” on the storefront window.
The signs reflect a slow return to normalcy as life and business adapt to the coronavirus pandemic and racial justice movement that both erupted in the first half of 2020.
The business, run by sisters Stacie Lee Banks and Kristie Lee, stayed open during the months of mandated shutdown in Washington, doing deliveries as its doors stayed shut.
Clients have been welcomed back into the store since June 22, although a table bars anyone from stepping in more than 10 feet. For wedding and funeral consultations customers may go further inside, but only after checking their temperatures.
“I think that we could have reopened more than we did, but we’re still being cautious about our space and not letting people in, because our employees are concerned,” Banks said.
When D.C. businesses reopened, the city government gave small businesses a supply of masks and hand sanitizer upon request. The shop, one of several U.S. small businesses that Reuters is following through the crisis, also bought face shields for employees and a thermometer.
The sisters had to modify staff schedules, with people working the same number of hours over fewer days.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-05 17:13:57
Moderna is in talks with several countries for supply agreements for its experimental coronavirus vaccine, the company said on Wednesday, adding that it had already received about $400 million in deposits for potential supply.
The company’s vaccine candidate is one of the few to be in the final stages of testing as drugmakers race to develop a safe and effective vaccine against the pandemic that has claimed more than 700,000 lives worldwide.
Last week, Moderna announced the start of a late-stage trial on 30,000 people to demonstrate that its vaccine was safe and effective, the final hurdle prior to regulatory approval. It has said the vaccine could be ready for widespread use by the end of this year.
The company, which ended the quarter with $3.1 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments, said it was on track to complete enrollment in the study in September.
Moderna said last month it plans to price its coronavirus vaccine in a way that ensures broad access and that it did not intend to conduct late-stage trials of the vaccine outside the United States.
“As we pivot to a commercial stage company, we recognize the need for responsible pricing in the face of the pandemic,” Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel said in a statement.
2020-08-05 16:00:14
Copenhagen airport has said it may lay off a quarter of its staff as it is forced to confront the massive drop in passengers due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The operator of Scandinavia's largest airport said the layoff of 650 employees was being considered "in order to secure its long-term competitive strength."
Cutting 650 jobs would reduce expenses by around 45 million euros ($53 million) per year.
Copenhagen Airports lost about 31 million euros in the first half of the year and it expects an even deeper loss for the second half.
Air traffic slowed to a trickle for several months as nations imposed lockdowns to stem the spread of the coronavirus, and while airlines have resumed some services they are still far below pre-crisis levels.
2020-08-05 15:45:05
Hong Kong reported 85 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, including three that were locally transmitted, as authorities battle to control a third wave of the outbreak which has seen a resurgence in infections over the past month.
Since late January, around 3,700 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 42 of whom have died. Wednesday's figure was up marginally from Tuesday's 80 cases
2020-08-05 15:25:18
Russia reported 5,204 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Wednesday, bringing its nationwide tally to 866,627, the fourth largest caseload in the world.
Russia's coronavirus taskforce said 139 people had died over the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 14,490.
2020-08-05 14:55:56
Ukraine reported a record daily high of 1,271 new coronavirus cases on Aug. 4, the country's council of security and defense said on Wednesday.
The number of new infections has increased sharply in the past two months following the gradual lifting of restrictions that began in late-May.
The total number of cases rose to 75,490, including 1,788 deaths.
2020-08-05 14:20:59
South America has surpassed Europe to become the region with the highest coronavirus death toll worldwide, according to a Reuters tally.
The region has now recorded more than 206,000 deaths, approximately 30% of the global total.
Brazil, the South American country most affected by the coronavirus, has now recorded a total of 95,819 deaths as of Tuesday. Mexico, the second-most affected country in the region, has 48,869 deaths.
2020-08-05 13:50:29
The Czech Republic reported on Wednesday its biggest daily jump in new coronavirus cases since the end of June as a recent uptick in infections stays elevated.
The central European country of 10.7 million recorded 290 new cases on Tuesday, Health Ministry data showed, bringing the total number of cases detected to 17,286. Of those, 11,812 have recovered and 383 have died of the COVID-19 illness.
2020-08-05 12:45:36
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 741 to 212,022, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by 12 to 9,168, the tally showed
2020-08-05 12:00:00
Some 24,000 health workers in South Africa have contracted the coronavirus, 181 of whom have died, since the pandemic hit the country in March, the health minister announced on Wednesday.
South Africa is the hardest-hit country in Africa with at least 521,318 infections diagnosed so far, accounting for more than half the continent's cases.
It now sits in the top five globally in terms of the number of infections.
2020-08-05 11:30:10
The global death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 700,000 on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally, with the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico leading the rise in fatalities.
Nearly 5,900 people are dying every 24 hours from COVID-19 on average, according to Reuters calculations based on data from the past two weeks.
That equates to 247 people per hour, or one person every 15 seconds.
2020-08-05 10:55:35
President Donald Trump has said the coronavirus outbreak is as under control as it can get in the US, where more than 155,000 people have died amid a patchy response to the public health crisis that has failed to stem a rise in cases.
"They are dying, that's true," Trump said in an interview with Axios news website . "It is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It's under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague.”
2020-08-05 10:30:00
Australia's worst-hit state of Victoria reported 15 coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, making it the country's deadliest day of the pandemic to date.
An outbreak in Melbourne, Australia's second-biggest city and the capital of Victoria, has seen hundreds of new cases recorded daily in recent weeks, including 725 on Wednesday.
The virus has spread rapidly through nursing homes in the city, with almost 1,500 active infections now linked to the facilities.
2020-08-05 10:15:48
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 281,136 in Pakistan on Wednesday after the country reported 675 new infections over the last 24 hours.
The country also reported 15 new fatalities taking the nation-wide death toll to 6,014.
The number of recoveries in the country stands at 254,286.
2020-08-05 09:50:39
The US added 1,302 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
The world's largest economy also added 53,847 new cases of the virus, the Baltimore-based institution's tracker showed.
The US has now recorded 4,765,170 total cases with 156,668 deaths, making it by far the worst-hit country in the world.
2020-08-04 21:35:00
The Balochistan health department has reported three more cases in the last 24 hours, taking the provincial tally to 11,780.
2020-08-04 20:50:39
Ireland plans to take "a very cautious approach" to easing COVID-19 restrictions in the coming weeks, Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Tuesday ahead of a government meeting that will decide whether to reopen bars or ease travel restrictions.
"I know that is going to come as a further blow to some of the sectors that are not being reopened, but we just can't risk going backwards," he told reporters, following advice from the National Public Health Emergency Team.
2020-08-04 20:50:20
Paris wants to make the wearing of face masks mandatory in certain outdoor areas in order to prevent a new spike of coronavirus infections, French daily Le Monde reported on Tuesday.
The paper said that mayor Anne Hidalgo would put in a formal request with the Paris prefecture about ordering the use of face coverings in specific areas, after the government on Friday gave local authorities the power to order the wearing of masks in outdoor public spaces.
The outdoor areas targeted would be shopping streets, the banks of the river Seine, parks and gardens, open food markets and all areas where tourists or Parisians have to stand in line.
2020-08-04 20:26:33
In the light of declining cases of coronavirus in the province, the Punjab government on Tuesday sent recommendations to the National Command Operation Centre (NCOC) to consider reopening tourist destinations and restaurants with standard operating procedures SOPs and allowing industries to work round the clock.
The provincial government has also recommended the opening of hotels, marriage and meeting halls with the implementation of all SOPs and has requested to revise the timings of all businesses across the province.
2020-08-04 20:00:09
Indonesia will have capacity to produce 250 million doses a year of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of 2020 pending trials on humans, a minister said, as the country seeks to halt a wave of infections that has shown no sign of relent.
Indonesia has confirmed 115,056 cases of COVID-19 and 5,388 deaths since its first infections in March. It has been reporting more than 1,000 new cases on most days since the start of June.
State-run pharmaceutical firm Bio Farma will begin phase three of clinical trials in humans this week using a vaccine produced by China’s Sinovac. If those are successful, Bio Farma has said would produce the vaccine itself.
The global pandemic has sparked a scramble to create a vaccine, with more than 100 in development and about a dozen already being tested on humans. There are concerns, however, about demand and developing countries’ access to a future jab.
Erick Thohir, Indonesia’s minister for state-owned enterprises, said Bio Farma would raise capacity in the coming months and by year-end would be ready to produce 250 million doses a year.
“Let’s trust the capability of our country. Don’t doubt Bio Farma which has been proven, either to produce vaccines that are produced with international partners or vaccines produced solely by (them),” Thohir said in a statement.
2020-08-04 19:49:02
The International Monetary Fund said that global current account imbalances narrowed in 2019 as trade slowed, and the coronavirus could narrow them further in 2020, but some vulnerable emerging market economies are facing major investment outflows.
The IMF’s annual report on currencies, the External Sector Report, showed that continued weakness in trade, coupled with massive fiscal expansion, was projected in many countries to shrink both current account deficits and surpluses.
The Fund said net current account balances fell by 0.2 percentage point to 2.9% of global GDP, and could narrow by 0.3% of global GDP in 2020, though the outlook is highly uncertain.
2020-08-04 19:41:19
Islamabad recorded 19 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Shahzad Town, the district health officer said.
2020-08-04 19:27:40
Medical device maker Abiomed said the US Food and Drug Administration granted its left-sided heart pumps emergency use authorization to help patients suffering from COVID-19-related heart and lung failures.
COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, causes widespread inflammation which could impair or damage the left ventricle of the heart and lead to heart failure or excess fluids in the lungs.
Impella, part of a family of invasive heart pump devices manufactured by Abiomed, provides circulatory support to patients who develop left side ventricular failure and is authorized to be used by healthcare providers in the hospital setting.
It was approved for use in the United States in 2015.
This is the second EUA that the FDA has granted for Impella during the COVID-19 pandemic. In May, the FDA issued an EUA to expand the use of Impella RP to include patients suffering from COVID-19-related right ventricular complications.
2020-08-04 19:10:42
New confirmed coronavirus cases nearly doubled in the Netherlands over the past week to 2,588, health authorities said, continuing a steady surge ongoing since lockdown measures were eased at the start of July.
The new cases registered in the week through Aug. 4 were up 95% from 1,329 in the week through July 28, the National Institute for health said in its weekly report published on Tuesday.
2020-08-04 18:59:25
Islamabad's coronavirus recovery rate reached84.73% after 50 more people recovered, the district health office said.
2020-08-04 17:25:39
Venezuela capital Caracas’ largest produce market is at the center of a worsening COVID-19 outbreak, but cash-strapped merchants refuse to stop hawking food there for the city’s 5 million residents, many of whom are starving.
“Caracas depends on this market,” its administrator Walter Rivera said in an interview, adding that about 17,000 tonnes of goods are sold there each month.
But the open-air bazaar, where people pay little heed to social distancing though most wear masks, upsets President Nicolas Maduro’s government’s efforts to stop an accelerating number of coronavirus cases from overloading Venezuela’s dilapidated health system. So far authorities have confirmed 20,206 cases and 174 deaths, though the opposition and medical NGOs warn that testing is insufficient.
Coche is a “potential site of high contagion” due to its lack of social distancing, Jose Manuel Olivares, a health advisor to opposition leader Juan Guaido, said in an interview.
Maduro ordered harsh lockdown measures in March which slowed the virus’ spread, but basic goods shortages forced many merchants to return to wholesale markets to make a living.
“If you don’t go out every day you don’t eat,” said Moises Rojas, 23, who sells carrots, potatoes and onions in Coche.
2020-08-04 17:39:56
Ralph Lauren Corp said its quarterly revenue plunged by nearly $1 billion, as it struggled with coronavirus-led store closures and a slowdown in demand for luxury goods across the world.
The big drop in revenue and a larger-than-expected loss pushed shares of the New York-based fashion house down nearly 7% in trading before the bell.
The company’s revenue slumped 77% in North America, with analysts saying demand for high-end handbags, apparel and accessories is not expected to rebound quickly as the global economy enters a recession.
Ralph Lauren is more exposed to the health crisis than other apparel companies as its jackets, coats and dresses are designed for social or formal occasions, said Neil Saunders, managing director of research firm GlobalData Retail.
2020-08-04 17:52:52
New car registrations in Ireland posted an annual fall of 14% in July, a key month for sales in the country, where registration plates change every year on Jan. 1 and July 1, the Society of the Irish Motor Industry said.
New car registrations in the year to the end of July were down 30% compared to the same period last year, while used car imports for the year to date were down 50%, the industry body said.
“While the July registration period did bring much needed activity back to showrooms, new car sales continue to disappoint,” the society’s director general Brian Cooke said in a statement.
Irish retail sales rose 3.5% year-on-year in June, data showed last week, the first annual increase since the coronavirus lockdown, as pent-up demand led to large increases in many categories, even as parts of the economy remained closed.
2020-08-04 18:00:06
Colombia’s economic growth will recover to close to 4.1% in 2021 after a recession this year, the country’s central bank said, amid uncertainty about when economic activity will return to pre-pandemic levels.
The Andean country’s economy has suffered as low oil prices and a coronavirus lockdown have shuttered businesses and sent unemployment soaring.
The central bank’s technical team places 2021 gross domestic product growth at between 3% and 8%, with a figure of close to 4.1% as the most likely, the bank said in its quarterly monetary policy report released late on Monday.
The bank has said the economy is set to contract between 6% and 10% this year, with a shrinking of 8.5% as the most likely scenario.
“The ranges reflect the high uncertainty that both the global economy and the Colombian economy are facing,” the report said. “The central scenario means the levels of economic activity observed in 2019 will not be recovered in 2021.”
The bank’s GDP estimates are considerably less optimistic than the government’s, which says GDP is set to contract 5.5% this year but will recover to 6.6% growth next.
2020-08-04 18:20:10
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 71 more infections in the province, taking the total to 34,253.
It also reported five more deaths, taking the death toll to 1,213 in the province.
2020-08-04 18:39:47
Denmark’s state epidemiologist on Tuesday said he could not recommend proceeding to the next phase of reopening society during the coronavirus outbreak, Danish media Ingenioeren reported.
“It is not something that I can recommend from a healthcare perspective that you go ahead with,” Kare Molbak, director of Statens Serum Institut (the State’s Serum Institute) said according to Ingenioeren.
The government and parliament are due to begin discussing the fourth phase of reopening, including nightclubs, this month. The weekly number of people infected with COVID-19 in Denmark has risen in the past couple of weeks.
2020-08-04 17:06:30
The number of people who have died in Yemen after contracting the new coronavirus has reached 500, according to a Reuters tally, although aid organisations say the death toll is probably much higher.
About 80% of the population rely on humanitarian assistance in Yemen after years of war. The country is divided between the Saudi-backed government based in Aden in the south and the Houthi movement based in the capital Sanaa in the north
The Saudi-backed government has declared 1,740 coronavirus cases, including 499 deaths, the Reuters tally shows. The Houthis, who control most big urban centres, have not provided figures since May 16 when authorities said there were four cases, and one death.
The United Nations says the virus is circulating rapidly and undetected throughout the country and infections and deaths are probably much higher.
According to World Health Organization data, there have been 1,738 COVID-19 infections, with 500 deaths, but the count does not include figures from Houthi authorities.
A government health ministry spokesman has said it reports figures daily and that “nothing was hidden”. Houthi authorities have not responded to requests for comment on coronavirus numbers.
2020-08-04 16:56:48
A World Health Organization team in China to probe the origins of COVID-19 had “extensive discussions” and exchanges with scientists in Wuhan where the outbreak was first detected, a spokesman said.
The talks included updates on animal health research, he said. China shut down a wildlife market in Wuhan at the start of the outbreak, a day after discovering some patients were vendors or dealers.
The WHO says the virus most likely came from bats and probably had another, intermediary animal “host”.
The results of the WHO investigation are keenly awaited by scientists and governments around the world, none more so than Washington, which lobbied hard for the mission. The Trump administration accuses the WHO of being China-centric and plans to leave the agency over its handling of the pandemic.
“The team had extensive discussions with Chinese counterparts and received updates on epidemiological studies, biologic and genetic analysis and animal health research,” Christian Lindmeier told reporters, saying these included video discussions with Wuhan virologists and scientists.
2020-08-04 16:41:42
Restaurant chain Pizza Express said it could cut 1,100 jobs and close around 67 pizzerias in Britain as it grapples with the "unprecedented challenges" of coronavirus.
The chain, which has 600 restaurants globally including 449 in the UK, said it was putting itself up for sale as part of a restructuring plan to deal with the fallout from the pandemic.
The company, majority-owned by Chinese firm Hony Capital, said it plans to reduce the size of its British restaurant footprint by 15 percent to help protect around 9,000 jobs in the country.
2020-08-04 16:29:25
A restaurant on Spain’s northeastern Mediterranean coast is pioneering a dining experience that allows customers to avoid most face-to-face contact with staff and minimise the risk of coronavirus contagion.
Customers at Funky Pizza, in Palafrugell on the Costa Brava popular with tourists, can browse the menu, order and pay via the “Funky Pay” app on their phones - the first time a purpose-designed app has been integrated into a restaurant’s ordering system in Spain.
A waiter does bring the order to the table.
“Through this system we have tried to keep physical distance with our clients, which is what people are looking for during COVID,” said restaurant owner Carlos Manich.
Staff manage the orders from screens behind the bar.
The restaurant has had to adapt to social distancing rules by becoming table service only and reminding customers on entry they must wear face masks at all times when not at their tables.
“The application is very user-friendly ... and you can also track your order and see when it is in the kitchen or when it will be arriving,” said Claudia Medina, 26, eating at the restaurant.
2020-08-04 16:18:53
British electrical retailer Dixons Carphone said it planned to cut 800 jobs to create a leaner management structure across its stores in the UK and Ireland.
The company, which sells mobile phones and tablets as well as white goods, said that it had started consultations with the affected employees. It has 24,000 employees in the UK.
In April, Dixons Carphone said strong online sales were making up for around two-thirds of the store sales lost during coronavirus lockdowns, but the company said in its statement on Tuesday that it remained committed to its stores.
Britain’s retail industry has been hard-hit by the pandemic with many high street chains announcing job losses in recent weeks. Marks & Spencer, health and beauty chain Boots and the upmarket department store Selfridges are cutting thousands of jobs between them.
2020-08-04 16:09:31
Vietnam reported 10 new COVID-19 infections and two deaths on Tuesday, lifting its total cases to 652, with eight dead, as the capital Hanoi said it was running short of the rapid testing kits being used to keep a new outbreak at bay.
Targeted testing and strict quarantining had helped Vietnam contain earlier outbreaks, but it is battling a new cluster of infections after going more than three months without detecting any domestic transmission.
The new outbreak has infected more than 200 people since July 25, the majority in the central city of Danang, but it has spread to at least eight other cities and provinces, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, where entertainment venues are closed and gatherings restricted to prevent infections.
Danang and Buon Ma Thuot in the coffee-growing Central Highlands have been placed on lockdown. A government spokesman on Monday said Vietnam does not plan a nationwide lockdown.
2020-08-04 15:58:00
Poland reported its fourth record daily increase in coronavirus cases in a week, with more than 30% of cases coming from the Silesia region in the south, which has been grappling with another outbreak among coal miners.
The daily record, with 680 new infections and six deaths, comes as Poland considers introducing stricter restrictions, including mandatory testing for travellers returning to Poland and quarantine for those coming from certain countries.
More than 220 cases were reported in Silesia.
Sanitary services said last week that the resurgence of COVID-19 among miners is a result of loosening restrictions and the working conditions in mines, where it is difficult to enforce social distancing.
2020-08-04 15:46:39
2020-08-04 15:33:54
2020-08-04 15:21:07
Banks’ lending to businesses under a government-backed COVID-19 loan scheme has exceeded 50 billion pounds ($65 billion), while the cost of supporting furloughed workers has increased to 33.8 billion pounds, weekly finance ministry figures showed.
Lending across the government’s three main programmes for small, medium and large businesses rose to a total 50.69 billion pounds as of Aug. 2, up from 49.43 billion pounds the week before.
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which has supported 9.6 million jobs and is the costliest single government COVID relief measure, has risen to 33.8 billion pounds from 31.7 billion pounds a week earlier.
2020-08-04 15:08:46
Indonesia recorded 1,922 new coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of cases in the Southeast Asian country to 115,056, official data by the country’s COVID-19 task force showed.
The data also showed there were 86 additional deaths, taking the overall number of fatalities to 5,388.
2020-08-04 14:46:38
Taiwan provisionally approved the use of dexamethasone, a cheap and widely-used steroid, to treat the new coronavirus, as the island faces a shortfall of the antiviral drug remdesivir after the United States bought nearly all global supplies.
Taiwan Centres for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang told reporters on Tuesday that medical experts had decided to provisionally allow dexamethasone to be listed as a COVID-19 treatment but that procedures still needed to be completed before it could be given to any patients.
Taiwan has reported 476 cases of the new coronavirus, including seven deaths. Most of the cases are imported and almost all have recovered. It has kept numbers low thanks to early and effective prevention work.
Taiwan’s official Central News Agency said this week that stocks on the island of U.S. drugmaker Gilead’s COVID-19 medicine remdesivir were low.
2020-08-04 14:35:51
German fashion house Hugo Boss expects demand for suits and formal wear to return as coronavirus lockdowns ease even as it adjusts to the rising popularity of casual styles after sales tumbled 59% in the second quarter.
“People will still get married and hold confirmations or baptisms and people still want to meet up,” acting chief executive Yves Mueller told journalists, adding he saw pent-up demand for formal outfits for events postponed by lockdowns.
“We are convinced that ready-to-wear will come back after the pandemic,” he said, shrugging off predictions that many people will keep working from home even after the pandemic.
2020-08-04 14:25:27
France’s top scientific body said a second wave of the coronavirus was “highly likely” this autumn or winter as the country grapples with a marked increase of new cases of the disease over the past two weeks.
“France has the situation under control but it is precarious with a surge of virus circulation this summer. The short term future of the pandemic mainly lies in the hands of the population,” the scientific committee on the disease said in a statement published by the Health Ministry’s website.
“It is highly likely that we will experience a second epidemic wave this autumn or winter.”
2020-08-04 14:12:27
Spain registered in July its first drop in jobless claims since February as more businesses began to reopen their doors after months of coronavirus lockdown, data from the Labour Ministry showed.
The number of people in Spain registering as jobless fell by 2.33% in July from a month earlier, or by 89,849 people, marking the biggest July drop since 1997, the ministry said.
Still, 3.77 million people remain out of work across the country and overall, there were 761,601 more jobless people in July than in the same month a year ago.
“The rise in hiring, double April’s number, indicates a strong recovery in activity,” Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz tweeted.
Unemployment fell across all sectors apart from agriculture which saw a 5.9% rise due to the end of fruit-picking seasons.
2020-08-04 13:58:22
Thailand's exports may contract by 15% this year as the coronavirus pandemic hits global demand and a stubbornly strong baht adds to pressure, a Thai shipping association said.
Exports, a key driver of Thai growth, slumped 15.2% in the second quarter from a year earlier and 7.1% in the January-June period.
The export picture in the third quarter will be similar to the second period as the global economy has yet to recover, Ghanyapad Tantipipatpong, chairwoman of the Thai National Shippers’ Council, told reporters.
While the group keeps its 2020 export target of minus 10% for now, Ghanyapad said there were more negative factors than positive ones and it was therefore possible that shipments could fall by 15%.
2020-08-04 13:49:48
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 879 to 211,281, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.
The reported death toll rose by eight to 9,156, the tally showed.
2020-08-04 13:37:37
Britain faces a second wave of COVID-19 this winter twice as widespread as the initial outbreak if it reopens schools without a more effective test-and-trace system in place, according to a study published on Tuesday.
Researchers from University College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine modelled the impact of reopening schools either on a full- or part-time basis, thus allowing parents to return to work, on the potential spread of the virus.
They concluded a second wave could be prevented if 75% of those with symptoms were found and tested and 68% of their contacts were traced, or if 87% of people with symptoms were found and 40% of their contacts tested.
“However, we also predict that in the absence of sufficiently broad test–trace–isolate coverage, reopening of schools combined with accompanied reopening of society across all scenarios might induce a second COVID-19 wave,” said the study, published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.
“Our modelling results suggest that full school reopening in September 2020 without an effective test-trace-isolate strategy would result in R rising above 1 and a resulting second wave of infections that would peak in December 2020 and be 2.0-2·3 times the size of the original COVID-19 wave.”
2020-08-04 13:23:09
2020-08-04 13:06:06
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced he was retightening restrictions on indoor gatherings after a recent surge in coronavirus cases in the state that officials have, in part, linked to house parties and indoor events.
Murphy said such events will now be limited to 25% of a room’s capacity with a maximum of 25 people, down from the previous limit of 100.
“The actions of a few knuckleheads leaves us no other course,” Murphy said at a news briefing. “We have to go back and tighten these restrictions once again until we begin to see the numbers of cases decrease.”
The restrictions will not apply to weddings, funerals and memorial services, and religious and political activities protected under the First Amendment, Murphy said.
2020-08-04 12:57:20
LONDON: The aviation sector carries the biggest risk of corporate default as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a survey of insurers published by broker Gallagher on Tuesday.
Only 29% of credit and political risk insurers had seen claims directly related to the virus so far, the survey of underwriters, conducted in June and July, showed.
Companies or lenders buy credit insurance to get cover for non-payment for goods or services.
Pandemic-related credit insurance claims are, however, likely to rise later this year or early next year, as businesses struggle to stave off default, said Matthew Solley, managing director of structured credit and political risks at Gallagher.
Aviation, oil and energy, and tourism were the three sectors in their portfolios that concerned insurers the most.
Virgin Australia, Air Mauritius and Colombia-based Avianca are among airlines to have ceased operations in the past few months, with planes grounded by lockdowns around the world.
Insurers also worry about non-payment by governments, with Zambia seen the biggest risk.
In the broader political risk insurance market, which can cover issues ranging from expropriation to war, Argentina was seen as the biggest concern.
The survey of 76 underwriters from 46 firms in Lloyd’s of London and the broader London commercial insurance market was carried out between June 24 and July 9.
2020-08-04 12:55:41
2020-08-04 11:47:14
Germany is already contending with a second wave of the coronavirus and risks squandering its early success by flouting social distancing rules, the head of the German doctors’ union said in a newspaper interview.
The number of daily confirmed coronavirus cases has ticked up steadily in recent weeks, with health experts warning lax adherence to hygiene and distancing rules among some of the public is spreading the virus across communities.
“We are already in a second, shallow upswing,” Susanne Johna, president of Marburger Bund, which represents doctors in Germany, told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.
She said there was a danger that a longing to return to normality and a suppression of containment measures would fritter away the success Germany had achieved so far, urging people to stick to social distancing and hygiene rules and wear masks.
2020-08-04 12:00:29
Turkish manufacturing activity grew in July at the fastest rate in nine years as the country eased its measures aimed at tackling the coronavirus pandemic, a survey showed.
The headline PMI rose to 56.9 in July from 53.9 in June, recording its highest reading since February 2011, according to survey data from the Istanbul Chamber of Industry and IHS Markit.
A broad re-opening of the economy beginning on June 1 and a return of business for customers brought the second monthly rise in new orders at Turkish manufacturers. The expansion rate was among the fastest since the survey began in June 2005.
New export orders also rose, albeit to a lesser extent than total new business.
The latest PMI survey data signalled the sector is strengthening after the pandemic brought a sharp downturn beginning in March. July saw jumps in expansion in both output and new orders, with capacity pressures emerging and firms taking on additional staff.
2020-08-04 12:20:09
Argentina said that it had reached a deal with three creditor groups on a sovereign debt restructuring deal.
The deal with the Ad Hoc Group of Argentine Bondholders, the Argentina Creditor Committee and the Exchange Bondholder Group and other significant holders would allow members of the creditor groups to support a debt restructuring deal and grant the country significant debt relief, the Ministry of Economy said.
The country had been at an impasse with creditors including BlackRock and Ashmore, over proposals to revamp $65 billion in debt ahead of the deadline of today.
2020-08-04 12:34:40
Turkey’s consumer price inflation fell to a lower-than-expected 11.76% year-on-year in July, the Turkish Statistical Institute said on Tuesday, reversing two months of rising inflation as the economy continued to emerge from lockdown.
Month-on-month, consumer prices rose 0.58% in July, compared to a Reuters poll forecast of 0.9%. The poll saw annual inflation at 12.10% in July, after it rose to 12.62% in June.
The producer price index rose 1.02% month-on-month in July for an annual rise of 8.33%, the data showed.
2020-08-04 12:32:01
Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar has said the federal government has started consultations with the provinces to review the list of sectors allowed to open amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The minister also shared that the federal government has also asked provinces to review the timings of markets and industries.
2020-08-04 11:27:21
As the world awaits a COVID-19 vaccine, the next big advance in battling the pandemic could come from a class of biotech therapies widely used against cancer and other disorders — antibodies designed specifically to attack this new virus.
Development of monoclonal antibodies to target the virus has been endorsed by leading scientists. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert, called them “almost a sure bet” against COVID-19.
When a virus gets past the body’s initial defenses, a more specific response kicks in, triggering production of cells that target the invader. These include antibodies that recognise and lock onto a virus, preventing the infection from spreading.
Monoclonal antibodies — grown in bioreactor vats — are copies of these naturally-occurring proteins.
Scientists are still working out the exact role of neutralising antibodies in recovery from COVID-19, but drugmakers are confident that the right antibodies or a combination can alter the course of the disease that has claimed more than 675,000 lives globally.
“Antibodies can block infectivity. That is a fact,” Regeneron Pharmaceuticals executive Christos Kyratsous told Reuters.
Regeneron is testing a two-antibody cocktail, which it believes limits the ability of the virus’ to escape better than one, with data on its efficacy expected by late summer or early fall. “Protection will wane over time. Dosing is something we don’t know yet,” said Kyratsous.
2020-08-04 11:16:07
Driven largely by Latin America's largest country Brazil, the region crossed the 5 million COVID-19 cases mark on Tuesday, as the WHO expressed fears that there never may be a "silver bullet" for the pandemic.
Global infections passed 18 million, with Brazil driving the regional surge. South America´s largest country has recorded 2.75 million cases, and close to half the region´s 202,000 deaths.
Only the United States, with 4.7 million cases and more than 155,000 deaths, has been worse affected.
Read more here.
2020-08-04 10:28:57
The United Nations diplomats and experts cautioned the world that the COVID-19 pandemic ca intensify violence and further deteriorate the human rights situation in conflicts to the point that it will intensify them.
COVID-19 is hampering aid programs, diverting the attention and resources of major powers battling the deadly virus at home, and cutting remittances to already fragile, war-weary economies, they say.
"There´s a very high level of concern that its economic impact is going to spark more disorder, more conflict," said New York-based UN expert Richard Gowan.
"We´re still only really in the opening act of quite a long drama," he told AFP.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres´s plea for a global ceasefire back in March has gone largely unheeded, with fighting continuing to rage in hotspots such as Yemen, Libya and Syria.
Lockdowns are restricting the movements of envoys, peacekeeping troops and non-governmental agencies, hindering mediation efforts and impeding the distribution of desperately needed aid to increasingly vulnerable civilians.
Read more here.
2020-08-04 10:19:07
ISLAMABAD: Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 280,461 on Tuesday after 432 new cases were detected in the country over the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 121,705 total cases in Sindh, 93,336 in Punjab, 2,097 in AJK, 11,777 in Balochistan, 2,198 in GB, 15,095 in Islamabad and 34,253 cases in KP.
The country also reported 15 new fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,997.
2020-08-04 09:42:24
SYDNEY: Australia’s second-most populous state Victoria said on Tuesday military personnel will be deployed to enforce COVID-19 isolation orders, with anyone caught in breach of those rules facing hefty fines as high as A$20,000 ($14,250.00).
Australia, once heralded as a global leader in containing COVID-19, is desperately trying to slow the spread of the virus in Victoria to prevent a national second wave of infections.
Victoria earlier this week imposed a night curfew, tightened restrictions on people’s daily movements and ordered large parts of the local economy to close to slow the spread of coronavirus.
But nearly a third of those who contracted COVID-19 were not home isolating when checked on by officials, requiring tough new penalties, Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said on Tuesday.
Andrews said 500 military personnel will this week deploy to Victoria to bolster enforcement of self-isolation orders, with fines of nearly A$5,000 ($3,559.00) for breaching stay at home orders. The only exemption will be for urgent medical care.
“There is literally no reason for you to leave your home and if you were to leave your home and not be found there, you will have a very difficult time convincing Victoria police that you have a lawful reason,” Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.
Repeat offenders face a fine of up to A$20,000, he said.
Australia has recorded nearly 19,000 COVID-19 cases and 232 fatalities, far few than many other developed nations after closing its international borders early, imposing social distancing restrictions and mass virus testing.
But as the country began to reopen, community transmissions rose significantly in Victoria which has recorded triple digit new cases for weeks. It now has the bulk of infections in the country, with nearly 12,000 reported cases. On Tuesday, Victoria reported 439 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours.
Andrews said 11 people had died from the virus since Monday, bringing the state’s death toll to 136. The virus has spread significantly throughout Victoria’s aged care facilities, with many of the deaths among the elderly.
Victoria state officials said the latest wave of COVID-19 infections has been driven by residents refusing to adhere to restrictions on their movements.
2020-08-04 09:15:35
BRASILIA: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, Army General Walter Souza Braga Netto, has tested positive for COVID-19, his office said on Monday, becoming the seventh Brazilian minister to have contracted the disease.
Braga Netto is doing well and has no symptoms, the office said in a statement. He will remain in isolation until a new examination and medical evaluation is carried out, and will continue to work remotely.
Last week, Bolsonaro’s wife and one of his ministers tested positive for COVID-19. Bolsonaro also contracted the disease but his latest test showed he was no longer infected.
On Monday, Bolsonaro told reporters he was fine and was already cured, after the president last week reported that he had “mold” in his lungs and was taking antibiotics. He did not give more details about his medical condition.
2020-08-04 08:50:42
WASHINGTON: The United States added 46,321 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours Monday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
The world's largest economy also added 532 deaths, the Baltimore-based institution's tracker showed at 8:30 pm (0030 GMT Tuesday).
The US has now recorded 4,711,323 total cases, with 155,366 deaths, making it by far the worst-hit country in the world.
Monday was the second day to notch a slightly lower caseload, after a string of five days last week had all recorded more than 60,000 new daily infections.
President Donald Trump said during a coronavirus press briefing on Monday that the virus was "receding" in parts of the southern and western United States, deeming the situation "very encouraging."
But the day before, White House coronavirus advisor Deborah Birx had warned that the country was entering a "new phase" of the pandemic, with rural areas just as threatened as major cities.
"It is extraordinarily widespread," she told CNN on Sunday.
"To everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune or protected from this virus."
2020-08-04 08:43:58
LOS ANGELES: The rates of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions were all trending downward in California in the latest counts, the governor said on Monday.
Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said that despite that good news, the state’s Central Valley agricultural region was still being hit hard by the coronavirus. He said the data had yet to reach a point for lifting pandemic restrictions.
“This virus is not going away,” Newsom said at a daily coronavirus briefing. “It’s not going to take Labor Day weekend off or Halloween off or the holidays off. Until we have a vaccine we are going to be living with this virus.”
California, the country’s most populous state with some 40 million residents, has recorded a total of 514,901 confirmed COVID-19 infections and 9,388 deaths, according to the governor’s office.
The state’s seven-day average of infections has dropped more than 21%, compared to the previous period, Newsom said, and hospitalizations are down 10% in a 14-day average.
2020-08-03 23:47:20
Tyson Foods Inc is seeking to convince Beijing to lift a ban on US chicken shipments from an Arkansas plant where workers tested positive for COVID-19, President Dean Banks said on Monday
China has emerged as the largest export market for American poultry, overtaking Mexico this spring, after Beijing in November ended a nearly five-year embargo on imports from the United States.
Since June, China's customs authority has blocked chicken from Tyson's plant in Springdale, Arkansas, as part of an all-out effort to control the spread of COVID-19 in China. Globally, Beijing has suspended imports from more than 20 overseas plants processing pork, beef and poultry.
"We've been interacting with them and making sure that they have all the information they need about the precautionary measures, the protective measures that plant has taken," Banks told reporters on a call.
"We'd love to continue to export product from that facility, but that's in the hands of the Chinese government."
Tyson on Monday also named Banks as its new chief executive and reported quarterly earnings that were hurt by the pandemic.
2020-08-03 23:08:17
Britain's health ministry reported 938 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, the second-highest daily total since June, taking the cumulative number of positive test results to 305,623.
The most recent peak in cases came on July 29, when health ministry data show there were 995 positive tests, the highest number since June 16.
2020-08-03 23:06:08
France said on Monday the number of people in intensive care units for COVID-19 stood at 384 on Monday, versus 371 on Friday, the second time in a week that figure has increased after declining for 16 weeks.
In a statement, health authorities reported 29 additional deaths from the disease, bringing the total to 30,294.
2020-08-03 22:45:00
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday reported 4,649,102 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 47,576 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 469 to 154,471.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, as of 4 p.m. ET on Sunday versus its previous report a day earlier.
The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
2020-08-03 22:17:02
Khunjerab Pass has been opened temporarily to facilitate the flow of goods between China and Pakistan amid COVID-19, according to a Chinese Embassy statement.
2020-08-03 21:47:07
Masks are not dangerous even for those with respiratory problems, according to US-based infectious disease expert, Dr Faheem Younus.
2020-08-03 21:24:24
Three cabinet ministers in Gambia have tested positive for COVID-19, the presidency said, in a further sign the virus is ripping though the corridors of power after the nation's vice president tested positive last week.
President Adama Barrow is in self isolation for the next two weeks, the presidency said last week, after Vice President Isatou Touray tested positive.
Now, finance minister Mambureh Njie, energy minister Fafa Sanyang and agriculture minister Amie Fabureh have also been infected by the virus, the presidency said in a statement late on Sunday.
The statement gave no detail on the state of the ministers' health.
Gambia, mainland Africa's smallest country, has recorded 498 cases of COVID-19 with nine related deaths, the lowest totals in West Africa.
2020-08-03 21:05:51
Spain on Monday reported 968 new coronavirus infections in the past day, showing a slower pace of contagion than last week when the country reported more than 1,000 new cases for three days in a row.
Cumulative cases, which also include results from antibody tests on people who may have recovered, increased to 297,054 from 288,522, the health ministry said.
The number of active clusters grew to 560 from 483 on Thursday, when they were last disclosed.
2020-08-03 21:05:30
Portugal reported no coronavirus-related deaths on Monday from a day earlier for the first time since mid-March, when a lockdown was put in place, and the lowest number of new infections in almost three months.
"It has been very difficult in recent times - we are very happy this happened," the secretary of state for health, Antonio Sales, said as he teared up during a news conference.
"I want to leave this message of hope to the Portuguese but I want to ask them to help us maintain these numbers," he said.
Portugal's total confirmed cases rose by 106 from Sunday to 51,569, with 62% of new infections reported in and around Lisbon, where localised outbreaks on the outskirts have worried authorities for the past two months.
The death toll remained unchanged at 1,738.
2020-08-03 20:47:28
The World Health Organization on Monday warned there might never be a "silver bullet" for the coronavirus, as Australia’s second-largest city went under curfew and the number of global infections passed 18 million.
The world’s hope of ending the current cycle of outbreaks and lockdowns rests on a vaccine, but the UN health agency said governments and citizens should focus on what is known to work: testing, contact tracing, maintaining physical distance and wearing a mask.
"We all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference.
"However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment -- and there might never be," he said.
"For now, stopping outbreaks comes down to the basics of public health and disease control. Do it all."
2020-08-03 20:42:20
Pandemic-inspired housing innovation will collide with techno-acceleration, and the new focus on resilience and income inequality.
2020-08-03 20:16:00
Norway will stop all cruise ships with more than 100 people on board from disembarking at Norwegian ports in the wake of the outbreak of COVID-19 on a Hurtigruten cruise ship, the Norwegian health minister said on Monday.
The new rules will initially apply for fourteen days, Bent Hoie said. They will not apply to regular ferries traffic, both domestic and international. Norway has ferry connections to Germany and Denmark, among others.
2020-08-03 19:59:24
The World Health Organization warned that there might never be a “silver bullet” for COVID-19 in the form of a perfect vaccine and that the road to normality would be long, with some countries requiring a reset of strategy.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan exhorted nations to rigorously enforce health measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-washing and testing.
“The message to people and governments is clear: ‘Do it all’,” Tedros told a virtual news briefing from the U.N. body’s headquarters in Geneva. He said face masks should become a symbol of solidarity round the world.
“A number of vaccines are now in phase three clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection. However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment - and there might never be.”
The WHO head said that, while the coronavirus was the biggest health emergency since the early 20th century, the international scramble for a vaccine was also “unprecedented”.
But he underscored uncertainties. “There are concerns that we may not have a vaccine that may work, or its protection could be for just a few months, not more. But until we finish the clinical trials, we will not know.”
2020-08-03 19:42:02
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 30 more infections in the province, taking the total to 34,253.
It also reported six more deaths, taking the death toll to 1,208 in the province.
2020-08-03 19:29:21
2020-08-03 19:06:42
People across Britain enjoyed half-price meals as the government launched its “Eat Out to Help Out Scheme” aimed at driving up business in the shattered hospitality industry after months of coronavirus lockdown.
Diners are entitled to a 50% discount on food and non-alcoholic drinks to eat or drink in, up to a maximum of 10 pounds ($13) discount per head every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday between Aug. 3 and Aug 31.
The offer - expected to cost half a billion pounds ($650 million) - is open to diners in participating restaurants, cafés, bars, pubs, work and school canteens and food halls. More than 72,000 restaurants have registered, finance minister Rishi Sunak said.
Matt Healey, 23, who works in digital marketing for Warner Bros., was glad his cooked “English breakfast” would cost him half the usual price at Maggies, a cafe in Lewisham, south east London.
But he said the priority for him remained the health risks over the discount. “It’s a bit of a balancing act,” Healey said. “I think the risks will probably outweigh the 50% off.”
2020-08-03 18:58:15
Greece will make mask-wearing compulsory on the decks of ferries sailing to its islands, extending the requirement beyond indoor public spaces, after a sudden rise in coronavirus infections that could put its crucial tourism season at risk.
Greece reported 110 new cases on Saturday, its highest single-day increase in several weeks. Another 75 confirmed cases were reported on Sunday.
“Compliance with this measure is crucial to avoid more drastic measures that would reduce passenger-load limits on ships,” government spokesman Stelios Petsas told reporters.
The new measure will go into effect from Tuesday until August 18, as the summer holiday season hits its peak.
2020-08-03 18:47:22
A German state opened schools on Monday after the nationwide shutdown in March earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
2020-08-03 18:14:00
Mexican schools will not reopen when the academic year begins on August 24 in order to safeguard the health of students and teachers because cases of coronavirus are still too high, education minister Esteban Moctezuma said on Monday.
The government has agreed with major networks including Televisa and TV Azteca to launch a home schooling scheme to be broadcast nation-wide, the minister said.
2020-08-03 17:56:56
Chief Minister Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that 219 new cases of the coronavirus were detected when 4,484 samples were tested during the past 24 hours, raising the province-wide tally to 121,705 as of Monday.
In a statement today, Shah said that two more patients died of the virus, taking the death toll to 2,226 in the province so far.
Shah said that the overall recovery rate in the province is 91%, as so far 111,249 people have recovered. The statement mentioned that 243 people recovered from COVID-19 during the past day.
He said that 8,230 patients are currently under treatment for the coronavirus, adding that 64 are on ventilators.
2020-08-03 17:42:21
The World Health Organization warned on Monday that, despite strong hopes for a vaccine, there might never be a “silver bullet” for COVID-19, and the road to normality would be long.
More than 18.14 million people around the world are reported to have been infected with the disease and 688,080 have died, according to a Reuters tally, with some nations that thought they were over the worst experiencing a resurgence.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan exhorted all nations to rigorously enforce health measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-washing and testing.
“The message to people and governments is clear: ‘Do it all’,” Tedros told a virtual news briefing from the U.N. body’s headquarters in Geneva. He said face masks should become a symbol of solidarity round the world.
2020-08-03 17:05:17
The Tokyo Paralympics may require specific COVID-19 measures to help keep athletes safe as they move between venues, organisers said.
The 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics have been pushed back to next year because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Paralympics organisers said on Monday the schedule would remain largely the same for next year. The opening ceremony will take place on Aug. 24 and the Games will feature 539 events at 22 different venues.
Games Director Hidemasa Nakamura said additional measures against the virus may be needed during the Paralympics because of the extra time required to move para-athletes between venues.
“There might be some specific measures that are needed depending on what type of sport or competition it is,” he said.
“We are having discussions with IFs (International Federations) and the IPC (International Paralympic Committee) and others to provide a safe and secure environment.”
2020-08-03 16:55:35
As the world awaits a COVID-19 vaccine, the next big advance in battling the pandemic could come from a class of biotech therapies widely used against cancer and other disorders - antibodies designed specifically to attack this new virus.
When a virus gets past the body’s initial defenses, a more specific response kicks in, triggering production of cells that target the invader. These include antibodies that recognize and lock onto a virus, preventing the infection from spreading.
Monoclonal antibodies - grown in bioreactor vats - are copies of these naturally-occurring proteins.
Scientists are still working out the exact role of neutralizing antibodies in recovery from COVID-19, but drugmakers are confident that the right antibodies or a combination can alter the course of the disease that has claimed more than 675,000 lives globally.
“Antibodies can block infectivity. That is a fact,” Regeneron Pharmaceuticals executive Christos Kyratsous told Reuters.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-03 16:39:19
One person is dying from COVID-19 every seven minutes in Iran, state television said, as the Health Ministry reported 215 new deaths from the disease and state media warned of a lack of proper social distancing.
Health Ministry spokesman Sima Sadat Lari was quoted by the state TV as saying the 215 deaths in the past 24 hours took the combined death toll to 17,405 in Iran, and the number of confirmed cases rose by 2,598 to 312,035.
State television showed several Iranians in a busy Tehran street without wearing face masks or social distancing.
Some experts have doubted the accuracy of Iran’s official coronavirus tolls. A report by the Iranian parliament’s research centre in April suggested that the coronavirus tolls might be almost twice as many as those announced by the health ministry.
The report said that Iran’s official coronavirus figures were based only on the number of deaths in hospitals and those who had already tested positive for the coronavirus.
2020-08-03 16:29:00
Vietnam reported 21 more novel coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 642.
All of the new cases are linked to Danang, the new coronavirus epicentre where Vietnam more than a week ago detected its first locally transmitted infections in more than three months, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
There have been nearly 200 cases since the virus resurfaced in Danang, with six deaths. Coronavirus infections have since been detected in at least 10 locations in Vietnam.
2020-08-03 16:16:41
Portugal’s once-booming tourism sector registered another month of disastrous numbers in June as contagion fears and travel restrictions due to the coronavirus outbreak continued to keep visitors away, official data released showed.
In its flash estimate, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said the number of overnight stays by foreign tourists in dropped 96% to around 201,000 last month from a year ago.
The total number of guests, including domestic travellers, fell nearly 82% in June to just over 500,000 people, a slight improvement from a drop of over 94% in May, INE said, adding that in June around 45% of tourist accommodation establishments were shut or had no guests.
Overnight stays by Britons, one of the country’s biggest foreign markets, fell over 98% in June compared to the same period in 2019, followed by a massive drop in the German and Spanish markets, decreasing 95.1% and 93.3% respectively.
2020-08-03 16:10:11
Vietnam is in the midst of a “decisive” fight against the novel coronavirus, the prime minister said on Monday, with the focus on Danang city where infections have appeared in four factories with a combined workforce of about 3,700 people.
Vietnam, widely praised for its mitigation efforts since the coronavirus appeared in late January, is battling several new clusters of infection linked to Danang after going more than three months without detecting any domestic transmission.
“We have to deploy full force to curb all known epicentres, especially those in Danang,” the official broadcaster Vietnam Television (VTV) quoted Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc telling government officials.
“Early August will be the decisive time within which to stop the virus from spreading on a large scale.”
2020-08-03 15:58:38
Rival drugmakers AbbVie Inc , Amgen and Takeda Pharmaceuticals Monday said they have begun treating patients in a trial to quickly show whether a drug from each company can be repurposed and used against COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The COVID-19 pandemic is an “all hands on deck moment,” David Reese, Amgen’s research and development chief told Reuters. “We wanted a trial to be able to quickly sift through multiple agents and prioritize.”
The study is a collaboration among pharmaceutical industry members of the recently-formed COVID Research & Development Alliance, Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative, a partnership of medical researchers and investors, and the Food and Drug Administration.
The first segment will test whether Amgen’s psoriasis drug Otezla, Takeda’s anti-inflammatory Firazyr and AbbVie’s cenicriviroc, which has been tried in patients with HIV, will help with the overactive, and potentially damaging, immune response that sometimes happens in patients with severe COVID-19.
The study’s “adaptive platform” means several treatment candidates can be tested at the same time, with the most promising moving forward and the least promising dropping out, Quantum Leap co-founder Dr. Laura Esserman told Reuters.
“We could have some results in as early as six weeks,” she said, adding that additional drugs will soon be added to the roster.
2020-08-03 15:45:00
Hong Kong reported 80 new coronavirus cases on Monday, dropping below 100 infections for the first time in 12 days, as a team of Chinese officials began preparations for widespread testing in the global financial hub, which has seen a resurgence in cases.
Since late January, around 3,600 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 37 of whom have died
2020-08-03 15:20:23
Russia reported 5,394 new cases of the coronavirus on Monday, pushing its national tally to 856,264, the fourth largest in the world.
Officials said 79 people had died in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 14,207.
2020-08-03 15:00:19
Millions of coronavirus tests able to detect the virus within 90 minutes will be rolled out to British hospitals, care homes and laboratories to boost capacity in the coming months, the country's health minister said on Monday.
They will comprise 5.8 million tests using DNA and 450,000 swab tests. Neither will need to be administered by a health professional, said Matt Hancock.
"The fact these tests can detect flu as well as COVID-19 will be hugely beneficial as we head into winter, so patients can follow the right advice to protect themselves and others," he said.
2020-08-03 14:35:14
Australia's second-biggest city, Melbourne, already under night curfew, announced fresh restrictions on industries including retail and construction on Monday in a bid to contain a resurgence of the coronavirus.
From Wednesday night, Melbourne, the capital of Victoria state, will close retail, some manufacturing and administrative businesses as part of a six-week lockdown.
Australia has fared better than many countries, with 18,361 coronavirus cases and 221 deaths from a population of 25 million.
Restrictions announced on Sunday included a curfew from 8pmto 5amfor six weeks, barring the city's nearly five million people from leaving their homes except for work or to receive or give care.
2020-08-03 13:52:31
HSBC Holdings warned its bad debt charges could blow past a previous estimate to $13 billion this year and said its profits more than halved, as the coronavirus pandemic hammered the bank’s retail and corporate customers worldwide.
HSBC reported a pre-tax profit of $4.32 billion for the first six months this year, lower than the $5.67 billion average of analysts’ forecasts.
The bank increased its estimate of the total bad debt charges it could take this year to between $8 billion and $13 billion from $7 billion-$11 billion, reflecting worse-than-expected actual losses in the second quarter and expectations of a steeper decline in the economy.
2020-08-03 13:40:36
Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar presented former SAPM on Health Dr Zafar, with a plaque, in recognition of his contribution to the nation's COVID-19 response.
"Thankful for the support he provided and wish him the best for his future work," Umar said.
2020-08-03 13:31:23
India’s worsening economic outlook as coronavirus cases soar has raised the chance the central bank will cut interest rates at its policy review on Thursday, in spite of inflationary pressures.
Around two-thirds of economists in a Reuters poll expect the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to cut the repo rate by another 25 basis points (bps) on Aug. 6 to a record low of 3.50%, and once more next quarter.
“High inflation has added confusion to the Reserve Bank’s policy outlook, but given the state of aggregate demand, we forecast the RBI will continue easing,” said Rahul Bajoria, economist at Barclays who expects a 25-bp cut.
2020-08-03 13:21:00
Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said that early August would a decisive period for preventing a large-scale spread of the coronavirus, state broadcaster VTV reported, after a reemergence of the virus after more than three months.
“We have to deploy full force to curb all known epicentres, especially those in Danang,” VTV quoted Phuc as telling a meeting of government officials, referring to the city where the virus reappeared recently.
“Early August will be the decisive time within which to stop the virus from spreading on a large scale.”
Phuc said this current wave of infection could have a more “critical impact” than the previous one and ordered officials to both contain the spread and maintain supply chains, the report said.
2020-08-03 13:12:06
Poland’s health minister said police health authorities would start checks in shops this week to see if people are following regulations to keep their mouths and noses covered.
“This week we are starting inspections in shops...(to see) whether clients are wearing masks, whether the staff are wearing masks,” Lukasz Szumowski told Polish public radio.
2020-08-03 13:00:52
Singapore will make some incoming travellers wear an electronic monitoring device to ensure that they comply with coronavirus quarantines as the city-state gradually reopens its borders, authorities said on Monday.
From August 11, the devices will be given to incoming travellers, including citizens and residents, from a select group of countries who will be allowed to isolate at home rather than at a state-appointed facility.
Travellers to Singapore are required to activate the device, which use GPS and Bluetooth signals, upon reaching their home and will receive notifications on the device which they must acknowledge.
Any attempt to leave home or tamper with the device will trigger an alert to the authorities.
Singapore, which has not given details on what the device will look like, said in a statement that it will not store any personal data and does not have any voice or video recording function.
2020-08-03 12:50:59
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spike in investment among Britons, with millennials leading the way as they turn increasingly to the stock market.
The crisis pushed UK household consumption down by a record 9.5 billion pounds ($12.5 billion) in the first quarter as spending on restaurants, clothes and cars plummeted, official data shows.
That drop in spending has led to a pick-up in equities investment by people frustrated at low savings rates, particularly among so-called millennials born after 1981,
Investment platform Interactive Investor said that openings of tax-efficient self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) and ISA investment accounts by 25 to 34 year olds jumped more than 250% year on year in the second quarter as low rates on regular savings products boosted the appeal of alternatives offering potentially greater returns.
A survey from fund tracker Calastone found that 69% of British millennials with investment portfolios have added to them in the past month or plan to do so in the next month.
That’s the biggest proportion among the four age groups categorised by Calastone, with only 29% of the 1950s-born “older baby boomers” chalking up new investments in the past month or making plans to do so in the next month.
2020-08-03 12:40:08
Australia’s second-biggest city Melbourne already under night curfew announced fresh restrictions on industries on Monday, including retail and construction, as it steps up desperate efforts to contain the spread of a resurgent coronavirus.
From Wednesday night, Melbourne will close retail, some manufacturing and administrative businesses as part of a six week lockdown which is expected to hit 250,000 jobs, roughly the number already impacted.
The state of Victoria declared a “state of emergency” on Sunday due to a surge in community transmissions.
“As heartbreaking as it is to close down places of employment... that is what we have to do in order to stop the spread of this wildly infectious virus,” Victoria’s state premier Daniel Andrews told a news conference.
“Otherwise we are not in for six weeks of restrictions we’ll be in for a six month stint.”
2020-08-03 12:30:31
A novel coronavirus outbreak that began in the Vietnamese city of Danang more than a week ago has spread to at least four city factories with a combined workforce of about 3,700, state media reported.
Four cases were found at the plants in different industrial parks in the central city which collectively employ 77,000 people, the Lao Dong newspaper said.
Authorities on Monday reported one new case linked to Danang, a tourism hot spot where a case was detected on July 24, Vietnam’s first domestically transmitted case in 100 days.
The source of the new outbreak is unclear but it has spread to at least 10 different places, including the capital, Hanoi, and the business hub of Ho Chi Minh City, infecting 174 people and killing six.
The government said on Saturday it planned to test Danang’s entire population of 1.1 million people, part of “unprecedented measures” to fight the outbreak. The city imposed a lockdown last week, closing entertainment venues and banning movement in and out of the city.
Authorities said on Sunday that the strain of virus detected in Danang was a more contagious one, and that each infected person could infect 5 to 6 people, compared with 1.8-2.2 for infections earlier in the year.
2020-08-03 12:22:16
India’s interior minister and the chiefs of two big states have been hospitalised with COVID-19 as the country’s daily cases topped 50,000 for a fifth straight day.
The country reported 52,972 new confirmed infections in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 1.8 million - the third highest in the world after the United States and Brazil - data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare showed on Monday.
With 771 new deaths, the COVID-19 disease has now killed 38,135 people in India, including that of a minister on Sunday in the most-populous state of Uttar Pradesh.
On Sunday, federal interior minister Amit Shah, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closest aides, as well as the chief minister of the southern state of Karnataka, were hospitalised. The chief of the central state of Madhya Pradesh is also recovering in hospital.
As infections continue to surge in the country, having registered a record of 57,118 on Saturday, India has also stepped up efforts to test more people and search for a vaccine.
2020-08-03 12:10:39
A major incident has been declared in Manchester to help tackle the rising number of coronavirus cases, a local official said on Sunday.
"Although the council and partner organisations have been working closely to tackle the impacts of the pandemic since early this year, declaring a major incident means we can ramp this up further," the Leader of Manchester City Council Richard Leese said in the Manchester Evening News.
2020-08-03 11:55:02
White House coronavirus advisor Deborah Birx has warned the US has entered a "new phase" of the pandemic with rural areas just as threatened as major cities.
Birx, who heads the White House coronavirus task force, told CNN's"State of the Union" that local virus mitigation procedures were starting to work, but added that "what we are seeing today is different from March and April".
"It is extraordinarily widespread. It´s into the rural as equal urban areas," she added. "To everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune or protected from this virus."
"We are in a new phase," Birx said.
She added that sticking to health and safety guidelines— such as wearing a mask, maintaining personal hygiene and observing social distancing— was crucial.
2020-08-03 11:35:39
India reported 52,972 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 1.8 million, data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare showed on Monday.
With 771 new deaths, the COVID-19 disease has now claimed 38,135 lives in the world’s second-most populous country.
2020-08-03 11:00:22
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 280,029 on Monday after 330 new cases were detected in the country over the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 121,486 total cases in Sindh, 93,197 in Punjab, 2,093 in AJK, 11,774 in Balochistan, 2,180 in GB, 15,076 in Islamabad and 34,223 cases in KP.
The country also reported eight new fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,984.
2020-08-03 10:25:53
Argentina topped 200,000 COVID-19 cases on Sunday and Colombia set a daily record as grim milestones topple in South America, pushing the world’s worst affected region towards a combined 5 million cases.
Latin America, which has some 8% of the world’s population, accounts for close to 30% of global cases and fatalities, with infections still spreading fast and hitting regional leaders like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Bolivia’s Jeanine Anez.
Brazil, the worst hit country in the region and the second-worst worldwide, has over 2.73 million cases and more than 94,000 deaths.
2020-08-03 10:00:36
The number of coronavirus cases recorded worldwide crossed the 18 million mark with the virus continuing its march.
Six months after WHO declared a global emergency, the virus has killed more than 687,000 people since it first emerged in China late last year, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources.
Fresh clusters have been reported in countries that had previously brought their outbreaks under control, forcing governments to reimpose lockdown measures despite worries over further economic fallout.
2020-08-03 09:10:32
The US recorded 47,508 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
There were also 515 new deaths, the Baltimore-based university real-time count .
Sunday's toll was a slight dip, as the previous five days had all recorded more than 60,000 new infections.
The US has now tallied 4,665,002 cases and 154,834 deaths, making it by far the hardest-hit country in the world.
2020-08-02 22:00:00
The US Congress is in position to spend big on coronavirus relief efforts because the nation’s budget gap can be financed without relying on foreign borrowing, given how much Americans are saving, a top Federal Reserve official has said.
“Those of us who are fortunate enough to still have our jobs, we’re saving a lot more money because we’re not going to restaurants or movie theaters or vacations,” Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“That actually means that we have a lot more resources as a country to support those who have been laid off,” he said.
2020-08-02 21:33:00
At least 40 passengers and crew from a luxury cruise liner have tested positive for COVID-19 and the authorities are still trying to trace a number of passengers from two recent Arctic voyages, public health officials said.
Four crew members on the MS Roald Amundsen were hospitalised on Friday when the ship arrived at the port of Tromsoe, and later diagnosed with the respiratory illness. Tests showed another 32 of the 158 staff were also infected.
While the crew was quarantined on the ship, the 178 passengers who arrived on Friday were allowed to disembark before anyone had been diagnosed, triggering a complex operation to locate them in order to contain any potential spread.
So far, four of the combined 387 passengers travelling on the ship on two separate cruises since July 17 have been found to carry the virus, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) and the Tromsoe municipality said.
“We expect that more infections will be found in connection to this outbreak,” said Line Vold, a senior FHI executive, adding that the passengers have been told so self-isolate.
Among the infected crew, 32 were from the Philippines while the rest were of Norwegian, French and German nationality, operator Hurtigruten said.
“We are working hard to contain this outbreak in order to limit the spread in the general population,” Tromsoe municipality chief doctor Kathrine Kristoffersen told a news conference.
2020-08-02 21:12:00
Russia has reported 5,427 new cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing its nationwide tally to 850,870, the fourth largest caseload in the world.
Russia’s coronavirus taskforce said 70 people had died over the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll in the country of around 145 million people to 14,128.
2020-08-02 20:42:00
The UN health agency has warned that the coronavirus pandemic would be lengthy and could lead to “response fatigue”.
Six months after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency, the novel coronavirus has killed more than 680,000 people and infected more than 17.5 million, according to an AFP tally.
An emergency WHO committee reviewing the pandemic “highlighted the anticipated lengthy duration of this COVID-19 outbreak, noting the importance of sustained community, national, regional, and global response efforts”.
2020-08-02 20:19:00
Almost five months after the tennis season ground to a halt following the global coronavirus outbreak, the WTA Tour will restart tomorrow (Monday) with a low-key but closely-monitored event in Palermo.
The tournament in Sicily, which comes just weeks before the US Open and Roland Garros double-header, has already lost top seed Simona Halep to lingering health concerns while an unnamed player withdrew from qualifying after testing positive for COVID-19.
Sofia Kenin and Elina Svitolina captured titles in Lyon and Monterrey respectively on March 8, the last day of competitive matches before the circuit was put on hold as the tennis calendar was shaken upside down.
2020-08-02 19:49:00
Media will be barred from the Republican National Convention in North Carolina later this month, US news outlets have reported, when President Donald Trump will formally receive his party’s nomination.
Soaring coronavirus cases have already forced Trump to cancel the part of the convention planned for Florida’s Jacksonville in July.
“We are planning for all of the Charlotte activities to be closed press: Friday, August 21-Monday, 24th given the health restrictions and limitations in place in the state,” the convention spokesperson had told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
“We are working within the parameters set before us by state and local guidelines regarding the number of people who can attend events.”
Trump has been forced to scrap his signature rallies because of the coronavirus epidemic, which is killing more than 1,000 Americans a day.
2020-08-02 19:29:00
Gut-wrenching images of seven stillborn infants wrapped separately in green sheets and laid out in a row on a hospital counter in Zimbabwe have drawn public outrage amid a raging coronavirus pandemic.
Seven of the eight births in one night last week at just one state hospital in Zimbabwe’s capital were still, and medics warned that the incident was just a tip of the iceberg of the dire state of health care in the southern African country.
The public health care system is teetering on the brink of breakdown with shortages of basic drugs and equipment and an overburdened and underpaid staff. The coronavirus pandemic has added to the crises.
Nurses countrywide have been on a go-slow for months demanding improved remuneration and coronavirus protective gear. They have since been joined by senior and junior doctors.
On Saturday night, the country recorded 490 cases, its highest number of new COVID-19 infections in any 24-hour cycle. The total number of diagnosed cases now stands at 3,659 with the number of deaths having more than doubled to 69 in ten days.
“I call on our medical staff to act in the national interest and exhibit sense of responsibility,” said Mnangagwa in a eulogy on Friday. “Your grievances, which we acknowledge and continue to address, cannot be at the expense of the loss of lives.
“When the pandemic spreads and the death toll rises there are no winners, none at all. We all die,” he said.
2020-08-02 18:59:00
Greek Super League club PAOK Thessaloniki have announced their first coronavirus case among players.
The side was set to train for the upcoming season when the COVID-19 outbreak was verified with no other player or staff testing positive at this time.
The unidentified player has mild symptoms of the virus and is quarantined at his residence while the rest of the team trained as scheduled Sunday evening. All PAOK players and staff will be tested again on tomorrow (Monday) for the virus.
Meanwhile, the Greek water polo federation announced on Sunday that four more players of the men’s national team have tested positive to COVID-19 and have been placed in quarantine.
2020-08-02 18:36:00
Health authorities in South Africa who had been expecting a surge in cases after the gradual loosening of a strict lockdown have reported that infections have exceeded the half-million mark.
The nation is by far the hardest-hit in Africa, accounting for more than half of diagnosed infections, although President Cyril Ramaphosa said the fatality rate is lower than the global average.
“WHO continues to assess the global risk level of COVID-19 to be very high,” the agency said, adding that the effects of the pandemic “will be felt for decades to come”.
2020-08-02 18:09:00
Some 45 police officers have been injured in a wave of weekend demonstrations in Berlin including protests against coronavirus restrictions, police have said as protesters gathered again in smaller numbers.
The unruly protests, in which many demonstrators failed to wear masks or respect social distancing rules, have sparked a chorus of condemnation including calls for tougher penalties against those who violate restrictions aimed at curbing transmission of the deadly virus.
A total of 133 people were arrested during Saturday’s protests, which included a huge “day of freedom” demo against coronavirus restrictions, police said in a statement.
The arrests were for offences including resisting police officers, breach of the peace and the use of unconstitutional symbols. Three officers required hospital treatment, police said.
Around 20,000 people took part in the “day of freedom” demonstration, the majority not covering their nose and mouth or respecting Germany’s 1.5-metre social distancing requirement.
The crowd, a mixture of hard left and right, and conspiracy theorists, shouted “We are the second wave” as they converged on the Brandenburg Gate, demanding “resistance” and dubbing the pandemic “the biggest conspiracy theory”.
Police began dispersing the crowds in the late afternoon, but hundreds of protesters remained at the Brandenburg Gate late into the evening. Police have launched legal proceedings against organisers for not respecting virus hygiene rules.
2020-08-02 17:55:00
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said he discussed the region’s coronavirus outbreaks and other issues with his Emirati counterpart in rare talks held via a videoconference call.
“Just had a very substantive, frank and friendly video conversation with UAE FM” Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Zarif wrote on Twitter. “We agreed to continue dialogue on theme of hope — especially as region faces tough challenges, and tougher choices ahead,” he added.
According to UAE state news agency WAM, the top diplomats exchanged greetings for Eid ul Adha and discussed efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic in the region.
Bin Zayed emphasised “enhancing international cooperation, solidarity and synergy between all countries” to tackle the virus, WAM said.
2020-08-02 17:20:00
Australia's second-largest city Melbourne imposed an overnight curfew on Sunday to halt the spread of coronavirus cases.
For the next six weeks, a ban is in force on weddings, and schools and universities are going back online in the coming days.
"Anything short of this will see it drag on for months and months and months," said Victoria leader Daniel Andrews.
Despite a lockdown, Melbourne has continued to report hundreds of new cases daily even as other states in Australia have reported zero or a small number of cases.
2020-08-02 16:40:00
Indian movie star Amitabh Bachchan, who was hospitalised on July 11 after being diagnosed with COVID-19, was discharged after his latest coronavirus test came back negative, his son Abhishek Bachchan has tweeted.
"He will now be at home and rest. Thank you all for all your prayers and wishes for him," he wrote.
2020-08-02 15:57:00
The Philippines' health department has vowed to update its game plan against COVID-19 within a week and seeks to beef up the healthcare workforce in the capital Manila, where medical frontliners are calling for reviving strict lockdowns.
The Southeast Asian country on Saturday reported 4,963 additional coronavirus infections, the largest single-day jump on record, bringing its total confirmed cases to 98,232, while its death toll had climbed to 2,039.
It has the second-highest number of coronavirus infections and COVID-19 deaths in the region, behind Indonesia.
In the largest call yet from medical experts to contain the virus, 80 groups representing 80,000 doctors and a million nurses, on Saturday said the Philippines was losing the fight against the disease and warned of a collapse of the healthcare system from soaring infections without tighter controls.
In a statement issued following an unscheduled meeting late on Saturday of the government’s coronavirus task force to address the concerns of doctors and nurses, the Department of Health said it would come up with an updated COVID-19 strategy within seven days.
It appealed to healthcare workers in the provinces and those returning from abroad to help beef up the frontline workforce in the capital, and sought help from universities and medical groups in hiring more doctors, nurses and other medical staff.
2020-08-02 16:26:00
India’s interior minister Amit Shah was hospitalised on Sunday after testing positive for coronavirus.
Shah, a close aide to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and one of the country’s most powerful politicians, heads a key ministry that has been at the forefront of managing India’s coronavirus outbreak.
“I request all of you who came in contact with me in the last few days to isolate yourselves and get tested,” Shah said in a tweet.
2020-08-02 15:33:00
Vietnamese authorities say they are finding it hard to track the origin of a fresh coronavirus outbreak that began in the central city of Danang and has infected around 200 people in recent weeks.
“In Danang, there are many sources of virus, and there are still many infections out there in the community,” a government statement said of the city, a popular tourist hotspot with a population of 1.1 million.
The country reported 34 infections on Sunday, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases to 620. The death toll rose by two to five, the Health Ministry said in a statement.
Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said the strain of the virus detected in the new outbreak is a more contagious one.
He said with the new strain, each infected person may infect about 5-6 people compared to 1.8-2.2 people in the previous period.
Authorities have taken a series of “unprecedented measures” to fight the outbreak in Danang, including the mobilisation of several hundred military school students to help with contact tracing and collecting test samples, the government said in its statement.
2020-08-02 15:08:00
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 685,780 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT.
At least 17,896,220 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 10,326,000 are now considered recovered.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
On Saturday, 5,557 new deaths and 263,110 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Brazil with 1,088 new deaths, followed by the United States with 1,051, and India with 853.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 154,449 deaths from 4,620,502 cases. At least 1,461,885 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 93,563 deaths from 2,707,877 cases, Mexico with 47,472 deaths from 434,193 cases, the United Kingdom with 46,193 deaths from 303,952 cases, and India with 37,364 deaths from 1,750,723 cases.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 85 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by the United Kingdom with 68, Andorra with 67, Spain 61, Peru 59, and Italy 58.
China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 84,385 cases (48 new since Saturday), including 4,634 deaths and 79,003 recoveries.
Europe overall has 210,487 deaths from 3,191,892 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 200,212 deaths from 4,919,054 infections, and the United States and Canada 163,424 deaths from 4,737,084 cases.
Asia has recorded 63,844 deaths from 2,917,571 cases, the Middle East 27,643 deaths from 1,165,720 cases, Africa 19,930 deaths from 945,248 cases, and Oceania 240 deaths from 19,656 cases.
As a result of corrections by national authorities or late publication of data, the figures updated over the past 24 hours may not correspond exactly to the previous day's tallies.
2020-08-02 14:43:00
Indian cricket president Sourav Ganguly on Sunday said the women’s T20 Challenge was "very much on" after the IPL confirmed the virus-delayed men’s tournament would get underway in September.
Last year, a women’s T20 Challenge involving three teams was played alongside the cash-rich, globally popular Indian Premier League.
"I can confirm to you that the women’s IPL is very much on and we do have a plan in place for the national team also," Ganguly told the Press Trust of India news agency.
He added that "we have a plan in place and we will have a camp (before the tournament) for women, I can tell you that".
The Board of Control for Cricket in India president did not reveal any potential dates, but another official told PTI it was "likely to be held between November 1-10".
2020-08-02 14:18:00
More than 200,000 people have died from coronavirus in Latin America and the Caribbean, with Brazil and Mexico accounting for nearly three-quarters of those deaths, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources at 0830 GMT on Sunday.
The number of fatalities stood at 200,212 in Latin America and the Caribbean, out of a total 4,919,054 reported cases. The death total doubled in just over a single month.
Latin America is the second hardest hit region in the world after Europe, which has recorded 210,425 deaths and 3,189,322 infections.
The United States and Canada are third.
After Brazil and Mexico, the worst-affected countries in Latin America are Peru, Colombia and Chile.
2020-08-02 13:42:34
The Philippines on Sunday reported 5,032 additional coronavirus infections, its largest single-day increase on record, taking the country's confirmed cases to 103,185.
In a bulletin, the Department of Health also said the Southeast Asian country's coronavirus death toll had jumped by 20 to 2,059.
President Rodrigo Duterte was scheduled to meet key cabinet members on Sunday to discuss a call by medical frontliners' groups to put the capital Manila, which accounts for the bulk of infections, back under a stricter lockdown, his spokesman said.
2020-08-02 13:40:44
Sindh government spokesman Murtaza Wahab on Sunday said the province carried out more than 50% of total coronavirus tests conducted in the country in the last 24 hours.
2020-08-02 12:43:13
NEW YORK: Pakistan has "dramatically reversed course" in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a prominent American newspaper reported Sunday, adding that the South Asian nation recorded a "sharp decline" in coronavirus cases and deaths — both of which are down over 80% from their peaks.
"Major hospitals report beds are freeing up in previously overflowing coronavirus wards, even in Pakistan’s biggest and hardest-hit city, Karachi," the Wall Street Journal said in a report from Islamabad. "The tally of patients on ventilators has halved over the past month," it adds.
"This is all happening as Pakistan’s neighbours to the east and west — India and Iran — are still reporting that infection rates are climbing steadily," the Journal said.
2020-08-02 12:42:39
Pakistan recorded the lowest single-day death toll Sunday since April with six patients succumbing to the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, taking the number of fatalities to 5,976, according to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC).
2020-08-02 11:39:48
Pakistan, where coronavirus was spreading out of control some two months ago, has “dramatically reversed course, recording a sharp decline in coronavirus cases and deaths, which are both down more than 80% from their peaks,” a prominent US newspaper reported Sunday.
2020-08-02 11:13:07
President Donald Trump on Saturday said the US has more COVID-19 cases because "we have tested far more than any other country".
2020-08-02 11:05:14
A state of disaster was declared in Australia's Victoria on Sunday, with the local government implementing a night curfew as part of its harshest movement restrictions to date to contain the coronavirus.
State Premier Daniel Andrews said that the new restrictions, to be in place for six weeks until mid-September, will allow only one person per household to go shopping once a day. Melbournians will not be able to go further than 5 km (3 miles) from home.
2020-08-02 11:04:47
In a University College London study published earlier this month, 10 out of 43 patients had "temporary brain dysfunction" and delirium, while 12 had brain inflammation, eight had strokes and eight had nerve damage.
2020-08-02 09:57:30
The death toll in Latin America from the novel coronavirus passed 200,000 on Saturday night, a Reuters tally showed, after Peru reported another 191 deaths from the pandemic.
2020-08-02 08:34:04
The United States counted 61,262 new coronavirus cases in the 24 hours leading up to 8:30 pm Saturday (0030 GMT Sunday), according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
It was the fifth consecutive day with more than 60,000 infections recorded, according to the Baltimore-based university. There were also 1,051 deaths in the 24-hour period.
The US has now tallied more than 4.6 million cases and 154,319 deaths, making it the hardest-hit country in the world.
The new numbers came as Florida braced for the arrival of Tropical Storm Isaias, which is expected to strengthen back into a hurricane as it approached the southeastern part of the virus-ravaged state.
Among US states, only California, with almost double Florida´s population of about 21 million people, has registered more coronavirus cases.
2020-08-02 08:26:17
Kuwait has banned until further notice commercial flights to 31 countries it regards as high risk due to the spread of the coronavirus, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said on Saturday.
The countries include India, Pakistan, Egypt, the Philippines, Lebanon and Sri Lanka, which all have large numbers of expatriates in Kuwait. The list also includes China, Iran, Brazil, Mexico, Italy and Iraq.
The ban was announced the same day that Kuwait began a partial resumption of commercial flights. The authorities have said Kuwait International Airport would run at about 30% capacity from Saturday, gradually increasing in coming months.
The health ministry also advised against all non-essential travel at the present time, government spokesman Tariq al-Muzaram said on Twitter.
Kuwait, which has recorded nearly 67,000 coronavirus cases and more than 400 deaths, began a five-phase plan at the start of June to gradually lift COVID-19 restrictions. A partial curfew remains in place.
2020-08-01 22:15:00
Thousands of Germans gathered today (Saturday) in Berlin to protest against face masks and vaccines, celebrating a "day of freedom" from months of the virus' curbs.
Police put turnout at around 17,000 -- well below the 500,000 organisers had announced as they urged a "day of freedom" against the coronavirus restrictions.
Despite Germany´s comparatively low toll, authorities are concerned at a rise in infections over recent weeks and politicians took to social media to criticise the rally as irresponsible.
"We are the second wave," shouted the crowd, a mixture of hard left and right and conspiracy theorists as they converged on the Brandenburg Gate, demanding "resistance" and dubbing the pandemic "the biggest conspiracy theory".
Few protesters wore a mask or respected the 1.5-metre (five-foot) social distancing requirement, an AFP journalist reported, despite police repeatedly calling on them via megaphone to do so.
2020-08-01 20:45:25
Sindh reported 270 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Saturday over the past 24 hours, according to Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah.
The recovery rate of the infection rate climbed to 91%, revealed the Sindh chief minister.
The total number of persons who contracted the virus in Sindh have jumped to 121,309
2020-08-01 20:30:42
The lowest number of COVID-19 cases in Islamabad were reported today, according to the city's District Health Office.
Only 19 cases were reported in the capital city over the past 24 hours, as per the office. "Our teams are on-ground to examine 19 cases in Islamabad today," it stated.
2020-08-01 19:59:14
As many as 104 new cases of the novel coronavirus were reported by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in the past 24 hours, stated the provincial health department Saturday.
"104 new cases confirmed taking the total to 34,160. Only 1 death was reported, from Chitral Lower, taking the total to 1,200. 349 new patients recovered taking the total tally of recovered patients to 28,978. Active cases at 3,982," read the Health Department KP's tweet.
2020-08-01 19:19:46
Here are the latest developments in the coronavirus crisis:
´Explosive spread´ in Okinawa
Japan´s Okinawa region declares a state of emergency and governor Denny Tamaki asks people to stay home for two weeks as the popular tourist destination sees an "explosive spread" of cases, reporting 71 new infections, bringing its total to 395.
The majority of the cases have been detected among US forces based in Okinawa.
Hong Kong emergency hospital
The financial hub opens a temporary field hospital in its AsiaWorld-Expo exhibition centre with 500 beds to house stable virus patients.
Once a poster child for tackling the virus, Hong Kong has seen a new outbreak, recording 125 fresh cases in 24 hours -- the 11th day in a row it has registered above 100 infections, and the death toll has risen from seven to 31 since July.
More than 680,000 deaths
The pandemic has killed at least 680,014 people worldwide since it surfaced in China late last year, with more than 17.6 million people infected, according to an AFP tally at 1100 GMT on Saturday based on official sources.
The United States has the most deaths with 153,314, followed by Brazil with 92,475, Mexico 46,688, Britain with 46,119, and India with 36,511 fatalities.
2020-08-01 18:14:33
US top infectious diseases expert Dr Fauci said Saturday that the country will most likely not make use of COVID-19 vaccines being developed by China and Russia.
He demonstrated concern whether the vaccines would be tested before they are administered to patients.
2020-08-01 17:56:47
MOSCOW: Russia said on Saturday it would allow flights to resume to Geneva starting from Aug. 15, a first air link to be reopened between Russia and a continental European since all scheduled air traffic was suspended in March due to the coronavirus.
Russia, which operated repatriation flights during the coronavirus lockdown, allowed other scheduled international flights to resume on Saturday, starting with Britain, Turkey and Tanzania.
Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, who heads a government coronavirus response centre, said flights between Moscow and Geneva would initially be weekly.
International flights were grounded on March 30 after the lockdown was imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected more than 845,000 people in Russia so far. The death toll has exceeded 14,000.
Russia announced a partial reopening of its borders in June to allow people to travel abroad if they needed to work, study, seek medical treatment or look after relatives.
2020-08-01 17:38:50
Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Saturday lauded the doctors and healthcare workers contributions as frontline soldiers against COVID 19 pandemic.
The COAS passed the remark while visiting the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology & National Institute of Heart Diseases to perform the earth breaking of NEPCARD facility.
2020-08-01 17:13:45
MANILA: The Philippines on Saturday reported 4,963 additional coronavirus infections, the largest single-day jump on record.
In a bulletin, the health ministry said total infections have reached 98,232, while deaths increased by 17 to 2,039. In the region, the Philippines is second only to Indonesia in coronavirus deaths and cases.
2020-08-01 16:55:58
DUBAI: Kuwait has banned commercial flights to several countries it said it regards as high risk due to the spread of the coronavirus, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said on Saturday.
The countries include India, Pakistan, Egypt, the Philippines, Lebanon and Sri Lanka — all countries with large populations in Kuwait. The list also includes China, Iran, Brazil, Mexico, Italy and Iraq.
2020-08-01 16:35:18
HANOI: Vietnam’s health ministry on Saturday reported 12 new local coronavirus cases linked to the recent outbreak in the central city of Danang, taking total infections in the country to 558, with three deaths.
Vietnam has detected new coronavirus cases in other cities, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, since its first locally transmitted infections in more than three months were reported in Danang.
The ministry said in a separate statement on Saturday that up to 800,000 visitors to Danang have left for other parts of the country since July 1, adding that more than 41,000 people have visited three hospitals in the city since.
The new patients, aged between two and 78, are linked to hospitals in the coastal city, a tourist hot spot, the ministry said in a statement.
Dr. Kidong Park, World Health Organisation representative in Vietnam, told Reuters in an emailed statement that Vietnam had been preparing for the possibility of wider community transmission, after the country reported its first case in January.
“The government has always been determined to ensure that its people are protected from COVID-19 by keeping the country’s relatively low number of cases and controlling the transmission within the community,” Park said.
2020-08-01 16:00:00
This Eid-ul-Adha, the Pakistani leadership has urged the public to exercise caution while celebrating the occasion, owing to fear of a resurgence of coronavirus cases in the country.
As people got ready to celebrate, many politicians took to Twitter and warned the nation to adhere to the SOPs while celebrating the auspicious day. The warning comes as the country continues to report fewer cases of COVID-19.
Here's a look at the messages by some political leaders of the country.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-01 15:41:37
US deaths from the novel coronavirus rose by at least 1,453 on Friday, the biggest one-day increase since May 27, to reach a total of 153,882, according to a Reuters tally.
US cases rose by at least 66,986 to a total of 4.58 million with some local governments yet to report.
The rise in deaths was the biggest one-day increase since fatalities rose by 1,484 on May 27.
For July, U.S. cases rose by 1.87 million, or 69%, and deaths rose by 25,770, or 20%. In June cases rose by 835,000 and deaths by 22,322.
2020-08-01 15:26:49
US top infectious diseases expert has raised doubts over the safety of COVID-19 vaccines being developed by Beijing and Moscow as the world scrambles to find a solution to a pandemic the WHO warned will be felt for decades.
Six months after the World Health Organisation declared a global emergency, the novel coronavirus has killed at least 679,000 people and infected at least 17.9 million, according to an AFP tally.
As countries across Western Europe announced new lockdowns and reported historic economic slumps, the UN health body said the pandemic was a "once-in-a-century" crisis and its fallout would be felt for decades.
Several Chinese companies are at the forefront of the race to develop an immunity to the disease and Russia has set a target date of September to roll out its own vaccine.
But US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said it was unlikely his country would use any vaccine developed in either country, where regulatory systems are far more opaque than they are in the West.
"I do hope that the Chinese and the Russians are actually testing the vaccine before they are administering the vaccine to anyone," he told a US Congressional hearing on Friday.
Read complete story here.
2020-08-01 15:12:16
Russia reported 95 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, pushing its national tally to 14,058.
Officials also reported 5,462 new cases of the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours, pushing the country’s tally to 845,443.
2020-08-01 14:59:16
The Philippines on Saturday reported 4,963 additional coronavirus infections, the largest single-day jump on record.
In a bulletin, the health ministry said total infections have reached 98,232, while deaths increased by 17 to 2,039. In the region, the Philippines is second only to Indonesia in coronavirus deaths and cases.
2020-08-01 14:26:53
Poland reported its highest number of new coronavirus cases for a third day in a row on Saturday with 658, the Health Ministry said.
More than 200 cases were reported in the Silesia mining region in southern Poland, which has been grappling with an outbreak among miners.
The ministry also reported five new deaths.
Poland has reported a total of 46,346 coronavirus cases and 1,721 deaths.
The prime minister this week did not rule out tightening some restrictions if the situation worsens.
Health Minister Lukasz Szumowski said on Saturday that curbs may be imposed on weddings, which have become a source of many infections in recent weeks.
“We are thinking whether to launch, in the regions with the highest number of infections, restrictions saying that fewer people could attend weddings or whether to register weddings, so that they could be better controlled,” Szumowski told private radio RMF24.
2020-08-01 14:39:23
Indonesia reported 1,560 new coronavirus infections, bringing the total in the Southeast Asian country to 109,936, data from the country’s COVID-19 task force showed.
It also reported 62 COVID-19 related deaths, taking the death toll to 5,193.
2020-08-01 14:12:34
PTI MPA Musarrat Cheema wished all the nationals Eid-ul-Adha, urging them to exercise caution while celebrating the event.
Cheema, in a Twitter message, asked the nationals to not forget the needy and deserving during the celebrations. She asked people to ensure they follow the SOPs so that the COVID-19 does not spread and overburden the healthcare system of the country.
Punjab Law Minister Raja Basharat also cautioned the public on the occasion.
2020-08-01 14:00:29
Information Minister Senator Shibli Faraz urged masses to follow coronavirus safety measures on the occasion of Eid-ul-Adha as Pakistan battles the pandemic.
"Eid Mubarak Pakistan. Enjoy Eid but please remember to follow SOP’s for your well being & country’s prosperity," he said.
2020-08-01 13:14:14
Russia is preparing to start a mass vaccination campaign against the novel coronavirus in October, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Saturday, RIA news agency reported.
The minister, who did not give details about the vaccine to be used, said doctors and teachers would be the first to be vaccinated.
A source told Reuters this week that Russia’s first potential COVID-19 vaccine, developed by a state research facility, would secure local regulatory approval in August and be administered to health workers soon after that.
2020-08-01 13:30:09
South Korean authorities arrested the founder of a secretive Christian sect at the centre of the country’s largest outbreak of COVID-19 infections on Saturday for allegedly hiding crucial information from contact-tracers and other offences.
Lee Man-hee is the powerful head of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus which is linked to more than 5,200 coronavirus infections, or 36% of South Korea’s total cases.
Prosecutors allege the 89-year-old conspired with other sect leaders to withhold information from authorities during the peak of the outbreak among his more than 200,000 followers.
Lee, who has described the novel coronavirus as the “devil’s deed” to stop the sect’s growth, allegedly hid details on members and their meeting places as authorities tried to trace infection routes in February, Yonhap news agency reported.
2020-08-01 13:01:51
Members of Pakistan's male and female cricket teams have delivered an important message on Eid-ul-Adha, urging the nation to also sacrifice their traditional minglings and wear masks in order to curb the threat of COVID-19.
In a video released by the Pakistan Cricket Board, names such as Sarfaraz Ahmed, Babar Azam, Bismah Maroof, Naseem Shah and more teamed up to give their Eid greetings but also warn the people of Pakistan to stay cautious.
The male version of the national team is currently in England where they are to play a Test series against their hosts starting August 5.
2020-08-01 12:48:17
Two major drug companies will supply the US government with 100 million doses of an experimental coronavirus vaccine, the Trump administration said on Friday, as the nation’s top health agency predicted that fatalities would rise in the coming weeks.
The agreement calls for the US government to pay French drug maker Sanofi and British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline up to $2.1 billion to supply it with enough vaccines for 50 million people, with the option to buy another 500 million doses.
The purchase falls under the Trump administration’s so-called Operation Warp Speed, intended to rush a COVID-19 vaccine to the market by the end of 2020.
“Today’s investment supports our latest vaccine candidate, an adjuvanted product being developed by Sanofi and GSK, all the way through clinical trials and manufacturing, with the potential to bring hundreds of millions of safe and effective doses to the American people,” Alex Azar, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, said in announcing the deal.
2020-08-01 12:32:17
Japan’s stately traditional kabuki theatre resumed performances on Saturday after a five-month break due to the novel coronavirus, with musicians in masks, actors farther apart on stage and only half the usual number of seats.
The re-opening of Tokyo’s famed Kabukiza Theatre, which called off performances from March due to the spread of the coronavirus, came even as new cases have spiked to record highs around the country.
“We’re re-opening based on guidelines from infectious disease experts, paying attention to audience safety from the time they enter until the time they leave,” Kabukiza manager Yoshitaka Hashimoto said at a Friday preview for journalists.
Onstage, the number of musicians is limited and all wear draped black cloth masks from nose to chest.
Performers stand farther back on stage and keep a greater than normal distance from each other. Actors and staff are completely different for each act, to shorten contact.
Though the traditional black-dressed stage assistants who approach the performers most closely wore both masks and face shields during a rehearsal, the company that runs the theatre said they wore only masks from Saturday’s performance because the shields apparently made their job harder to do.
Audience members face temperature checks at the entrance and must wear masks. Seats are roped off so fewer than half are usable, and the auditorium will be sterilized between each act.
Though eating boxed lunches between acts has long been a cherished kabuki custom, it’s currently prohibited.
2020-08-01 12:19:32
A section of the Alps turned amber on Friday night in a massive pyrotechnic display as Switzerland marked its national day with an event suited to COVID-19 and social distancing rules.
The mountain chains of Veisivi and Dent de Perroc, which tower nearly 4,000 metres (13,000 feet)in the southern canton of Wallis, saw more than 100 kg (220 lbs) of magnesium powder ignited in the event.
Although Swiss National Day is on Aug. 1, many people celebrate the night before. The date marks the foundation of Switzerland in 1291.
“It is like 100 million candles being lit on the mountains and gives them a lovely warm glow,” said organiser Jacques Morard, who runs Jimagine, an events company in Montreux.
“Lots of people around Switzerland normally have fireworks to celebrate our national day, but they weren’t able to this year because of distancing regulations.”
2020-08-01 12:07:57
More than a million Philippine doctors and nurses, saying the country was losing the fight against COVID-19, urged President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday to reimpose strict lockdown in and around Manila.
In the largest call yet from medical experts to contain the virus, 80 groups representing 80,000 doctors and a million nurses, warned of a collapse of the healthcare system from soaring infections of the new coronavirus without tighter controls in the capital and nearby provinces.
“Our health workers are burnt out with a seemingly endless number of patients trooping to our hospitals for emergency care and admission,” the group, led by the Philippine College of Physicians, said in a letter to the president.
“We are waging a losing battle against COVID-19,” it added.
“The palace understands the delicate balancing act between public health and the economic health of the nation,” Duterte spokesman Harry Roque said in a statement.
Healthcare workers, including microbiologists, infectious disease and public health experts, paediatricians and nurses, called for a two-week lockdown in the capital and provinces south of it until mid-August.
2020-08-01 11:54:19
2020-08-01 11:44:41
The number of new coronavirus cases confirmed in Tokyo was around 472 on Saturday, a new record, NHK public television quoted Tokyo officials as saying.
It was the second day in a row that the number of cases in the capital rose by more than 400.
Though Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has said the city could declare its own state of emergency, the central government says there is still no need to do so nationally despite a record spike in several cities around the nation.
2020-08-01 11:25:18
With countries like the UK putting the breaks on returning to normality due to fresh spike in cornavirus cases, devastating economic data poured in Friday as nations counted the cost of efforts to contain the pandemic.
Six months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global emergency, the novel coronavirus has infected more than 17 million people and killed nearly 674,000, according to an AFP tally.
As global daily cases approach the 300,000 mark, the impact is being felt in every sphere of life, with elections postponed in Hong Kong — the latest blow to its democracy activists — and the annual Muslim hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia performed with radically reduced numbers.
In a sign of the trade-offs being forced on governments, Britain imposed new lockdowns in several northern counties Friday, just as Western Europe announced historic economic slumps that would have been nightmare scenarios at the start of the year.
France's economy contracted by 13.8% in the April-June quarter, mirroring similar devastation in Spain (18.5%), Portugal (14.1%) and Italy (12.4%).
Europe as a whole saw gross domestic product (GDP) fall by 12.1% in the eurozone and by 11.9% across the Union bloc.
2020-08-01 11:11:48
Japan has signed a deal to secure 120 million doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine, German pharmaceutical group BioNTech, which is developing the drug with US pharma giant Pfizer, said.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, with BioNTech saying the terms were based on the timing of the delivery and volume of doses.
But an agreement announced recently between the labs and the United States put the price of 100 million doses of the potential vaccine at almost $2 billion.
First deliveries to Japan are planned for the first half of 2021, added the Mainz-based company.
Laboratories around the world are racing to find a vaccine to curb COVID-19, which has claimed more than 667,000 lives and upended the livelihoods of millions.
2020-08-01 11:01:55
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 279,146 on Saturday after 841 new infections were recorded in the country in the last 24 hours.
According to the National Command and Control Centre, there are 2,084 cases in AJK, 11,743 in Balochistan, 2,134 in GB 15,033 in Islamabad, 34,056 in KP, 93,057 in Punjab and 121,039 in Sindh.
The country also recorded 32 fatalities during the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 5,970 deaths.
2020-08-01 10:45:41
Gambling revenue in Macau plunged 94.5% in July year-on-year, with casinos reeling from a lack of visitors in the world’s biggest casino hub despite a loosening of quarantine restrictions which have seen only a modest rise in gamblers.
July’s figure of 1.3 billion patacas ($162.89 million) was in line with analysts’ expectations of a drop of around 95 percent.
Casinos are staring at heavy losses for the second quarter, with not much hope for a near-term recovery as a resurgence in coronavirus cases muddies the outlook for when China will reinstate travel visas.
Even after easing curbs for some travellers, Macau saw only around 2,000 visitors per day in July, a tiny fraction of the 108,000 daily average in 2019, as the individual travel scheme through which visitors from the mainland gain entry remains suspended.
2020-08-01 10:31:12
Egypt reported 321 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, the health ministry said, the lowest figure since May 3.
In total, 94,078 COVID-19 cases have been reported in Egypt, of which 39,638 have recovered and 4,188 have died, including 31 on Friday, the ministry said in a statement late on Friday.
Egypt reopened resorts to foreign tourists on July 1 after tourism came to a halt in March under measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak.
But Egypt has not yet made it to a “safe list” of countries for resumption of non-essential travel to the European Union.
2020-08-01 10:20:24
2020-08-01 10:10:46
Punjab reported 184 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 93,057 with two more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,142, authorities said.
2020-08-01 09:59:35
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 955 to 209,653, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.
The reported death toll rose by 7 to 9148, the tally showed.
2020-08-01 09:41:18
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi urged the masses to follow safety measures during Eid-ul-Adha to flatten Pakistan's COVID-19 curve.
"Eid Mubarak to all celebrating across the world. On this occasion, we must exercise our collective responsibility to ensure a safe & healthy Eid, continuing to flatten Pakistan’s #COVID19 curve," he said.
"Wishing you all a peaceful Eid," he added.
2020-08-01 09:29:59
2020-08-01 09:20:26
People have started violating coronavirus safety measures prescribed by the government in a bid to stem the pandemic, Geo News reported.
Despite the allocation of centres by the provincial government, people have started sacrificing their animals on the streets, violating the government's SOPs.
2020-08-01 09:09:28
California and Florida, two of the most populous US states, reported record increases in COVID-19 deaths on Friday, according to a Reuters tally.
Florida reported 257 deaths and California 208 fatalities.
In numerical terms, the loss of life in each state is roughly equivalent to the number of passengers on a single-aisle airplane.
For Florida this is the fourth day in a row with a record rise in deaths and for California the second this week. Mississippi, Montana and Nevada also had a one-day record increase in deaths on Friday.
Overall in the United States, deaths have increased by over 25,000 in July to 153,000 total lives lost since the pandemic started.
2020-08-01 08:49:05
US coronavirus deaths rose by over 25,000 in July and cases doubled in 19 states during the month, according to a Reuters tally, dealing a crushing blow to hopes of quickly reopening the economy.
The United States recorded 1.87 million new cases in July, bringing total infections to 4.5 million, for an increase of 69%. Deaths in July rose 20% to nearly 154,000 total.
The biggest increases in July were in Florida, with over 310,000 new cases, followed by California and Texas with about 260,000 each. All three states saw cases double in June.
Cases also more than doubled in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to the tally.
Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York had the lowest increases, with cases rising 8% or less.
2020-08-01 08:34:50
The World Health Organization reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Friday, with the total rising by 292,527.
The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a daily report. Deaths rose by 6,812. The four countries have dominated global headlines with large outbreaks.
The previous WHO record for new cases was 284,196 on July 24. Deaths rose by 9,753 on July 24, the second largest one-day increase ever. Deaths have been averaging 5,200 a day in July, up from an average of 4,600 a day in June.
Nearly 40 countries have reported record single-day increases in coronavirus infections over the last week, around double the number that did so the previous week, according to a Reuters tally showing a pick-up in the pandemic in every region of the world.
2020-08-01 08:23:41
Australia’s second most populous state, Victoria, reported 397 cases of the new coronavirus on Saturday, down by more than a third from Friday, but authorities said they are considering further restrictions as numbers remain worrisome.
Three people died from factors related to COVID-19 in the 24 hours to early Saturday, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said. This brings the state’s deaths in the pandemic to 116 and Australia’s tally to 201.
“The numbers are too high and there is a growing case for us to do more,” Andrews told a televised briefing.
“This is a very significant number of new cases, and while there is always a temptation to try and read trends in these numbers, there is a growing concern in relation to the number of community transmission within the data.”
2020-07-31 23:53:42
The government has issued the following guidelines for the slaughtering of animals this Eid:
2020-07-31 23:38:00
The WHO has said that coronavirus pandemic effects would be felt for decades as its emergency committee assessed the situation six months after sounding its top alarm over the outbreak.
The novel coronavirus has killed nearly 675,000 people and infected at least 17.3 million since it emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.
The World Health Organization's emergency committee, comprising 18 members and 12 advisers, is meeting for the fourth time over the COVID-19 crisis.
"It's sobering to think that six months ago, when you recommended I declare a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), there were less than 100 cases and no deaths outside China," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as the meeting began.
"The pandemic is a once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come."
2020-07-01 23:07:00
The EU has announced that it has struck a deal with French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi for 300 million doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine.
The European Commission, the bloc's executive arm which negotiated the agreement, said it would allow all 27 member countries to purchase the vaccine once it was proven to be safe and effective.
The announcement comes on the same day the US government said it would provide up to $2.1 billion to Sanofi and GSK for the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, as the world continues to battle the pandemic.
As official data revealed coronavirus lockdowns had caused a devastating 12% economic contraction in the EU in the second quarter of 2020, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc was doing everything it could to help find a vaccine.
"We are in advanced discussions with several other companies," she said in a statement, adding that Europe was investing in a "diversified portfolio of promising vaccines".
"This increases our chances to obtain rapidly an effective remedy against the virus."
Sanofi hopes to seek marketing authorisation from the European Medicines Agency for a vaccine in June next year.
2020-07-31 22:47:00
Alphabet Inc’s Google says that 20 US states and territories, representing about 45% of the country’s population, are “exploring” contact tracing apps for the novel coronavirus using a tool it developed with Apple Inc.
In addition, the company said public health authorities in 16 countries and regions outside the United States had launched apps using the Apple-Google tool. They include Austria, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Gibraltar, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Northern Ireland, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Uruguay.
The technology enables app users to track encounters with other people through Bluetooth signals and anonymously notify contacts if they later become infected with the virus.
Google had previously said in May that three states — Alabama, North Dakota and South Carolina — would be launching apps using the exposure notification tool. But South Carolina lawmakers halted the release of the state’s app last month, while Alabama officials are still weighing the launch of their completed app. North Dakota’s app has yet to launch.
On Friday, Google said the first of the U.S. apps would be released in the “coming weeks.”
It added that its system with Apple now enables apps launched by different countries to talk to each other, allowing contact-logging to continue even when users cross borders.
2020-07-31 22:20:00
French health authorities have reported 1,346 new confirmed coronavirus infections, taking the total to 187,919 as new cases are above 1,300 per day for the third day in a row, the highest since late April.
In a statement, the health ministry also said that the number of people in intensive care units due to the disease fell by a further 10 to 371. On Thursday, that figure had increased by just one, which was the first daily increase after falling every day since April 9.
In the past 24 hours, 11 people died from the virus infection, taking the total to 30,265. In the past three days the number of dead per day was 16, 15 and 14.
2020-07-31 21:52:00
Hundreds of children contracted the coronavirus at a summer camp in the US state of Georgia last month, health authorities say, adding to a growing body of evidence that minors are both susceptible to infection and vectors of transmission.
The virus infected at least 260 of the 597 attendees, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said, adding that the true number was probably higher since test results were only available for 58% of the group.
The camp ignored the CDC's advice that all participants in summer camps wear cloth masks — requiring them only for staff.
It did however adhere to a state executive order requiring all participants to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken 12 days or less before their arrival.
Other precautionary measures included physical distancing, frequent disinfection of surfaces, keeping children among the same small group, also known as "cohorting," and staggering the use of communal spaces.
The camp held an orientation for 138 trainees and 120 staff members from June 17 to June 20 — the vast majority of whom were themselves aged 21 and under.
The staff remained when the camp officially opened on June 21 and were joined by 363 campers, who ranged in age from six to 19, as well as three more senior staff members.
Camp attendees "engaged in a variety of indoor and outdoor activities, including daily vigorous singing and cheering," the report said. They slept in cabins housing up to 26 people.
2020-07-31 21:24:00
The Balochistan health department has reported 11 new infections in the province, bringing the total to 11,743.
No more deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.
2020-07-31 20:53:23
President Arif Alvi has credited "the smart people of Pakistan" for the decline in the country's cases to three figures "for the first time after 3rd of May".
According to Alvi, Pakistan saw 903 new infections and less than 30 deaths, at 27, yesterday.
2020-07-31 20:24:00
Colombian industrial designer Ricardo Conde has been photographed donning a new ventilation mask he designed.
The mask is a joint effort of Conde, a medical doctor and two aeronautical engineers.
2020-07-31 19:26:00
New rules imposed this weekend by the UK government which require travellers to undergo mandatory quarantine upon their return to Britain, have ruined people's plans to travel in the summer.
The UK tourists who throng Spanish resorts each year — partying in Ibiza, sunbathing on the Costa Brava and eating full English breakfasts in the Costa del Sol — have all but vanished, reports AFP.
2020-07-31 19:45:00
MIPCOM, the world's biggest television and entertainment market, will go ahead in France in October but with much of the moving and shaking going online because of the coronavirus, its organisers say.
The huge gathering in the Riviera resort of Cannes has been scaled back from four to three days with the separate two-day MIPJunior — which showcases children's content — now running alongside the main event.
But Netflix's co-chief executive Ted Sarandos will be making the trip for one of the keynote speeches at the streamlined event, which has been rebranded MIPCOM Rendezvous Cannes.
"We understand that some people will be unable to travel to Cannes, so they can be part of the MIPCOM experience digitally," said Laurine Garaude of Reed MIDEM, who run the event.
"New health and safety guidelines meant considerable disruption and extra costs for exhibitors and their stands, so we decided there will be no exhibition stands at MIPCOM Rendezvous Cannes," she added.
Organisers said they were setting up a new digital platform for online screenings and video meetings between executives.
MIPCOM will run from October 12 to 15 alongside the international series festival, Canneseries, which was postponed because of the virus in March.
2020-07-31 19:22:00
The coronavirus crisis has pulverised Spain’s economy, triggering its worst recession since the civil war, with collapsed tourism numbers boding ill for hopes of a swift rebound.
Hit by one of Europe’s worst outbreaks and strictest lockdowns, the economy came to a virtual halt in March and remained paralysed until the end of June.
It shrank 18.5% in the second quarter, a drop so harsh it wiped out all the recovery achieved since the 2008 global financial crisis, figures from the National Statistics Institute showed on Friday.
“It’s a war economy,” said one Mallorca hotelier, Lluis Rullan, who has only reopened one of his two establishments and was limiting costs and staff to a minimum due to scant visitors.
The government had counted on tourists from northern Europe and further afield driving a third quarter recovery, but quarantines and travel advisories have dashed hopes as Spain battles with new localised outbreaks of the COVID-19 disease.
Rullan, who operates in Soller in northwest Mallorca, had planned for 60% occupancy for August but now expects barely 20% for what should be the high summer season.
After Britain required travellers to Spain to quarantine on return, Germany dealt another blow on Friday, putting three Spanish regions — including Catalonia, home to Barcelona — on its list of high-risk areas.
“Not only has the Spanish economy been one of the worst hit in the euro zone by the pandemic, it also looks set to make a much weaker recovery than its neighbours,” said analysts at Capital Economics.
Spain normally received about 80 million visitors annually and has depended on tourism for about 12% of economic output.
2020-07-31 18:55:00
On the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, when Iraqis visit loved ones' tombs and take children to the funfair, the coronavirus pandemic has put both cemeteries and Ferris wheels off-limits.
The virus has cost almost 4,700 lives and infected over 121,000 people in Iraq, but it has also sharpened an economic crisis born of a slide in lifeline oil revenues.
"Civil servants' salaries are being paid late, taxis or day labourers no longer have work, this has an impact on everyone," said Ahmed Abdel Hussein, an official in Basra, a port city near the southern tip of Iraq.
"I'm thinking of all the children who this year will not get any presents because of the crisis," he said on the first day of the feast, being celebrated with the country under curfew.
"Eid used to be the happiest day of the year before, now it's a burden," said another official, Falah, 35, who has two children and an elderly mother to support.
2020-07-31 18:28:00
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 673,909 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT.
At least 17,352,910 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 9,992,800 are now considered recovered.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
On Thursday, 6,459 new deaths and 290,986 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were United States with 1,379 new deaths, followed by Brazil with 1,129, and India with 779.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 152,070 deaths from 4,495,224 cases. At least 1,414,155 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 91,263 deaths from 2,610,102 cases, Mexico with 46,000 deaths from 416,179 cases, United Kingdom with 45,999 deaths from 302,301 cases, and India with 35,747 deaths from 1,638,870 cases.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 85 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Britain with 68, Andorra with 67, Spain 61, Italy 58, and Peru 58.
China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 84,292 cases (127 new since Thursday), including 4,634 deaths (0 new), and 78,974 recoveries.
Europe overall has 209,780 deaths from 3,157,253 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 194,683 deaths from 4,733,320 infections, the United States and Canada 161,027 deaths from 4,610,841 cases, Asia 61,868 deaths from 2,775,743 cases, Middle East 26,997 deaths from 1,146,821 cases, Africa 19,325 deaths from 910,325 cases, and Oceania 229 deaths from 18,615 cases.
As a result of corrections by national authorities or late publication of data, the figures updated over the past 24 hours may not correspond exactly to the previous day´s tallies.
2020-07-31 17:14:00
Pharma giants Sanofi and GSK will receive up to $2.1 billion from the US government for the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, the companies have said, as the world continues to be ravaged by the coronavirus epidemic.
The United States had identified a vaccine candidate under development by Sanofi and GSK for its "Operation Warp Speed," which aims to rapidly secure millions of vaccine doses.
The firms aim to combine a Sanofi-developed antigen, which stimulates the production of germ-killing antibodies, with GSK's adjuvant technology, a substance that bolsters the immune response triggered by a vaccine.
The American money, they said in a statement, will "help fund the development activities and secure scale-up of Sanofi's and GSK's manufacturing capabilities in the United States [...] resulting in a significant increase in capacity."
"The US government will provide up to $2.1 billion, more than half of which is to support further development of the vaccine, including clinical trials, with the remainder used for manufacturing scale-up and delivery of an initial 100 million doses of the vaccine," they said.
"The US government has a further option for the supply of an additional 500 million doses longer term," they added.
2020-07-31 17:43:00
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 98 more infections in the province, taking the total to 34,056.
It also reported five more deaths, taking the death toll to 1,199 in the province.
2020-07-31 16:52:00
People who had visited Italy accounted for more than a quarter of the first reported cases of the new coronavirus outside China, according to a new study that found most initial infections were linked to just three countries.
Researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used publicly-available data to trace the early spread of COVID-19 to dozens of affected countries in the 11 weeks before the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic.
They found that 27% of all the first reported cases were people with travel links to Italy, while 22% had been to China and 11% had travelled from Iran.
"Our findings suggest that travel from just a few countries with substantial SARS-CoV-2 transmission may have seeded additional outbreaks around the world before the characterisation of COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020," said the CDC's Fatimah Dawood, who co-led the research.
The study, which was published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases this week, found that overall three quarters of the first cases in affected countries were linked to recent travel.
Other initial cases were travellers from Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas.
Researchers examined online reports from health ministries and other government agency websites, social media feeds, and press releases for information on first cases and early outbreaks.
2020-07-31 16:34:00
Germany has added three northern Spanish regions to its list of high-risk destinations, meaning anyone arriving from those areas will have to produce a negative coronavirus test or go into quarantine for 14 days.
Germany's foreign ministry said it had toughened up its warning against travel to the regions of Catalonia, Navarre and Aragon following a spike in COVID-19 cases there.
The move comes after Germany's Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for disease control added the three regions to its high-risk list.
"A mandatory quarantine can only be avoided through a negative COVID-19 test," the ministry said.
2020-07-31 16:05:30
Breaking Badstar Bryan Cranston has said he had recovered from mild symptoms of COVID-19 and donated his plasma in the hopes that his antibodies would help others with the disease.
“I was one of the lucky ones,” Cranston wrote. “I count my blessings and urge you to keep wearing the damn mask, keep washing your hands, and stay socially distant.”
2020-07-31 15:45:38
The Philippine health ministry on Friday confirmed 4,063 novel coronavirus infections, reporting the highest daily case increase in Southeast Asia for a second straight day.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total confirmed infections have risen to 93,354, while deaths increased by 40 to 2,023.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday maintained coronavirus restrictions in the capital and some provinces for another two weeks to try to control the spread of the virus.
2020-07-31 15:25:58
Russia reported 5,482 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Friday, pushing its national tally to 839,981, the world's fourth largest caseload.
Officials said 161 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 13,963
2020-07-31 14:55:16
Germany reported 870 more confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday, according to a tally from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.
That brought the total number to 208,698 while 9,141 deaths have been recorded.
2020-07-31 14:35:26
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike warned on Friday that the Japanese capital could declare a state of emergency if the coronavirus situation deteriorated further, after new cases jumped by a record single-day high of 463.
"If the situation worsens, Tokyo would have to think about issuing its own state of emergency," Koike said, imploring residents to follow health guidelines to avoid that happening.
2020-07-31 14:00:17
Australia’s Victoria state recorded its second-highest day of new COVID-19 infections on Friday as its premier rebuked residents for evading lockdown and flagged the prospect of more rigorous steps to contain the disease.
Victoria, whose capital Melbourne is under a reimposed six-week stay-home order, reported 627 new infections, down from a record 723 the previous day. The state recorded eight more deaths linked to the novel coronavirus, including two men in their fifties, also from a record 14 the day before.
2020-07-31 13:31:25
Vietnam recorded its first death from COVID-19 on Friday after winning plaudits worldwide for one of the most successful pandemic responses to containing the novel coronavirus outbreak.
The country of 96 million had gone 100 days without infection before an unexpected cluster of new cases surfaced in the central and popular resort city of Danang a week ago.
Vietnam’s health ministry on Friday reported 45 new infections in the city, marking the Southeast Asian country’s biggest single-day jump in cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
2020-07-31 13:00:49
Fiji has recorded its first coronavirus death, a 66-year-old man who tested positive after returning from India, where he had undergone surgery for a long-standing heart condition.
"Sadly, despite the best efforts of our health-care professionals, this gentleman passed away yesterday in the isolation ward at Lautoka hospital due to complications from COVID-19," Health Minister Ifereimi Waqainabete told reporters.
He said the man was one of nine active cases who had been held in quarantine since they were repatriated from India on July 1.
Before then, Fiji had enjoyed a spell of four weeks virus-free, after the 18 cases it had previously recorded all recovered.
2020-07-31 12:15:41
India reported another record surge in daily COVID-19 cases on Friday, taking the total to 1.64 million, as the government further eases virus curbs in a bid to resuscitate the economy, while also trying to increase testing.
Infections jumped by 55,078 in the past 24 hours, while the death toll rose by 779 to 35,747, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.
2020-07-31 11:05:01
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 278,305 on Friday after 906 new infections were reported in the country over the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard there are 2,073 cases in AJK, 11,732 in Balochistan, 2,105 in GB, 15,014 in Islamabad, 33,958 in KP, 92,873 in Punjab and 120,550 in Sindh.
The country also reported 27 fatalities taking the death toll to 5,951.
2020-07-31 10:15:24
Indonesian Muslims, wearing face masks and getting temperature checks as a precaution against the novel coronavirus, performed morning prayers on Friday to celebrate the festival of Eid-ul-Adha in mosques with reduced capacity as well as on the streets.
Indonesia’s religious ministry also asked mosques to shorten the gatherings this year, while many mosques cancelled the traditional ceremony when livestock is slaughtered and meat distributed to the community.
Instead the donated sheep, goats and cows will be killed in abattoirs to mark the ‘Feast of the Sacrifice’.
2020-07-31 09:35:00
The United States counted 1,379 new deaths from the coronavirus in the 24 hours, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.
It was the third day in a row with more than 1,200 deaths, according to the Baltimore-based school.
The US has tallied a total of 151,826 deaths from COVID-19, making it the hardest-hit country in the world.
2020-07-31 00:24:16
Balochistan has recorded 24 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 11,732, according to the health department.
2020-07-30 23:59:01
Inovio Pharmaceuticals said its coronavirus vaccine candidate was effective in protecting rhesus macaques from the virus 13 weeks after the last vaccination, sending its shares up 20% before the bell.
The results, submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and also published on the non-peer reviewed preprint site, bioRxiv, demonstrate that INO-4800 reduced viral load in both the lower lungs and nasal passages in monkeys who received two doses of the vaccine four weeks apart.
The company in June said the experimental coronavirus vaccine showed promise and was found to be safe in an early-stage human trial.
2020-07-30 23:47:37
Canada is tightening its rules for foreign travelers who must transit through the country to get to Alaska, the government said on Thursday, after several US citizens were fined by police for making detours to sightsee.
The Canada-US border has been closed to non-essential travel since mid-March, but returning Canadians, essential workers, truck drivers, foreigners reunifying with family, and people driving to Alaska have been allowed in.
Canada has significantly slowed the spread of the coronavirus compared to the United States, where on Wednesday the country’s three biggest states all set one-day records for fatalities from COVID-19. Deaths in all of Canada have been in the single digits several times in the past two weeks.
Everyone entering Canada except essential workers currently must quarantine for 14 days, but not all have complied. Some people — including US citizens who have stopped at the picturesque Banff National Park while en route to Alaska — have been fined by police.
2020-07-30 23:36:28
French health authorities reported 1,377 additional confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, at 186,573, bringing the moving 7-day average above the 1,000 threshold for the first time since the first half of May, when France eased its lockdown.
In a statement, authorities said 381 people were in ICU units due to the disease, the first time that figure has increased on a daily basis in 16 weeks.
There were 16 new deaths from the disease, taking the total to 30,254, a figure higher than the seven-day moving average of 10.
2020-07-30 23:28:36
Sales at Maybelline maker L’Oreal fell more sharply than expected in the second quarter, though the French beauty group managed to contain any major profit erosion as the COVID-19 pandemic forced stores to close.
The company, which also makes Lancome creams and make-up for brands such as Armani, sounded a more optimistic note for the second half of the year, saying it was planning product launches and was determined to “find again the path to growth”.
In China, its biggest market, and where lockdown measures were eased several months ago, comparable revenue was up 30% in the April to June period, it added.
Coronavirus lockdowns hit retailers and luxury manufacturers hard as the outbreak spread from Asia to Europe and the United States. L’Oreal sells many of its products in airports, which were also paralysed as tourist numbers dried up.
The group was hurt by the closure of hairdressing salons too, and sales of professional products tumbled more than those of other divisions.
2020-07-30 23:20:43
The Ontario government is set to reopen all its publicly funded schools in September, which will result in elementary-age students back in classrooms full time, while class sizes for some secondary schools will be limited to about 15 students attending alternate days, the province announced.
Ontario closed its schools in mid-March to limit the spread of the new coronavirus. The question of how to safely reopen schools has been closely watched in Ontario, which is home to some two million students in the country’s most populous province.
Students in Grade 4 and up must wear masks at all times.
School boards must prepare to offer online learning for parents who choose not to send their children back to school, the province said.
2020-07-30 23:11:46
Sindh has recorded 498 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 120,896, according to the province's chief minister.
20 people succumbed to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,209, it added.
2020-07-30 23:04:45
Zimbabwe’s agriculture minister Perrance Shiri died from the COVID-19 infection, becoming the first senior government official to succumb to the pandemic, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said.
Shiri, a retired general who helped plot a coup that ousted Robert Mugabe in 2017, died on Wednesday.
The late liberation war veteran was declared a national hero and will be buried on Friday during a closed ceremony.
“Now that it is confirmed that Minister Shiri died of COVID-19, we will follow World Health Organisation regulations on how the funeral should proceed,” Mnangagwa said during a funeral wake at Shiri’s home in Harare.
2020-07-30 22:53:44
Chinese government-linked hackers targeted biotech company Moderna Inc, a leading US-based coronavirus vaccine research developer, earlier this year in a bid to steal valuable data, according to a US security official tracking Chinese hacking activity.
Moderna, which is based in Massachusetts and announced its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in January, confirmed to Reuters that the company had been in contact with the FBI and was made aware of the suspected “information reconnaissance activities” by the hacking group mentioned in last week’s indictment.
Reconnaissance activities can include a wide range of actions, including probing public websites for vulnerabilities to scouting out important accounts after entering a network, cybersecurity experts say.
“Moderna remains highly vigilant to potential cybersecurity threats, maintaining an internal team, external support services and good working relationships with outside authorities to continuously assess threats and protect our valuable information,” spokesman Ray Jordan said, declining to provide further detail.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-30 22:41:21
A heatwave hit Europe just as Madrid made wearing masks compulsory to prevent a surge in coronavirus infections, and Julian Martinez said his beard wasn’t making it any easier to keep his face covered in the heat. But the 60-year-old Spanish civil servant wasn’t taking his mask off.
“I’ve been wearing a mask for so many days in the heat that it doesn’t bother me that much,” he said.
Temperatures soared across Europe on Thursday, heading above 40 Celsius (104 F) in places, adding extreme heat to the health warnings of a continent already taking fresh measures to rein in a potential second wave of coronavirus infections.
The heat undoubtedly made it more difficult to wear face masks in the Spanish capital. Spain’s meteorological agency said the hot air was coming from Africa and would last until Saturday.
In Rome, where the temperature hit 38C on Thursday and was set to go to 39C on Friday, authorities told the elderly and children not to go out in the hottest part of the day.
The Swiss weather agency advised people to drink plenty of water, eat cool dishes and avoid physical exertion.
On Cyprus, the heatwave hit earlier this week, with temperatures already up in the 40s since Monday.
“It’s really hot. We’re not used to it. We’ve generally got a temperate climate in Brittany,” said Mael Delaunay, 19, enjoying a cool drink with friends on a terrace by the sea in the town of Quiberon in the Brittany region of Northern France.
2020-07-30 22:31:11
Young people letting down their guard to enjoy the summer holidays are partly driving a spike in new COVID-19 cases in some countries, the World Health Organization said.
A fresh jump in cases in parts of Europe, the United States and Asia has fuelled fears of a second wave of new coronavirus infections and prompted some countries to impose new restrictions on travel.
“We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again: young people are not invincible,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news briefing in Geneva.
Evidence suggests that recent spikes of cases in some countries are being “driven in part by younger people letting down their guard during the northern hemisphere summer”, he said.
2020-07-30 22:15:23
A joint study conducted by the Aga Khan University (AKU) and The Chinese University of Hong Kong has found that that one in six Pakistani adults or 17% believe that they are safe from the coronavirus even if they don’t take any preventive measures.
The research which surveyed 1,406 adults in Pakistan over the first two weeks of May compared the results of its study with a similar study in Hong Kong. Hong Kong, which has recorded just 2,770 cases and 22 deaths in six months, is widely regarded as a COVID-19 containment success story.
In contrast, data collected in May showed Pakistan’s rate of infections per 100,000 people at 137 against Hong Kong’s 33, while Pakistan’s fatality rate per 100,000 was also three times higher at 21 despite imposing wide-ranging lockdowns across the country.
According to researchers from AKU’s Department of Community Health Sciences, Pakistanis were less concerned about complications from coronavirus and believed that they were more likely to survive the virus than those surveyed in Hong Kong. Only 41% of Pakistanis rated coronavirus symptoms as being very severe as compared to 97% of respondents in Hong Kong.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-30 21:59:45
Authorities ordered the lockdown of 36 suburbs in Australia’s second biggest city Melbourne in an attempt to stop a spike in coronavius cases, a dramatic departure from the relaxation of restrictions elsewhere in the country.
From midnight on Wednesday the first suburb-specific stay-home order will be imposed on some 320,000 people, the Victorian state Premier Daniel Andrews told a news conference on Tuesday.
Residents in the suburbs must stay home unless travelling for work, school, healthcare, exercise or food for a period of four weeks.
Cafes and restaurants would have to revert to takeaway only, just weeks after they returned to seated diners amid a wider reopening of the national economy.
The Victorian state government requested all flights be diverted to other states to prevent the risk of imported cases.
“If we don’t take these steps now we will finish up in a situation (where rather) than locking down 10 postcodes, we will be locking down every postcode,” said Andrews, referring to postal codes which cover the 36 suburbs.
“People are desperate for this to be over, no one more than me, but it isn’t and pretending won’t get us to the other side.”
2020-07-30 21:45:15
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s wife and one of his ministers have tested positive for COVID-19, according to an official statement on Thursday, as the spread of the novel coronavirus showed no signs of slowing in the country with the world’s second-worst outbreak after the United States.
Just days after her husband said he had overcome the virus with a negative test following weeks in quarantine, Bolsonaro’s wife Michelle has tested positive, the presidential office said in a statement.
“First lady Michelle Bolsonaro tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. She is in good health and will follow all established protocols,” it said, referring to the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
Earlier on Thursday, Brazil’s science and technology minister, Marcos Pontes, said his test had come back positive, becoming the fifth minister in Bolsonaro’s government to be diagnosed with the disease.
Their infections are a palpable sign of the scale of the outbreak in Brazil, which set fresh daily records on Wednesday for new COVID-19 cases and related fatalities.
2020-07-30 20:51:17
he World Health Organization’s chief scientist said on Thursday that any country that supports the COVAX financing initiative has a better chance of getting a successful COVID-19 vaccine.
Soumya Swaminathan told a news briefing in Geneva that the more countries that joined COVAX, a scheme designed to guarantee fast and equitable access globally to COVID-19 vaccines, the greater its chances of success.
More than 75 countries have expressed an interest in joining COVAX, which is co-led by the GAVI vaccines alliance, the WHO and the CEPI Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. Its aim is to deliver 2 billion doses of effective, approved COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2021.
2020-07-30 21:10:44
AstraZeneca has been granted protection from future product liability claims related to its COVID-19 vaccine hopeful by most of the countries with which it has struck supply agreements, a senior executive told Reuters.
“This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in ... four years the vaccine is showing side effects,” Ruud Dobber, a member of Astra’s senior executive team, told Reuters.
“In the contracts we have in place, we are asking for indemnification. For most countries it is acceptable to take that risk on their shoulders because it is in their national interest,” he said, adding that Astra and regulators were making safety and tolerability a top priority.
2020-07-30 21:31:55
British authorities are worried about a second wave of coronavirus infections in Europe and will not hesitate to bring back more quarantine measures, possibly within the next few days, as they did with Spain.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said COVID-19 was under some measure of control in Britain, but a resurgence in some European countries showed the pandemic was not over.
“It is absolutely vital as a country that we continue to keep our focus and our discipline, and that we don’t delude ourselves that somehow we are out of the woods or that that is all over, because it isn’t all over,” he said.
2020-07-30 20:40:53
One of Britain’s largest care home providers has said the government is unable to meet its promise to regularly test staff and residents in care homes after problems were discovered with coronavirus testing kits.
Earlier this month, the government announced that staff will be tested for the virus each week while residents will receive a test every 28 days. Health minister, Matt Hancock, said at the time this would keep residents and staff safe. However, Andrew Knight, chief executive of residential services at CareUK, said the government told him that a problem with a test from an unnamed supplier means that it may take five weeks before staff and residents can access regular testing.
“I am sure many of you will find this situation as disappointing as I do,” Knight said in a letter to relatives.
The testing is seen as critical to combating the spread of coronavirus in care homes. The health department recommended the regular testing after a study showed thousands people working in care homes who had the disease, but did not have symptoms, were spreading the virus.
2020-07-30 20:21:50
Diamond mining giant De Beers is likely to have to cut jobs, its chief executive said on Thursday, as it outlined plans for an overhaul of its business after the coronavirus hit jewellery demand.
De Beers, a unit of Anglo American, earlier reported plunging earnings in the first half of 2020 as a drop in rough diamond sales and prices hurt margins.
Underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were just $2 million in the period, down from $518 million in the first half of last year.
De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver told Reuters official consultations with workers will begin on August 11. He said the business overhaul “is likely to lead to some job losses, but I can’t tell you at this point what that number will be”.
Cleaver said the process would last for three months and involve a review of mining, rough sales, retail and the corporate centre, but exclude joint venture businesses in Botswana and Namibia where the miner employs 20,000 people.
2020-07-30 20:11:47
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has recorded 113 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 33,958, according to the health department.
Two more people succumbed to the disease, pushing the death toll to 1,194, it added.
2020-07-30 19:58:19
Herman Cain, a 2012 Republican presidential candidate, has died after contracting COVID-19, according to a statement on his website and Facebook page.
Cain was diagnosed with the disease in late June after attending a Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally for President Donald Trump, an event where many attendees crowded close together without wearing face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
“We’re heartbroken, and the world is poorer: Herman Cain has gone to be with the Lord,” the statement on his website said.
2020-07-30 19:22:23
Libya’s internationally recognised government in Tripoli will impose a full lockdown in areas of the country it controls, it said, after a sharp rise in coronavirus cases.
Libya’s health system is in tatters after nearly a decade of chaos and war that has fragmented the state, destroyed infrastructure and left many people living in crowded conditions after fleeing their homes.
The main outbreaks are focused in Tripoli, the port of Misrata and in the southern desert town of Sebha, according to the NCDC, though cases have also been confirmed in most other major population centres.
The lockdown will start on Friday and last for at least five days, forbidding all movement outside except to buy necessities, and replacing a partial 9pm to 6am curfew.
Authorities in Benghazi, in eastern Libya, have also imposed restrictions on movement but, with fewer cases confirmed there, have not yet ordered a full lockdown.
2020-07-30 19:12:10
President Dr Arif Alvi has urged the nation to observe safety measures and follow SOPs during Eid-ul-Adha to stem spread of coronavirus, Radio Pakistan reported .
He asked the citizens to avoid going to crowds and cattle markets as more caution is required enable to defeat the virus completely.
2020-07-30 18:59:51
Iceland reinstated restrictions on public gatherings after finding at least two new infection clusters in the country, the government said in a statement.
“The measures we are introducing now are intended to have the effect of sparing us the need for more drastic restrictions later,” said Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir.
The measures, which limit public gatherings to 100 people and reinstate a 2-metre social distancing rule, come just a week after the government announced further easing of restrictions, such as allowing gatherings of up to 1,000.
The new measures will take effect on July 31, the government said.
2020-07-30 18:42:11
The US economy contracted at its steepest pace since the Great Depression in the second quarter as the COVID-19 pandemic shattered consumer and business spending, and a nascent recovery is under threat from a resurgence in new cases of coronavirus.
Gross domestic product collapsed at a 32.9% annualized rate last quarter, the deepest decline in output since the government started keeping records in 1947, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. The drop in GDP was more than triple the previous all-time decline of 10% in the second quarter of 1958. The economy contracted at a 5.0% pace in the first quarter.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast GDP plunging at a 34.1% rate in the April-June quarter.
The bulk of the historic tumble in GDP occurred in April when activity almost ground to an abrupt halt after restaurants, bars and factories among others were shuttered in mid-March to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
2020-07-30 18:28:48
Latin American should turn its infrastructure investment focus toward digital technologies and away from physical infrastructure to stimulate its economic recovery after the coronavirus pandemic, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) said.
Increasing digitalization of public services like water, electricity and internet could lead to gross domestic product growth of 5.7 percent over 10 years in the region, equivalent to $325 billion in additional income during that time, the IADB report said.
Latin America, where economic growth has already been slowing in recent years, is expected to see an economic contraction of 8% to 10% this year as a result of the coronavirus and associated quarantine measures, IADB President Luis Alberto Moreno told Reuters this week.
Drones and satellite technology, among others, could contribute to improvements in the planning and engineering stages of construction projects and land acquisitions, the report said.
“For too long we’ve focused on bricks, pipes and other hard assets,” said Agustin Aguerre, head of the IADB’s infrastructure department. “Digital technology allows us to better understand how people use our roads, consume electricity and water.”
2020-07-30 18:05:33
This is the first year Fateh Khan, who runs an ancestral animal husbandry business with his brother Sardar Khan, had to purchase animals from a third party to sell for Eid ul Adha.
Khan, 50, hails from Sahiwal. Every year, he eagerly looks forward to the 'Bari Eid' (Greater Eid) — also called 'Bakra Eid' (a mispronunciation of Baqr Eid) in Pakistan.
Every year for the past 20 years, he has taken his family and a herd of sacrificial animals (reared all year with the help of his five children) all the way from Sahiwal, Punjab to the many livestock markets in Karachi that pop up ahead of Eid ul Adha.
“After coronavirus cases appeared in my own family, we had to sell almost all of our animals to make ends meet. This is the first time I have travelled all the way from my native city to Karachi all alone to sell animals that I had to purchase from a friend,” he said, grieving about the impact of the virus on his business during the past few months.
“Usually, I sell my animals at the Sohrab Goth mandi [livestock market] and PIB Colony [a neighbourhood in Karachi’s District East], but due to government restrictions on animal markets inside city premises, we only managed to sell animals at the main market this time,” Khan said.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-30 17:53:16
The German economy contracted at its steepest rate on record in the second quarter as consumer spending, company investment and exports all collapsed during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, wiping out nearly 10 years of growth.
The Federal Statistics Office said gross domestic output in Europe’s largest economy shrank by 10.1% quarter-on-quarter from April to June after a revised 2.0% contraction in the first three months of the year.
The plunge was the steepest since the office began collecting quarterly growth data in 1970 and was worse than the 9% contraction predicted by economists in a Reuters poll. Adjusted for inflation, seasonal and calendar effects, it erased almost a decade of growth, the statistics office said.
“Now it’s official, it’s the recession of a century,” said DekaBank economist Andreas Scheuerle.
2020-07-30 17:22:27
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said COVID-19 was now under some measure of control in the UK, but a resurgence of the coronavirus in some European countries made clear that the pandemic was not over.
“This country has had a massive success now in reducing the numbers of those tragic deaths, and we’ve got it at the moment under some measure of control,” he said.
“But I have to tell you that we are looking at a resurgence of the virus in some other European countries and you can see what’s been happening in the United States, and so it is absolutely vital as a country that we continue to keep our focus and our discipline, and that we don’t delude ourselves that somehow we are out of the woods or that that is all over because it isn’t all over.”
2020-07-30 17:05:55
Britain’s AstraZeneca (AZN.L) said on Thursday that good data was coming in so far on its vaccine for COVID-19, already in large-scale human trials and widely seen as the front-runner in the race for a shot against the novel coronavirus.
The drugmaker, Britain’s most valuable listed company, also announced second quarter results that beat its sales and profit estimates, thanks to strong sales from a diverse product line-up.
“The vaccine development is progressing well. We have had good data so far. We need to show the efficacy in the clinical programme, but so far, so good,” Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said on a media call.
AstraZeneca has already reached deals with countries to make more than 2 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, developed in partnership with the University of Oxford, and says it could be approved by the end of this year.
2020-07-30 16:51:41
CanSino Biologics , one of many companies worldwide trying to develop a coronavirus vaccine, needs to conduct late-stage trials overseas if it is to stay in the race, experts say, but it has yet to announce another country willing to help.
Mid-stage trials showed that its vaccine did not work as well in people with immunity to a particular strain of the common cold virus and experts say it needs to broaden its pool of testing in Phase III trials to see if that outcome, described by the company as “the biggest obstacle”, is replicated abroad.
“There is a large fraction of people both in the Western world and particularly in the developing world that have the baseline Ad5 neutralizing antibody,” said Dr Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
“And how will that impact the vaccine? It will reduce it... They (CanSino) will need to show that it’s immunogenic in the areas of the world with the highest baseline Ad5 titers (levels) if they want to make it a global solution,” he said.
2020-07-30 17:29:36
Islamabad recorded 24 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Sector I-8, the district health officer said.
2020-07-30 16:38:58
Johnson & Johnson kicked off US human safety trials for its COVID-19 vaccine after releasing details of a study in monkeys that showed its best-performing vaccine candidate offered strong protection in a single dose.
When exposed to the virus, six out of six animals who got the vaccine candidate were completely protected from lung disease and five out of six were protected from infection as measured by the presence of virus in nasal swabs, according to the study published in the journal Nature.
“This gives us confidence that we can test a single-shot vaccine in this epidemic and learn whether it has a protective effect in humans,” Dr Paul Stoffels, J&J’s chief scientific officer, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
The drugmaker said it had started early-stage human trials in the United States and Belgium and would test its vaccine candidate in over 1,000 healthy adults aged 18 to 55 years, as well as adults aged 65 years and older.
The US government is backing J&J’s vaccine effort with $456 million in funding as part of a spending spree aimed at speeding production of a vaccine to end the pandemic, which has infected millions and killed more than 660,000 people.
2020-07-30 16:20:15
Japan is bracing for a surge in the number of coronavirus infections after new daily cases exceeded 1,000 for a second straight day, a week after the start of a national travel campaign to revive the tourism industry.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government launched a national travel campaign on July 22 that aimed to revive a battered tourism industry despite a resurgence in coronavirus cases.
A member of the World Health Organization’s influenza panel said the campaign was ill-timed, and it has created a dilemma for those who fear the spread of the virus but are in desperate need of business.
“It’s become a habit for me to check the number plates of cars to see whether they come from outside the prefecture. I’m not going to lie, I get a bit shocked when I see that someone’s visiting from far away,” said Keiko Tsukahara, the co-manager of an inn in the hot springs town of Nikko, north of Tokyo.
“But we have had zero income for the past few months and we need customers.”
2020-07-30 16:00:23
Anyone who tests positive or shows symptoms for COVID-19 in Britain will have to self-isolate for 10 days instead of the previous seven, based on a low but tangible possibility that people could remain infectious for longer.
The government said the change in the rule would come into force immediately.
2020-07-30 15:40:32
US donated another tranche of 100 ventilators to Pakistan on Thursday to help combat the coronavirus pandemic.
US Ambassador to Pakistan Paul W Johns handed over the ventilators to National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Lt Gen Muhammad Afzal.
“The United States is a proud partner with the Government of Pakistan to help stem the tide of this deadly pandemic and these ventilators will help with that fight,” Ambassador Jones said.
2020-07-30 15:25:27
Poland reported 615 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, setting a new daily record, as authorities mulled reintroducing mandatory quarantines for travellers from some countries.
The health ministry's Twitter site also reported 15 deaths over the past day, raising the number of fatalities to 1,709 in a country of 38 million people.
Coronavirus infections tallied at 45,031, including 33,643 recoveries on Thursday, with communities in the southern coal mining belt particularly hard hit.
Poland was among the first EU members to introduce sweeping measures to contain the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus, including shutting its borders to foreign travellers, closing schools and urging citizens to stay home.
2020-07-30 15:00:25
India reported more than 50,000 daily coronavirus cases for the first time on Thursday, taking the total number of infections to almost 1.6 million.
The country reported 52,123 new cases in the previous 24 hours, according to federal health data
Some 775 people died of COVID-related conditions over the same period, raising total deaths now just under 35,000.
India has the third highest number of infections globally, behind the United States and Brazil. It has nearly twenty times the number of cases as China, which has a similar-sized population and where the virus was first recorded late last year.
2020-07-30 14:45:25
Vietnam's capital will conduct mass testing for 21,000 people who recently returned from the central city of Danang, Hanoi's ruling body said on Thursday, as authorities race to contain the first domestic outbreak in the country since April.
The mass testing will take place from Thursday to Saturday, using rapid test kits, the city's administration said in a statement.
Hanoi on Thursday registered its first case of COVID-19 linked to the Danang outbreak and has ordered bars to shut and has banned large gatherings from midnight on Wednesday.
Read more here.
2020-07-30 14:20:43
Russia reported 5,509 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Thursday, pushing its national tally to 834,499, the world's fourth largest caseload.
Officials said 129 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 13,802
2020-07-30 14:00:40
The number of coronavirus infections recorded worldwide has soared through 17 million, according to an AFP tally from official sources.
At least 17,022,877 cases have been registered as the pandemic accelerates with a million new infections detected in the last four days.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 4,426,982 cases including 150,713 deaths.
2020-07-30 13:30:33
Britain's Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said he was worried about a second wave of coronavirus infections in Europe and that the government would not hesitate to act to bring back quarantine measures if necessary to keep Britain safe.
"I am worried about a second wave. 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.
2020-07-30 13:00:18
Ukraine reported a record daily high of 1,197 new coronavirus cases on July 30, the country's council of security and defense said on Thursday.
The number of new daily infections has increased sharply in the past two months following the gradual lifting of restrictions that began in late-May.
The total number of cases rose to 68,794, including 1,673 deaths and 38,154 recovered as of July 30.
2020-07-30 12:30:28
Oil prices slipped on Thursday, weighed down by concerns that surging coronavirus infections around the globe could jeopardize a recovery in fuel demand just as major oil producers are set to raise output.
Prices were anchored on Thursday by demand concerns with a rise in COVID-19 infections raising the prospect for lockdowns to be reimposed.
The potential hit to the demand rebound comes just as OPEC and its allies, together known as OPEC+, are set to step up output in August, adding about 1.5 million barrels per day to global supply.
2020-07-30 11:50:27
Japan is bracing for a surge in the number of coronavirus infection after fresh cases exceeded the 1,000 mark for the first time, a week after the start of a national travel campaign to revive the tourism industry.
Tokyo confirmed 367 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, national broadcaster NHK said, topping the previous record of 366 cases on July 23.
Tokyo plans to urge shorter operating hours for restaurants and karaoke parlours next month to tackle a recent spike in coronavirus infections, the Nikkei business daily said.
Besides promoting domestic trips, Japan is slowly reopening to foreigners.
The government plans to allow foreign students and workers to return to Japan starting August 5, the foreign ministry said.
2020-07-30 11:25:44
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 277,402 on Thursday after 1,114 new infections were recorded in the country in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 2,065 cases in AJK, 11,708 in Balochistan, 2,090 in GB 14,987 in Islamabad, 33,845 in KP, 92,655 in Punjab and 120,052 in Sindh.
The country also recorded 32 fatalities during the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 5,924 deaths.
2020-07-30 10:50:43
China reported 105 new coronavirus cases on Thursday up from 101 cases a day earlier, the health commission said on Thursday.
Of the new infections, 96 were in the far western region of Xinjiang, five were in the northeastern province of Liaoning, one was in Beijing, and three were imported cases, according to a statement by the National Health Commission.
2020-07-30 10:35:46
Australia on Thursday reported a record number of new coronavirus infections and its deadliest day of the pandemic so far following a spike in cases at elderly care homes.
Thirteen deaths and 723 positive tests were reported in the southeastern state of Victoria alone, well beyond the previous nationwide record of 549 cases set on Monday.
Premier Daniel Andrews indicated the leap, was in part, linked to a surge in cases in aged care homes.
2020-07-30 10:05:50
Vietnam's health ministry on Thursday reported nine new locally transmitted coronavirus cases linked to the recent outbreak in the central city of Danang, taking total infections to 42 since the virus resurfaced at the weekend.
Of the nine new cases, eight people are from Danang and one is from the capital Hanoi, the health ministry said a statement. The new virus wave has spread to six Vietnamese cities and provinces in six days.
Vietnam has registered a total of 459 cases, with no deaths, the statement said. Over 81,000 people in Vietnam are currently undergoing quarantine, up from 12,000 people on Monday.
2020-07-30 09:25:00
The United States marked a grim milestone on Wednesday when its coronavirus deaths topped 150,000— far exceeding the toll in any other pandemic-hit nation.
On Wednesday alone the country recorded 1,267 new deaths in the past 24 hours and notched more than 68,000 new daily cases, with southern and western states particularly hard-hit— especially Florida, where more than 6,300 people have died.
Brazil is second to the US in terms of cases and fatalities, and also reported a sobering figure as it surpassed 90,000 deaths.
2020-07-29 23:58:13
French health authorities reported 1,392 additional confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, at 185,196, the highest daily increase since more than a month.
There were also 15 new deaths linked to the disease, taking the total to 30,238, a figure higher the daily average increase of nine seen over the last week.
In a statement, authorities said the number of people in hospital for COVID-19 went down again, pursuing a two-month downward trend.
2020-07-29 23:47:44
Islamabad recorded 25 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Sector G-9, the district health officer said.
2020-07-29 23:40:09
US deaths from the novel coronavirus surpassed 150,000, a number higher than in any other country and nearly a quarter of the world’s total, according to a Reuters tally.
Of the 20 countries with the biggest outbreaks, the United States ranks sixth in deaths per capita, at 4.5 fatalities per 10,000 people.
Only the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Peru and Chile have a higher per capita rate, the tally shows, with US deaths making up nearly 23% of the global total of just over 661,000.
The increase of 10,000 COVID-19 deaths in 11 days is the fastest in the United States since early June.
The pace of infections has accelerated since the US death toll passed 100,000 on May 27. The epicenter has also moved, to the South and West from the area around New York, which still has by far the highest toll for one state at more than 32,000.
Arkansas, California, Florida, Montana, Oregon and Texas each reported record spikes in fatalities on Tuesday.
2020-07-29 23:28:13
The Dutch government on Wednesday said it will not advise the public to wear masks to slow the spread of coronavirus, asserting that scientific evidence of their effectiveness is mixed.
The decision was announced by Minister for Medical Care Tamara van Ark after a review by the country’s National Institute for Health (RIVM). The government will instead seek more adherence to social distancing rules after a surge in coronavirus cases in the country this week, Van Ark said at a press conference in The Hague.
2020-07-29 23:10:53
The Balochistan health department has notified 54 new infections in the province, taking the total to 11,708.
No new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.
2020-07-29 23:00:13
Authorities in the Spanish capital Madrid backtracked on Wednesday over a heavily criticised plan to give an “immunity card” to people testing positive for coronavirus antibodies so they can enjoy higher-risk areas like gyms, bars and museums.
But in the northwestern region of Galicia, authorities announced fines of up to 601,000 euros ($706,000) for visitors from at-risk areas who do not sign up to an online registry.
Politicians, rights groups and epidemiologists condemned the project, announced by regional leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso, as potentially discriminatory and medically unsound.
But after a weekly cabinet meeting of the Madrid authority, her deputy, Ignacio Aguado, told a news conference that the controversial cards would not in fact be issued.
2020-07-29 22:52:20
The World Bank Group’s private-sector arm said on Wednesday it is launching a $4 billion financing platform aimed at boosting the production and supply of critical health care products in developing countries to help fight the coronavirus pandemic.
The International Finance Corp’s initiative is largely aimed at private-sector projects to manufacture products such as personal protective equipment, ventilators and other medical equipment, coronavirus test kits, therapeutic drugs and vaccines.
IFC is contributing $2 billion in internal resources with plans for another $2 billion to come from private-sector partners.
The group also intends to work with other international finance institutions to leverage additional funds, IFC Chief Operating Officer Stephanie von Friedenburg told Reuters in an interview.
She added that IFC also is working with the GAVI global vaccine alliance to identify and finance projects that can boost COVID-19 vaccine production in developing countries.
2020-07-29 22:34:31
The US Open scheduled to be played at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York from Sept. 17-20 will be held without spectators due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the US Golf Association (USGA) said on Wednesday.
The US Open is the second major that will not have spectators after organisers confirmed last month that next week’s PGA Championship in San Francisco, California would go ahead without fans.
Both majors were scheduled to be held in May and June before the pandemic forced the tournaments to be rescheduled.
“Following months of consultation and scenario planning with local and state health officials, we have jointly decided that hosting the US Open without spectators will provide the best opportunity to conduct the championship safely for all involved,” USGA CEO Mike Davis said in a statement.
“We will miss the excitement of the fans and what their presence brings to the championship. We look forward to welcoming them again to future US Opens.”
2020-07-29 22:11:09
Bolivia’s police forces in La Paz and El Alto have collected since April more than 3,300 bodies of people who died at home or in public places, about 80% of whom are suspected of having been infected with the novel coronavirus, a police chief said.
With health systems overwhelmed, the police have taken on a frontline role collecting the dead, with the number increasing to around three per hour in the past week as infections spread in the landlocked Andean nation of about 11.5 million people.
“The health service and forensic institutes have collapsed due to a lack of personnel, because the number of corpses that are now being collected is very large,” Walter Sossa, director of the special crime force in El Alto, told Reuters.
Bolivia’s official tally of coronavirus infections stands at more than 72,000, with a death toll of 2,700, though as in many countries the actual number of fatalities is thought to be much higher.
Often with little protection, 527 police officers have been infected with the virus, Sossa said, meaning officers sometimes are carrying the bodies of colleagues. Some bodies have been collected on streets and a recent case involved confirming the death of an infant from the virus.
“We are human and we can be infected like any other person. We are also in the first line of work, and so we are more exposed than others,” said Sossa, adding that the bodies of three officers were retrieved on Tuesday.
2020-07-29 21:50:28
Spain’s furniture manufacturers say they are overwhelmed by demand after sales boomed at the end of lockdown in June, potentially erasing most of the year’s losses.
Sales of household equipment, including furniture and home appliances, jumped by 9.9% in June, rebounding from three months of losses that included a 59.2% fall in April.
The overall retail sales index, however, fell by 4.7% in June from a year earlier, data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed on Wednesday, as the coronavirus lockdown took its toll on the Spanish economy.
Lidia Roza, owner of Casa Nueva, a furniture store in Gijón in northern Spain, said business was buzzing and some customers were having to wait two months, especially for sofas.
“There are no mattresses and sofa beds in warehouses anymore, it’s mission impossible. We call the manufacturers and they tell us they are overstretched,” she said.
“There’s like a boom. Many manufacturers are telling us they are overflowing,” said Vicente Sales, head of market analysis at the Spanish Furniture Observatory (Aidimme).
2020-07-29 21:35:50
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 121 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 33,845 with six more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 1,192, the health department said.
2020-07-29 21:20:18
Sindh Minister for Auqaf and Irrigation, Suhail Anwar Siyal has said that all shrines of province, including Hazrat Qalandar-Lal-Shahbaz will be opened for public with SOP’s after Eid-ul-Azha, Radio Pakistan reported.
2020-07-29 21:01:00
Berlin’s Tegel airport began large scale coronavirus testing on Wednesday, as airports across Germany prepared for the advent of free, compulsory testing for many passengers from next week.
Two rooms were set aside for tests, but an airport spokeswoman said a larger space was being prepared, indicating that authorities are preparing for testing to remain a fixture for a long time to come.
“These rooms are of course a bit small, as you can see,” said spokeswoman Sabine Deckwerth. “That is why the large Terminal D in Tegel is being prepared to host a bigger one.”
An increase in the number of infections across Europe has dashed the hopes of airlines and tourist destinations such as Spain for a relatively quick return to mass tourism after months of lockdown.
Airports such as Frankfurt, Germany’s busiest, have been offering tests over the previous weeks, but now preparations are gearing up across the country for the testing of passengers arriving from countries deemed high risk that is due to begin next week.
2020-07-29 20:45:58
Moderna plans to price its experimental coronavirus vaccine in a way that ensures broad access, it said on Wednesday, adding that it did not intend to conduct late-stage trials of the vaccine outside the United States.
Moderna began the U.S. government-backed trial on Monday, among a handful of companies that have started final testing of their experimental vaccines on tens of thousands of healthy volunteers.
Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel declined to comment on the specific price of the vaccine on a conference call with analysts.
“We are highly aware of our obligation during the pandemic phase to be responsible in how we price the vaccine,” Bancel said.
2020-07-29 20:15:38
Louie Gohmert, a Republican congressman who steadfastly refused to wear a mask as the coronavirus pandemic took hold, tested positive for COVID-19, Politico reported.
The US representative from Texas, where coronavirus cases have surged since the state reopened, tested positive in a prescreening at the White House, the news outlet said, citing multiple sources. Gohmert was supposed to fly to his home state with fellow Republican President Donald Trump, it said.
2020-07-29 20:00:46
Science teacher Arthur Cabral rides his bike from the city of Recife to deliver pdf printed versions of textbooks for students without internet access, hence unable to attend online classes.
2020-07-29 20:38:59
2020-07-29 19:47:40
Sweden will scrap recommendations against travel to four European countries from Thursday, including neighbours Norway and Denmark, amid signs that coronavirus infections are falling.
Sweden decided to forego a hard lockdown and kept most schools and businesses open throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, a divisive strategy that has set it apart from most of Europe.
The government said it would stop advising against non-necessary travel to Norway, Denmark, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
It added that current travel restrictions for other countries within the European Union and the United Kingdom would remain until August 12.
Daily COVID-19 death rates and the number of people treated at intensive care have been slowing gradually since April in Sweden.
2020-07-29 19:40:37
UAE Team Emirates have withdrawn three of their cyclists from the Tour of Burgos as a precautionary measure after the trio had been in contact with someone outside the race who tested positive for coronavirus.
The team were previously in the spotlight in late February when the last two stages of the UAE Tour were scrapped, with two of the outfit's stars testing positive for the virus and being quarantined.
The three riders who failed to show up at the starting line for stage two in Spain on Wednesday are Sebastian Molano, Cristian Munoz and Camilo Ardila.
"The three Colombian athletes on Saturday had been in recent contact with a person who turned out to be positive for COVID-19 yesterday (Tuesday)," UAE Team Emirates said on their website.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-29 19:29:24
Russia’s first potential COVID-19 vaccine will win local regulatory approval in the first half of August and be administered to frontline health workers soon afterwards, a development source close to the matter told Reuters.
A state research facility in Moscow - the Gamaleya Institute - completed early human trials of the adenovirus-based vaccine this month and expects to begin large-scale trials in August.
The vaccine will win regulatory approval from authorities in Russia while that large-scale trial continues, the source said, highlighting Moscow’s determination to be the first country in the world to approve a vaccine.
The speed at which Russia is moving to roll out the vaccine has prompted some Western media to question whether Moscow is putting national prestige before solid science and safety.
“(Regulatory) approval will be in the first two weeks of August,” the development source said. “August 10 is the expected date, but it will definitely be before August 15. All (trial) results so far are highly positive.”
2020-07-29 19:15:20
Germany awarded three biotech companies grants to help them speed up the development of coronavirus vaccine candidates, but Research Minister Anja Karliczek said any vaccine was unlikely to be widely available before the middle of next year.
Europe’s largest economy has reported a rise in infections in recent days, with the head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases blaming negligence and saying it was unclear if a second wave was underway.
“We should not expect a miracle,” Karliczek told a news conference, calling for people to maintain social distancing and mask-wearing to avoid jeopardising what Germany had achieved in recent weeks in terms of bringing the pandemic under control.
“We must continue to assume that vaccines for the broader population will only be available from the middle of next year at the earliest.”
Government advisers had recommended making awards from a 750 million euro ($882.23 million) pot for vaccine development the government announced last month to German biotech firms BioNtech, CureVac and IDT Biologika, which are working on coronavirus vaccines, she said.
“All three of them are promising candidates but we must of course always expect setbacks during the testing phase because it’s one thing to have an effective vaccine but it’s another to have a safe vaccine that people want,” Karliczek said.
2020-07-29 18:58:28
Hong Kong’s long recession showed some signs of easing in the second quarter as coronavirus restrictions were lifted, but a quick recovery is now in doubt as a fresh wave of infections prompt the government to impose tough new health measures.
The economy contracted 9.0% in April-June from a year earlier, shrinking for the fourth quarter in a row and the second biggest drop on record, government advance estimates showed on Wednesday.
But activity picked up markedly from a slump early in the year as anti-virus measures were gradually relaxed and people returned to offices and stores. Gross domestic product (GDP) eased just 0.1% from the first quarter, compared with a revised 5.5% drop in the previous three months.
“Not only are the new measures stricter than those implemented earlier in the year – and are therefore likely to weigh more heavily on consumption – but the higher number of infections means that the measures are likely remain in place for a while,” Martin Rasmussen, China economist at Capital Economics, said in a note to clients.
“That will postpone the recovery in consumption, and put additional pressure on employment and incomes, dampening the boost from government cash handouts,” the consultancy said, which sharply downgraded its 2020 GDP growth forecast from -4.5% to -8.0%.
2020-07-29 18:47:22
Britain’s GSK fell short of quarterly expectations for profit on Wednesday, as sales of its existing vaccines fell and stockpiling of pain and lung medication tapered as countries eased coronavirus-induced lockdowns.
The company said it still expects adjusted earnings per share for the year to decline in the range of 1% to 4%, with the outcome dependent on the timing of a recovery in vaccination rates, particularly in the United States.
Rather than developing its own vaccine in the global race to combat the pandemic, GSK has instead focused on contributing its adjuvant technology to at least seven other global firms, including Sanofi SAY.PA and China’s Clover.
GSK also signed a deal with Britain for up to 60 million doses of a possible COVID-19 vaccine being developed by the company and Sanofi (SASY.PA). The company said discussions are underway with the EU and United States.
2020-07-29 18:35:07
Health experts, citizens’ rights groups and lawmakers lined up to criticise plans by Madrid authorities to give immunity passports to people who test positive for coronavirus antibodies.
Dubbed ‘COVID cards’ by regional government leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso, who wants to introduce them as a pilot project in September, they would identify holders as coronavirus-free, granting them access to high-risk infection zones including gyms, museums and bars.
“The key is letting people who are not infectious continue to live a normal life and focusing the precautions on the vulnerable,” Ayuso said on Tuesday. “We are asking for the card to be studied so we can identify who cannot infect or be infected right now.”
However, at a time when countries are struggling to strike a balance between fighting the virus and respecting civil liberties, experts have questioned the scientific validity of such a system and say it could infringe on privacy rights.
“A positive COVID-19 antibody result does not necessarily mean you have ‘functional’ antibodies that will protect you from another infection,” Liverpool University epidemiologist Raquel Medialdea tweeted.
2020-07-29 18:20:48
Air traffic in Spain has dropped since British authorities announced a quarantine on travellers from Spain last weekend, airport operator AENA said.
AENA’s Chief Executive Maurici Lucena did not say by how much traffic had been affected by the quarantine announcement and added that the impact was hard to predict, as it could be lifted within a few weeks.
Speaking to investors during a conference call, Lucena maintained the guidance of a 57%-67% decline of overall traffic in 2020, despite the effect of the Britain quarantine.
Just over a fifth of the more than 80 million foreign tourists who visit the country each year come from Britain.
2020-07-29 18:07:58
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to celebrate Eid-ul-Adha with simplicity, Special Assistant to Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Information Kamran Bangash said.
In the light of coronavirus, the chief minister has instructed the parliamentarians, ministers, and advisers to refrain from socialising on Eid, he said.
Bangash said that a spike in the virus cases was witnessed after Eid-ul-Fitr as people did not follow safety measures.
2020-07-29 17:55:06
2020-07-29 17:43:16
US deaths from the novel coronavirus were approaching 150,000, the highest level in the world, and rising by 10,000 in 11 days, according to a Reuters tally.
This is the fastest increase in fatalities since the United States went from 100,000 cases to 110,000 cases in 11 days in early June, according to the tally.
Nationally, COVID-19 deaths have risen for three weeks in a row while the number of new cases week-over-week recently fell for the first time since June.
A spike in infections in Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas this month has overwhelmed hospitals. The rise has forced states to make a U-turn on reopening economies that were restricted by lockdowns in March and April to slow the spread of the virus.
Texas leads the nation with nearly 4,000 deaths so far this month, followed by Florida with 2,690 and California, the most populous state, with 2,500. The Texas figure includes a backlog of hundreds of deaths after the state changed the way it counted COVID-19 fatalities.
2020-07-29 17:33:12
Balochistan extended market timings to 12am, a notification said.
The extension in the timings has been granted till July 31, the notification said, adding that all the markers, shopping malls, and other shops open should ensure implementation of safety measures.
Earlier, the time for shops to close was 9pm.
2020-07-29 17:21:36
The European Union’s executive said on Wednesday it had agreed to buy a limited supply of the COVID-19 medicine remdesivir from U.S. drugmaker Gilead address the short-term needs of European patients, and hoped to be able to order more later.
The anti-viral is the only drug so far authorised in the EU to treat patients with severe symptoms of COVID-19, but nearly all available supplies have already been bought by the United States.
The EU Commission has agreed to pay 63 million euros ($74 million) to buy enough doses to treat about 30,000 patients, it said in a statement.
The United States signed a deal with Gilead in June for more than 500,000 courses of treatment, which accounts for most of the company’s output through September..
The Commission said this batch would address “just immediate needs”, and that it was already working to secure new doses from October.
Gilead appears to be selling the drug to Europe for 2,100 euros per patient, or $2,467, based on Reuters’ calculations.
2020-07-29 17:07:55
Sindh reported 654 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 120,052 with 17 more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,189, the province's chief minister said.
2020-07-29 16:57:04
Vietnam, virus-free for months, was bracing for another wave of COVID-19 infections on Wednesday after state media reported new cases in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and the Central Highlands linked to a recent outbreak in the central city of Danang.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said the current wave of infections was different to the second wave Vietnam fought in March and every province and city in the Southeast Asian country was at risk, state broadcaster Vietnam Television (VTV) reported.
Thanks to a centralised quarantine programme and an aggressive contact-tracing system, Vietnam had managed to keep its coronavirus tally to just 446 cases, despite sharing a border with China.
With over 95 million people, Vietnam is the most populous country in the world to have recorded no deaths from the virus, and until now no locally transmitted infections had been reported for months.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-29 16:45:03
Britain has signed a deal for up to 60 million doses of a possible COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline, it said, its fourth such arrangement as the race to tame the pandemic heats up.
No vaccine has yet been approved for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus that has killed more than 659,000 people and unleashed economic havoc worldwide.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Sanofi and GSK confirmed in a statement that regulatory approval for their vaccine could be achieved by the first half of 2021 if clinical data was positive.
It is Sanofi and GSK’s first deal to supply their experimental COVID-19 vaccine to a country, and British ministers have stressed the importance of securing supplies of a range of candidates early.
“The fact remains that there are no guarantees,” said business minister Alok Sharma.
“It is important that we secure early access to a diverse range of promising vaccine candidates ... to increase our chances of finding one that works.”
2020-07-29 16:30:35
US biotech firm Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine prevented the replication of the infection in the noses and lungs of monkeys, revealed a study in the New English Journal of Medicine.
The fact that the vaccine prevented the virus from replicating in the nose is seen as particularly crucial in preventing it from being transmitted onward to others.
The same outcome did not occur when the University of Oxford's vaccine was tested on monkeys, though that vaccine did prevent the virus from entering the animals' lungs and making them very sick.
In the Moderna animal study, three groups of eight rhesus macaques received either a placebo or the vaccine at two different dose levels — 10 micrograms and 100 micrograms.
All vaccinated macaques produced high levels of neutralizing antibodies that attack a part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus used to invade cells.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-29 16:18:39
Spotify Technology said music streaming demand had rebounded from coronavirus-related weakness at the start of the quarter and its paid subscribers reached 138 million, ahead of Wall Street estimates.
However, the company’s quarterly revenue missed analysts’ estimates, hit mostly by a 21% fall in ad-supported revenue as the spread of the pandemic kept advertisers at bay.
Premium subscribers, which account for most of the company’s revenue, were up 27% from a year earlier. Analysts on average were expecting the company to have 136.4 million paid subscribers, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
The world’s largest music streaming service also assuaged investors that people no longer commuting to work would not have a deep lasting impact on its finances and it will hit its full-year targets.
2020-07-29 16:00:17
2020-07-29 15:40:23
Coronavirus infections in India passed 1.5 million and deaths neared 35,000 in the world's second-most populous nation on Wednesday.
The health ministry website— which no longer includes total infections as the government puts more emphasis on recoveries— on Wednesday reported almost 50,000 new infections and 768 more deaths.
India now has the third-highest number of cases in the world behind the United States and Brazil, although the official number of deaths in the South Asian nation is far lower.
Read more here.
2020-07-29 15:20:36
Hong Kong reported 118 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, including 113 that were locally transmitted, as strict new measures including a restriction of gatherings to two people and a ban on restaurant dining, took effect.
The measures, which are the toughest introduced since the outbreak are to last for at least one week.
The global financial hub reported 106 new cases on Tuesday. Since late January, about 3,000 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 24 of whom have died.
2020-07-29 15:00:21
The World Health Organisation has released guidelines for social gatherings for Eid-ul-Adha.
2020-07-29 14:15:28
Russia on Wednesday reported 5,475 new cases of the novel coronavirus, pushing its national tally to 828,990, the fourth largest in the world.
In the daily readout, officials said 169 people had died in the last 24 hours, pushing the national death toll to 13,673.
2020-07-29 13:25:12
Australia's second most populous state of Victoria said on Wednesday the total daily coronavirus cases fell below 300 for the first time in more than a week.
The state reported nine deaths from the coronavirus over the last 24 hours with seven casualties linked to aged care facilities. Victoria reported 295 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, compared with 384 a day earlier.
2020-07-29 12:50:16
As many as 10,000 Muslim pilgrims residing in Saudi Arabia began the five-day annual Hajj pilgrimage on Tuesday amid safety protocols due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This year only up to 10,000 people already residing in the kingdom will participate in the ritual, a tiny fraction of the 2.5 million pilgrims from around the world that attended last year.
Read more here.
2020-07-29 12:20:00
Sanofi and GSK said they have reached an agreement with Britain to supply it with up to 60 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, and that discussions with other governments were ongoing.
The first clinical trials are expected in September.
The vaccine will be developed by combining Sanofi’s S-protein COVID-19 antigen and GSK’s pandemic adjuvant technology.
2020-07-29 12:00:00
China reported 101 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, its highest single-day figure in three months, as gyms, bars and museums closed in infection hotspots.
Of the new cases, 98 were domestic infections, mostly in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
China— where the global outbreak first emerged— had largely brought domestic transmission under control through targeted lockdowns, travel restrictions and testing.
The last time it recorded so many new cases was April 13, when 108 infections were confirmed— mostly imported.
Read more here.
2020-07-29 11:25:49
Brazil recorded 40,816 additional confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, as well as 921 deaths from the disease, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
Brazil has registered nearly 2.5 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 88,539, according to ministry data.
2020-07-29 10:55:02
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 276,288 on Wednesday after 1,063 new cases were detected in the country in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard there are 2,055 cases in AJK, 11,654 in Balochistan, 2,042 in GB, 14,963 in Islamabad, 33,724 in KP, 92,452 in Punjab and 119,398 in Sindh.
The country also recorded 27 fatalities during the last 24 hours to take the nationwide death toll to 5,892.
2020-07-29 10:40:12
US President Donald Trump has doubled down on his support for the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine, describing it as extremely successful in treating the deadly coronavirus.
The US Food and Drug Administration last month revoked its emergency-use authorization for hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 after several studies cast doubt on its effectiveness
2020-07-29 10:05:01
Over half the people living in the slums of Mumbai have had the coronavirus, according to a city-commissioned study that raises fresh doubts about India's official case numbers.
Blood tests on 6,936 randomly selected people conducted by Mumbai's city authorities found that 57% of slum-dwellers and 16% of non-slum residents had virus antibodies.
Mumbai, where about 40% of the population lives in slums, has reported just over 110,000 infections and more than 6,000 deaths so far.
2020-07-29 09:35:05
US deaths from the coronavirus rose by nearly 1,300, the biggest one-day increase since May, according to a I tally.
California, Florida and Texas, the three most-populous states, reported one-day record spikes in deaths on Tuesday, together accounting for 584 of the 1,292 new deaths. Arkansas, Montana and Oregon also had one-day record increases in COVID-19 fatalities.
Tuesday’s surge in deaths comes on top of US deaths rising on a weekly basis for three weeks in a row. Last week, fatalities increased by over 1,000 for four days in a row.
2020-07-28 23:59:13
French health authorities reported 725 new confirmed coronavirus cases, below the daily average of 924 over the past week but unlikely to alleviate fears of a second wave.
In a statement, authorities said “viral circulation is still sustained in France”, stressing the reproduction rate was steady at 1.3.
A reproduction rate, or ‘R’, of 1.3 means that 100 people with the virus infect, on average, 130 other people. A rate of less than 1 is needed to gradually contain the disease.
France also reported 14 new deaths from the virus, taking the total to 30,223, and twice the daily average increase of seven seen over the past week.
The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 went down by 104 to 5,551, continuing a two-month downward trend.
2020-07-28 23:48:21
Some 14 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Argentina’s grains sector, affecting the operations of ports and oilseeds crushing plants, the head of the CIARA-CEC grains exporting and crushing chamber, Gustavo Idigoras, told Reuters.
“Many communities around Rosario are severely affected by the virus. The Santa Fe provincial government has set up very strict rules regarding the circulation of people and goods,” Idigoras said.
“We are reinforcing these rules in all grains terminals and processing plants. But we may expect more cases in coming days. Cases confirmed at Bunge and COFCO came from outside the plants, but they are affecting operations.”
2020-07-28 23:30:33
French luxury group Kering said second-quarter comparable sales plunged by 43.7% due to the COVID-19 pandemic, adding it could not provide a forecast for the second half of the year despite an encouraging recovery in Asia.
The sales drop at the conglomerate that owns Gucci was a touch better than analyst expectations, with those at UBS citing a consensus for a 46% fall.
2020-07-28 23:10:55
Sindh government has extended the operational timings of cattle markets, allowing them to open from 7am- 11pm, a notification from the home department said.
The cattle market would remain open 24 hours a day before the pandemic hit Pakistan, thus forcing the government to impose curb in a bid to stem the spread of the virus.
According to the notification, the province had made the decision in light of the National Command and Control Centre's directives.
Earlier, the provincial government had allowed the mandis to operate from 6am-7pm.
2020-07-28 22:56:33
President Dr Arif Alvi has urged the nation to follow safety measures while buying and sacrificing animals on the eve of Eid-ul-Adha, reported Radio Pakistan.
2020-07-28 22:40:19
Tesla received payroll related benefits from the government in the first half of the year to help reduce the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its business, the electric carmaker said in a filing.
The company, whose Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has spoken against further government aid as Congress debates another round of stimulus, said that along with cost cuts, the benefits had offset almost all of its costs due to the idling of factories in this year's lockdowns.
Tesla’s only US vehicle factory — in California, where most of its cars are produced — was shut down for some six weeks in the second quarter ended June after an initial standoff with local authorities.
Reuters could not immediately verify which government assistance the company received and in what country.
2020-07-28 22:26:29
Wearing masks in public at all times will be compulsory on the popular Portuguese island of Madeira from August 1, the local government announced, making it the first region in the country to adopt such measure against COVID-19.
The Madeira island, popular with tourists for its wine and green landscape, has managed to keep its tally of coronavirus cases low since the pandemic started. So far it has only reported 105 infections, with no new cases since Saturday.
2020-07-28 22:16:00
Twitter said it had reined in access to Donald Trump Jr’s account for 12 hours because a tweet he had posted violated the social media site’s misinformation policy on COVID-19.
The eldest son of US President Donald Trump had posted a video on Monday of doctors talking about the drug hydroxychloroquine, that was removed by Twitter.
The video was also taken down by Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc-owned YouTube after racking up millions of views, for breaking their rules on COVID-19 misinformation.
President Trump also retweeted posts late on Monday containing a link to the misleading video and accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and Democrats of suppressing the use of the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the novel coronavirus.
2020-07-28 21:59:48
Prancing in front of a camera with its blond mane blowing in the wind, "007" is one of thousands of goats being sold online as Muslims prepare for a key religious festival shaken this year by the coronavirus pandemic.
Millions of goats, sheep and cattle are slaughtered annually at Eid al-Adha — the festival of sacrifice — one of two major holy days observed by Muslims across the world, including some 600 million in South Asia.
The pandemic has, however, badly hit India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, which have shut or heavily restricted major markets, while fears about catching the virus are keeping customers away ahead of the main festival on Saturday.
"We were traumatised by the loss of two of my uncles to COVID-19 and didn't want to sacrifice an animal," Saddid Hossain told AFP in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka.
"But we have to stay within our religious tradition, so we'd rather buy from an online cow seller."
2020-07-28 21:43:43
The Balochistan health department has reported 30 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing the provincial total to 11,654.
2020-07-28 21:29:35
The head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Gao Fu disclosed that he has been injected with an experimental COVID-19 vaccine in a bid to persuade the public to follow suit once the vaccine is approved.
According to a news report by Associated Press (AP), a government-owned Chinese company had earlier administered trial shots in March, before human testing had been approved, and had to face heavy criticism from experts raising ethical concerns.
During a webinar hosted by Alibaba Health, an arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant, and Cell Press, an American publisher of scientific journals on Sunday, Gao said: “I’m going to reveal something undercover: I am injected with one of the vaccines. I hope it will work.”
Read complete story here.
2020-07-28 21:12:16
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza urged the people to strictly follow safety measures on Eid-ul-Azha for effective prevention from coronavirus, Radio Pakistan reported.
Addressing the media, he said although spread of virus in the country has declined significantly by eighty percent, however, we need to continue observing precautionary measures to reduce spread of pandemic.
2020-07-28 20:59:27
Iran's capital Tehran has been placed among 15 out of 31 provinces now on "red" alert over COVID-19 after a record death toll reported for a single day in the Middle East's hardest-hit country.
Iran reported 235 new deaths from the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, a record toll for a single day in the Middle East's hardest-hit country.
"We have lost 235 of our compatriots due to COVID-19 in the past 24 hours," taking the overall toll to 16,147, said health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari.
Authorities had placed Tehran among 15 out of Iran's 31 provinces now on "red" alert over the virus, she told a televised news conference.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-28 20:44:18
US industrial conglomerate 3M missed Wall Street estimates for quarterly profit and revenue on Tuesday, hit by a plunge in demand across its business units due to the coronavirus crisis, sending its shares down about 5.3%.
3M is the world’s biggest producer of N95 respirator masks and has seen sales surge as governments fought over supplies of protective equipment for healthcare and other essential workers.
However, demand for the wide range of office and industrial supplies it churns out has declined as global economic activity sank and millions of employees retreated to working from home.
“3M is not immune to a slowing economy,” said Matt Arnold, industrial analyst at brokerage Edward Jones. “We expect a negative near-term impact on earnings from the shutdowns related to the outbreak”.
2020-07-28 20:26:56
Kuldip Kumar, a farmer from northern India, sold his only cow to buy a smartphone so his children could keep up with lessons that shifted online when the coronavirus lockdown closed schools four months ago.
Kumar was already in debt and the cow was his only asset. He sold it last week for 6,000 rupees ($80), almost all of which he spent on the device.
“My neighbours had a smartphone but my children were reluctant to go there every day to study,” Kumar, 36, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from the hill town of Palampur.
“I was worried about their education, so I sold the cow,” he added.
India is the world’s second-biggest smartphone market after China, and nearly half of the country’s almost one billion mobile users already have a phone with internet access.
For Kumar and his family, the smartphone is a novelty. Neither he nor his wife have ever been online, and so far only their children have been making use of it.
With no clear sign of schools reopening soon, internet access has become a must for children to follow classes, prompting more low-income families to scrape together the money to buy a cheap or second-hand smartphone for the first time.
And with a school population of some 240 million, it could prove a boon for sales of low-cost devices to new users, industry analysts say, noting signs of an increase in purchases of used handsets in rural areas.
India’s smartphone market has grown in the last two or three years mainly due to replacement purchases, said Navkendar Singh, research director with International Data Corporation.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-28 20:09:36
Harley-Davidson reported an unexpected quarterly loss due to disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, sending its shares sliding over 9% in morning trade.
It also unveiled a restructuring strategy that aims to shift focus back to more profitable motorcycles and core markets such as the United States.
Harley has been struggling for years to grow sales beyond baby boomers. The company has not posted retail sales growth in the United States, its biggest market, in the past 14 quarters.
The pandemic has exacerbated its challenges.
2020-07-28 19:41:00
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 214 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing the provincial total to 33,724.
It also reported six more deaths, taking the total number of deaths in the province to 1,186.
2020-07-28 19:18:29
Off a narrow corridor above a store selling Persian rugs in central Tokyo, a small office houses a private operation which won a tender in April to distribute more than $20 billion in government aid to businesses hit by the new coronavirus.
The agency, the Service Design Engineering Council, actually carried out only a fraction of that work, local media reported last month. Service Design was co-founded by Dentsu Group, one of Japan’s most influential companies. It passed hundreds of millions of dollars to administer the project back to Dentsu, an advertising and PR company with close ties to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, government documents show.
Under the arrangement, Service Design won the contract to distribute the $20 billion, but actually took less than 1% of the total $718 million for managing the project and passed on most of the rest to Dentsu, which set up vetting procedures, websites and call centres, the companies and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said.
Dentsu, in turn, subcontracted the work again through its subsidiaries. The ministry has said that there were five tiers of subcontractors and at least 63 companies involved. Officials have disclosed the names of only 14 of those; the government has not fully accounted for contracts worth at least $247 million, about one-third of the total.
2020-07-28 19:02:04
A cinema for cyclists has been set up by students from the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-07-28 18:50:23
United States President Donald Trump is back to spreading misinformation on tackling coronavirus and the credibility of the America's leading infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci, AP reported .
Fauci pushed back Tuesday, saying he will keep doing his job.
Trump pushed unproven claims that an anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, is an effective treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
However, numerous studies have suggested otherwise, and the US Food and Drug Administration recently withdrew an order that allowed the drug’s use as a emergency treatment for COVID-19.
2020-07-28 18:35:33
Islamabad recorded 54 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in PWD, the district health officer said.
2020-07-28 18:17:15
British Airways faces strike action over its plans to cut jobs, pay and conditions, the BBC reported, piling more pressure on the airline which has been hard hit by the coronavirus crisis and faced more disruption this week from new UK quarantine rules on Spain.
Trade union Unite, which represents BA cabin crew, said that the airline is planning to fire and rehire thousands of its workers and that it planned to defend its members by immediately moving towards industrial action, the BBC reported.
British Airways, which is owned by IAG (ICAG.L) and Unite did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
BA said in April that it would need to cut up to 12,000 jobs to survive the coronavirus pandemic, which wiped out air travel for months and from which the aviation market will take years to recover.
Unite has accused BA of seeking to fire and rehire some workers on less favourable contracts. For many weeks the Union refused to engage in consultations with BA.
2020-07-28 17:59:00
Indonesia reported 1,748 new coronavirus infections, bringing its tally to 102,051 confirmed cases overall, Health Ministry data showed.
The number of deaths in the Southeast Asian nation related to COVID-19 rose by 63, bringing the total to 4,901.
2020-07-28 17:38:49
Nissan Motor warned of a record $4.5 billion operating loss this year and its lowest sales in a decade as the COVID-19 pandemic hampers its turnaround efforts.
Japan’s carmaker is battling to recover from a rapid expansion that has left it with dismal margins and an ageing portfolio, as well as revive its alliance with Renault that was rocked by the arrest of long-time boss Carlos Ghosn.
But the virus pandemic and associated plunge in demand has taken a heavy toll on the car industry, with Nissan reporting a second straight quarter of operating losses on Tuesday.
The company forecast an operating loss of 470 billion yen ($4.5 billion) for the year to March 2021, much larger than analysts’ consensus estimate for a 262.8 billion yen loss, according to Refinitiv data. That would be the second annual loss in a row.
“The market outlook remains uncertain and we may see a further deterioration in demand due to a possible second wave of the pandemic,” Chief Executive Makoto Uchida told a livestreamed briefing.
2020-07-28 17:21:16
Taiwan was investigating its first possible local coronavirus infection in more than a month, a Thai man who tested positive last week, as the island also faces a rise in cases brought from overseas.
Taiwan’s early response was effective in keeping the pandemic at bay, with just 467 infections and seven deaths. Most of the cases have been imported and have recovered.
Until the Thai man’s positive test, the island had not seen a local case of coronavirus infection since June 24.
Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Centre said it was probing where and how the man contracted the virus. The migrant worker arrived on the island in January and tested positive on July 25, shortly after returning to Thailand.
More than 180 people who had contact with him in Taiwan have undergone health screenings, the centre said.
“We will make all necessary checks, clarifying how he got infected and whether there is a possibility for further contagion,” the centre’s deputy chief, Chuang Jen-hsiang, told reporters in Taipei.
2020-07-28 17:06:12
Export expectations in the manufacturing sector of Europe’s largest economy rose in July, with the automotive industry among the biggest winners, the Ifo institute said, in a boon for a sector that has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
The car industry, spearhead of Germany’s export-driven economy, has taken a beating from the pandemic that halted production at some sites during a lockdown that came as companies were already struggling to shift away from diesel- and petrol-powered cars toward “green” electric vehicles.
The Ifo institute said its index tracking export expectations in the manufacturing sector rose to 6.9 points in July from -2.2 the previous month thanks to an economic recovery in many countries.
“Cautious optimism is spreading among German exporters,” Ifo said. “The automobile sector is one of the biggest winners. After some very tough months, the export business should pick up again.”
2020-07-28 16:55:40
2020-07-28 16:44:08
Americans are hanging on to their cars and trucks longer, pushing the average age of vehicles on the road to the highest level in nearly 20 years even before the coronavirus hit, according to new data from IHS Markit.
That is not good for emissions or safety, but it could give a lift to companies that manufacture and sell repair parts.
IHS Markit, which gathers and analyzes data on a wide range of industries, said the average age of cars, sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks rose to 11.9 years as of January 2020 from 11.8 years for the prior year.
Data for the period since the coronavirus pandemic hit the global economy are not final, but the sharp slowdown in vehicle sales is likely to push the average age of vehicles on U.S. roads over 12 years, said Todd Campau, associate director of aftermarket solutions for IHS Markit.
“We definitely expect to eclipse the 12-year barrier,” he said. People working from home could put fewer miles on vehicles, allowing them to last longer, he said.
The average age of cars and light trucks has been increasing steadily for nearly 20 years, reflecting rising prices for new vehicles and improved durability that allows older vehicles to travel more miles with more owners before they are scrapped, Campau said.
The aging US vehicle fleet has been an issue as US lawmakers have debated economic stimulus plans. Proposals to provide government-funded incentives to retire older, more polluting vehicles, or encourage drivers to get new vehicles with more advanced safety technology have so far not gained much traction.
Manufacturers of repair parts and vehicle repair shops should benefit from America’s aging and expanding vehicle fleet, IHS Markit forecast. The United States has more than 280 million vehicles on the road.
2020-07-28 16:35:51
Fujifilm Holdings Corp’s Avigan, once hyped as a potential COVID-19 treatment by Japan’s prime minister, is facing uncertain prospects in the country, dampened by disappointing clinical studies and slow progress in regulatory review.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe previously touted Avigan’s potential as Japan’s contribution to a global race for coronavirus treatments, aiming for domestic approval in May and offering to give it away to other countries. He mentioned the drug in at least 10 official speeches from February.
But Abe has lately gone mum on the drug and regulatory deadlines have lapsed, while researchers at Fujita Health University said earlier this month that their Avigan study was inconclusive.
“I think that does not look good for any early approval,” said one clinical trial expert, referring to the Fujita study, and asking not to be identified due to professional connections in Japan.
Interest in Avigan, developed more than 20 years ago, soared in March after a Chinese official said it appeared to help patients recover from COVID-19. It is now the subject of at least 28 clinical trials around the world.
2020-07-28 16:27:26
Negligence is behind Germany’s steady rise in new coronavirus infections, the head of a state-funded research body said on Tuesday, adding it was unclear if a second wave was underway.
“The new developments in Germany make me very worried,” Lothar Wieler, of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases, said during his first news conference in weeks.
“The rise has to do with the fact that we have become negligent,” he added, urging people not to flout social distancing rules.
“It is irrelevant if you are on holiday or at home,” he said. “The holiday is as much a part of the precautions against the spread of COVID-19 as your work and home life. The setting is irrelevant.”
2020-07-28 16:00:07
Sindh on Tuesday reported 571 new cases and 10 more fatalities from the coronavirus in the province.
With the new infections, the number of cases in the province currently stands at 119,398. The death toll from the virus stands at 2,172.
The province also recorded 509 more recoveries, taking the number of recovered patients to 108,989.
2020-07-28 15:45:54
The World Health Organisation has warned against complacency about new coronavirus transmission in the northern hemisphere summer, saying that this virus did not behave like influenza that tended to follow seasonal trends.
"People are still thinking about seasons. What we all need to get our heads around is this is a new virus and...this one is behaving differently," Margaret Harris told a virtual briefing in Geneva, urging vigilance in applying measures to slow transmission that is spreading via mass gatherings.
She also warned against thinking in terms of virus waves, saying: "It's going to be one big wave. It's going to go up and down a bit. The best thing is to flatten it and turn it into just something lapping at your feet."
2020-07-28 15:25:00
Lebanon reimposed severe COVID-19 restrictions for the next two weeks, shutting places of worship, cinemas, nightclubs, sports events and popular markets, after a sharp rise in infections.
Shops, private companies, banks and educational institutions would be permitted to open, but only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with a near total lockdown in place Thursday through Monday until August 10.
Officials said they were alarmed by a spike in cases in recent days, with at least 132 new infections and eight deaths confirmed in the last 24 hours.
2020-07-28 14:45:51
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza has urged the people to strictly adhere all SOPs on Eid-ul-Adha for effective prevention from coronavirus pandemic, reported Radio Pakistan.
Briefing the media in Islamabad Mirza said though the spread of the virus in the country had declined significantly by 80% there was still a need to continue observing precautionary measures to stem the spread of the virus.
“The resurgence of the virus has been witnessed in many countries and we will have to be more cautious,” he said.
2020-07-28 14:20:04
Germany´s disease control agency has voiced "great concern" over rising virus numbers in the country as authorities issued a travel warning against parts of Spain.
"We must prevent that the virus once again spreads rapidly and uncontrollably," Robert Koch Institute head Lothar Wieler told reporters.
"The latest developments in the number of COVID-19 cases are of great concern to me and all of us at the RKI," he said.
"It's in our hands how the pandemic evolves in Germany," Wieler said, calling on Germans to stick with prevention measures such as washing hands and keeping a safe distance.
2020-07-28 14:00:15
Russia reported 5,395 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, bringing its nationwide tally to 823,515, the fourth largest in the world.
Russia's coronavirus taskforce said 150 people had died over the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll in the country of around 145 million people to 13,504.
2020-07-28 13:30:50
A new coronavirus cluster in a port city in northeast China has spread to other provinces and prompted fresh restrictions, authorities said Tuesday, as Beijing scrambles to prevent a second wave of infections.
China had largely brought the virus under control since it first emerged in the country late last year, through a series of strict lockdowns and travel restrictions.
But in recent months a number of small outbreaks have given cause for concern, with China reporting 68 new infections on Tuesday— the highest daily number since April.
A fresh Beijing case reported Tuesday was also linked to an asymptomatic patient who had travelled from Dalian— the first new local case since a cluster in the capital was brought under control in early July.
2020-07-28 13:05:13
As schools struggle to keep pupils engaged during the pandemic, a kindergarten on Indonesia’s Java island is getting pupils back in the classroom using makeshift transparent cubicles and also sending teachers on home visits with social distancing barrier.
Permata Hati Kindergarten, a private kindergarten with 135 pupils in the city of Semarang in Central Java province, is allowing six pupils per day to spend time in the classroom, giving children a chance to attend school once every two weeks.
Everyone attending the school is required to wear a mask, face shield, gloves and have temperature checks.
2020-07-28 12:40:05
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 633 to 206,242, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Tuesday.
The reported death toll rose by 4 to 9,122, the tally showed.
2020-07-28 12:15:21
Australia's second-most populous state of Victoria on Tuesday reported six deaths from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours and 384 new cases compared with a record 532 cases a day earlier.
The state reported the country's highest daily increase in coronavirus infections a day earlier, prompting authorities to warn a six-week lockdown in the state may be extended.
2020-07-28 11:45:07
Moderna and Pfizer have launched two 30,000-subject trials of COVID-19 vaccines that could clear the way for regulatory approval and widespread use by the end of this year, the companies said on Monday.
The trials, both announced on Monday, are the first late-stage studies supported by the Trump administration’s effort to speed development of measures against the novel coronavirus, adding to hope that an effective vaccine will help end the pandemic.
Both vaccine candidates rely on a new technology that allows for faster development and manufacturing than traditional vaccine production methods but does not have an extensive track record.
Read more here.
2020-07-28 11:10:02
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 275,225 on Tuesday after 936 new coronavirus cases were reported in the country during the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 118,824 cases in Sindh, 92,279 in Punjab, 33,510 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,624 in Balochistan, 14,938 in Islamabad, 2,010 Gilgit-Baltistan and 2,040 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also recorded 23 fatalities during the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,865.
The number of recoveries from coronavirus in Pakistan stands at 242,436.
2020-07-28 10:55:16
Vietnam has suspended all flights to and from Danang for 15 days after at least 14 cases of the coronavirus had been detected in the city, the government said on Tuesday.
The Southeast Asian country is back on high alert after authorities on Saturday confirmed the first community infections since April, and another three cases on Sunday, all in or around Danang.
All bus and train services to and from Danang have also been suspended from Tuesday, the statement said.
2020-07-28 10:35:23
China reported 68 new coronavirus cases for the fourth consecutive day, including two in Beijing, the country’s health authority said on Tuesday.
China is battling the most aggressive return of COVID-19 in months, driven by infections in the far western region of Xinjiang and a separate flare-up in the northeast.
Beijing reported two new infections, one linked to Dalian and the other imported. They were the first new cases in the Chinese capital for more than three weeks.
2020-07-28 10:15:22
Brazil on Monday reported a total of 2,442,375 coronavirus cases and 87,618 deaths, as cases continue to rise in the world's second most affected country.
Brazil reported 23,384 new cases and 614 new deaths.
2020-07-28 09:50:50
Deaths from the coronavirus in US rose for a third week in a row to more than 6,300 people in the seven days, though the number of new cases fell 2%, dropping for the first time after rising for five weeks.
Fifteen states have reported weekly increases in deaths for at least two consecutive weeks, according to the Reuters tally of state and county reports. In Texas, more than 1,000 people died in the last seven days, or 20% of the state’s more than 5,000 total deaths.
There were nearly 460,000 new COVID-19 cases reported last week, according to the analysis.
2020-07-28 09:15:04
From beach closures to quarantine moves, the world introduce several new measures to stem the spread of COVID-19 on Monday, as the global death toll surged past 650,000.
European countries trying to repair the economic damage caused by the earlier lockdowns struggled to balance keeping the lifeline of tourism open while guarding against new flare-ups of infection.
Spain's tourism industry faced fresh misery after British travelers — and one major tour operator — cancelled flights there following London's decision to reintroduce quarantine for travellers returning from the country.
Hong Kong mandated wearing masks in public in response to a new wave of infections.
Read more here.
2020-07-27 23:42:00
Biotech group Biocad is discussing producing in China a potential COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Russia’s Vector state virology institute, the director of the St Petersburg-based company said in an interview.
The potential vaccine - based on the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) - is expected to enter clinical trials in mid-August, Biocad chief executive Dmitry Morozov said. The vaccine is one of six vaccine prototypes the Vector Institute is developing, a World Health Organization list showed.
Biocad is gearing up to produce 4-5 million doses per month of the VSV-based vaccine by the end of this year, if early-stage trials prove it to be safe and effective, Morozov said.
Biocad plans to handle industrial scale production of the vaccine entirely in-house, from manufacturing the virus strain in its bioreactors to dealing with registration and packaging, Morozov said.
2020-07-27 22:48:17
Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta extended a nightly curfew for 30 days to curb the spread of COVID-19 and banned alcohol sales in restaurants but stopped short of locking down the country again despite a surge in cases.
The curfew had been due to be lifted on August 6 or 7.
“The harsh reality my friends is that we are at war. At war with an invisible enemy who is relentless,” Kenyatta said in a televised address.
“We cannot have a policeman at every street and in every village to enforce the rules. We need, as citizens, to hold ourselves and one another accountable,” he said.
“All the measures ... shall be applied to all citizens regardless of their social or political standing,” Kenyatta said.
2020-07-27 23:00:32
Balochistan reported 23 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 11,624, the health department confirmed.
2020-07-27 23:15:18
Bulgaria will allow tourists from Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia, Montenegro, Moldova, Israel and Kuwait to visit its resorts as of July 28 if they have negative COVID-19 tests, the health ministry said.
The negative tests have to be done 72 hours prior to arrival. Tourists from Ukraine will be allowed on the same grounds as of July 30, the ministry said in a statement.
Bulgaria is eager to help its struggling Black Sea summer resorts, where foreign visits have plunged due to travel bans over the coronavirus pandemic.
2020-07-27 23:28:54
Latin America will emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic with higher poverty rates as efforts to control the virus lead to spikes in unemployment and indebtedness, Inter-American Development Bank President Luis Alberto Moreno said in an interview.
Latin America, where economic growth has already been slowing in recent years, is expected to see an economic contraction of 8% to 10% in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus and associated quarantine measures, Moreno said.
The pandemic “will impoverish not only Latin Americans, (but also) the world in general, but clearly Latin America is going to be hit much harder because we are an emerging (market) region,” he said.
The IADB, which is Latin America’s largest regional lender, this year will approve nearly $20 billion dollars in loans.
Around $15 billion of those will go to governments to strengthen healthcare systems, he added.
2020-07-27 22:24:20
2020-07-27 22:13:27
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 113 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 33,510 with two more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 1,180, the health department confirmed.
2020-07-27 21:55:44
Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Britain to lose “a little bit of weight” on Monday, using his own struggle with his weight before he contracted the novel coronavirus to encourage people to take more exercise.
His government unveiled a “Better Health” campaign on Monday, saying it would tackle the “obesity time bomb” by banning advertising of junk food before 9.00 p.m., ending “buy one get one free” deals and putting calories on menus.
“I’ve always wanted to lose weight for ages and ages and like many people I struggle with my weight, I go up and down. But since I recovered from coronavirus I have been steadily building up my fitness,” he said in a video clip on Twitter.
“I’m at least a stone down, I’m more than a stone down but when I went into ICU (intensive care) when I was really ill, I was way over weight ... and, you know, I was too fat,” he said, adding that he hoped the new campaign was not “excessively bossy or nannying”.
2020-07-27 21:40:08
Belgium announced measures including a sharp reduction in permitted social contact designed to prevent a return to a nationwide lockdown after a surge of coronavirus infections in the past three weeks.
Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes told a news conference that, from Wednesday, a Belgian family or those living together would only be able to meet five other people, sharply down from 15 now.
The numbers allowed to attend public events will be halved to 100 for inside and 200 for outside. Consumers will have to shop on their own and Wilmes also said people should work from home as much as possible.
“We are acting again today to keep the situation under control and to prevent a general lockdown,” Wilmes said, adding those infected appeared to be more contagious than when the country went into lockdown in mid-March.
2020-07-27 21:18:44
Sindh reported 513 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 118,824 with 11 more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,162, the province's chief minister confirmed.
2020-07-27 21:05:13
Alphabet Inc’s Google said it would allow employees, who do not need to be in the office, to work from home until the end of June 2021.
Google had said in May it would begin reopening more offices globally as early as June this year, but most Google employees would likely work from home until the end of this year.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported here the news, said Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai made the decision himself last week after debate among an internal group of top executives that he chairs.
Several other companies have also allowed most of their employees to work from home until the end of 2020 in a bid to safeguard them against the COVID-19 pandemic, with Twitter Inc proposing remote work for some of its employees indefinitely.
2020-07-27 20:57:03
Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and her daughter Aaradhya Bachchan have tested negative for Covid-19 and returned home from the hospital after successful recovery.
This was confirmed by Abhishek Bachchan on Twitter on Monday.
He said, “Thank you all for your continued prayers and good wishes. Indebted forever.”
Read complete story here.
2020-07-27 20:47:37
European efforts to secure potential COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson are mired in wrangles over price, payment method and potential liability costs, three EU officials told Reuters.
The bloc is in talks with at least six vaccine makers to acquire up front doses of potential shots against the novel coronavirus, officials told Reuters earlier in July, in a strategy meant to increase the chances of having COVID-19 vaccines for its population.
Despite the urgency to seal deals amid a global race to secure the most promising shots, the EU is struggling to reach swift agreements, said the officials, who are involved in the talks, and declined to be named because the negotiations are confidential.
The United States, meanwhile, has already inked two supply agreements with AstraZeneca and Pfizer among other major funding deals.
2020-07-27 20:30:37
Markets in Punjab will remain closed for next eight days, a notification from the province's heath department said, adding that schools, marriage halls, beat parlous, and spas would also remain shut.
However, medical services, pharmacies, petrol pumps and a few other businesses have been exempted, the notification said.
2020-07-27 20:27:42
India’s rice exporters are struggling to fulfil orders due to limited availability of containers and workers at mills and the biggest handling port on the east coast after novel coronavirus cases jumped in the region, industry officials told Reuters.
Slowing shipments from the world’s biggest rice exporter could allow rivals like Thailand and Vietnam to raise supplies in the short term, and also carries the potential to push up global prices.
“The vessel loading rate at Kakinada port has gone down by nearly 30%,” said BV Krishna Rao, president of the Rice Exporters Association.
Kakinada is located in East Godavari district of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh - a district that has been reporting more than 1,000 new virus infections every day - accounts for more than a quarter of India’s rice shipments.
“Labourers are working only on day shifts and not doing night shift,” Rao said.
In the next few months, India could export around 100,000 tonnes less rice per month as the labour shortage means rice mills are operating at lower capacity, Rao said.
2020-07-27 20:16:16
Gold soared to a record high as investors rushed into the safe-haven commodity on concerns about heightened China-US tensions, a spike in virus infections and a lack of progress on a new stimulus bill in Washington.
"Always a sign of trouble, gold continued its red hot streak on Monday, the safe haven commodity looking mighty attractive after another troubling weekend of COVID-19 and US-China headlines," said Spreadex analyst Connor Campbell.
With vast monetary easing measures put in place by the Federal Reserve also pushing the dollar lower against most other currencies, gold is flying, with the spot price hitting an all-time high of $1,944.71 per ounce, well above its previous record of $1,921.18 seen in 2011. It later pulled back somewhat.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-27 19:59:49
Hong Kong banned gatherings of more than two people, closed down restaurant dining and introduced mandatory face masks in public places, including outdoors, as it tries to rein in a new coronavirus outbreak.
The measures, which take effect from Wednesday, are the first time the densely populated city has completely banned dining in restaurants. Since late January, more than 2,700 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 20 of whom have died.
“The situation is very worrying,” said Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung, adding that the current outbreak is the most severe the city has experienced.
The measures will be in place for seven days, he said.
The ban on dining at restaurants and food stalls threatens to complicate life for the many people in the city who depend on eating out for daily meals as their tiny apartments lack kitchen facilities.
2020-07-27 19:41:59
Russia reported 5,635 new cases of the novel coronavirus, its lowest daily rise since April 23, pushing its national tally to 818,120, the fourth largest in the world.
In a daily readout, the official coronavirus taskforce said 85 people had died over the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 13,354.
2020-07-27 19:27:25
2020-07-27 19:14:30
Bans on international travel cannot stay in place indefinitely, and countries are going to have to do more to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus within their borders, the World Health Organization said.
“Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they are not, cases go up,” he said, praising Canada, China, Germany and South Korea for controlling outbreaks.
WHO emergencies programme head Mike Ryan said it was impossible for countries to keep borders shut for the foreseeable future.
“...It is going to be almost impossible for individual countries to keep their borders shut for the foreseeable future. Economies have to open up, people have to work, trade has to resume,” he said.
2020-07-27 18:59:25
US President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, but there is no risk of exposure to Trump or Vice President Mike Pence, the White House said in a statement.
“He has mild symptoms and has been self-isolating and working from a secure location off site. There is no risk of exposure to the President or the Vice President. The work of the National Security Council continues uninterrupted,” according to the statement.
2020-07-27 18:43:54
The airport in the central Vietnamese tourism hotspot of Danang was packed after three residents tested positive for the coronavirus and the evacuation of 80,000 people began.
The Southeast Asian country is back on high alert after authorities on Saturday confirmed the first community infections since April, and another three cases on Sunday, all in or around Danang.
A further 11 cases linked to a Danang hospital were reported late on Monday.
The evacuations of mostly local tourists will take at least four days with domestic airlines operating approximately 100 flights daily from Danang to 11 Vietnamese cities, the government said.
Vietnam has also reintroduced social distancing measures in Danang.
Nguyen Tien Nam, an English teacher based in Ho Chi Minh City, said he had got on the last flight out of Danang on Sunday night.
“Everyone was just trying to get out of the city on Sunday,” said Nam. “Everyone was telling me that I should get out as soon as possible.”
2020-07-27 18:31:17
Bavaria on Monday called on Germany’s federal government to clarify how to quickly make coronavirus testing mandatory at airports to ensure returning holidaymakers do not further drive up case numbers in Europe’s largest economy.
Bavarian state premier Markus Soeder said concerns were growing that people returning from holiday could cause “lots of mini Ischgls”, referring to the Austrian ski resort that was the source of some of Germany’s first coronavirus cases.
“We need mandatory testing at airports and we need it as soon as possible,” he told a news conference. “We’re preparing everything so that when the federal government gives us the legal basis we can press the start button immediately.”
Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Saturday that the government was checking whether it was legally possible to oblige someone to do a test while respecting people’s basic rights.
2020-07-27 18:15:23
Britain is closely watching rises in coronavirus cases in other European destinations such as France and Germany after slapping a 14-day quarantine on travellers from Spain at the height of the summer vacation season.
The imposition of a British quarantine on Spain is one of the starkest indications to date that Europe could face a second wave of economic turmoil as governments scramble to head off a rise in cases from the Mediterranean to the North Sea.
Shares in airlines and travel companies - already on their knees due to coronavirus lockdowns - tumbled while Spain pleaded for Britain to exclude the Balearic and Canary islands from the quarantine.
The British decision, leaked ahead of an official announcement on Saturday, upset the plans of hundreds of thousands of British tourists and raised the spectre of limits on more countries.
“We have to keep the situation under review and I think that is what the public would expect us to do,” junior health minister Helen Whately told Sky News when asked about Germany and France possibly being next to face quarantines.
2020-07-27 18:03:23
Australia’s Victoria state reported the country’s highest daily increase in coronavirus infections, prompting the authorities to warn a six-week lockdown may last longer if people continue to go to work while feeling unwell.
The second-most populous state reported 532 new cases of the virus which causes COVID-19, taking the national total to 549, the most new cases in a day since the pandemic arrived.
Victoria currently has more than 4,500 active cases after weeks of triple digits daily rises.
It reported six more deaths, taking the state toll to 77, almost half the total national death toll. Five of the deaths were in aged care facilities, which have been hit hardest in the state.
Australia has avoided the high COVID-19 casualty rates of other countries, but a wave of community transmission in Victoria has prompted a lockdown in Melbourne, the only Australian city to make it mandatory to wear a facemask in public.
2020-07-27 17:50:10
Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei has been hospitalized with COVID-19, the Mehr news agency reported on Monday, the latest among several officials to have been infected with the new coronavirus.
Iran has the Middle East’s highest number of recorded COVID-19 cases and infections and deaths have risen sharply since restrictions on movement began to be eased in mid-April.
There have been a total of 293,606 cases and 255,144 recoveries in the Islamic Republic, Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari announced on state TV on Monday.
The latest daily death toll of 212 brings the total number of deaths to 15,912.
2020-07-27 17:37:21
US President Donald Trump on Friday signed four executive orders designed to reduce drug costs for consumers, in a bid to highlight his commitment to cutting prescription prices ahead of the November presidential election.
The orders, which range from relaxing drug importation rules to cutting Medicare payments to drugmakers, are far reaching but experts say they are unlikely to take effect in the near term and in some cases lack specifics.
The executive orders have for the most part been proposed by the Trump administration in various forms in the past, but stalled amid industry pushback.
Trump signed an executive order requiring that the pharmaceutical benefits managers (PBMs) that negotiate on behalf of government health plans pass the discounts they receive directly to consumers. The rule applies to Medicare Part D, a government health plan primarily for seniors. It would reverse the longstanding practice of PBMs passing a portion of savings back to the health plan itself and pocketing the remainder as profit.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-27 17:19:30
Prime Minister Imran Khan said that the coronavirus might spike during Eid-ul-Azha and Muharram if people do not follow SOPs.
The premier said that due to ‘smart lockdown’ strategy we were able to contain the spread of coronavirus and now the whole world is now recognising its benefits.
In a televised address to the nation, PM Imran said Pakistan’s situation is very different from China, the US and other European countries.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-27 17:02:52
Indonesia confirmed its 100,000th coronavirus case as the Red Cross warned that the health crisis in the world's fourth most populous country risked "spiralling out of control".
The vast archipelago — home to more than a quarter of a billion people — has been recording 1,000-plus new infections daily after relaxing movement restrictions this month in a bid to head off a collapse of Southeast Asia's biggest economy.
As of Monday, Indonesia had reported a total of 100,303 COVID-19 cases and 4,838 deaths. But with some of the world's lowest testing rates, the true scale of its toll is widely believed to be much greater.
Dozens of frontline doctors have succumbed to the deadly respiratory disease while health officials have warned that hundreds of children may have also died from it — as many suspected virus victims are buried without testing.
2020-07-27 16:52:47
Moderna said it has started a US government-backed late-stage trial to assess its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in about 30,000 adults who do not have the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna’s shares were up 11% at $81.31 before the bell.
The trial, named COVE, is the first to be implemented under the US government’s Operation Warp Speed that aims to accelerate the development, manufacturing and distribution of therapeutics and vaccines for COVID-19.
The federal government is supporting Moderna’s vaccine project with nearly a billion dollars and has chosen it as one of the first to enter large-scale human trials.
The main goal of the study will be prevention of the symptomatic COVID-19 disease, the company said.
2020-07-27 16:42:34
Global airline body IATA criticised Britain’s snap decision to re-impose coronavirus quarantine measures on travellers from Spain as a severe blow to recovery hopes that was disproportionate to health risks.
“This is a big setback for consumer confidence that is essential to drive a recovery,” the International Air Transport Association said in an emailed statement, after Britain abruptly restored a two-week quarantine requirement for travellers returning from Spain.
The move “does not accurately reflect the risk of a regional spike in one corner of the country,” IATA said - adding that restoring confidence in travel would depend on governments “working together to isolate and precisely manage risks” rather than a “stop-and-go” approach to restrictions.
“The UK’s decision falls short of the mark,” it said.
2020-07-27 16:30:43
The new coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 16 million people is easily the worst global health emergency the World Health Organization (WHO) has faced, its director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Only with strict adherence to health measures, from wearing masks to avoiding crowds, would the world manage to beat it, Tedros added at a virtual news briefing in Geneva.
“Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they are not, cases go up,” he said, praising Canada, China, Germany and South Korea for controlling outbreaks.
Resurgences of the coronavirus in various regions, including where nations thought they had controlled the disease, are alarming the world, with deaths nearing 650,000.
2020-07-27 16:15:02
Emergent BioSolutions said it signed a $174 million agreement with AstraZeneca to develop and manufacture the British drugmaker's COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
AstraZeneca in June picked Emergent to help produce 300 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine pledged to the United States.
AstraZeneca has signed manufacturing deals globally to meet its target of making 2 billion doses of the vaccine, including with two Bill Gates-backed ventures and a $1.2 billion agreement with the U.S. government.
The company's vaccine, which has been co-developed by University of Oxford, is among the first to move into mid-stage trials. There are no approved vaccines or treatments for COVID-19, the highly contagious respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus.
2020-07-27 16:00:42
Belgium is seeing a "worrying" rapid rise in coronavirus cases, health authorities warned Monday, with almost half of the new infections recorded around the port city of Antwerp.
There have been 1,952 new cases around Belgium over the past week, up more than 70% on the previous week, officials announced.
"The rapid growth in the number of cases is worrying," Frederique Jacobs, professor of infectious diseases and a spokeswoman for Belgium's federal COVID-19 taskforce, told reporters.
She said the situation was particularly serious in the province of Antwerp, in northern Belgium, which recorded 47% percent of new infections in the last week.
2020-07-27 15:45:27
Everyone in Hong Kong will have to wear masks in public from this week, authorities said Monday, as they unveiled the city´s toughest social distancing measures yet to combat a new wave of coronavirus infections.
The ramped-up rules came as authorities revealed China would help officials build an emergency field hospital to help deal with a surge in patients.
"The epidemic situation in Hong Kong is remarkably severe," Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung told reporters, as he announced new measures including a ban on more than two people gathering in public and restaurants only being allowed to serve takeaway meals.
More than 1,000 infections have been confirmed since early July— more than 40% of the total since the virus first hit the city in late January.
2020-07-27 15:31:21
British people should eat less to lose weight as being obese increases the risk of dying from the novel coronavirus, junior health minister Helen Whately said on Monday.
Whately said that those with a body mass index of over 40 had double the risk of dying from COVID-19.
2020-07-27 15:06:53
Countries around Asia are confronting a second wave of coronavirus infections and are clamping down again to try to contain the disease, with Australia recording a record daily rise in cases and Vietnam locking down the city of Danang.
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.
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.
2020-07-27 14:30:21
Markets across Punjab will close from midnight tonight till August 5 in line with the government's measures to stem the spread of coronavirus during Eid-ul-Azha, provincial information minister Fayyazul Hassan Chohan announced on Monday.
"All business and commercial centres in Punjab will remain closed till August 5," the minister said in his statement.
Read more here.
2020-07-27 14:10:30
Russia reported 5,635 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday, its lowest daily rise since April 23, pushing its national tally to 818,120, the fourth largest in the world.
In a daily readout, the official coronavirus taskforce said 85 people had died over the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 13,354.
2020-07-27 13:50:06
Surrey cricketers Mark Stoneman and Ryan Patel on Sunday experienced something no other sportsmen in England have enjoyed since March when they strode to the wicket at The Oval— applause from a crowd desperate to witness live action in the flesh after the coronavirus lockdown.
Stoneman and Patel had 1,000 members— mostly from Surrey but some from rivals Middlesex— to cheer them on a day that even the unpredictable British weather did not wish to ruin with the sun making welcome if sporadic appearances.
Read more here.
2020-07-27 13:10:21
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 evacuation will take at least four days with domestic airlines operating approximately 100 flights daily from Danang to 11 Vietnamese cities, the government said in a statement.
2020-07-27 12:50:11
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 340 to 205,609, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The reported deaths remained unchanged at 9,118, the tally showed.
2020-07-27 12:30:13
Murree Expressway, Margalla, Parks and other recreation places including hotels and picnic spots in the federal capital will remain closed till Eid holidays, DC Islamabad said on Monday.
He added the decision to close these spots was taken to stem the spread of coronavirus.
2020-07-27 12:00:23
Canadians under the age of 39 make up a clear majority of new cases of COVID-19 in Canada, health authorities said Sunday, warning young adults they are not "invincible" against the disease.
"Recent national surveillance data show that young adults aged 20-39 years of age account for the highest incidence rates across all ages in Canada," Canada's chief public health officer Theresa Tam said in a statement.
For the week ending July 22, the incidence rate was highest among young men and women aged 20-29 (14.4 and 13.8 cases per 100,000 people respectively), followed by those aged 30-39.
"Younger Canadians are not invincible" to the disease, Tam warned, noting that it is not only the elderly who are at risk of serious health problems if infected.
2020-07-27 11:45:55
The National Institute of Health has organised free screening camps for coronavirus at cattle markets established near Tiramri and Ghauri Town in Islamabad.
2020-07-27 11:12:20
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health, Dr Zafar Mirza has said Pakistan reported its lowest number of COVID-19 deaths in the past three months on Sunday, when only 20 people died due to the infection.
the SAPM disclosed that the current statistics indicated an 87% drop in COVID-19 deaths.
"Today, Alhamdolilah, we have the lowest number of deaths in Pakistan due to COVID-19 in last 3 months. We had a peak of 153 deaths on 20 June and in last 24 hours we had 20. This is 87% reduction in COVID-19 related deaths. Yet no place for any complacency!" he tweeted.
Read more here.
2020-07-27 10:45:08
The number of confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 274,289 on Monday after 1,176 new infections were recorded in the country over the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 118,311 cases in Sindh, 92,073 in Punjab, 33,397 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,601 in Balochistan, 14,884 in Islamabad, 1,989 Gilgit-Baltistan and 2,034 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also recorded 20 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,842.
The number of recoveries from coronavirus stand at 241,026.
2020-07-27 10:24:59
Morocco will stop people entering and leaving some of its biggest cities from midnight to contain a surge in COVID-19 cases, the interior and health ministries said.
The cities to be locked down include the economic powerhouse of Casablanca as well as Tangier, Marrakech, Fez and Meknes.
The country eased a nationwide lockdown a month ago, though international flights are still suspended except special flights by national airlines carrying Moroccans or foreign residents.
Morocco has carried out 1.1 million tests and has made mask-wearing mandatory. It has extended an emergency decree, until August 10, giving authorities leeway in restoring restrictive measures on a region-by-region basis depending on developments in the epidemic.
2020-07-27 09:50:58
Australia’s second-most populous state of Victoria reported on Monday six new deaths from the coronavirus and logged a record daily increase of 532 new cases compared with 459 a day earlier.
Victoria on Sunday suffered its deadliest day since the pandemic began after reporting 10 deaths, mostly at aged-care facilities.
2020-07-27 09:32:21
China recorded 61 new coronavirus cases on Monday— the highest daily figure since April— propelled by clusters in three separate regions that have sparked fears of a fresh wave.
The bulk of 57 new domestic cases were found in the far northwestern Xinjiang region, according to the National Health Commission, where a sudden outbreak in the regional capital of Urumqi occurred in mid-July.
It is the highest daily tally of new virus cases since April 14, when 89 cases, mostly imported, were recorded.
2020-07-27 09:10:02
The United States recorded 55,187 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, Johns Hopkins University reported.
The world's hardest-hit country now has a total caseload of 4,229,624, the Baltimore-based university showed.
An additional 518 deaths brought the overall death toll to 146,909.
After a drop in infection rate in the late spring, the US has seen a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, particularly in southern and western states such as California, Texas, Alabama and Florida.
The daily death toll for the past four days exceeded 1,000.
2020-07-26 23:53:13
Moderna Inc has said it has received an additional $472 million from the US government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to support development of its novel coronavirus vaccine.
The US-based drug maker said the additional funding will support its late-stage clinical development including the expanded Phase 3 study of Moderna’s vaccine candidate.
In April, Moderna had received $483 million from the US federal agency that funds disease-fighting technology, when the experimental vaccine was in an early-stage trial conducted by the US National Institutes of Health.
2020-07-26 23:26:00
Hong Kong will stop most ships from changing crews in the territory from Wednesday to cut back on quarantine exemptions blamed for causing a third wave of coronavirus cases.
After seemingly ending local transmissions for weeks, new infections have hit triple figures on a daily basis in the densely packed finance hub — sparking fears the new outbreak is spreading out of control.
More than 1,000 infections have been confirmed since early July — more than 40% of the total since the virus first hit the city in late January.
Some health experts have blamed an exemption from the usual 14-day quarantine which the government granted to "essential personnel", including cross-boundary truckers and air and sea crew.
Because of its extensive air links and busy port, Hong Kong is a popular transit point for ships to change crews.
From Wednesday, only vessels with freight destined for Hong Kong will be able to change crews, but even they will not be allowed to mingle in public and must go straight to or from the airport, or stay in a designated quarantine venue.
2020-07-26 23:09:00
Former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa was suffering from malaria and died of a heart attack, his family has said, scotching rumours that he succumbed to coronavirus.
"Mkapa was found with malaria and he was admitted for treatment since Wednesday," family member William Erio revealed during a funeral mass broadcast on state television TBC1.
Mkapa, who ruled the East African country for two terms from 1995 to 2005, died early Friday aged 81 in a Dar es Salaam hospital but the government did not reveal the cause of the death.
"He was feeling better on Thursday and I was with him until 8pm that day," Erio said.
"After watching the evening news bulletin, he died of cardiac arrest," Erio added, saying he wished to dispel rumours spreading on social media that Mkapa had contracted the new coronavirus.
2020-07-26 22:38:00
The Spanish government has said that in spite of the recent surge in coronavirus cases, the situation there is "under control".
The statement comes in response to countries that have recently announced travel restrictions on Spain.
From Sunday, passengers arriving from Spain to the UK will have to undergo a fortnight in isolation while Norway imposed restrictions on travel to Spain.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex "strongly recommended" Friday that the French avoid going to Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain where the epidemic is particularly on the rise.
"The Spanish government considers that the situation is under control, the outbreaks have been located, isolated and controlled," the foreign ministry told AFP.
"Spain is a safe country," the ministry said, adding that in the case of the British quarantine, Spain is "in contact" with London whose decisions it "respects".
Spain reported nearly a thousand new cases a day on both Thursday and Friday.
Its number of cases has tripled in two weeks while more than 280 homes are being closely monitored by the authorities.
2020-07-26 22:03:00
Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab has responded to concerns of expensive healthcare in the province, especially when it comes to COVID-19 treatment.
Responding to journalist Hamid Mir who pointed out that Liaquat National Hospital demands Rs100,000 per day from COVID-19 patients and Indus Hospital treats patients for free, Wahab said that Indus has been the Sindh government's partner "in providing quality healthcare in Sindh".
"Government of Sindh gives an annual grant of Rs2bn and another grant of Rs2bn for construction of new building of hospital. In our fight against COVID-19, [government of Sindh] has given Rs300m as special grant," he said.
2020-07-26 21:28:00
The Balochistan health department has reported 23 new infections, taking the province's tally to 11,601.
No more deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.
2020-07-26 21:00:00
The premier's aide on health Dr Zafar Mirza has urged people to make use of online markets for the purchase of sacrificial animals.
"Children, the elderly and the sick should not be taken to the cattle markets and people should try to make collective sacrifices this time," he added.
Read more here.
2020-07-26 20:44:00
South Africa's trade minister Ebrahim Patel has tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the fourth minister to do so.
2020-07-26 20:27:00
A Bangladesh zoo has seen a record rise in animal births since it closed its doors due to the coronavirus pandemic.
2020-07-26 19:56:00
Some 500 workers are in quarantine on a large Bavarian farm to contain a mass coronavirus outbreak, German officials have said.
They also announced free COVID-19 tests for worried local residents.
A total of 174 seasonal workers have tested positive for the virus since Friday, Werner Bumeder, the district administrator of Dingolfing-Landau, told a press conference.
Most of the seasonal employees come from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine, he said, and had been working in close proximity harvesting cucumbers at the farm in the municipality of Mamming.
He stressed that the cluster appeared to be limited to "a closed group of people" and had not yet spread to the wider population.
The farm's 480 employees and managers are all in lockdown on-site, with those who have tested negative staying in separate accommodation from those known to be infected.
The farm itself has been closed off from the outside world with a security team monitoring the quarantine.
2020-07-26 19:42:00
"We won't leave until Bibi leaves." Israel's struggle to contain the coronavirus has stirred deep-seated resentment towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and protests demanding his resignation are growing by the week.
As the Shabbat rest-day was ending on Saturday evening, thousands of demonstrators headed towards Netanyahu's Jerusalem residence, a main site for protests that have taken place in multiple cities.
Some demonstrators branded Netanyahu — who has been indicted with bribery, fraud and breach of trust — as corrupt, while others condemned a lack of coherence in the government's response to the pandemic.
For Tamir Gay-Tsabary, who travels each day to the Jerusalem protests with his wife Tami from southern Israel, coronavirus was "a trigger" that brought renewed focus to Netanyahu's leadership faults.
Netanyahu won praise for his initial response to the virus. His government's quick decisions in March to curb travel and impose a lockdown brought the daily case-count to a trickle by early May.
But an economic re-opening that began in late April has led to an explosion in transmission in the country of about 9 million people, with daily COVID-19 tallies ranging between 1,000 and 2,000 cases in recent weeks.
2020-07-26 19:23:00
In the Akabane district of Tokyo city in Japan, diners are using mannequins to enforce social distancing in customers.
2020-07-26 18:58:23
WASHINGTON: US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Sunday Republican coronavirus relief legislation will be made public on Monday and that he believes the party can move quickly with Democrats to hammer out their differences.
The most pressing issues are enhanced unemployment benefits that run out next week and liability protections from coronavirus-related lawsuits, Mnuchin said.
“We can move very quickly with the Democrats on these issues. We’ve moved quickly before, and I see no reason why we can’t move quickly again,” Mnuchin said on the “Fox News Sunday” program.
2020-07-26 18:43:15
MADRID: Spain’s COVID-19 death toll could be nearly 60% higher than the official figure of 28,432, according to an investigation by El Pais newspaper published on Sunday.
The country’s official death toll includes only people who were formally diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, not suspected cases who were never tested.
A lack of widespread testing, particularly in the early stages of the outbreak, means the official count could underestimate the virus’ toll, like in many other countries.
By counting regional statistics of all suspected and confirmed fatalities from the virus, El Pais reached a total of 44,868 deaths. If accurate, that would make Spain’s outbreak the second deadliest in Europe after Britain’s.
Spain’s health ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The El Pais figure is roughly in line with figures from the National Epidemiology Centre and National Statistics Centre (INE), which register excess mortality by comparing deaths across the country with historical averages.
2020-07-26 18:25:03
LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to roll out a £10 million anti-obesity campaign, including junk food advert bans, following his own brush with death that he partly blamed on his weight.
Johnson will announce his "Better Health" campaign on Monday, which is expected to include encouraging doctors to issue "cycling prescriptions" for overweight patients, more segregated cycling lanes and a ban on junk food television ads before 9.00pm, according to British media reports.
"COVID-19 has given us all a wake-up call of the immediate and long-term risks of being overweight, and the Prime Minister is clear we must use this moment to get healthier, more active and eat better," said a government spokesman on Sunday.
"We will be urging the public to use this moment to take stock of how they live their lives, and to take simple steps to lose weight, live healthier lives, and reduce pressure on the NHS."
Restaurants will also have to publish the number of calories in the meals they serve, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
Johnson, who has fought his own battles to control his weight, required intensive care treatment in April after catching the virus.
The plan, which the Guardian estimated would cost £10 million ($12.8 million, 11 million euros), marks a U-turn by the prime minister, who has long railed against the interventionist "nanny state".
A Public Health England (PHE) study published on Saturday found that obesity increased the risk of death from coronavirus by 40 percent.
2020-07-26 18:12:39
MUMBAI: India needs to be “extra vigilant” as the novel coronavirus threat persists, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a public address on Sunday, even as the country registered a record number of patient recoveries in a day.
Infections from the coronavirus have risen rapidly in India, the world’s second most populous country, with more than 48,000 cases recorded in the last 24 hours. India has so far recorded nearly 1.4 million cases and more than 30,000 deaths.
On Sunday, the Indian government said 36,145 patients had recovered and been discharged in the last 24 hours, marking a record number of single-day recoveries. At the same time, a record number of tests in a single day — more than 440,000 — were conducted, it added.
Modi, in his monthly radio broadcast to the nation, sounded caution, saying it was important to practise social distancing and wear masks to fight the virus.
“The danger of corona is far from being over. At many places, it is spreading fast,” Modi said. “We need to be extra vigilant.”
In recent weeks, coronavirus infections have spread further into the countryside and smaller towns. Experts say case numbers will rise significantly in the coming months as testing increases, straining a healthcare system already pushed to the brink.
2020-07-26 18:00:04
AMMAN: Jordan will reopen its airports to commercial flights next month after a near five-month shutdown imposed to stem the spread of the coronavirus, an official said on Sunday.
The move comes as the country is trying to revive its economy which has been badly hit since the outbreak of the pandemic.
Civil aviation commission chief Haitham Misto told state television that flights from 22 "low risk" countries will be allowed from August 5.
The countries listed by the health ministry include Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, Georgia, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Thailand, he said.
Travellers from those countries will not need to isolate for 14 days when they reach Jordan but must be tested for the virus before arriving, Misto said, adding that the list would be updated every two weeks.
Transport Minister Khaled Saif however that those travellers must show proof of having spent two weeks in one of the countries on the list before arriving in Jordan.
Anyone providing false information will be fined 10,000 dinars ($14,000), he said.
2020-07-26 17:42:58
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department reported 177 new cases, taking the provincial tally to 33,397.
It also reported two more deaths, taking the death toll to 1,178 in the province.
2020-07-26 17:33:12
Sindh reported 713 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 118,311 with 16 more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,151, the province's chief minister Murad Ali Shah said on Sunday.
Shah said that 10,480 samples were tested in the last 24 hours out and 3,384 patients recovered overnight.
2020-07-26 17:28:03
HANOI: Vietnam suspended its domestic football leagues on Sunday until further notice following news of the first locally transmitted case of coronavirus in nearly 100 days.
After more than three months with no local cases, a 57-year-old retired Vietnamese man in the central city of Danang tested positive for the virus.
Following the discovery, authorities announced Sunday that they have found three more infections connected to the Danang case.
In response, the Vietnam Professional Football (VPF) announced all domestic football leagues have been suspended.
The country's top Vleague and the First Division were supposed to play new rounds starting July 29.
The change in plans is "to ensure the safety of the players", organisers said in a statement.
No details were provided on when the matches might resume.
2020-07-26 17:11:31
Minister for Information and Broadcasting Shibli Faraz says the government has adopted a balanced strategy to deal with the challenge of coronavirus pandemic.
The minister was addressing a news conference along with Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Digital Pakistan Tania Aidrus and Focal person to the PM on COVID-19 Dr Faisal Sultan in Islamabad on Sunday.
Faraz said coronavirus has engulfed the whole world and Pakistan introduced lockdown policy in this situation to save precious lives and the economy as well. He said Pakistan's model is being replicated in many countries in the world.
The minister said Pakistan cannot afford a complete lockdown policy. He said some countries observed strict lockdown to stop spread of this global epidemic but they are facing disturbing economic hardships and rising death toll.
2020-07-26 17:02:25
HANOI: Vietnam reintroduced social distancing measures in the central city of Danang on Sunday after a second locally transmitted novel coronavirus case was detected there, more than three months after any cases were reported in the country.
The Southeast Asian country was back on high alert after the government on Saturday confirmed its first community infection since April, and another case early on Sunday, both in Danang, a tourist hot spot.
Authorities gave no more details about how the two infections were contracted and did not say if they were believed to be linked.
The city’s social distancing measures would come into force until further notice, the government said in a statement on its website.
Danang would stop receiving inbound tourists for 14 days, while all religious, sports and cultural events would be suspended.
2020-07-26 16:45:12
Germany's Ambassador to Pakistan Bernhard Schlagheck says his country backs Islamabad in its efforts to overcome the socioeconomic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and build back a more sustainable future.
Bernhard, in an Interview with APP, said Berlin has decided to scale up its support to local governments in their fight against the pandemic. It has made available 0.5 million euros to Pakistan to promote activities, which would help mitigate the socioeconomic effects of the pandemic at a local level.
2020-07-26 16:30:18
LONDON: TUI, Europe’s biggest holiday company, said on Sunday it had decided to cancel all holidays to mainland Spain up to and including Sunday August 9 in updated advice after Britain imposed a quarantine on those returning from the country.
“TUI UK have taken the decision to cancel all holidays to mainland Spain up to and including Sunday 9th August 2020,” it said in a statement.
“We know how much our customers look forward to their holiday abroad and some will be able to accommodate the new quarantine restrictions. Therefore all those that wish to travel to the Balearic Islands and Canary Isands will be able to travel as planned from Monday 27th July.”
2020-07-26 16:18:50
ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza advised people to be cautious of the coronavirus standard operating procedures (SOPs) during Eid ul Adhaa.
Addressing a news conference Sunday, he urged people to book sacrificial animals online so that they can avoid visits to the cattle markets where large gatherings can contribute to the spread of the virus.
Dr Mirza said that the government had prepared in advance for Eid ul Adha 2020 keeping in mind the violation of SOPs that took place during Eid ul Fitr earlier. He added that citizens are not allowed to set up cattle markets inside city premises this time.
"Children, the elderly and the sick should not be taken to the cattle markets and people should try to make collective sacrifices this time," he added.
Mirza also underscored that the citizens should abide by the issued guidelines to perform Eid prayers to stem the spread of the contagious disease.
Read more here.
2020-07-26 16:00:26
UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab says Britain acted swiftly to impose a quarantine on travellers returning from Spain after seeing data on Friday recording a large jump in coronavirus cases.
Asked by Sky News why the decision was taken with so little notice, Raab said: "Because the cases in Spain, the data we got was on Friday, we obviously compiled that through the course of the day.
"It showed a big jump right across mainland Spain. That was then assessed yesterday afternoon and we took the decision as swiftly as we could. We can't make apologies for doing so; we must be able to take swift, decisive action," he said, describing the move as "a real-time response".
2020-07-26 15:45:28
Australia reached a grim milestone on Sunday, recording its highest ever daily tally of deaths from the novel coronavirus, as authorities in Victoria state battled scores of clusters of infection and intensified efforts to trace their contacts.
Victoria's leader, Daniel Andrews, told a media briefing the state had reported 10 COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, Australia's highest ever daily toll.
Victoria also recorded 459 new cases of the coronavirus, its second highest tally ever, he said, falling short only of the 483 last Wednesday, and up from 357 on Saturday.
2020-07-26 15:27:35
2020-07-26 15:05:47
Russia on Sunday reported 5,765 new coronavirus cases and 77 more deaths, a steep decline from the 146 deaths reported a day earlier.
The nationwide tally of infections has risen to 812,485, Russia's coronavirus crisis response centre said. The COVID-19 death toll now stands at 13,269 and 600,250 people have recovered.
2020-07-26 14:32:36
President Dr Arif Alvi has said the government's smart lockdown strategy has led to an outstanding recovery of coronavirus patients in the country.
“Credit to pro-poor and intelligent government decisions and the people of Pakistan for mostly following directions and SOPs,” President Alvi said on Twitter.
2020-07-26 14:05:02
British tourists flying home from holidays in Spain have reacted angrily to the UK government’s abrupt decision to impose a two-week coronavirus quarantine on everyone travelling from there.
“It’s really bad because it’s just come all of a sudden, it’s not given very much time to prepare so everyone is now panicking,” Emily Harrison who was flying to London said.
Spain had been on a list of countries that the British government had said were safe for travellers to visit - meaning tourists returning home would not have to go into quarantine.
However, a recent spike in cases has promoted countries to re-imposequarantine requirement for people arriving from Spain.
2020-07-26 13:32:28
French health authorities are making COVID-19 tests available free of charge without prescription as they closely monitor an uptick in infections after the lifting of lockdown measures.
PCR nasal swab tests, which detect COVID-19 infections caused by the novel coronavirus, will be freely available on demand under government orders published on Saturday.
"We wouldn't describe this as a second wave, but what's clear is that for several days now we have seen a noticeable increase in the number of confirmed cases, which had been in decline for 13 weeks," Health Minister Olivier Veran said.
2020-07-26 13:04:23
The global number of coronavirus cases crossed 16 million on Sunday, more than half of them in the Americas and the Caribbean, according to an AFP tally from official sources.
2020-07-26 12:17:05
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 305 to 205,269, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.
The reported death toll was unchanged with 9,118, the tally showed.
2020-07-26 12:00:24
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has said he has tested negative for the coronavirus after weeks quarantined in his residence due to an infection.
In a photo posted to social media, Bolsonaro appeared with a box of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug he credited for his recovery despite a lack of scientific evidence about its effectiveness. In an accompanying text, he said his RT-PCR test for Sars-Cov 2 was negative.
He did not say when he took the test nor did he provide any further details.
Bolsonaro reported testing positive three times this month, including an initial diagnosis on July 7 for COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus.
Read more here.
2020-07-26 11:31:12
China reported 46 new cases of the coronavirus in the mainland, up from 34 cases a day earlier, the health commission said on Sunday.
Of the new infections, 22 were in the far western region of Xinjiang, according to a statement by the National Health Commission. Thirteen were in the northeastern province of Liaoning, while the remaining 11 were imported cases.
2020-07-26 11:05:14
Confirmed coronavirus cases in Pakistan climbed to 273,112 after 1,226 new coronavirus infections were reported in the country in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 117,598 cases in Sindh, 91,901 in Punjab, 33,220 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,578 Balochistan, 2,023 Azad Jammu and Kashmir and 1,952 in Gilgit Baltistan.
The country also reported 35 fatalities in the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,822.
2020-07-26 10:32:53
North Korea on Sunday reported a suspected case of COVID-19, according to state media, acknowledging for the first time that the coronavirus pandemic may have crossed into the country.
Official news agency KCNA described the case as "a person who is suspected to have been infected with the vicious virus returned on July 19 after illegally crossing the demarcation line."
Pyongyang previously said it had not had a single case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and the country´s borders remain closed.
2020-07-26 10:05:12
Australia has suffered its deadliest day from the coronavirus since the pandemic began, with authorities reporting ten fatalities Sunday and a rise in new infections despite an intensive lockdown effort.
The country's COVID-19 death toll rose to 155 and the southeastern state of Victoria reported more than 450 new infections in the last 24 hours.
It is the worst loss of life from the virus in Australia since the disease first emerged, according to a tally compiled by AFP.
Still, 459 fresh cases were reported in Victoria on Sunday— up from 357 on Saturday. Around a dozen more were recorded in other parts of Australia.
2020-07-26 09:22:38
The United States recorded 68,212 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, Johns Hopkins University reported in its real-time tally.
That brought the total number of cases in the world's hardest-hit country to 4,174,437, the Baltimore-based university said.
Another 1,067 deaths were reported, bringing the country's total fatalities to 146,391. The daily death toll for the past four days has exceeded 1,000.
2020-07-25 23:59:25
Sindh reported 798 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 117,598 with 25 more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,135, the province's chief minister Murad Ali Shah said.
2020-07-25 23:37:03
All travellers arriving in the United Kingdom from Spain from Sunday will have to quarantine themselves for 14 days to ensure they do not spread coronavirus, Scotland’s government has said.
The measure, coming into force from midnight (2300 GMT on Saturday), will deal a major blow to Spain, which is trying to recoup its tourism season after the sector took a battering from COVID-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions earlier in the year.
It will also hit airlines and travel companies struggling to get back to business.
“Spain will be removed from the list of countries exempt from quarantine requirements due to an increased number of cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the last few days,” Scotland’s government said in a statement.
“The decision, also made by the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland and Wales as well as the UK Government, has been made to reduce the risk of the transmission of the virus by those travelling from Spain,” it added.
The United Kingdom’s four constituent nations — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — each set their own COVID-19 policies, but follow similar rules in most cases.
2020-07-25 23:26:25
The premier's aide on health, Dr Zafar Mirza has said that health teams are conducting tests at cattle markets to enhance testing and to "sustain the COVID-19 decline".
He said that a health camp is also being set up at the mandis to make it a safe place for traders and buyers.
Dr Mirza urged everyone to remain extra vigilant so the decline in cases can be maintained.
2020-07-25 23:07:59
Germany may introduce compulsory coronavirus testing for holidaymakers returning from high-risk destinations after the number of new infections in the country hit a two-month high, the health minister said on Saturday.
Health Minister Jens Spahn told Deutschlandfunk radio the government wanted to do everything possible to stem the spread of the virus while also respecting people’s basic rights.
“We are also checking whether it is legally possible to oblige someone to do a test, because it would be an encroachment on freedom,” Spahn said.
The minister, who is a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, added that the courts were examining all coronavirus measures to ensure they are proportionate in light of their impact on basic rights.
2020-07-25 22:52:02
Almost three-quarters of mothers in Britain have been forced to cut work hours because of childcare issues under COVID-19 lockdowns, according to a survey by a maternal rights group which warned more action was needed to protect women’s careers.
More than eight in 10 employed mothers said they needed childcare to be able to work, but fewer than half said they had enough childcare to let them do their job during the pandemic, showed the survey by Pregnant Then Screwed released on Saturday.
“This lack of childcare is destroying women’s careers,” said the campaign group’s founder and chief executive Joeli Brearley.
“They are being made redundant, they are being forced to cut their hours, and they are being treated negatively all because they are picking up the unpaid labour.”
Studies around the world have found women are picking up more of the extra chores and childcare during the pandemic.
The International Labour Organization has warned coronavirus could wipe out “the modest progress” made on gender equality at work in recent decades, with women globally at greater risk of losing their jobs.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-25 22:22:54
Storm Hanna, the first hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic season, was forecast to make landfall on the Texas coast, threatening one of the nation’s COVID-19 hot spots with storm surge and flooding.
Hanna was about 75 miles (120 km) east-northeast of Port Mansfield, Texas, packing maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Saturday morning.
“Additional strengthening is forecast before Hanna makes landfall later today,” the Miami-based forecaster said, adding that the hurricane will rapidly weaken after it moves inland.
Video footage on Twitter of Port Aransas in Nueces County, Texas showed gray skies and lashing waves that had already engulfed a beach ahead of the storm’s landfall.
The storm was projected to hit the coast between Corpus Christi and Brownsville, a region that has struggled to contain outbreaks of COVID-19 in recent weeks. Cases along the state’s coast have soared into the tens of thousands, and more than 400 people in Corpus Christi’s city of 325,000 were hospitalized with the novel coronavirus on Friday, according to city data.
2020-07-25 22:09:45
Islamabad recorded 55 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Sector G-10, the district health officer said.
2020-07-25 21:59:03
Balochistan reported 28 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 11,578, health department said.
2020-07-25 21:41:43
Britain’s government is set to announce all travelers from Spain arriving after midnight (2300 GMT) will need to spend two weeks in quarantine in case they are infected with coronavirus, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.
“Second wave of Covid-19 there has prompted decision to kick Spain off the safe country list,” the newspaper’s political editor, Tim Shipman, said on Twitter.
Britain’s health ministry had no immediate comment on the report.
If true, the reported announcement would deal a heavy blow to Spain, which is trying to recoup its tourism season after the sector took a battering from coronavirus lockdowns and travel restrictions earlier in the year.
There was no immediate comment from Spanish government officials.
Cases of coronavirus have been on the rise again in recent weeks in Spain, prompting concern in several European countries.
2020-07-25 22:39:03
2020-07-25 21:24:00
The National Institute of Health, in a bid to curb the spread of coronavirus, has issued the guidelines for Eid-ul-Azha, which will be observed on August 1 (Saturday).
”The animal markets to be set up around the time of Eid must adhere to these guidelines for social distancing and protective measures to be practised for preventing the spread of infection among the sellers and buyers and to ensure the safe Eid during the COVID 19 outbreak,” the document issued read.
The NIH also said that the masses should keep their travelling minimum and refrain from crowding the markets as was witnessed during Ramazan.
“Every person should bring his own prayer mat for Eid prayers,” the advisory stated and discouraged children and the elderly from attending the prayers.
Read more
2020-07-25 20:53:00
The Galiyat Development Authority and Abbottabad district administration, in a joint operation on Friday, sealed around 15 hotels and guesthouses in the galiyat for violating lockdown measures put in place to curb the coronavirus epidemic.
It is pertinent to mention that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has imposed a complete ban on entry of tourists to Nathiagali, Dongagali, Baragali, Ayubia and other hill stations, which are collectively known as the galiyat.
Speaking to The News, Deputy Commissioner Mughees Sanaullah said that the tourists have been warned of stern action in case of any violation, particularly during the Eid ul Adha holidays.
Sanaullah said that around 15 hotels were fined and two hotels and guesthouses were sealed, while four persons were sent to jail for flouting lockdown rules.
2020-07-25 20:26:00
Visitors to Greece arriving by air from Bulgaria and Romania will need to provide proof they have tested negative for coronavirus to gain entry, Greece's Civil Protection authority said on Saturday.
The requirement, which will come into effect from July 28 to August 4, will not apply to Greek nationals arriving from those countries.
"Based on an analysis of epidemiological data, arrivals to Greece via air connections from Bulgaria and Romania will be required to provide a negative test result for the coronavirus that has been done up to 72 hours before their arrival," the authority said.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Bulgaria passed 10,000 on Saturday, with 270 confirmed new infections in the past 24 hours, official data showed.
The Civil Protection authority said it is continuously monitoring data to ensure that the opening of the country to foreign visitors is done safely.
2020-07-25 20:46:00
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged people on Saturday to observe health protocols and practice social distancing during upcoming Muslim festivities, as a health official said there had been a surge in coronavirus infections in a major holy city.
Muslims around the world mark the Eid al-Adha feast, due to start at the end of the month. This year, Saudi Arabia is to limit the number of domestic pilgrims attending haj to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Most Iranians are Shi’ite Muslims, who also mark their most significant mourning ceremonies of Ashura in September.
“Let glorious festivities be held in mosques and religious centers by observing health protocols and social distancing,” Rouhani said in a televised speech.
"Let masks this year be part of the glorious mourning of Muharram,” Rouhani said, referring to Ashura, the 10th day of the lunar month of Muharram, when according to Islamic tradition Imam Hussein was killed in battle in 680.
2020-07-25 20:01:06
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 149 new cases, taking the provincial tally to 33,220.
It also reported six more deaths, taking the death toll to 1,176 in the province.
2020-07-25 19:36:00
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 639,981 people since emerging in China late last year, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT.
At least 15,815,830 coronavirus cases have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 8,891,100 are now considered recovered.
Thursday and Friday saw the two largest daily increases in global cases in the pandemic so far, with more than 280,000 infections recorded on both days.
More than five million new infections have been officially reported since July 1, which represents a third of the total number of cases since the pandemic began.
On Friday, 6,241 new deaths and 284,661 new cases were recorded worldwide. The countries with the most new deaths were United States with 1,157, followed by Brazil with 1,156 and India with 757.
The US is the worst-hit country with 145,546 deaths from 4,112,651 cases. At least 1,261,624 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 85,238 deaths from 2,343,366 cases, Britain with 45,677 deaths from 297,914 cases, Mexico with 42,645 deaths from 378,285 cases, and Italy with 35,097 deaths from 245,590 cases.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 85 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Britain with 67, Spain 61, Italy 58, and Sweden 56.
China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 83,784 cases (34 new since Friday), including 4,634 deaths and 78,889 recoveries.
Europe overall has 207,599 deaths from 3,046,440 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 179,692 deaths from 4,247,552 infections, the United States and Canada 154,461 deaths from 4,225,857 cases, Asia 56,099 deaths from 2,396,156 cases, Middle East 24,872 deaths from 1,073,596 cases, Africa 17,084 deaths from 810,634 cases, and Oceania 174 deaths from 15,597 cases.
2020-07-25 18:57:38
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has announced he has tested negative for the new coronavirus more than two weeks after being diagnosed on July 7, attributing his recovery to an unproven malaria drug.
"RT-PCR for Sars-Cov 2: negative. Good morning everyone," the 65-year-old tweeted, along with a photo of himself smiling and holding a packet of hydroxychloroquine, whose effectiveness against COVID-19 has not been demonstrated in clinical trials.
He did not say when he took the latest test.
The president, who has routinely downplayed the virus he calls a "little flu" but which is currently ravaging his country, spent nearly 20 days self-isolating at his official residence in the capital Brasilia, the Alvorada Palace.
During that time he underwent at least three more virus tests, all positive.
The pandemic has exploded in Brazil, the country with the most infections and deaths from COVID-19 anywhere in the world except the United States.
The Latin American powerhouse has registered nearly 2.3 million cases of the new coronavirus and more than 84,000 deaths, and the numbers have continued to rise rapidly.
2020-07-25 18:39:32
The world has set a new record for the highest daily increase in coronavirus infections, as a survey released Saturday shows governments are fast losing support for their handling of the pandemic.
There were more than 280,000 new cases recorded globally on both Thursday and Friday, the highest daily rises since the virus emerged in China late last year.
Friday's tally of 282,042 was marginally down on Thursday's single-day record 284,661, according to an AFP count based on official sources, but still marks an alarming uptick in the spread of the virus.
Nearly a third of the world's 15.8 million infections have been registered since July 1, while the total death toll nears 640,000.
The United States remains the hardest-hit nation, on Friday reporting its second straight day of more than 70,000 new cases and over 1,000 deaths as the virus takes hold in the country's south and west.
Populations in France, Germany, Britain, Japan, Sweden and the US widely believed death and infection figures to be higher than recorded, according to the study, which polled 1,000 people in each nation.
"In most countries this month, support for national governments is falling," the report by the Kekst CNC communications consulting group said.
2020-07-25 18:27:16
Young, previously healthy adults can take weeks to fully recover from even a mild COVID-19 infection, with about a fifth of patients under 35 years reporting not returning to their usual state of health up to 21 days after testing positive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A telephone survey across 13 states of symptomatic adults with mild COVID-19 found 35% had not returned to their usual state of health when interviewed two to three weeks after testing, the CDC reported in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Friday.
Cough, fatigue and shortness of breath were among the symptoms reported while testing that persisted even weeks later, according to the report.
The findings indicate recovery can be prolonged even in young adults without chronic medical conditions, making a case for public health messaging to target populations that might not perceive COVID-19 as being a severe illness.
Among 292 people interviewed, 274 reported experiencing one or more symptoms at the time of testing. Among symptomatic respondents who reported not having returned to their usual state of health, 26% were between 18 and 34 years of age, 32% were between 35 and 49 years, and 47% were over 50.
2020-07-25 18:13:11
Thousands of Filipinos were crammed into a baseball stadium in Manila on Saturday, breaking social distancing rules despite coronavirus risks, after people wanting to return to their home provinces flooded a government transportation program.
Officials had reserved the stadium as a place to test people before transporting them back to their home provinces under a program to help people who had lost their jobs in the capital return to their families elsewhere.
Officials had planned for 7,500 people to arrive at the stadium from Friday, but were caught out when another 2,000 people who were not yet scheduled to travel headed there anyway.
“Because of the overflowing number of people, we can no longer control (the situation) and the relevance of social distancing had been diminished,” Assistant Secretary Joseph Encabo, who is overseeing the government’s transportation assistance program, told Reuters by phone.
Many of those at the stadium had got stuck in the capital when it imposed one of the strictest and longest lockdowns in mid-March in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Among those at the stadium was Fred Marick Ukol, 40, who became stuck in Manila after his flight to Australia, where he had found work as a welder, was cancelled.
“We don’t have work and now all of our savings have dried up because of the lockdown,” Ukol said, referring to himself and fellow overseas Filipino workers.
Encabo said everybody at the stadium would undergo rapid testing for COVID-19 and must be cleared before being allowed to board the buses, sea vessels, and trains the government has prepared.
2020-07-25 17:59:37
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged people to observe health protocols and practice social distancing during upcoming Muslim festivities, as a health official said there had been a surge in coronavirus infections in a major holy city.
Muslims around the world mark the Eid-ul-Azha feast, due to start at the end of the month. This year, Saudi Arabia is to limit the number of domestic pilgrims attending haj to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
“Let glorious festivities be held in mosques and religious centers by observing health protocols and social distancing,” Rouhani said in a televised speech.
“Let [face] masks this year be part of the glorious mourning of Muharram,” Rouhani said, referring to Ashura, the 10th day of the lunar month of Muharram, when according to Islamic tradition Imam Hussein was killed in battle in 680.
2020-07-25 17:45:51
Australia’s Victoria state recorded an increase in new coronavirus cases as officials laid out new directives to protect people in retirement homes and help contain a second wave of infections.
Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state, recorded 357 new cases overnight, and five deaths, up from 300 on Friday when it saw its highest ever death toll of 7, but lower than Wednesday’s record daily increase of 483 cases, state officials said.
Australia has escaped the high coronavirus casualty numbers of other countries, with 13,950 infections and 145 deaths as of Saturday, but recent flare-ups in its two most populous states have raised alarm.
A cluster of infections in Melbourne, Victoria’s largest city, prompted the government to impose a six-week partial lockdown and make masks mandatory for its residents, or risk a A$200 ($143) fine.
“This is an incredibly stubborn second wave,” state premier Daniel Andrews told a regular media briefing.
2020-07-25 17:32:22
Indonesia reported 1,868 new coronavirus infections, bringing the total to 97,286, data from the country’s COVID-19 task force showed.
The number of deaths in the Southeast Asian nation related to COVID-19 rose by 49, to bring the total to 4,714, the data showed.
2020-07-25 17:15:55
The United States recorded more than 1,000 deaths from COVID-19 for the fourth straight day on Friday but a top White House advisor on the pandemic said she saw signs that the worst could be past in hard-hit southern and western states.
At least 1,019 fatalities due to COVID-19 were confirmed nationwide on Friday, following 1,140 on Thursday, 1,135 on Wednesday and 1,141 on Tuesday. Total cases across the United States rose by at least 68,800 on Friday to over 4 million.
The numbers have been driven in large part by a surge in infections in Arizona, California, Florida, Texas and California.
“We’re already starting to see some plateauing in these critically four states that have really suffered under the last four weeks, so Texas, California, Arizona and Florida, those major metros and throughout their counties,” Dr Deborah Birx told NBC news in an interview.
2020-07-25 17:05:18
Almost 40 countries have reported record single-day increases in coronavirus infections over the past week, around double the number that did so the previous week, according to a Reuters tally showing a pick-up in the pandemic in every region of the world.
The rate of cases has been increasing not only in countries like the United States, Brazil and India, which have dominated global headlines with large outbreaks, but in Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Bolivia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Uzbekistan and Israel, among others.
Many countries, especially those where officials eased earlier social distancing lockdowns, are experiencing a second peak more than a month after recording their first.
“We will not be going back to the ‘old normal’. The pandemic has already changed the way we live our lives,” World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week. “We’re asking everyone to treat the decisions about where they go, what they do and who they meet with as life-and-death decisions – because they are.”
The Reuters data, compiled from official reports, shows a steady rise in the number of countries reporting record daily increases in the virus that causes COVID-19 over the past month. At least seven countries recorded such increases three weeks ago, rising to at least 13 countries two weeks ago to at least 20 countries last week and to 37 countries this week.
2020-07-25 16:55:32
Vietnam was back on high alert for the novel coronavirus after medical officials in the central city of Danang detected, its first locally transmitted case for three months.
Thanks to strict quarantine measures and an aggressive and widespread testing programme, the Southeast Asian country has kept its virus total to an impressively low 415 cases and had reported no locally transmitted infections for 100 days.
Vietnam has reported no deaths from the virus.
But on Friday, the health ministry said a 57-year-old man from Danang, a tourist hot spot, had tested positive, prompting the isolation of 50 people he came in contact with.
2020-07-25 16:45:14
Malaysia said a November summit of leaders from Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) nations might still go ahead in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, despite the coronavirus pandemic.
New Zealand, which is hosting next year’s APEC summit, has said already that it will use virtual platforms to conduct the meeting due to travel restrictions and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.
But Malaysian Trade Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali said the government has not cancelled the meeting of the 21 leaders of the APEC countries that it is due to host in November, even though meetings of other officials will be held virtually.
“The cabinet has also agreed not to rule out a format that would involve physical meeting arrangements for the APEC economic leaders’ meetings,” he told an online news conference following talks with fellow trade ministers from the bloc.
2020-07-25 16:26:11
Special Assistant to the PM for Overseas Pakistanis Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari said that once the coronavirus pandemic subsides, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will give preference to Pakistanis in terms of employment opportunities.
The Ministry for Overseas Pakistanis in a statement said that the UAE officials have given Bukhari a reassurance in this regard.
Quoting Bukhari, the statement said the Pakistan government and UAE officials will ensure the rights of Pakistanis working in the Gulf country.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-25 16:15:14
The federal government will review its decision to reopen schools in the first week of September, said Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood.
Talking to a private news channel, the minister said private educational institutions could only call their teachers and administration staff on duty before September 15 but the government schools would be never allowed to call their students before a final decision, as there could be no compromise on the health of students.
"Schools and colleges across the country will reopen only after the coronavirus pandemic is over," he added. He said strict SOPs, including spaced-out seating arrangements, division of classes into further sections and change in timings could be some of the measures that schools will have to adopt whenever they were reopened.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-25 15:53:37
The latest data released by the John Hopkins University has revealed a “marked decline” in the coronavirus cases in Pakistan in the past seven day, Advider to PM on Interior Mirza Shahzad Akbar said on Saturday.
Akbar commended the leadership of PM Imran Khan and untiring efforts by the NCOC and health professionals in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-07-25 15:20:10
The All-China Youth Federation has requested the government of Pakistan to share operational details of the Prime Minister’s Corona Relief Tiger Force (CRTF), said Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Youth Affairs Muhammad Usman Dar’s office on Saturday.
In a news release, it said the CRTF, formed on the instruction of Prime Minister Imran Khan, has started receiving international acclaim and being hailed for its business model.
The SAPM office said the Chinese youth federation has shown interest in learning from the experiences of the tiger force and forwarded a formal request to the Pakistani authorities in that regard.
2020-07-25 14:53:05
Hong Kong reported 133 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, including 126 that were locally transmitted, a record for a daily increase, as authorities warned that the city faces a critical period in containing the virus.
2020-07-25 14:28:00
The World Health Organization expressed concern Friday over a coronavirus resurgence in Europe as Britain joined France, Germany and Austria in announcing tighter mask rules and greater testing.
Europe accounts for a fifth of the world’s more than 15 million infections and remains the hardest-hit region in terms of deaths, with 207,118 out of more than 630,000 globally since the virus emerged in China late last year.
The WHO’s European chapter pointed to rising cases on the continent over the past two weeks, saying tighter measures may be needed to curb the spread.
Europe like other regions is struggling to balance restrictions to halt COVID-19 against the need to revive economies as people there emerge from some of the world’s toughest lockdowns.
A three-year-old girl died in Belgium, becoming the country’s youngest known coronavirus victim, in a further wake-up call for a continent that has recently lifted shutdowns.
"The recent resurgence in COVID-19 cases in some countries following the easing of physical distancing measures is certainly cause for concern," a WHO-Europe spokeswoman told AFP.
"If the situation demands, reintroduction of stricter, targeted measures with the full engagement of communities may be needed."
2020-07-25 14:10:00
Governments are fast losing support for their handling of the coronavirus outbreak from a public that widely believes death and infection figures to be higher than statistics show, a survey of six countries revealed Saturday.
Support for the federal government of the United States, the country with the most reported infections and deaths, dropped by four percentage points from mid-June, with 44 percent of respondents declaring themselves dissatisfied, said a report by the Kekst CNC communications consulting group.
In Britain, just over a third of respondents approved of their government´s actions, a three-point decline in one month, according to the report, based on an opinion poll conducted over five days in mid-July.
It also included France, Sweden, Japan and Germany.
"In most countries this month, support for national governments is falling," the report said.
The notable exception was France, where approval rose by six percentage points, yielding a dissatisfaction rate of 41 percent.
France, which has the world´s seventh-highest COVID-19 toll, has all but emerged from lockdown but has seen infections increase in recent days, prompting the government to order face masks in all enclosed public spaces.
In Sweden, which took a controversial soft approach to lockdown and has a higher toll than its neighbours, the prime minister´s approval rating has shrunk from a positive seven percent to a neutral zero, the poll found.
2020-07-25 13:14:00
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Bulgaria passed 10,000 on Saturday, as the Balkan country reported 270 infections in the past 24 hours, official data showed.
Eight people had died from the virus overnight, taking the official death toll to 337. Total infections stand at 10,123. Some 5,252 people have recovered, data from the official coronavirus information platform showed.
2020-07-25 13:48:00
The National Disaster Management Authority on Staurday clarified that it has not received donations from the US and Japanese governments.
“NDMA only received a generous contribution of US $4 million from Chinese Govt specifically for [the] construction of [a] hospital.”
2020-07-25 12:44:00
Pakistan recorded 1,487 new coronavirus cases and 24 fatalities in the last 24 hours, according to the data released by the National Command and Operations Centre on Saturday.
There is a significant improvement in the number of recoveries from COVID-19 in the country with the tally reaching 236,596.
According to latest statistics, these cases include 116,800 in Sindh, 91,691 in Punjab, 33,071 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,550 Balochistan, 2,012 Azad Kashmir, and 1,942 Gilgit Baltistan.
2020-07-25 12:17:00
China reported 24 new cases of COVID-19 for July 24 in the mainland, with 20 cases of the virus emerging in the country's Xinjiang province.
As per details, nine COVID-19 cases were reported in the northeastern province of Liaoning, while the remaining five were imported cases.
China reported 74 new asymptomatic cases, up from 43 a day earlier.
As of Friday, mainland China had 83,784 confirmed coronavirus cases, the health authority said. The COVID-19 death toll remained at 4,634.
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2020-07-25 11:43:00
The federal government will review its decision to reopen schools in the first week of September, said Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood on Friday.
Talking to a private news channel, the minister said private educational institutions could only call their teachers and administration staff on duty before September 15 but the government schools would be never allowed to call their students before a final decision, as there could be no compromise on the health of students.
"Schools and colleges across the country will reopen only after the coronavirus pandemic is over," he added. He said strict SOPs, including spaced-out seating arrangements, division of classes into further sections and change in timings could be some of the measures that schools will have to adopt whenever they were reopened.
2020-07-25 11:11:00
Pakistan Cricket Board Chief Executive Wasim Khan said on Saturday that sending the Pakistan cricket team on a tour to England during the coronavirus pandemic was quite a tough decision, but "cricket and COVID-19 will have to co-exist".
The PCB official, while speaking to Geo News, said that the situation became quite tense when cricket team players started testing positive for COVID-19.
"However," the official said, "for the restoration of world cricket and to keep it on track, it is imperative to continue with matches."
“COVID-19 and cricket will have to co-exist, there was no other reason for this decision other than the [revival of] global cricket,” he added.
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2020-07-25 10:45:00
Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar on Saturday urged the masses to avoid going to the entertainment places and gatherings on Eid ul Adha as carelessness would jeopardise the gains achieved in the past couple of weeks.
A meeting was held at the National Command and Operation Centre where the participants were briefed on the implementation and violations regarding preventive measures in cattle markets on Eid.
Speaking on the occasion, Asad Umar said as per the directive of Prime Minister Imran Khan, we should celebrate this Eid with simplicity.
He said the pandemic can be controlled by observing social distancing in prayers and following the given instructions.
2020-07-25 10:24:00
The Czech Republic reported 15,081 cases of coronavirus as of July 24 as authorities reinstated measures to curb the spread of the virus, which has spiked in the past week.
Czechs will have to wear face masks when attending indoor events with more than 100 persons present from Saturday as the daily number of confirmed cases surpassed 150 in the last five days and Prague was trying to contain an outbreak from a club.
2020-07-25 10:09:00
Vietnam reported its first local coronavirus infection for more than three months on Saturday after a man in the central city of Danang tested positive four times for the virus, a government statement said.
Thanks to strict quarantine measures and an aggressive and widespread testing programme, Vietnam had kept its virus total to an impressively low 415 cases, and had reported no locally transmitted infections for 100 days.
2020-07-25 13:31:03
Balochistan Health Department, in a statement on Saturday, said that the Quetta residents will get the testing facility for the coronavirus at their homes.
The department said it made the decision keeping in view the difficulties faced by the people.
The residents can dial 0819213258 and 0819202080 to acquire the testing facility, the department stated.
2020-07-25 09:35:20
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis, Zulfi Bukhari thanked the Pakistani diaspora in UAE for being frontline soldiers in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.
He also thanked embassy staff members for doing their best to repatriate stranded Pakistanis in the Emirates and helping the destitute.
2020-07-25 08:44:14
The WHO´s European chapter pointed to rising cases on the continent over the past two weeks, saying tighter measures may be needed to curb the spread.
Europe like other regions is struggling to balance restrictions to halt COVID-19 against the need to revive economies as people there emerge from some of the world´s toughest lockdowns.
A three-year-old girl died in Belgium, becoming the country´s youngest known coronavirus victim, in a further wake-up call for a continent that has recently lifted shutdowns.
"The recent resurgence in COVID-19 cases in some countries following the easing of physical distancing measures is certainly cause for concern," a WHO-Europe spokeswoman told AFP.
"If the situation demands, reintroduction of stricter, targeted measures with the full engagement of communities may be needed."
2020-07-24 23:59:28
Canadian officials urged younger adults who are going to social gatherings for the first time in months, and subsequently driving up the country’s average daily coronavirus case count, to continue to take precautions.
A seven-day rolling average of newly reported cases peaked in early May at 1,800, then fell back to a low of 273 in early July, chief health officer Theresa Tam told reporters. Now it has crept back up to 487, she said.
“The upward trend in daily case counts is worrisome,” Tam said at a news conference. “I must urge all Canadians, particularly younger adults, to not give into COVID-19 fatigue.”
Canada has loosened public health restrictions as the spread of the new coronavirus slowed. Many younger people, exhausted by isolating lockdowns, are venturing out again to mingle, including in some cases in bars and at private parties where the virus can be easily spread.
2020-07-24 23:46:18
McDonald's became the latest US corporate giant to require customers to wear face masks as it paused additional dining room reopenings in response to the US coronavirus outbreak.
The fast-food giant, which has continued to serve in the US throughout the pandemic through its pickup and drive-through sites, said it will "ask customers to wear face coverings when entering our US restaurants effective August 1."
The requirement is consistent "with our top priority: protecting the health and well-being of our and our franchisees, employees and customers," McDonald's said in a statement.
The action comes on the heels of recent announcements by Walmart, Target and a trove of US companies that have required face coverings of customers.
More states have required masks in recent weeks as the coronavirus outbreak has spread to numerous western and southern states. But such requirements have drawn criticism from a minority of the country that has complained of having their liberty suppressed.
2020-07-24 23:39:14
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Friday issued an emergency airworthiness directive for 2,000 U.S.-registered Boeing 737 NG and Classic aircraft, warning of possible corrosion on parked planes that could lead to a dual-engine failure.
Inspectors found compromised air check valves when bringing aircraft out of storage following four recent reports of single-engine shutdowns on planes that had been parked, prompting the directive for aircraft not operated for seven or more straight days.
Alaska Airlines said one of its aircraft is likely one of the four incidents, noting a recent engine shutdown issue.
“The safety of the flight was not compromised,” Alaska said in a statement, adding it is now inspecting the check valves before returning planes to service.
If airlines find corrosion, they must replace the valve prior to flying the aircraft again, the FAA said.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-24 23:24:19
German biotech CureVac, whose coronavirus vaccine is being tested in an early-stage study, said it had filed for an initial public offering in the United States.
The company started its clinical study in healthy volunteers in June, with results expected in the fourth quarter of 2020, regulatory filings showed.
The German government in June disclosed plans to invest 300 million euros ($338.5 million) for a 23% stake in CureVac to further aid the development of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine program.
Software firm SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp, who holds more than 80% stake in CureVac, has agreed to purchase shares worth 100 million euros ($116.37 million) at the IPO.
2020-07-24 23:15:11
Senegal is strengthening its coronavirus testing capacity to enable travellers to get tested before leaving the country, and testing those arriving in the West African state.
Senegal, which depends on tourism for around 4% of GDP, has reported 9,422 cases since the outbreak, with 182 deaths.
It lifted a ban on international flights from July 15 but said it will apply the principle of reciprocity to travellers from countries that do not allow citizens from Senegal.
The health ministry has accredited four testing centres in the capital Dakar, from only one at the onset of the outbreak, to test travellers. It plans to expand testing in other major towns.
2020-07-24 23:03:14
Balochistan reported 27 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 11,550, the health department said.
2020-07-24 22:51:41
Human trials of Russia’s second potential coronavirus vaccine, developed by the Siberian Vector institute, will begin on July 27, the TASS news agency cited Russia’s consumer safety watchdog as saying.
An early-stage human trial of a separate vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya institute in Moscow, was completed this month, with scientists hailing the results and authorities planning to move to mass production in the autumn.
2020-07-24 22:36:32
Japan's capital city Tokyo has recorded 269 new cases today, AFP reports.
2020-07-24 22:19:55
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 633,711 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT.
At least 15,535,790 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 8,718,700 are now considered recovered.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
On Thursday, 6,696 new deaths and 285,396 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on the latest reports, the countries with the newest deaths were Brazil with 1,311 new deaths, followed by the United States with 1,225, and India with 740.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 144,305 deaths from 4,038,864 cases. At least 1,233,269 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 84,082 deaths from 2,287,475 cases, the United Kingdom with 45,554 deaths from 297,146 cases, Mexico with 41,908 deaths from 370,712 cases, and Italy with 35,092 deaths from 245,338 cases.
2020-07-24 21:46:41
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday he thought the country would be through the coronavirus crisis by mid-2021 but feared there may be a second spike that could overwhelm the health service.
“Whether it came from... a bat, a pangolin or however it emerged, it was a very, very nasty thing for the human race. And I think by the middle of next year we will be well on the way past it,” he told reporters.
“This country is going to bounce back stronger than ever before,” Johnson said. “We’ve still got the threat of a second spike.”
“There’s all these anti-vaxxers now,” Johnson told medical workers. “They are nuts, they are nuts.”
2020-07-24 21:30:55
India's death toll from the novel coronavirus overtook France's with 30,601 fatalities and nearly 50,000 new cases overnight, official data showed.
The death toll is the sixth-biggest behind the US, Brazil, Britain, Mexico and Italy, according to an AFP tally. It has the third-highest caseload with almost 1.3 million infections.
In the past 24 hours the country recorded 740 new deaths from the virus and 49,310 fresh infections, according to the health ministry.
But many experts say that with testing levels low, the extent of the pandemic across the world's second-most populous country may be far worse than officially reported.
A antibody study commissioned by the government showed this week that almost a quarter of people in the capital New Delhi have had the virus -- almost 40 times the official number.
2020-07-24 21:13:02
French Prime Minister Jean Castex advised people not to travel to the neighbouring northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia in a bid to help contain the spread of the coronavirus.
“Concerning the situation in Catatonia, which is displaying worsened indicators for infection, we strongly encourage French citizens to avoid going there until the health situation improves,” Castex told reporters.
“We are holding everyone to a much higher degree of security than is asked elsewhere in Europe, such as in France,” the source said.
Castex’s recommendation was the latest blow to Spain’s beleaguered tourism sector after Norway announced that travellers returning from the country would have to undergo a 10-day quarantine.
The French border with Spain remains open, but Castex said he was in talks with Madrid to reduce traffic flow.
2020-07-24 21:00:27
Austria’s push to test large numbers of hotel staff for the coronavirus in a bid to reassure tourists is falling far short of its target as too few people have signed up, Tourism Minister Elisabeth Koestinger said.
The scheme, which began on July 1, is supposed to test 65,000 staff in hotels and other forms of accommodation each week - roughly matching the number of tests otherwise carried out nationally.
The total number of tests carried out so far, however, is just a fraction of that, Koestinger told ORF radio, putting it at more than 14,000.
“We have achieved the capacity to be able to carry out 65,000 tests (a week)... Now we need the businesses, the employees to register, to take part and above all to let themselves be tested regularly,” Koestinger said, without explaining why so few had signed up.
Tourism directly contributes about 6% of Austria’s economic output, and Germans are the top foreign visitors.
“I also believe above all that now, because of the renewed increase in infection numbers, there will be an increase in awareness and that more people will sign up,” Koestinger said.
2020-07-24 20:50:19
A senior Lebanese official said he had taken bad news of testing positive for COVID-19 during a lunch with visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
“I received a telephone call from the hospital saying the test was positive, so naturally I left the lunch and informed all those present,” Hadi Hashem, head of the Lebanese foreign minister’s office, told the local OTV broadcaster.
A spokesman for Le Brian, whose lunch with Lebanese officials on Thursday came during a trip urging reforms to the crisis-hit economy, had no immediate comment on the matter.
Speaking by video, Hashem told OTV he had taken a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test ahead of a planned trip to Denmark, but was now self-isolating at home until Monday before another test.
“The result was unexpected but the most important thing is that the virus level is low and not contagious,” he said.
2020-07-24 20:38:18
The Grand Prix in the United States, Mexico, Brazil and Canada have been scrapped this year but three races in Europe have been added to the coronavirus-affected season, Formula One has said.
There will be an F1 debut for Portugal's Portimao track and a return for Germany's Nurburgring and Imola in Italy.
The US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, had been scheduled for October 23, with a race in Mexico City a week later and Brazil on November 13, but with coronavirus infections rising in all those countries, organisers have abandoned attempts to hold races there.
The race in Canada had originally been scheduled for June, but plans to hold it later in the season have been scrapped because Canadian travel restrictions that make it impossible to hold the race.
The race at the historic Nurburgring circuit, which last saw F1 action in 2013, will take place on October 11.
F1 said it still intended to hold between 15 and 18 races "and end in the Gulf in mid-December".
The sport was hit hard by the pandemic, with the season postponed just hours before the opening practice of the traditional curtain raiser in Melbourne in March.
The season finally got underway this month with two races in Austria before moving to Hungary last weekend. The next two races will take place at Silverstone in England on July 31 and August 7.
2020-07-24 20:24:05
Catalonia has stricter health measures in place than the rest of Europe, including France, a Catalan government source said, after the French Prime Minister Jean Castex recommended avoiding the Spanish region amid a surge in coronavirus cases.
Authorities in Catalonia recommend that everyone, including locals and foreign travellers, take care when travelling in the region due to the high number of coronavirus clusters, the source added.
2020-07-24 20:12:15
The European Union is not interested in buying potential COVID-19 vaccines through an initiative co-led by the World Health Organisation as it deems it slow and high-cost, two EU sources told Reuters, noting the bloc was in talks with drugmakers for shots cheaper than $40.
The position shows the EU has only partly embraced a global approach in the race for COVID-19 vaccines as, while it is a top supporter of initiatives for worldwide equitable access, it prefers prioritising supplies for the EU population.
It could also deal a blow to the WHO-led COVAX initiative to secure vaccines for all.
“Using COVAX would lead to higher prices and later supplies,” one of the two officials said.
The WHO and GAVI, a public-private partnership that co-leads the COVAX initiative, had no immediate comment.
A COVAX mechanism meant to buy vaccines in advance is targeting a $40 price for shots in wealthy countries, the official said, adding the EU could buy at cheaper prices with its own scheme for upfront purchases.
2020-07-24 19:59:20
US business activity increased to a six-month high in July, but companies reported a drop in new orders as a resurgence in new COVID-19 cases across the country weighed on demand.
Data firm IHS Markit said its flash US Composite PMI Output Index, which tracks the manufacturing and services sectors, rose to a reading of 50.0 this month from 47.9 in June. The increase ended five straight monthly contractions.
A reading above 50 indicates growth in private sector output. The economy slipped into recession in February.
Coronavirus infections have sky-rocketed, forcing some authorities in the hard-hit South and West regions to either shut down businesses again or pause reopenings.
IHS Markit said some service providers were struggling with the reintroduction of lockdown measures. The survey’s flash composite new orders index slipped to a reading of 49.5 this month from 49.9 in June.
Its services sector flash PMI increased to 49.6 from a reading of 47.9 in June. Service industry firms reported a faster pace of decline in new orders in July. In contrast, manufacturing firms signaled the strongest expansion in new orders since January.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a reading of 51 for the services sector, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of the US economy.
2020-07-24 19:42:17
The Belgian subsidiary of Lufthansa Brussels Airlines said it would get a 290 million euro loan from the Belgian government and a 170 million euro capital injection from its German owner.
“(The) Stabilization package enables Belgium’s home carrier to overcome the unprecedented crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic and to create a sustainable future,” Brussels Airlines said in a statement.
“Lufthansa’s financial support allows Brussels Airlines to implement its turnaround plan and herewith to create a long-term and structurally profitable future for the company,” it said.
The airline added the entire package still needed government approvals in Germany and from the EU’s executive arm.
2020-07-24 19:38:06
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Mexico has so far shed 27,000 formal jobs in July but that he expects that by the end of the month there will be no job losses.
2020-07-24 19:16:39
Thirty-one more workers at a German abattoir hit by a coronavirus outbreak in mid-June have this week tested positive, authorities said.
Coronavirus outbreaks at several slaughterhouses in Germany have forced meatpacking plants to review cooling systems amid global concern over airborne transmission risks.
The Toennies plant in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck had closed in mid-June after about 1,500 workers tested positive for the COVID-19 disease. That outbreak in turn led to about 600,000 people in the surrounding Guetersloh region being put back in lockdown, which has since been lifted.
The plant reopened last week after a new health and safety plan was introduced including testing all workers twice a week for coronavirus.
Since then, 7,300 tests have been undertaken with 31 people showing positive, said a statement from the local government authority in Guetersloh. But only three were regarded as new infections and have been quarantined.
“From the view of the health department this cannot be viewed as a second wave,” the Guetersloh authority said, adding that positive tests mainly related to remainder infections from the first bout.
2020-07-24 19:00:49
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 173 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 33,071 with one more person succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 1,170, authorities confirmed.
2020-07-24 18:49:32
Shoppers in England were ordered to wear face coverings for the first time on Friday as new rules came into force, albeit with the government relying on customers’ common sense to stick to the policy rather than active policing.
The requirement, announced on July 13, marks the latest step in Britain’s slow acceptance of the benefits of face coverings in preventing the spread of COVID-19.
“I don’t like them, but if it keeps people safe you’ve got to do it,” said retiree Michael James, wearing a black face covering.
“I can’t understand how I didn’t have to wear one yesterday and I have to today. What’s the difference in the two days? But, yeah, if it cuts it down, anything.”
Some retailers, including supermarkets and coffee shop chains, said they supported the rules and would ask customers to abide by them, but it would not be up to staff to enforce them.
The move comes as deaths and new cases drop and the government encourages people back to work.
Asked how the rules should work, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “We should rely on the massive common sense of the British people... The people understand the value of face masks in confined spaces.”
2020-07-24 18:27:06
Credit card issuer American Express reported an 85% slump in quarterly profit after it set aside nearly $628 million to prepare for a flood of potential defaults caused by coronavirus-led layoffs.
Shares were down about 1% before the bell, even as the group managed to eke out a small profit rather than report a loss as expected by analysts.
The health crisis has hammered economies worldwide and triggered mass layoffs, which in turn made more people default on their bills, hurting credit card issuers.
AmEx said its consolidated loss provisions stood at $1.6 billion, up from $861 million a year ago, with the increase driven primarily by new reserves created to account for the effects of the pandemic.
2020-07-24 18:12:31
LUSAKA: Fifteen lawmakers and 11 members of staff at the Zambian parliament have tested positive for COVID-19, the health minister said on Friday, days after the assembly suspended sittings because a lawmaker had died of the respiratory disease.
Zambia’s coronavirus cases have surged to 3,856 from 1,632 at the beginning of July, with deaths rising to 136 from 30 over the same period, minister Chitalu Chilufya told reporters.
The heavily indebted southern African country, the No. 2 copper producer on the continent, is bracing for an economic contraction of over 4% this year because of the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-07-24 18:08:30
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said later on Friday that 14 people lost their lives, while 917 tested positive for the coronavirus within the past 24 hours.
In a statement, the CM Sindh said that the 917 new cases emerged against 11,812 tests in a day.
In Sindh, so far 2,110 people have lost their lives to COVID-19, while 116,800 have contracted the virus, said Shah.
He added that 4,089 people made a recovery within last 24 hours, taking the tally of recoveries to 103,491.
2020-07-24 17:48:37
Indonesia is considering returning tax paid by companies to support them during the coronavirus pandemic, the country’s deputy finance minister said on Friday, as the government seeks to retune parts of its economic stimulus.
Southeast Asia’s largest economy has budgeted 695.2 trillion rupiah ($47.81 billion) for its pandemic response, but some existing tax incentives had not been widely taken up, Suahasil Nazara said in an online interview.
“We’re thinking of giving a tax cashback. So if a business player has been compliant with its taxes all this time, we will return their 2019 taxes,” Nazara said, declining to comment on whether this could be all or part of a company’s tax payments.
The government may also scrap a minimum electricity payment for businesses in the pandemic, allowing firms to pay only for power consumed, he said, adding that power company Perusahaan Listrik Negara would get state compensation.
2020-07-24 17:27:59
Russia plans to resume some international flights from Aug. 1, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said on Friday, but the list of destinations will initially be limited to Tanzania, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
International flights were grounded on March 30 after the imposition of lockdown measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has infected more than 800,000 in Russia.
Golikova said the decreasing number of coronavirus infections had allowed Russia to resume flights from airports in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Rostov-on-Don.
2020-07-24 16:57:51
US health officials including Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, have called for so-called pooled testing to diagnose COVID-19 in order to test more people faster and cut down on mounting turnaround times for getting results.
Quest Diagnostics on Saturday received the first emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use pooled testing to help reduce its backlog of COVID-19 tests. The following is a description of how it works and the advantages and disadvantages of pooled testing.
How does pooled testing work?
In pooled testing, laboratories combine samples taken from several people and test the multiple specimens together for the presence of genetic material from the novel coronavirus. If a batch tests negative for COVID-19, all those patients are cleared. If a batch tests positive, the specimens must be retested individually or in smaller groups.
Such tests could be used to quickly clear groups of people who are not likely carriers, such as students returning to school, or individuals in areas with relatively low active COVID-19 infection levels.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-24 16:44:11
A three-year-old girl has become Belgium's youngest known victim of the coronavirus, officials said Friday, as the country confronts a worrying growth in new infections.
Health spokesman Boudewijn Catry said three people die each day in Belgium from COVID-19, including recently the toddler and an 18-year-old.
The young girl had "severe" pre-existing conditions, but Catry warned against complacency among the healthy and that 85% of new cases diagnosed last week were among the under-60s.
"It's true that it's rare that a young person dies of COVID-19, but it's clear that no-one is immune," he warned, after the number of new infections per week in Belgium jumped by 89%.
Belgium has now recorded 64,847 cases of COVID-19, after being one of the countries with the highest per capita rates of infection at the height of the crisis in Europe.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-24 16:36:01
President Donald Trump said he would no longer hold part of the Republican Party’s nominating convention in Florida in August because of a spike in coronavirus cases in the state.
Trump already moved part of the convention from North Carolina to Florida because of restrictions on gathering due to the virus, but the surge in cases had led some Republicans to pull out of attending the Florida event.
Trump said it was not the right time to hold a “crowded convention.”
“The timing for this event is not right,” Trump said in a White House press briefing. “It’s just not right with what’s happened recently, the flare up in Florida. To have a big convention it’s not the right time.”
2020-07-24 16:26:57
South Korea will add 4,000 medical students over the next 10 years to swell the number of its doctors and strengthen the response to future public health crises, government and ruling party officials say.
“We will increase the quota for medical students to add more personnel in specialized fields,” Kim Tae-nyeon, a lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, said at a policy meeting on Thursday.
The plan is to boost medical school admissions by about 400 a year for the next decade, before returning to a quota of 3,058, which has stayed fixed since 2006.
The government said it would waive tuition and offer full scholarships to about 300 students in areas such as epidemiology, gynaecology or surgery, widely seen as unpopular in contrast with more lucrative plastic surgery and dermatology.
2020-07-24 16:15:01
UAE reported 261 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 58,249 with one more person succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 343, authorities confirmed.
2020-07-24 16:05:42
Global trade has been hit by new and accumulated import restrictions just as economies need to rebuild in the COVID-19 crisis, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said in a mid-year report.
But some export constraints imposed on surgical masks, medicines and medical equipment early in the pandemic are being rolled back, it said.
“Although the full impact of the pandemic is not yet reflected fully in trade statistics, it is expected to be very substantial”, WTO director-general Roberto Azevedo said in presenting the report to its 164 member states.
The WTO said last month that estimates for the second quarter of 20
2020-07-24 15:46:46
LISBON: Portugal’s government has launched a plan aimed at boosting its export sector to alleviate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, with a goal of increasing exports to 53% of gross domestic product by 2030 from 44% last year.
Announced late on Thursday, the ambitious plan is set to include various measures to help firms access more foreign markets, diversify exports and hire internationally oriented specialists.
It would also include a financing line to increase foreign demand for Portuguese products, as well as a range of tax incentives such as exemption from stamp duty for export credit insurance backed by the government.
“We’re experiencing a particularly difficult situation and we want to increase the height of the export sector,” Eurico Brilhante Dias, Secretary of State for Internationalisation, told reporters.
“We want a 20% to 25% increase in the number of companies that export goods,” he said.
The pandemic is set to leave long-lasting scars on Portugal’s economy, which was propelled back to growth by exports and booming tourism after a 2010-14 economic and debt crisis.
Last year, exports of goods and services rose 4.3% to a record of 93.5 billion euros ($108.5 billion), representing 44% of GDP.
However, the coronavirus pandemic has already led to an abrupt drop in exports, with the country’s central bank predicting they will fall around 25% in 2020, mainly because tourism collapsed due to lockdowns and the absence of holidaymakers.
2020-07-24 15:35:11
SOFIA (Reuters) - The head of the political office of Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, Denitsa Zheleva, who had tested positive for coronavirus late on Thursday, was on the Balkan country’s team at the EU summit earlier this week, a government spokeswoman said on Friday.
The delegation returned to Bulgaria on Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov has gone into quarantine after the head of his political office tested positive for coronavirus late on Thursday, the government press office said in a statement.
Borissov, 61, whose first test for coronavirus came out negative, will stay in self-isolation until the results of a second test taken early on Friday come out, a government spokeswoman said.
Bulgaria has registered a spike in coronavirus infections in the past month. On Friday, the Balkan country had 268 new cases, bringing the total to 9,853 including 329 deaths.
2020-07-24 15:19:24
LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday he thought the country would be through the coronavirus crisis by mid-2021 but feared there may be a second spike that could overwhelm the health service.
“Whether it came from... a bat, a pangolin or however it emerged, it was a very, very nasty thing for the human race. And I think by the middle of next year we will be well on the way past it,” he told reporters.
“This country is going to bounce back stronger than ever before,” Johnson said. “We’ve still got the threat of a second spike.”
On a visit to a doctor’s surgery, Johnson said he hoped everybody would get a flu vaccine to lower the pressure on the health service during the winter months.
“There’s all these anti-vaxxers now,” Johnson told medical workers. “They are nuts, they are nuts.”
In the year since Johnson became the British leader, he has won a landslide election victory, delivered on his pledge to lead Britain out of the European Union and came close to death with COVID-19.
But opposition parties say Johnson was too slow to impose a lockdown, failed to identify care homes as a vulnerability, botched the test-and-trace system and failed to sack his senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, for travelling during lockdown.
Speaking a year since he became prime minister, Johnson said his experience was that government needed “to move faster and be more responsive to the needs of the people.”
2020-07-24 14:46:03
MUMBAI: India reported over 49,000 fresh cases of the novel coronavirus with 740 new deaths on Friday, marking the biggest daily surge in cases even as officials in some states complained of shortages of vital drugs for those hospitalised.
As the number of cases neared 1.3 million in India, local authorities scrambled to procure generic versions of remdesivir, the drug that has shown promise in clinical trials in treating severely-ill patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“Demand is huge as cases are rising rapidly in the state,” said a senior drug regulatory official in the western state of Maharashtra. “Supplies of the drug are limited, but companies have assured us they will provide more in a week.”
India has reported 30,601 deaths from the disease, with more than 40% of these deaths coming from Maharashtra state.
The western state is the worst-affected, having recorded nearly 350,000 cases, of which almost 60% were reported in the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, and its satellite towns.
Remdesivir, made by the US drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc, has been in high demand globally amid the pandemic, and Gilead in May and June authorized six Indian companies, and three foreign ones, to make and sell generic versions of the drug in 127 developing nations.
Only three of these firms with operations in India - Hetero Labs Ltd, Cipla and Mylan NV have so far been able to start supplying. Others are either awaiting regulatory approvals or still setting up production.
2020-07-24 14:44:10
Medical superintendent of Bahawalpur’s Victoria Hospital shared on Friday that 12 Chinese nationals have been tested positive for the coronavirus.
According to the MS, all the patients have been admitted at the hospital. He added that Chinese were working at the power project in the area.
2020-07-24 14:08:38
Sindh reported 616 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 116,499 with 31 more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,127, showed the data shared by Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab.
According to the data, 103,230 people have recovered from the virus and there are 11,142 active cases.
Karachi continues to remain the worst hit city in the province, showed the data shared by Wahab.
2020-07-24 14:00:42
BEIJING: China’s aviation regulator said on Friday the number of daily passenger flights had rebounded to about 80% of pre-COVID levels, suggesting further improvement in the aviation industry after coronavirus epidemic shattered travel demand.
Daily transported air passenger numbers have recovered to nearly 70% of the levels seen last year, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said.
2020-07-24 12:29:54
The United States continues to remain the worst hit country by coronavirus with over 4 million cases.
2020-07-24 12:02:32
A Chinese city of nearly six million people will introduce a wave of coronavirus testing to stamp out a small cluster of cases, authorities said on Friday, with state media reporting communities will be locked down.
Since the virus first surfaced in the central city of Wuhan late last year, the country's official number of infections has been restricted to a trickle, mainly among arrivals from abroad. All mass lockdowns have been lifted.
But recent domestic outbreaks have proved the difficulty of stamping out the contagion entirely.
The port city of Dalian in Liaoning province has reported three cases in recent days after going nearly four months without any.
The fresh outbreak has been linked to a seafood processing company that deals with imported products.
On Friday, the Dalian health commission said the city had to "quickly enter wartime mode, go all-out, mobilise all people and resolutely curb the spread of the epidemic".
It announced strict new measures, including on-the-spot nucleic acid tests for everyone taking the subway line that passes the affected seafood company.
The latest cluster has turned the spotlight on the country's food supply chain, and China has banned imports from a number of overseas food producers involved in virus outbreaks.
One Chinese importer told AFP that exporters had earlier been asked to guarantee their shipments were not contaminated.
A document published Thursday by China's State Council also warned that the country's public health system should prepare for a possible second wave of the virus in the winter.
There were 21 coronavirus cases reported in China on Friday, including two of the three recent Dalian cases and 13 in the western region of Xinjiang.
The other six were imported.
2020-07-24 11:40:26
Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab announced on Friday that over 100,000 coronavirus patients have recovered from the virus in Sindh.
Wahab also stated that the recent recoveries have brought in the total recovery rate of the province to 86%. However, he did not share the exact figure of the people that have recovered by the virus.
2020-07-24 10:59:09
A fresh rise in COVID-19 cases from Japan to Belgium and Australia have seen a rise in the infection, which crossed the four million mark in the United States (US) and surged past the three million mark in Europe, on Friday.
While EU lawmakers combed through a huge aid package for their economies, the UN called for a basic income for the world´s poorest to help slow the spread of COVID-19, and the Red Cross warned of "massive" new migration caused by the economic devastation.
The United States, the hardest-hit country by the virus, added one million new cases in just over two weeks, according to a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University. In the previous 24 hours alone, the country notched more than 76,000 new cases.
Having recorded more than 144,000 total fatalities, the United States has seen a coronavirus surge, particularly in southern and western states, as Texas, California, Alabama, Idaho and Florida all announced record one-day death tolls.
Nevertheless, the rate of new cases is now showing signs of easing off in some of the worst-hit zones.
Read more here.
2020-07-24 10:42:48
LAHORE: Punjab Law Minister Raja Basharat assured the provincial restaurants’ association on Friday that the government will announce the “good news” of opening restaurants under SOPs after Eid.
“Government plans to open up everything according to SOPs,” said the law minister in a meeting with a delegation of Punjab Restaurants Association. He also assured them that he knew how much the restaurant industry was affected by the coronavirus.
2020-07-24 10:28:41
HANOI: Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has issued a directive to ban the Southeast Asian country’s wildlife trade with immediate effect in order to reduce the risk of new pandemics, a government statement said.
The directive bans imports of live wild animals and wildlife products, eliminates wildlife markets, and enforce prohibitions on illegal hunting and trading of wild animals, including online sales, according to the statement issued late on Thursday.
Vietnam is an important destination in the Asian region for illegal wildlife products such as pangolin scales and elephant ivory. There have also been seizures of rhino horns, which is believed to have medicinal value.
In February, 14 conservation organisations in Vietnam sent a joint letter urging the government to “identify and close markets and other locations where illegal wildlife is on sale”.
The Southeast Asian country is reported to have many wildlife markets and also a booming online trade in animals, with existing laws often poorly enforced.
Neighbouring China has also pledged to ban the trade and consumption of wild animals in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
Scientists suspect the virus passed to humans from animals and some of the earliest infections were found in people who had exposure to a wildlife market in Hubei’s provincial capital Wuhan, where bats, snakes, civets and other animals were sold.
2020-07-24 10:13:59
Microsoft founder Bill Gates slammed conspiracy theories on social media that accuse him of inventing the coronavirus that has killed more than 600,000 across the globe.
"It's a bad combination of pandemic and social media and people looking for a very simple explanation," he said during a CNN Town Hall interview.
Doctored photos and fabricated news articles crafted by conspiracy theorists — shared thousands of times on social media platforms and messaging apps, in various languages — targeting Gates have gained traction online since the start of the pandemic.
A video accusing Gates of wanting "to eliminate 15% of the population" through vaccination and electronic microchips has racked up millions of views on YouTube.
"Our foundation has given more money to buy vaccines to save lives than any group," Gates said, referring to his eponymous foundation.
He has pledged $250 million in efforts to fight the pandemic, and his foundation has spent billions of dollars improving health care in developing countries over the past 20 years.
Read more here.
2020-07-24 09:46:36
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 270,400 on Friday after the country recorded 1,209 new infections during the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, in Azad Jammu and Kashmir there are 1,989 cases, in Balochistan 11,523, in Gilgit Baltistan 1,918, Islamabad 14,766, Khyber Pakhtunkhawa 32,898, Punjab 91,423 and in Sindh 115,883.
The country also recorded 54 new fatalities in the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,763.
2020-07-24 09:37:30
MELBOURNE: Restrictions were reintroduced in Australia’s most populous state of New South Wales on Friday as authorities battle to control fresh coronavirus clusters that have emerged in Sydney over the last several days.
Group bookings at restaurants, cafes and clubs will be limited to 10 people and patrons inside a venue will be capped to 300 in rules that take effect amid a growing cluster stemming from a Thai restaurant in suburban Sydney.
Wedding and corporate events will be limited to 150 people with strict social distancing rules including a ban on singing, dancing and mingling, while only 100 can attend funerals and places of worship. Australia has so far escaped the high COVID-19 casualty numbers of other nations, with just over 13,000 infections and 133 deaths from the virus as of Thursday.
But a spike in community-transmitted cases in its two most populous states in recent weeks has alarmed authorities.
Victoria state on Thursday reported five deaths from COVID-19 in the previous 24 hours and the third-highest daily rise in cases.
A flare-up of infections in Melbourne, the state’s largest city, prompted the government to enforce a six-week partial lockdown and make face masks mandatory for its residents or risk a A$200 ($143) fine.
Australia’s National cabinet meets on Friday and is expected to discuss steps to combat the clusters as well as financial measures to shore up its economy.
2020-07-24 08:40:13
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he was scrapping next month's Republican Party nominating convention in Jacksonville, Florida, because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump, speaking at a White House press conference, said it was not the right time to do a "big, crowded convention."
"The timing for this event is not right, it's just not right with what's happened recently," he said.
Trump said convention events would be held "online in some form."
He said Republican delegates who will nominate him as the party's candidate in November's election against Democrat Joe Biden will gather in North Carolina for a "reasonably quick meeting."
The main reason for cancelling the Jacksonville event was "safety," he said.
"I could see the media saying 'Oh, this is very unsafe,'" Trump added.
"It's hard for us to say we should have a lot of people packed into a room and then other people shouldn't do it," he said. "There's nothing more crowded than a convention.
"I think we're setting an example by doing it."
The Republican convention had been scheduled to be held in Jacksonville from August 24-27.
2020-07-24 00:20:04
Punjab reported 294 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 91,423 with five more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,105, authorities confirmed.
2020-07-23 23:59:38
Sindh reported 670 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 115,883 with 36 more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,096, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said.
2020-07-23 23:43:42
South African public schools will close for a four-week break, with some exceptions, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in an address to the nation, as confirmed coronavirus cases rose over 400,000.
Ramaphosa said it was important to ensure that schools did not become sites of transmission at a time when the country’s coronavirus cases are rising at one of the fastest rates in the world.
2020-07-23 23:42:07
AMC Entertainment Holdings said it has delayed the reopening of its movie theaters in the United States to mid to late August, in alignment with the new release dates of Disney’s “Mulan” and Christopher Nolan’s thriller, “Tenet”.
UK’s Cineworld Group PLC also pushed its US reopening date to mid-August, although the company remains on track to welcome back movie-goers in Britain at the end of this month.
Movie theaters across the world were shuttered since the mid-March when several countries imposed lockdowns and social distancing measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
AMC, the world's largest movie theater operator, had earlier here delayed the reopening by two weeks to July 30. Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinemas in the United States, had also previously delayed its reopening date to July 31 for both the U.S. and UK.
About one-third of all AMC cinemas in Europe and the Middle East are already open and are operating normally, AMC said.
2020-07-23 23:32:43
The total number of coronavirus cases reported in the United States passed 4 million on Thursday, reflecting a rapid acceleration of infections detected in the country since the first case was recorded on January 21, a Reuters tally showed.
It took the country 98 days to reach 1 million cases, but just 16 days to go from 3 million to 4 million, according to the tally. The average number of new U.S. cases is now rising by more than 2,600 every hour, the highest rate in the world.
As the pandemic has spread widely over the country, moving from the early epicenter of New York to the South and West, federal, state and local officials have clashed over how to fight it, including over how and when to ease social and economic restrictions aimed at curbing the infection rate.
Whether to order the wearing of masks, a common practice in the rest of the world and recommended by the federal government’s own health experts, has become highly politicized, with some Republican governors particularly resistant.
Hostility to the idea appeared to be dwindling this week, however, including from the Republican administration of President Donald Trump, who once dismissed mask-wearing as an effort to be politically correct.
2020-07-23 23:22:19
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 3,952,273 cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 70,106 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 1,078 to 142,755.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by the new coronavirus.
2020-07-23 23:08:27
Uganda recorded its first death from the new coronavirus, the ministry of health said, making it one of the last nations on the continent to report a fatality since the pandemic reached it in March.
2020-07-23 22:53:34
The average number of people in Ireland infected by someone who has tested positive for the new coronavirus fell to 1.0 to 1.4 after it rose above 1 for the first time last week, senior health officials said.
The so-called “reproduction rate” rose to 1.2 to 1.8 a week ago, forcing the government to delay entering the final phase of its reopening plan. A rate above 1 signals that the number of cases are increasing exponentially again.
As of Wednesday, the average number of cases per day over the preceding five days fell to 18 versus a four-week high of 19 last week. A further seven new cases were reported on Thursday.
2020-07-23 22:35:32
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama blasted Republican President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in a video aired on Thursday, as the Biden campaign tapped the star power of America’s first Black president.
Obama and Biden, who served as his vice president, sat down facing each other in chairs from across a room for a “socially distanced” conversation.
Both men released the video on Twitter, where Obama has 120.8 million followers, the most on the platform.
“Can you imagine standing up when you were president, saying, ‘It’s not my responsibility?’” Biden asked Obama, referring to Trump’s efforts to evade blame for the pandemic.
“Those words didn’t come out of our mouths when we were in office,” Obama replied.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-23 22:21:21
Kuwait will shorten its nightly curfew and reopen hotels and mosques next week in the latest relaxation of its coronavirus restrictions, the government said.
The Gulf country said it would enter “phase three” of its coronavirus restrictions on July 28, enabling taxis to operate and resorts as well as hotels to re-open.
In addition, all mosques would be open for Eid Al Adha prayers, the Center for Government Communication (CGC) said on Twitter. Muslims expect the holiday to begin on July 31. Until now, only some mosques had been allowed to operate.
The curfew put in place to limit the spread of the virus will begin an hour later at 9pm and end two hours earlier at 3am, it said. The decision will be reviewed by the cabinet after the Eid Al Adha break.
The cabinet also decided to end the isolation of the Farwaniya district on Sunday. It is the last isolated area in the country.
2020-07-23 22:09:12
The head of the World Health Organization said that reported comments by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo questioning his independence were untrue and would not distract the organisation from its work in fighting the coronavirus.
“And the comments are untrue and unacceptable and without any foundation, for that matter,” Tedros said in response to a question at a Geneva briefing about remarks by Pompeo reported in London on Tuesday.
“Our sole focus - and the focus of the entire organisation - is on saving lives.
“...And WHO will not be distracted by these comments. We don’t want the international community also to be distracted.”
2020-07-23 21:57:13
2020-07-23 21:45:02
The World Health Organization is seeing intense transmission of the coronavirus in relatively few countries, its chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said.
“We continue to see intense transmission in a relatively small group of countries,” he told a virtual briefing in Geneva. “Two-thirds of all cases are from 10 countries. Almost half of all cases reported so far are from just three countries.”
U.S. coronavirus cases exceeded 4 million on Thursday, with over 2,600 new cases every hour on average, the highest rate in the world, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections in the United States have rapidly accelerated since the first case was detected on Jan. 21. It took the country 98 days to reach 1 million cases. It took another 43 days to reach 2 million and then 27 days to reach 3 million.
It has only taken 16 days to reach 4 million at a rate of 43 new cases a minute.
Tedros also said that just because cases may be at a low level where someone lives, it doesn’t mean they should let down their guard.
“Know your situation - do you know how many cases were reported where you live yesterday? Do you know how to find that information? Do you know how to minimise your exposure?”
2020-07-23 21:26:59
Balochistan reported six new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 11,523, the health department said.
2020-07-23 21:10:15
Coronavirus has infected some 13,000 South African health workers and killed more than 100 of them, the health ministry has said, as the virus takes a toll on frontline caregivers.
Health ministry spokesman Popo Maja told AFP that 13,174 health workers had become infected as of Tuesday, including 103 deaths and 6,394 people declared recovered.
South Africa's statistics were unveiled as the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that more than 10,000 health workers in 40 countries had been sickened by the virus.
"The growth we are seeing in COVID-19 cases in Africa is placing an ever-greater strain on health services across the continent," said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, at a news conference on Thursday.
"This has very real consequences for the individuals who work in them, and there is no more sobering example of this than the rising number of health worker infections," she said.
A combination of a recent spike in infections, staff shortages and a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) have been blamed for the infection increases.
2020-07-23 20:56:25
Spain’s number of coronavirus cases jumped by 2,615 on Thursday, as the country struggles to contain a rash of fresh clusters of infections that have sprung up since the country lifted a strict lockdown a month ago.
Health ministry data showed a total of 270,166 cases on Thursday, up from 267,551 on Wednesday. Some 16,410 infections have been detected in the last 14 days, the ministry said.
2020-07-23 20:24:00
South Africa's central bank has cut its key interest rate for the fifth time this year in a bid to breathe life into the coronavirus-stricken economy.
Along with other central banks around the world to aggressively lower borrowing costs in a bid to soften economic blow from COVID-19, the South African Reserve Bank cut its repurchase or "repo" rate by 0.25 percentage points to a record low of 3.5%.
Already this year, the bank had previously cut the rate by a total 2.75 percentage points to provide relief to indebted consumers as the negative effects from the coronavirus pandemic make themselves felt.
President Cyril Ramaphosa imposed a lockdown in March, but began loosening some of the restrictions in June to allow for economic activity to resume.
But the country's economy was already in tatters before the onset of the pandemic, with credit ratings agencies downgrading South Africa's sovereign debt.
Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago warned that even as the lockdown is relaxed in coming months, investment, exports and imports are expected to decline sharply across the year as a whole.
Job losses and unemployment, already at record highs of above 30%, are also expected to climb further.
The central bank also downgraded its growth estimate for the second quarter and said it expected gross domestic product to contract by 7.3% in 2020, instead of the 7% forecast in May.
South Africa is the country in Africa that has been worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic and, with over 400,000 infections so far, ranks among the top five in the world in terms of confirmed cases.
2020-07-23 20:39:34
South Africa witnessed some 17,000 extra deaths from natural causes or 59% more than would normally be expected between early May and mid-July, scientists said, suggesting many more people are dying of COVID-19 than shown in official figures.
New data by the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), released overnight, showed that just in the week to July 14 - the latest figures available - there was an excess of 5,022 deaths by natural causes, about half more than usual.
Africa’s most industrialised nation is in the middle of a runaway epidemic of the coronavirus, with cases increasing by more than 10,000 day and the current total approaching 400,000.
But its recorded death toll is low, at 5,940 deaths or less than 1.5 percent of cases.
Debbie Bradshaw, chief specialist scientist at the government-funded research council, said the figures revealed “a huge discrepancy” between the confirmed COVID-19 death toll and the excess natural deaths.
2020-07-23 20:27:25
Quest Diagnostics said it expects to get turnaround times for COVID-19 tests to “acceptable” levels by September, by boosting capacity and prioritizing the most at-risk patients.
The company, during an earnings conference call, said its turnaround time for non-priority testing was now at least seven days, and it aims to increase COVID-19 diagnostic testing to 150,000 per day by next month and ultimately to exceed that level.
“We believe, as we get through August and into September, will have a higher level of capacity,” said Quest’s chief executive officer Steve Rusckowski on the investor call. “We’ll be able to get the turnaround times that are in the acceptable levels that we’ve had in the past.”
Quest said it currently has capacity for about 130,000 tests per day, double its capacity since May.
The long wait for test results has been an issue in the United States, where coronavirus cases were approaching 4 million on Thursday.
2020-07-23 20:14:01
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has agreed with his Cabinet’s proposal to extend a nationwide lockdown beyond Aug. 1 as the coronavirus situation remained “serious” in the Central Asian nation, his office said.
Mirziyoyev’s office did not say by how long the former Soviet republic of 34 million would extend its second lockdown introduced from July 10 after a surge in the COVID-19 cases.
Uzbekistan has confirmed 18,703 cases of the disease with 105 deaths, figures which jumped in June and early July when the country reopened following its first lockdown and local hospitals quickly filled up.
Neighbouring Kazakhstan has also introduced its second lockdown this month after a botched reopening, and then prolonged it from the initial fortnight to four weeks.
2020-07-23 19:48:00
Coal power has no place in a post-coronavirus economic recovery plan, the UN chief has said in a speech broadcast in China, which has reportedly stepped up production of the polluting energy source.
"There is no such thing as clean coal, and coal should have no place in any rational recovery plan," Antonio Guterres said, in a video address televised at Beijing's Tsinghua University.
"We need to stop wasting money on fossil fuel subsidies and the funding of coal," he said.
Countries around the world are devising massive economic revival plans after the COVID-19 pandemic, which first emerged in China late last year, paralysed the global economy.
China, the world's biggest polluter and a signatory of the Paris climate agreement, has invested heavily in renewable energy.
But it also has nearly 250 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity under development, larger than the coal fleets of the United States or India, according to the June report by Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
"It is deeply concerning that new coal power plants are still being planned and financed, even though renewables offer three times more jobs, and are now cheaper than coal in most countries," Secretary General Guterres said.
2020-07-23 19:59:13
Baghdad International Airport reopened for scheduled commercial flights after months of closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit Iraq especially hard in recent weeks.
The country has recorded 102,226 coronavirus infections and 4,122 deaths, and regularly reports more than 2,000 new cases each day. Thursday’s tally was 2,361, according to health ministry figures.
Iraq suspended all flights to and from Baghdad in March, with only irregular or chartered flights operating and advance permission required for travel. The measures accompanied the closure of land borders and a general curfew.
The reopening comes with safeguards to contain the spread of the virus.
Some passengers travelling from the airport are required to take a swab test several days before their flights, and incoming passengers must all to take a test 48 hours before boarding Baghdad-bound planes, a Civil Aviation Authority spokesman said.
Passengers were being scanned for temperatures as they arrived at the airport, and some social distancing was enforced at stages such as passport control but not while people boarded flights.
2020-07-23 19:32:47
China provided $15 million worth of aid to Pakistan to support the country’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic, Chinese envoy Yao Jing said at a webinar.
The Pakistan-China Institute (PCI) on Thursday co-hosted a virtual meeting of government officials, entrepreneurs, and experts to discuss the post-coronavirus pandemic relationship between the two friendly nations in light of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The webinar, titled "New Opportunities and Challenges of China-Pakistan Cooperation in the Post-Epidemic Era," had two keynote speakers, including Chinese Ambassador Yao Jing and Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed.
In her opening remarks, Research & Development International (RDI) head and China's former population minister Dr Baige Zhao said President Xi Jinping’s speech on improving connectivity through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) at last month’s high-level video conference showed her country's will to start a new era of globalization.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-23 19:23:20
Islamabad recorded 21 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Sector I-8, the district health officer said.
2020-07-23 19:16:43
2020-07-23 19:04:38
The Bank of England said that it and the government needed to make it more attractive for insurers, pensions and funds to make the long-term investments that companies might need to recover from the coronavirus.
Alex Brazier, the BoE’s Executive Director for Financial Stability Strategy and Risk, said many businesses that were borrowing heavily during the crisis would need or want to raise equity finance in future.
Changes to rules which unfairly favoured funds offering immediate redemptions to investors, as well as how insurers could invest, were needed, Brazier said.
“Even investors who should have the longest horizons seem to have a fetish for liquidity and an aversion to really illiquid growth capital assets,” he said.
2020-07-23 18:53:42
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 145 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 32,898 with 11 more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 1,169, the health department said.
2020-07-23 18:42:39
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose last week for the first time in nearly four months, suggesting the labor market was stalling amid a resurgence in new COVID-19 cases and depressed demand.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased to a seasonally adjusted 1.416 million for the week ended July 18, from 1.307 million in the prior week, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the first weekly rise in applications since the week ending March 28, when claims raced to a record 6.867 million as nonessential businesses like restaurants and gyms were shuttered to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 1.30 million applications in the latest week.
Economists expect job growth to pull back this month after surging by a historic 4.8 million in June. Employment last month was boosted by the government’s Paycheck Protection Program, which provides businesses loans that can be partially forgiven if used for wages. Though the PPP was extended to Aug. 8, many small businesses drew their loans in May and June.
2020-07-23 18:30:26
Pacer Mohammad Amir will join the Pakistan squad in England after his second coronavirus test also came back negative on Wednesday.
According to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), Amir and masseuse Muhammad Imran both tested negative for the virus twice.
“The first test was conducted on July 21 which was negative and now he [Mohammad Amir] is eligible to travel to England to join Pakistan cricket squad”, a PCB spokesperson said.
"We have started making a travel plan for both Amir and Imran and details will soon be shared," the spokesperson added.
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2020-07-23 18:18:12
Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates resolved to address the issue of Pakistani expatriates, who have lost their jobs in the wake of coronavirus pandemic.
The two countries discussed various possibilities for restoration of the jobs of laid-off Pakistani workers in the emirates.
The modalities to this effect were worked out during a meeting between Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development (OP&HRD) Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari and UAE Minister for Human Resources and Emiratisation Naseer Bin Thani Juma Al Hamli, said a news release issued by the OP&HRD ministry here.
Both the dignitaries agreed to enhance inter-ministerial coordination, while discussing the ways for safe repatriation of Pakistani manpower from the UAE.
2020-07-23 18:08:16
Face masks should be worn even at home if you are with people you do not live with, an official from the Madrid region said on Thursday, even though he conceded there was no way to enforce such a recommendation.
Spain already has Europe’s strictest rules on masks. In Madrid they are mandatory everywhere in public unless people are outdoors and can keep a 1.5 meter distance. In most of the country, they must be worn in public regardless of safe distances, but with no rules on wearing them at home.
“We recommend, as a precaution, the wearing of masks in private spaces when there are meetings or gatherings of people who don’t live together,” Enrique Ruiz Escudero, the health chief of the Madrid region, told a news conference.
“We feel it is important since the majority of outbreaks happen in family or friends meetings or celebrations gathering people who don’t live together.”
2020-07-23 17:58:31
Belgium will tighten COVID-19 containment measures on July 25 after a rise in infections, Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes said, requiring the use of face masks in crowded outdoor public spaces and tracing measures at restaurants and bars.
“The latest figures should not throw us into panic but have to be taken seriously,” Wilmes told a news conference on Thursday.
Under the new measures, Belgians will have to wear a mask in public, including at outdoor markets, shopping streets and other crowded sites.
Tighter measures will also be imposed on bars and restaurants, where masks will become compulsory for those not seated. Customers will also have to leave their contact details to facilitate tracing in case of localised outbreaks. Night shops will have to close by 10 pm.
2020-07-23 17:43:46
Emirates airline is offering some pilots and cabin crew up to four months of unpaid leave, as it strives to manage the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, an internal email said.
The Dubai state-owned carrier, facing a cash crunch caused by the pandemic, has already cut salaries and thousands of jobs, including pilots and cabin crew.
Eligible pilots and cabin crew can take up to four months off between August and November during which they would still receive benefits, such as company-provided accommodation, an internal email seen by Reuters said.
“As a result of recent and unexpected travel restrictions imposed by some countries, an opportunity has arisen to offer our pilots and cabin crew unpaid leave. We have elected to offer this option as a short-term measure to reduce our resources,” the email said.
2020-07-23 17:33:57
Islamabad recorded 21 cases — the lowest daily infections — in the past 24 hours, the distect health office said, adding that the positivity rate was under 0.89%.
2020-07-23 17:22:56
The coronavirus crisis has put some 300,000 jobs at risk in Germany’s metal and electrical industry, a board member of trade union IG Metall said, adding that employees in the automotive and aviation sectors would be particularly affected.
“We’re talking about 300,000 jobs that are on the line,” Juergen Kerner told journalists in Munich on Wednesday in comments embargoed until Thursday.
2020-07-23 17:13:56
American Airlines posted its second consecutive quarterly loss, as the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shutdown of the US economy hurt demand for air travel.
The company’s shares, however, rose 1.9% to $11.56 before the bell after the US airline said its second-quarter cash burn rate was about $55 million per day, lower than its forecast of $70 million per day.
While air travel had picked up over the past two months from pandemic-driven lows in April, demand has started slowing again as coronavirus cases surge across the United States and states re-impose quarantine restrictions.
The US airline ended the second quarter with $10.2 billion in available liquidity.
It reported a net loss of $2.07 billion, or $4.82 per share, for the quarter ended June 30, compared with a profit of $662 million, or $1.49 per share, a year earlier. Total operating revenue plunged 86.4% to $1.62 billion.
2020-07-23 17:02:21
The European Commission extended until the end of October a waiver of customs duties and sales taxes on imported face masks and other medical gear to help tackle shortages as the bloc fights the coronavirus epidemic.
The measure was initially adopted in April for the period covering the first six months of the year, and has now been extended to October 31. It will also be applied by the United Kingdom.
“Today’s decision is due to the risks posed to public health by the number of coronavirus cases in member states and to the shortages of medical equipment which are still recorded,” the EU executive commission said in a statement released on Thursday.
Medical gear was in short supply when the pandemic first hit countries in the bloc in March. The problem is less intense now as most European nations have long past the peak of their outbreaks, but shortages could re-emerge in the event of a second large wave, which is considered possible in the autumn.
2020-07-23 16:52:35
AT&T Inc said on Thursday it lost monthly phone subscribers and suffered a $2 billion revenue decline from delayed movie releases and advertising shortfalls in the second quarter as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged its business.
The media and telecommunications company, which launched streaming service HBO Max in May, reported 36 million subscribers for both “HBO Max/HBO”. In the first quarter, HBO had about 33 million customers.
AT&T lost 151,000 postpaid mobile phone subscribers in the quarter, including about 338,000 customers who stopped paying but were kept on the network.
Analysts had expected the company to add 6,800 subscribers, according to research firm FactSet.
AT&T’s WarnerMedia segment has been reeling under production delays and had to postpone the release of Christoper Nolan’s highly-anticipated “Tenet” thrice as theater chains remained largely shut. Revenue in the unit fell 22.7% to $6.8 billion.
2020-07-23 16:42:15
US coronavirus cases were approaching 4 million, with over 2,600 new cases every hour on average, the highest rate in the world, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections in the United States have rapidly accelerated since the first case was detected on Jan. 21. It took the country 98 days to reach 1 million cases. It took another 43 days to reach 2 million and then 27 days to reach 3 million. It has only taken 16 days to reach 4 million at a rate of 43 new cases a minute.
With over 143,000 deaths, or 4.4 fatalities per 10,000 people, the United States ranks sixth globally for the highest deaths per capita. It is exceeded by the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Chile and France.
Globally, the rate of new infections shows no sign of slowing, with the disease accelerating the fastest in the United States and South America, according to the Reuters tally, based on official reports.
2020-07-23 16:33:42
India reported a record jump of 45,720 in coronavirus infections taking its total number of cases to 1.24 million, the health ministry said.
India also reported 1,129 deaths for Wednesday, taking the death toll to 29,861. India has the third-highest number of cases after the United States and Brazil.
2020-07-23 15:53:38
Hong Kong reported 118 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, a daily record, including 111 that were locally transmitted, adding to a deluge of new cases that have hit the global financial hub over the past two weeks.
Hong Kong extended strict social distancing measures on Wednesday as authorities reported 105 locally transmitted infections.
Since late January more than 2,000 people have been infected in Hong Kong, 14 of whom have died. Authorities have warned the city faces a critical period in containing the virus.
2020-07-23 15:22:58
The United Nations has said that nearly three billion of the world's poorest people should receive a temporary basic income to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.
A report released by the UN Development Programme has called for measures to protect vulnerable populations are "urgently needed" as the infection numbers spike in developing countries.
Funding of $199 billion per month would provide 2.7 billion people with a temporary basic income and the "means to buy food and pay for health and education expenses", the report said.
UN projections have warned the virus could kill 1.67 million people in 30 low-income countries.
2020-07-23 14:49:39
More than three million cases of the coronavirus have been reported in Europe, more than half of them in Russia, Britain, Spain and Italy, according to an AFP tally Thursday.
Europe has registered 3,002,861 infections, out of a global total of 15,237,784. The continent remains the hardest hit in terms of deaths, with 206,633 out of 626,994 worldwide.
Russia recorded the highest number of cases in the continent, at 795,038 including 12,892 deaths, followed by Britain (296,377 cases and 45,501 deaths), Spain (267,551 and 28,426) and Italy (245,032 and 35,082).
2020-07-23 14:27:34
Russia reported 5,848 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Thursday, pushing its national tally to 795,038, the fourth largest in the world.
In their daily readout, officials said 147 people had died in the last 24 hours, pushing Russia's official death toll to 12,892.
2020-07-23 13:47:21
World leaders will send videos instead of physically gathering at the United Nations in September due to the coronavirus pandemic, the General Assembly decided on Wednesday.
“Each Member State, observer State and the European Union can submit a pre-recorded statement of its Head of State, Vice-President, Crown Prince or Princess, Head of Government, Minister or Vice-Minister, which will be played in the General Assembly Hall ... after introduction by their representative who is physically present,” the UN said.
2020-07-23 13:18:23
Papua New Guinea World Health Organisation (WHO) help after a rapidly spreading new coronavirus outbreak sparked preparations for large-scale community transmission in the under-resourced country.
Having mostly dodged the COVID-19 pandemic until now, Papua New Guinea reported Thursday it had detected three new cases in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 30— up from just 11 on Sunday.
Against the growing threat national pandemic response controller David Manning said that the WHO was in the process of mobilising international emergency medical teams to deploy to the country.
He said in a statement there was "an urgent need" for emergency health workers to help the country manage a surge in cases and administer isolation facilities.
2020-07-23 12:56:00
More than 300 new coronavirus infections have been reported in Japan's capital of Tokyo, domestic media said on Thursday.
The daily figure was a record, topping the previous high of 293 cases reported last week, Kyodo news agency said.
2020-07-23 12:25:32
A special meeting of National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) is underway Quetta under the chairmanship of Federal Minister Asad Umar.
The meeting will discuss the guidelines for Eid-ul-Azha and management of cattle markets.
Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan, Deputy Speaker National Assembly Qasim Khan Suri and Chief Secretory Balochistan Inspector General Balochistan Police and other officials are attending the meeting.
2020-07-23 11:52:49
Australia's second most populous state of Victoria reported on Thursday five deaths from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours and logged the third-highest daily rise in coronavirus cases.
Victoria recorded 403 new cases overnight, a day after posting its biggest one-day spike of 484 cases.
Melbourne, the state's largest city, has seen a flare-up in infections in recent weeks, prompting the government to enforce a six-week partial lockdown and make face masks mandatory for its residents or risk a fine.
2020-07-23 11:29:22
India reported a record jump of 45,720 in coronavirus infections on Wednesday taking its total number of cases to 1.24 million, the health ministry said on Thursday.
India also reported 1,129 deaths for Wednesday, taking the death toll to 29,861.
2020-07-23 11:03:33
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 269,191 on Thursday after the country recorded 1,763 new infections during the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, in Azad Jammu and Kashmir there are 1,961 cases, in Balochistan 11,517, in Gilgit Baltistan 1,896, Islamabad 14,722, Khyber Pakhtunkhawa 32,753, Punjab 91,129 and in Sindh 11,5213.
The country also recorded 32 new fatalities in the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,709.
2020-07-23 10:10:40
China reported 22 new coronavirus cases up from 14 cases a day earlier, the health commission said on Thursday.
Of the new infections, 18 were in the far western region of Xinjiang and one was from the northeastern Liaoning province, according to a statement by the National Health Commission.
As of Wednesday, mainland China had 83,729 confirmed coronavirus cases, the health authority said. The COVID-19 death toll remained at 4,634.
2020-07-23 09:36:41
More than four million coronavirus cases have been recorded in South America with half of them in Brazil, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The region passed the bleak milestone as Brazil reported a daily record of 67,860 new coronavirus cases Wednesday.Peru, Mexico and Chile are also on the list of the top 10 countries by total cases, with well over 300,000 each.
South America is one of the hardest-hit regions in the world, with 4,040,925 recorded cases and 172,886 people killed by COVID-19.
2020-07-23 09:08:25
The US recorded over 1,000 new fatalities from the coronavirus for a second day in a row, including a record one-day rise in fatalities in Alabama, Nevada and Texas, according to a Reuters tally.
The US has not seen back-to-back days with over 1,000 lives lost since June 5-6. Weeks after cases began to surge, 23 states are now seeing fatalities also rise.
Over 142,000 lives have been lost to the virus in the US over the last five months, the highest in the world.
2020-07-22 23:59:39
Punjab reported 313 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 91,129 with five more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,100, authorities said.
2020-07-22 23:47:19
Sindh reported 1,109 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 115,213 with 19 more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,060, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said.
2020-07-22 23:39:20
2020-07-22 23:32:32
A 103-year-old man was discharged from a hospital in Chitral after beating coronavirus and fully recovering from the contagious disease.
A resident of Booni village, Aziz Abdul Alim had tested positive for the coronavirus a couple of weeks ago, following which he was admitted to the Aga Khan Health Services Emergency Response Centre, where he received the treatment for the disease.
The regional head of Aga Khan Health Service (AKHS) told Daily Dawn that during a two-week stay at the centre, the elderly man convalesced without requiring supplemental oxygen.
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2020-07-22 23:29:23
ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on overseas Pakistanis Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari on Wednesday left for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to address and resolve the issue of Pakistani expats stranded in foreign country due to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a statement issued by the Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development (OP&HRD) Ministry, Bukhari in his two-day visit would also meet the UAE Labour Minister for the redressal of the issues being faced by the Pakistani workers in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
"This is the first interaction of UAE labour ministry with a representative of any country with such a large diaspora to address workforce issues and post-COVID reintegration plan," the official news release read.
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2020-07-22 23:03:11
By the first week of September 2020, around 65-70% of Karachi’s population would be carrying COVID-19 antibodies as the country is moving towards herd-immunity within the next two months, claimed a top Pakistani health expert, Dr Tahir Sultan Shamsi.
The doctor said that in the third week of July this year, almost 40% of the city’s population had been exposed to the virus infection and this number will expand by September.
Dr Tahir said: “Our research on three different segments of the society reveals that around 40% of Karachiites have so far been infected with the coronavirus asymptomatically and by the first week of September 2020, 65-70% of city’s population would have been infected with the virus, which is a minimum requirement for achieving herd immunity in the COVID-19 case.”
The hematologist gave the example of neighbouring India, where he said that less than 1% of the population has tested positive, but a survey by the Indian government has revealed that one in four persons have already been exposed to the virus in New Delhi.
“In Karachi, based on antibody tests conducted by us at the National Institute of Blood Diseases (NIBD), Karachi, through five different FDA-approved kits and methods indicate that around 40% of the city’s population has already contracted coronavirus infection asymptomatically,” Dr. Shamsi said.
“We expect that by the first week of September 2020, around 65-70% population in Karachi would be carrying COVID-19 antibodies, which is required for herd immunity in a population,” he added.
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2020-07-22 22:43:42
India has cancelled a historic Hindu pilgrimage to a holy cave high in the snow-capped mountains of contested Kashmir for the first time, as cases of the novel coronavirus continued to rise.
There were 37,724 new cases reported in the past 24 hours, according to federal health data released on Wednesday. India has reported almost 1.2 million cases overall, behind only the United States and Brazil.
Organisers of the Amarnath Yatra, where saffron-clad Hindu ascetics walk 46 km (28 miles) to the cave across glaciers and waterlogged trails, said a “very sharp” spike in coronavirus cases had forced the cancellation.
“The health concerns are so serious that the strain on the health system, along with the diversion in resources to the Yatra, will be immense,” said a statement by the organising committee released late on Tuesday.
A strict lockdown was reimposed in Kashmir - also claimed by India’s arch rival Pakistan - on July 12 after a major spike in cases and deaths.
Shops and businesses are shut, and in most parts of the main city of Srinagar roads are sealed and people are not allowed to leave their homes.
2020-07-22 22:29:56
Researchers are making “good progress” in developing vaccines against COVID-19, with a handful in late-stage trials, but their first use cannot be expected until early 2021, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert said on Wednesday.
WHO is working hard to ensure fair distribution of the vaccines, but in the meantime it is key to suppress the spread of the coronavirus, said Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s emergencies programme, as daily new cases around the globe are at near-record levels.
“We’re making good progress,” Ryan said, noting that several vaccines were now in phase 3 trials and none had failed, so far, in terms of safety or ability to generate an immune response.
“Realistically it is going to be the first part of next year before we start seeing people getting vaccinated,” he told a public event on social media.
“And we need to be fair about this, because this is a global good. Vaccines for this pandemic are not for the wealthy, they are not for the poor, they are for everybody,” he said.
2020-07-22 22:14:40
A group of UN rights experts called on Iran to immediately release jailed activist and journalist Narges Mohammadi, reportedly ill with the novel coronavirus, warning her life was at stake.
"The Iranian authorities must act now before it is too late," the 16 independent experts said in a statement, expressing grave concern that Mohammadi appeared to have contracted COVID-19 in Zanjan Prison in north-western Iran.
Mohammadi, 48, is a campaigner against the death penalty and was spokeswoman for the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran — founded by lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi — when she was arrested in May 2015.
2020-07-22 21:59:19
Pakistanis with COVID-19 are risking their lives and navigating a shady black market to get blood plasma transfusions, despite scant medical proof about the remedy's effectiveness.
Convalescent plasma treatment, where the antibody-rich part of the blood from a recovered patient is transfused to a coronavirus sufferer, is growing in popularity across Pakistan amid widely circulating claims of success on social media.
Like some other nations, Pakistan is conducting medical trials on the treatment, which has shown promising signs but is far from proven.
But with lengthy wait times and uncertain access, people are turning to the black market and private clinics, where there are no guarantees about the safety or origin of the blood product.
"It's all born out of desperation because everyone wants to believe there is an answer to this (coronavirus) question," Fareeha Irfan, a public health specialist, told AFP.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-22 21:44:58
Islamabad recorded 76 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Sector G-7, the district health officer said.
2020-07-22 21:27:22
Spanish Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto said on Wednesday a resurgence in coronavirus cases in Catalonia was coming under control and she hoped there would be no need for France to close the border.
With the pandemic wreaking havoc on Spain’s tourism industry, which accounts for about 12% of economic output, Madrid has voiced concern after French Prime Minister Jean Castex on Sunday did not rule out closing the border.
But Maroto told an event organised by Europa Press news agency she was optimstic after data showed infections in Catalonia had fallen over the past three days.
“Let’s hope that with this better data we don’t have to close a border that for us is very important for mobility with our European partners.”
2020-07-22 21:14:05
Gazans are thronging beaches and crowding markets filled with holiday sweets and clothes as they prepare to celebrate Eid al-Adha largely free of the coronavirus restrictions affecting the Muslim festival elsewhere.
The 360 sq. km. coastal strip has had little access to the outside world for years due to an Israeli-led blockade which many Palestinians say is like living in permanent lockdown.
No cases have been recorded in the towns and refugee camps where its two million Palestinian population live, although 75 infections and one death have occurred in quarantine centres.
The scenes contrast with restrictions elsewhere: Saudi Arabia has capped the number of its own citizens attending the upcoming haj pilgrimage; Oman has implemented a nightly curfew and Iraq has said its curfew will last through the holiday.
“God protected us from the virus,” said Malkeya Abdallah, 62, as she relaxed on the beach near Gaza City.
“We see total relaxation within the communities, the malls, the supermarkets, wedding halls, the mosques, everything is working as normal with no precautionary measures whatsoever,” said Abdelnaser Soboh, director of the World Health Organization’s Gaza office, calling for more precautions.
“The virus will eventually get (in) ... you can’t isolate Gaza from the world forever.”
2020-07-22 20:59:36
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 230 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 32,753 with five more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 1,158, the health ministry said.
2020-07-22 20:49:54
Brazil’s government revised its primary budget deficit forecast for this year to 787.4 billion reais ($154 billion) in its latest bi-monthly revenue and expenditure report, from a 540.5 billion reais shortfall projected in the last report in May.
The Economy Ministry kept its 2020 primary revenue estimate basically steady at 1.2 trillion reais from the last report’s 1.21 trillion reais projection, and raised its primary spending forecast by 229.3 bln reais to 1.98 trillion reais due to the coronavirus-related emergency measures.
2020-07-22 20:30:07
The United States has signed a $1.95 billion agreement with US pharma giant Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech for 100 million doses of their experimental COVID-19 vaccine, part of an aggressive push to start immunising Americans early next year.
It is the biggest deal to date under Operation Warp Speed, intended to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of coronavirus vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.
Pfizer and BioNTech, which are developing the drug together, said in statements that the American people would receive the future vaccine "for free" in line with the Trump administration's pledge.
Under the agreement, the US government has placed an initial order for 100 million doses to be delivered if regulatory approval is granted.
The US government also has an option to purchase as many as 500 million additional doses from the two firms.
BioNTech and Pfizer have narrowed their vaccine candidates down to two frontrunners and are waiting for the green light to begin a mass trial involving 30,000 healthy volunteers, which may happen later this month.
If the studies are successful, they expect to receive some form of emergency approval as early as October 2020.
2020-07-22 20:06:00
Irish no-frills airline Ryanair plans to close its Frankfurt-Hahn base in Germany — and other hubs could follow after German pilots rejected pay cuts.
Ryanair, which is seeking to axe 3,000 jobs due to a coronavirus-induced collapse in travel demand, revealed its plan in a memo sent Tuesday to Germany-based pilots.
The Dublin-based carrier blamed their trade union VC, whose members voted in favour of rejecting its proposed 20-percent pay cut over four years.
"VC wrote to us... (on Monday) confirming that, following a ballot of members, this emergency agreement on cost savings and job protection was rejected since only 49.4% voted in favour," Ryanair said in the memo obtained by AFP on Wednesday.
It added: "The VC (has) voted for job cuts and base closures when they could have preserved all jobs.
"We must move on with alternative measures to deliver cost savings, which regrettably will mean base closures and dismissals."
2020-07-22 19:42:51
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has had another positive result for the novel coronavirus in the third test he has taken since falling ill on July 7, a secretariat of the Communications Ministry said.
“The test carried out on the president yesterday, on the 21st, showed a positive result,” a statement said. “President Bolsonaro is still in good condition, accompanied by the presidency’s medical team,” it added.
2020-07-22 19:23:52
DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi has lifted a health emergency over the coronavirus outbreak and ordered a reopening in three stages of business activities, schools and borders.
The vast country of more than 80 million people has recorded 8,534 infections including 196 deaths since March 10.
Tshisekedi said the figures place the Democratic Republic of Congo as ninth worst-hit country in Africa in terms of the number of cases and 12th in terms of deaths, "putting paid to all catastrophic forecasts for our country at the start of the epidemic."
Tshisekedi's government proclaimed a health emergency on March 24 in which borders were closed, as well as schools, bars and restaurants.
In a televised speech late on Tuesday, the president announced an end to the emergency.
He said that from Wednesday all shops, banks, restaurants and bars would be allowed to reopen, public transport could resume and large gatherings would be permitted.
Schools and universities can reopen on August 3, and airports, ports, borders and places of worship on August 15.
2020-07-22 18:52:00
A group of UN rights experts has called on Iran to immediately release jailed activist and journalist Narges Mohammadi, reportedly ill with the novel coronavirus, warning her life was at stake.
"The Iranian authorities must act now before it is too late," the 16 independent experts said in a statement, expressing grave concern that Mohammadi appeared to have contracted COVID-19 in Zanjan Prison in north-western Iran.
Mohammadi, 48, is a campaigner against the death penalty and was spokeswoman for the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran — founded by lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi — when she was arrested in May 2015.
The mother-of-two is serving a 10-year prison sentence for "forming and managing an illegal group", among other charges.
2020-07-22 18:41:20
Prime Minister Imran Khan's aide on health, Dr Zafar Mirza has appreciated the "commendable work by Punjab resulting in decline in cases and positivity".
Dr Mirza wrote that cases that saw a high of 2,705 on June 13 had been reduced by nearly 85% to just 372 yesterday. "Positivity declines from 25% on June 9 to 5% yesterday," he said.
The premier's aide, however, warned that the "challenge is not over".
"Eid-ul-Adha needs redoubled commitment by all of us."
2020-07-22 18:15:56
The United States has secured a 100 million doses of a potentially successful coronavirus vaccine for $1.95 billion, German firm BioNTech has said.
2020-07-22 18:02:24
Canada’s annual inflation rate in June posted its biggest jump in more than nine years as restrictions imposed to curb the coronavirus outbreak were lifted, Statistics Canada said.
The rate jumped to 0.7% from a 0.4% decline in May. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the annual rate to increase to 0.3% in May. The 1.1 percentage point matches the increase seen between February and March 2011.
The main drivers of growth were recovering prices for energy, food, as well as goods such as passenger vehicles, clothing and footwear, Statscan said.
Gasoline prices declined by 15.7% compared to a 29.8% plunge in May “mainly as a result of higher demand coinciding with the gradual reopening of businesses and public services, as well as a general increase in local travel in June”, it added.
Meat prices rose 8.1% from June 2019. Overall, prices rose in nine of the 10 provinces.
2020-07-22 17:52:34
Japan’s travel ban aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus has hit most European firms in the country and could prompt them to rethink their future in the world’s third-largest economy, a European business lobby said.
Even permanent residents are not allowed in unless they are granted an exception on humanitarian grounds. In the United States and Europe, in contrast, non-citizen residents are allowed to return.
A recent survey by the European Business Council of 376 members in Japan showed that 85% had been negatively impacted by the ban, with 44% reporting financial losses. The EBC said the travel restrictions run counter to international treaties.
“This situation may also trigger some investment disputes against Japan,” EBC president Michael Mroczek told reporters.
The way the ban was handled creates an air of unpredictability that may cause CEOs to “rethink their policy regarding Japan,” he said.
The EBC’s remarks echoed those of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ), which has decried the country’s “double standard” in reentry requirements.
2020-07-22 17:41:07
Tokyo's governor urged residents of the Japanese capital to stay at home during an upcoming four-day holiday weekend, as the number of new local coronavirus cases surged.
The city is on its highest coronavirus alert level, with experts warning infections appear to be spreading rapidly and widely.
"The infections are spreading not only among young people but also among middle-aged and older people," Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said during a meeting with infectious disease experts.
"I'd like to ask (Tokyo residents) to refrain from going out as much as possible, especially elderly people and those with pre-existing conditions," she said ahead of the holiday weekend.
2020-07-22 17:31:49
India’s Glenmark Pharmaceuticals said its version of anti-flu drug favipiravir showed promise in a late-stage study of 150 patients with mild to moderate coronavirus infection.
Data showed that patients receiving FabiFlu shook off the virus about 29% faster that those receiving standard supportive care.
About 70% of the patients being treated with the drug achieved "clinical cure" by the fourth day of the study, compared with about 45% in the standard care group, the company said in a statement.
Glenmark last month received Indian regulatory approval to make and sell FabiFlu for restricted emergency use in patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 symptoms, and last week cut the price of the drug to 75 rupees ($1.01) per tablet.
2020-07-22 17:19:20
Pfizer Inc and German biotech firm BioNTech SE will get $1.95 billion from the US government to produce and deliver 100 million doses of their COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
The agreement allows the US government to acquire an additional 500 million doses, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense said.
Pfizer will deliver the doses if the product receives Emergency Use Authorization or licensure from the US Food and Drug Administration, after completing demonstration of safety and efficacy in a large Phase 3 clinical trial.
A vaccine is seen as crucial to tackle the pandemic and governments across the globe have signed deals with drugmakers to secure dosages of their vaccine candidates.
Pfizer and BioNTech are among a handful of companies that are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19, caused by the new coronavirus. Their vaccine candidate has shown promise in early-stage small studies in humans.
2020-07-22 17:00:48
Tokyo Olympics organisers are preparing to host the Games next year even if the global coronavirus pandemic hasn’t eased substantially, organising committee chief executive Toshiro Muto told Reuters on Tuesday.
“It is rather difficult for us to expect that the coronavirus pandemic is contained,” Muto told Reuters. “But if we can deliver the Games in Tokyo with coronavirus, Tokyo can be the role model for the next Olympic Games or other various international events.”
Muto said he hoped Tokyo 2020 could be the benchmark in a post-pandemic world.
“By delivering the Games successfully in Tokyo we strongly hope that can create a legacy that is in the history of mankind.”
2020-07-22 16:46:09
The United States reported more than 1,000 deaths from COVID-19 , according to a Reuters tally, marking the first time since June 10 the nation has surpassed that grim milestone.
Nearly 142,000 Americans have now died from the illness caused by the coronavirus, a toll that experts warn will likely surge following recent record spikes in case numbers and an alarming rise in hospitalizations in many states.
2020-07-22 16:34:33
Global coronavirus infections surged past 15 million, according to a Reuters tally, with the pandemic gathering pace even as countries remain divided in their response to the crisis.
In the United States, which has the highest number of cases in the world with 3.91 million infections, President Donald Trump warned: “It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better.”
The top five countries with the most cases is rounded out by Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa. But, the Reuters tally shows the disease is accelerating the fastest in the Americas, which account for more than half the world’s infections and half its deaths.
Globally, the rate of new infections shows no sign of slowing, according to the Reuters tally, based on official reports.
After the first COVID-19 case was reported in Wuhan, China, in early January, it took about 15 weeks to reach 2 million cases. By contrast, it took just eight days to climb above 15 million from the 13 million reached on July 13.
2020-07-22 16:02:53
Worrying trends of coronavirus infection are emerging in southern Europe and in the Balkan region, Mike Ryan, head of the World Health Organisation's emergencies programme, said on Wednesday.
"Obviously the Americas is clearly still the major hot spot, North, Central and South America, but we have disease beginning to accelerate in Africa," Ryan told the Newstalk radio station in his native Ireland.
"Also, even in Europe, while certainly in western Europe the disease has come under control, we still have some worrying trends in southern Europe and the Balkans so we're not out of the woods just yet in the European environment. It requires sustained vigilance.
2020-07-22 15:19:28
Beijing has accused US of "slander" after two Chinese nationals were indicted for seeking to steal coronavirus vaccine research and hacking hundreds of companies
"The Chinese government is a staunch defender of cyber security, and has always opposed and cracked down on cyber attacks and cyber crime in all forms," said foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Wednesday.
The US must "immediately stop its slander and smearing of China on cyber security issues," he told a press briefing.
2020-07-22 14:51:40
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s (AIIB) has approved a loan of $250 million to help Pakistan strengthen its response to the social and economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A USD250-M loan to Pakistan aims to help strengthen its response to the social and economic fallout from COVID-19 which is expected to have long-term repercussions on growth, and may undermine the hard-fought progress the country has made in restoring macroeconomic stability,” the bank announced on Twitter.
2020-07-22 14:29:18
Confusion persists in Balochistan over the number of overall deaths from coronavirus, as health officials say that the death toll could be much higher than that officially recorded.
According to government figures, as of July 22, 135 people have died in Balochistan after contracting the deadly virus, while 11,469 are infected.
But this number, 135, is mostly gathered from only four hospitals in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, health experts in the province revealed.
“As per our internal tally, 225 people have succumbed to the deadly infection in all 33 districts of the province,” Dr Wasim Baig, the spokesperson for the directorate of director-general health, told Geo.tv.
Read more here.
2020-07-22 14:02:02
Hong Kong will expand strict new social distancing measures from midnight on Wednesday, mandating face masks in all indoor public areas including malls and markets, Health Secretary Sophia Chan said.
"This is the most critical time for Hong Kong. We ask citizens to be patient and stay at home as much as possible," Chan said.
A spike in recent cases was mostly due to people not wearing masks, she added. The new measures would be in place for two weeks.
2020-07-22 13:21:10
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 454 to 202,799, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by five to 9,095, the tally showed.
2020-07-22 12:54:49
President Donald Trump has warned that the coronavirus crisis in the United States is likely to "get worse before it gets better."
"Some areas of our country are doing very well," Trump said at his first formal White House virus briefing since the end of April.
"Others are doing less well," the president said. "It will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better."
Trump urged Americans to wear facemasks to help prevent the spread of the highly contagious virus which has left more than 141,000 people dead in the United States.
"We are asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask," he said.
2020-07-22 12:41:42
SAPM on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Dr Sania Nishtar has said cash has been granted to over 10 million families in a short time under Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme.
Speaking to Radio Pakistan, Dr Nishtar said the provision of funds under Ehsaas Programme is purely made based on merit and transparency is ensured throughout the process.
She said multiple projects were running under the umbrella of Ehsaas initiative. “Ehsaas programme also includes micro-financing programs which would help generate income for a respectable livelihood,” she added.
2020-07-22 12:02:03
Global coronavirus infections surged past 15 million on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally.
The United States has the highest number of cases in the world with 3.91 million infections. The top five countries with the most cases is rounded out by Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa.
Globally, the rate of new infections shows no sign of slowing, according to the Reuters tally, based on official reports.
2020-07-22 11:46:51
Residents of Australia's second most populous city Melbourne must wear masks when leaving home from Wednesday, as tougher border restrictions were put in place with neighbouring New South Wales state to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Melbourne has seen a rapid increase in the number of coronavirus cases in recent weeks, with the virus spreading to many aged and nursing homes and some prisons.
Australia has recorded nearly 12,500 COVID-19 cases and 126 deaths since the pandemic began earlier this year.
2020-07-22 11:16:02
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 267,428 in Wednesday after 1,332 new cases were recorded in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 114,104 cases in Sindh, 90,816 in Punjab, 32,523 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,469 in Balochistan, 14,701 in Islamabad, 1,878 Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,937 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also reported 38 fatalities in the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,677.
2020-07-22 10:35:12
China reported 14 new coronavirus cases in the mainland, the health commission said on Wednesday.
Of the new infections, nine were in the far western region of Xinjiang, according to a statement by the National Health Commission. The other five were imported cases.
As of Tuesday, mainland China had 83,707 confirmed coronavirus cases, the health authority said. The COVID-19 death toll remained at 4,634.
2020-07-22 09:58:21
Mexico passed the 40,000 coronavirus death mark on Tuesday as the country struggles to contain the virus.
The country's Health Ministry reported 6,859 new confirmed coronavirus infections and 915 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 356,255 cases and 40,400 deaths.
2020-07-22 09:37:00
As coronavirus infections climb in Mumbai, authorities in India's worst-hit city are turning to high-tech "smart helmets" to speed up screenings and identify suspected cases in the financial capital´s densely-populated slums.
The portable thermoscanners— previously deployed in Dubai, Italy and China— enable health workers to record the temperatures of dozens of residents per minute.
"Traditional screening methods take a lot of time. You go to a slum with 20,000 people and it takes you three hours to screen 300 people," said Neelu Jain, a medical volunteer affiliated with the non-profit group Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana.
"But when you use these helmets, all you have to do is ask people to come out of their homes, face them and you can screen 6,000 people in two-and-a-half hours," she told AFP.
Read more here.
2020-07-22 09:18:49
The United States recorded 68,524 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 24 hours, Johns Hopkins University reported in its real-time tally.
The country, which is the world's hardest-hit, has now registered a total of 3,891,893 infections, the Baltimore-based university said.
Another 961 more deaths were recorded, bringing total fatalities to 141,883.
The United States has seen a resurgence of cases, particularly in the so-
2020-07-21 23:59:56
An increase in coronavirus cases was expected as the Canadian economy reopens, a senior medical official said, while expressing concern about how many young people were contracting the virus.
Deputy public health officer Howard Njoo told a briefing that the success of efforts to combat the outbreak was fragile and could be undermined by people becoming complacent.
The daily case count across Canada is now around 460 compared with 300 earlier in the month. Authorities in the 10 provinces are gradually lifting social and economic restrictions imposed in March when the outbreak started.
“Provinces (are) ... trying to reopen at I think a very prudent pace, slowly opening up bars and restaurants. But everyone recognizes we would expect to get clusters of cases,” Njoo said.
“That is concerning,” he said, blaming fatigue after months of lockdown and a feeling among the young that they were invincible “and can get away with anything.”
2020-07-21 23:54:21
France has recorded 584 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, according to the latest health ministry data.
The number of confirmed cases now stands at 177,338, the ministry said. The number of people in hospitals with the virus was down 107, and the number in intensive care was down by 12, the figures showed.
The ministry revised down slightly its figure for the total death toll since the start of the outbreak, to 30,165 from 30,177 a day earlier. It did not immediately give a reason for the revision.
2020-07-21 23:44:40
Drugmakers racing to develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine pledged on Tuesday to ensure their larger clinical trials would include diverse sets of volunteers.
In prepared remarks for a US congressional hearing, several companies vowed to include broad representation as they prepare to launch studies with thousands of volunteers in the coming months.
“Ensuring diversity in these trials, including in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, age, and other factors, is a priority in our efforts,” Menelas Pangalos, AstraZeneca Plc’s executive vice president of biopharmaceutical research & development, said in prepared remarks ahead of the hearing held by the House subcommittee on oversight and investigations.
A group of physicians and scientists last week urged the U.S. government to include Black, Latino and indigenous Americans in the design and implementation of COVID-19 vaccine trials in hopes of building trust among these at-risk populations.
Representatives from Johnson & Johnson, Moderna Inc, Pfizer Inc, and Merck & Co Inc were also set to testify later on Tuesday in the hearing, which is focused on efforts to develop a safe, effective and accessible COVID-19 vaccine.
More than 150 vaccines are in development globally with an aim to help end the global pandemic that has claimed more than 600,000 lives. But whether any will succeed remains far from clear.
2020-07-21 23:34:04
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 3,819,139 cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 57,777 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 473 to 140,630.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by the new coronavirus/
2020-07-21 23:24:55
The Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB) reopened its training centres as athletes who missed out on this year’s postponed Tokyo Games took the first steps in preparing for action in Japan 12 months from now.
Competitors were back in the pool, on courts and at gymnasiums after months of training from home during the new coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s a good time for us to go back,” said swimmer Ana Marcela Cunha. “Looking forward to the 2021 Olympics. The feeling of starting over to fulfill a dream. Today’s first practice was a warm-up.”
The athletes, all of whom wore masks, wiped down equipment before heaving on weight machines at the start of what they hope will be the road to Tokyo, which has rescheduled the 2020 Olympic Games for July 23-Aug. 8 2021.
“We’re facing a very difficult time, but we’ll get through it,” said Jorge Bichara, the BOC’s sport manager.
“We’re going to resume training. We are going to work very hard next year so that the athletes arrive in good condition at the 2021 Olympics and can represent Brazil.”
Rio de Janeiro hosted the 2016 Games and invested heavily in upgrading and building new facilities for athletes to prepare.
2020-07-21 23:14:02
Italian luxury group Valentino had models suspended from swings in flowing white gowns against a pitch-black background in a circus-inspired haute couture show, live-streamed from Rome.
After being forced to cancel events, close shops and halt manufacturing during lockdowns triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, high-end fashion houses have largely ditched traditional catwalk shows and replaced them with films, videos and other formats to showcase their collections.
Valentino’s designer Pierpaolo Piccioli set his “Of Grace and Light” fall/winter 2020-21 couture show in Rome’s famed Cinecitta film studios, working with British photographer Nick Knight who remained in London.
The event was part physical, part digital, with a small media audience attending.
It displayed 15 gowns, all pure white but for one with silver fringes, with cascades of feathers, ruffles, chiffon and taffeta. Some were four or five metres long, to showcase the painstaking work in creating them. In some cases, up to 4,000 hours of stitching by hand and 350 metres of fabric were needed.
Piccioli told reporters on Zoom the lockdown had disrupted the availability of made-to-order embroideries and patterns but that his show wanted to send a message of hope and positivity.
“It came out at a tough moment but I believe our job is not to reflect the moment but rather react to it. Couture is made for emotions. It’s not for walking, it’s for dreams,” he said.
2020-07-21 23:04:03
After about four months of lockdown restrictions Britons will finally be able to sit down at a McDonald’s outlet and order a Big Mac starting Wednesday.
The world’s largest fast-food chain will open over 700 restaurants for dine-in service in the United Kingdom and Ireland, it said on Tuesday, as business restrictions imposed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic eased.
Diners will only have the option for table service, to minimize interaction with takeaway customers and delivery couriers when restaurants open on Wednesday, the company added.
England allowed pubs, hair salons and restaurants to open earlier this month, as it looked to resume normal life. The coronavirus has infected nearly 326,000 people in the UK and killed over 45,300.
None of the reopenings would take place in Wales due to government guidance, McDonald's said.
2020-07-21 22:54:54
Fears over the coronavirus will see the Nobel prize banquet cancelled for the first time in over half a century, Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter reported on Tuesday.
Nobel Prize winners for 2020 will be announced but the banquet, which is always held on December 10 and normally draws around 1,300 guests, will not go ahead.
“There are two problems. You can not gather that many people next to each other. And it is uncertain whether people can travel to Sweden to the extent they want,” Nobel Foundation Chairman Lars Heikensten told Dagens Nyheter.
The last time the banquet was cancelled was in 1956, in protest at the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary. It was also cancelled during World War One and Two.
2020-07-21 22:44:19
Islamabad recorded 26 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Sector I-8/3, the district health officer said.
2020-07-21 22:33:17
Major US and European Union airlines asked the EU and White House on Tuesday to consider a joint US-EU program to test airline passengers for COVID-19 as a way to allow people to travel once again between the United States and Europe.
In a letter to US Vice President Mike Pence and Ylva Johansson, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, the chief executives of American Airlines, United Airlines, Lufthansa, and International Airlines Group requested “the safe and swift restoration of air travel between the United States and Europe.”
“We recognize that testing presents a number of challenges, however we believe that a pilot testing program for the transatlantic market could be an excellent opportunity for government and industry to work together and find ways to overcome obstacles and explore all solutions to protect health, build confidence, and safely restore passenger travel between
the US and Europe,” the airlines wrote in the letter.
Lufthansa spokesman Andreas Bartels said the airline “wanted to raise this topic because we think there is the possibility to test people at the airport, as we have demonstrated in Frankfurt.”
2020-07-21 22:23:58
Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa said that security forces would enforce a dusk to dawn curfew from Wednesday to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
But critics and the opposition say authorities want to stop anti-government protests planned for next week by activists who say government corruption has worsened economic hardships.
2020-07-21 22:13:33
Authorities in India's worst-hit city, Mumbai, have turned to high-tech "smart helmets" to speed up the screening process of patients suspected to have the coronavirus.
2020-07-21 21:59:20
Passengers of China-bound flights must provide negative COVID-19 test results before boarding, China’s aviation authority said, as the government looks to further reduce the risk of imported coronavirus cases amid increased international travel.
Nucleic acid tests must be completed within five days of embarkation, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said on its website. Tests should be conducted at facilities designated or recognised by Chinese embassies in host countries, it said.
The embassies will carefully assess the testing capacity of host countries and formulate travel procedures when testing conditions are met, CAAC said.
The announcement comes as countries struggle with testing capacity and speed. In parts of the United States, receipt of test results can take up to two weeks, while in some other countries, nucleic acid tests are reserved for people who have come in close contact with COVID-19 patients or who have symptoms of the potentially fatal disease.
2020-07-21 21:44:42
The Citi Open in Washington, which was scheduled to restart the men’s ATP Tour after the COVID-19 shutdown, has been cancelled for 2020, organisers announced.
The tournament was set to begin on Aug. 14 and serve as a build-up for the US Open but the organisers said concerns about travel restrictions and recent trends in the coronavirus outbreak had led to the decision to scrap the event.
“After months of tireless work by our team and close collaboration with our many stakeholders, we are heartbroken to announce that we must unfortunately postpone the 52nd Citi Open until the summer of 2021,” tournament chairman Mark Ein said in a statement.
“... There are too many unresolved external issues, including various international travel restrictions as well as troubling health and safety trends, that have forced us to make this decision now in fairness to our players, suppliers and partners, so that they can have certainty around their planning.”
2020-07-21 21:33:24
Balochistan reported 28 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 11,469 with two more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 135, the health ministry said.
2020-07-21 21:20:24
Punjab has reserved 8,950 beds for COVID-19 patients, including, 2,345 in Lahore, according tostatistics released by the province's health department.
2020-07-21 21:08:39
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 280 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 32,523 with six more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 1,153, the health ministry said.
2020-07-21 21:00:58
South Korean epidemiologists have found that people were more likely to contract the new coronavirus from members of their own households than from contacts outside the home.
A study published in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on July 16 looked in detail at 5,706 “index patients” who had tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 59,000 people who came into contact with them.
The findings showed just two out of 100 infected people had caught the virus from non-household contacts, while one in 10 had contracted the disease from their own families.
“This is probably because these age groups are more likely to be in close contact with family members as the group is in more need of protection or support,” Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) and one of the authors of the study, told a briefing.
Children aged nine and under were least likely to be the index patient, said Dr. Choe Young-june, a Hallym University College of Medicine assistant professor who co-led the work, although he noted that the sample size of 29 was small compared to the 1,695 20-to-29-year-olds studied.
“The difference in age group has no huge significance when it comes to contracting COVID-19. Children could be less likely to transmit the virus, but our data is not enough to confirm this hypothesis,” said Choe.
2020-07-21 20:50:55
Indonesia reported 1,655 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of infections to 89,869, according to official data released by the government.
The number of fatalities due to COVID-19 rose by 81 on Tuesday to reach a total of 4,320, the data showed, while 48,466 people have recovered from the virus.
2020-07-21 20:40:12
Austria is reintroducing a requirement that face masks be worn in supermarkets, banks and post offices because of an increase in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said.
Austria went into lockdown early in its outbreak in mid-March and began loosening its restrictions a month later, even scrapping the requirement to wear face masks in shops and schools on June 15.
Face masks are still required on public transport, in hospitals and pharmacies and at hairdressers.
While the number of daily infections here was regularly well under 50 in May and June, it has increased in the past three weeks - it was over 100 almost every other day this month.
“There are areas of daily life where one cannot choose whether one goes or not - the supermarket, the bank, the post office,” Kurz told a news conference. “We have therefore decided that we will make face masks compulsory again in supermarkets, in banks, in post offices.”
2020-07-21 20:30:25
In the eastern Afghan city of Herat, 18-year-old high school student Somaya Faruqi adjusts a suction cap as she puts the finishing touches before unveiling a low-cost, lightweight ventilator created by her and six other young women.
The all-female Afghan Robotics Team, which has won international awards for its robots, started work in March on an open-source, low-cost ventilator as the coronavirus pandemic hit the war-torn nation.
It took the team almost four months to finalise the ventilator, which is partly based on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) design, and they received guidance from experts at Harvard University.
The device is easy to carry, can run on battery power for 10 hours, and costs roughly $700 to produce, compared with the $20,000 price of a traditional ventilator.
“We are delighted that we were able to take our first step in the field of medicine and to be able to serve the people in this area as well. All members of our team feel happy because after months of hard work, we were able to achieve this result,” Faruqi told Reuters.
Health Ministry spokesman Akmal Samsor said once the ventilators were approved they would be rolled out in Afghan hospitals and the design shared with the World Health Organization.
“We appreciate the initiative and creativity in Afghanistan’s health sector...after they are approved, we will use these ventilators and we are determined to contract with companies so we can also export them,” he said.
2020-07-21 20:20:49
Microsoft Corp’s professional networking site LinkedIn said it would cut about 960 jobs, or 6% of its global workforce, as the coronavirus pandemic is having a sustained impact on demand for its recruitment products.
Jobs will be cut across sales and hiring divisions of the group globally. Announcing the plan in a message posted on LinkedIn’s website, Chief Executive Ryan Roslansky said the company would provide at least 10 weeks of severance pay as well as health insurance for a year for US employees and will hire for newly-created roles from laid-off staff.
“I want you to know these are the only layoffs we are planning,” Roslansky said in his message. Affected staff, who have not yet been told, would be able to keep company-issued cell phones, laptops, and recently purchased equipment to help them work from home while making career transitions, he said.
“If you don’t receive a meeting invite, you are not directly impacted by this change,” Roslansky said.
2020-07-21 20:11:32
Coca-Cola Co said demand for its beverages was improving after reporting a 28% slump in sales in the “most challenging” quarter of the year due to coronavirus-led closures of restaurants, theaters and sports venues.
Shares of the world’s largest soda maker rose about 4% as it also beat second-quarter profit estimates.
Coca-Cola generates a sizeable portion of its revenues by selling its soft drinks and concentrates to restaurants and theater operators, such as McDonald’s Corp and AMC Entertainment Holdings, but most of them had to close some or all of their operations due to the health crisis.
But as lockdowns eased, unit case volume trends, a key demand indicator, improved sequentially, from a decline of about 25% in April to a fall of about 10% in June. Volume trends was down mid-single digits globally for July to-date.
“We cannot discount there might be further waves of lockdowns, partial or full,” Chief Executive Officer James Quincey told analysts.
“Having said that, I am pretty confident that second quarter will ultimately prove to have been the most difficult and the most impacted quarter.”
2020-07-21 19:59:27
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom said that the UN body was "deeply concerned" about the impact of coronavirus on indigenous people in the Americas.
"As of July 6th, more than 70,000 cases & over 2,000 deaths have been reported among these populations," he said.
2020-07-21 19:45:16
US deaths from COVID-19 rose for a second week in a row to more than 5,200 people in the week ended July 19, up 5% from the previous seven days, a Reuters analysis found.
Nationally, new COVID-19 cases have risen for seven straight weeks. Forty-three states reported more new cases of COVID-19 last week compared to the previous week, the analysis found.
2020-07-21 19:29:44
Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed blew a gasket over the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in the suo motu notice case and said that the NDMA does not know how to proceed with the court. However, the top court asked Prime Minister Imran Khan to take notice of the management authority.
A five-member bench headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed heard the coronavirus suo motu notice case in which a representative of the NDMA appeared before the court.
At the beginning of the hearing, the CJP inquired about the machinery that was imported from China in the name of Al-Hafeez.
"Where are his documents? Documents are being sought from the last 3 hearings, what is Al-Hafeez? who is he? Who is the owner? Nothing came up, why the documents were not given despite the orders from the court?" the CJ lashed out.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-21 19:14:35
TPL Trakker, the company behind the mapping technology that the government is using to map COVID-19 hotspots in Pakistan, is planning on going public, hoping to raise Rs1.4 billion rupees ($8.4 million) through an initial public offering.
According to Bloomberg, the company, which entered the Pakistani market in 1999 with its vehicle tracking system, will use the capital raised to expand.
Chief Executive Officer Sarwar Ali Khan, in his interview to Bloomberg, had shared that TPL Trakker has shifted in the past two to three years from being a hardware company selling tracking devices to a “software-based player”.
Responding to Geo.tv's question about how the response has been regarding the change in course, he described it as “positive”, with major companies like foodpanda and Telenor employing their services.
“Our target was to take it [TPL Trakker] out of Pakistan,” Khan said as he explained the decision behind the pivot in strategy. He said the new direction would allow them to offer solutions in the “wider region”, such as the Middle East.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-21 19:02:01
Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab said that the provincial government had issued Rs25 million to Dar-ul-Sukoon.
"In addition, medicine & protective equipment has also been handed over to the management. 20 people at Dar-ul -ukoon have unfortunately tested COVID-19 positive & are being isolated," Wahab said.
2020-07-21 19:02:02
South Korea’s SK Bioscience has agreed to manufacture AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine to help the British company build global supplies of the vaccine that has shown promise against the new coronavirus, it said.
Data on Monday showed that the vaccine, jointly developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, produced an immune response in early-stage clinical trials.
The manufacturing contract, which begins this month, will last until early next year and could be extended depending on AstraZeneca’s success in development of the vaccine, SK said.
South Korea’s health ministry arranged discussions between the two companies and will also begin discussions with AstraZeneca to introduce the vaccine to the country, it said.
2020-07-21 16:00:01
California reported a record increase of more than 11,800 new cases of COVID-19, according to a Reuters tally of county data, as the Trump administration pushes for schools to reopen to help businesses return to normal.
If California were a country, it would be rank fifth in the world for total cases at nearly 400,000, behind the United States, Brazil, India and Russia.
This is the first time California has reported over 10,000 new infections since setting a record with 10,861 cases on July 14.
Florida has reported over 10,000 new cases a day for the last six days in a row and Texas has reported over 10,000 cases for five out of the last seven days.
2020-07-21 16:13:43
More British employers are freezing staff pay or postponing annual wage settlements as they deal with the economic fallout from the coronavirus lockdown, a survey showed.
Human resources data provider XpertHR said 16% of pay deals in the three months to the end of June offered no increase in wages - up from 15% in the three months to May and around double the proportion in the three months to April.
“Many organisations are deferring a decision on their April pay award until later in the year, but indications are that many of these will come back and implement a pay freeze,” XpertHR pay and benefits editor Sheila Attwood said.
In the three months to the end of June, XpertHR recorded a 2.2% median basic pay award across the economy, unchanged from the previous period, based on a sample of 256 basic pay awards.
2020-07-21 16:48:38
Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab said that the province has the lowest death rate and the highest recovery rate, in a press conference where he lashed out at the federal government for failing to control the coronavirus pandemic.
Addressing a press conference in Karachi, Wahab said that Sindh had conducted the most number of tests in the country. “To date, we have conducted over 449,900 tests in the province,” he said.
“Unlike other provinces, Sindh is also doing contact tracing under which we have conducted 13,574 tests per million, whereas, Punjab conducted just 5,964 tests per million,” Wahab said.
Sindh has so far detected 113,553 coronavirus cases.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-21 18:51:44
Russia is considering cutting spending on the military as low oil prices and the coronavirus crisis have pummelled its economy, a document published by the finance ministry shows.
The ministry has proposed the government cut state spending on the military by 5% between 2021 and 2023. The proposal, published on Monday, also includes budget spending cuts of 10% for the court system, the servicing of Russia’s debt and wages for civil servants.
2020-07-21 17:00:01
2020-07-21 18:40:08
Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan cut the Swiss drugmaker’s 2020 sales forecast on Tuesday after COVID-19 disruptions that kept patients from visiting their doctor or hospital hit the company’s second-quarter revenue.
Narasimhan said Novartis now expected only mid-single-digit percentage sales growth this year, from previous expectations of mid- to high-single-digit percentage growth.
Novartis has been largely left out of the current race for new COVID-19 medicines or vaccines, having unloaded its vaccines business in 2014.
Narasimhan said selling the vaccines business, where he once led development, had left Novartis out of the COVID-19 prevention race. He also said the company is doing research on new antivirals he hopes could be deployed during this pandemic or future ones.
“We saw that we don’t currently have the vaccine in know-how and capabilities inside the company, but we have deep expertise in anti-viral drug development,” Narasimhan said.
2020-07-21 17:20:01
2020-07-21 17:34:05
Ahead of Eid ul Adha, the city's administration has enacted Section 144 in Karachi and Islamabad, against illegally-formed cattle markets.
Karachi Commissioner Iftikhar Shalwani said that a cattle market set up without prior permission from officials would be deemed illegal.
The commissioner said that the city administration will not allow the buying and selling of sacrificial animals apart from the designated cattle markets.
Meanwhile, in the federal capital, the local administration has imposed a ban on buying and selling of animals ahead of Eid ul Adha, within the city limits.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-21 17:49:52
Saudi authorities announced this year's Hajj will take place on July 29 with only 1,000 pilgrims as the country battles a surge in coronavirus infections.
Some 2.5 million people from all over the world usually participate in the ritual that takes place over several days, centred on the holy city of Makkah.
This year's Hajj will be held under strict hygiene protocols, with access limited to pilgrims under 65 years old and without any chronic illnesses.
"The stand of pilgrims on Mount Arafat, the peak of the Hajj ritual, falls on Thursday," the official Saudi Press Agency cited the Supreme Court as saying, indicating that Wednesday would be the first day of the annual event.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-21 18:00:46
Spain is not holding any talks with other EU countries over the potential closure of land borders, Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said, when asked about reports that France could mull such a move over coronavirus worries.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex on Sunday did not rule out closing the border with Spain, which is struggling to control a fresh surge of coronavirus cases. Most of the infections are located in Catalonia, which borders France.
2020-07-21 18:11:13
Chinese companies should be more patriotic as well as enhancing their ability to expand overseas, as the country strives to make up economic losses caused by the coronavirus epidemic, President Xi Jinping said, according to state TV.
China’s economic recovery so far and epidemic control efforts have been better than expected, China Central Television cited Xi as saying in a meeting with corporate representatives from Hikvision, Goertek, Panasonic China, and others.
Xi said the government will target a good growth rate this year, making fiscal policy more proactive, prudent monetary policy more flexible, and macro-economic policies more targeted and timely, according to the report. Authorities would also continue to cut taxes, administrative fees, rent and rates to benefit businesses.
2020-07-21 18:25:00
US lawmakers and White House officials headed into a day of negotiations on Capitol Hill, aimed at hammering out an agreement on new coronavirus aid legislation as infections and deaths surged to record levels across the country.
The Republican-led Senate and Democratic-controlled House of Representatives have less than two weeks to agree on a legislative package before assistance runs out for tens of millions of Americans made jobless by the coronavirus pandemic.
But the two sides remained far apart over how much money to spend and which priorities to spend it on, as the United States led the world with more than 3.8 million coronavirus cases and over 140,900 deaths.
The House approved a $3 trillion coronavirus bill in May, which the Senate has ignored. Senate Republicans are expected to unveil their own legislation as early as this week. But there has been little evidence of consensus within their ranks.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is due to host a meeting on Tuesday afternoon to discuss coronavirus relief with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Schumer. Mnuchin and Meadows will meet separately with Senate Republicans.
2020-07-21 16:39:58
The Philippines said on Tuesday it would ramp up testing for the novel coronavirus amid a sharp rise in infections and deaths since a lockdown was eased in June, while President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to arrest anyone not wearing a mask.
The government aimed to test 32,000 to 40,000 people a day compared with the current 20,000 to 23,000, Health Secretary Francisco Duque said in a televised meeeting with Duterte.
“We cannot test every citizen as no country has done it even the richest, the United States,” Duque said.
“We do not have any qualms in arresting people,” Duterte said in a recorded address aired on Tuesday. It was a “serious crime” to spread the COVID-19 respiratory disease, he added.
2020-07-21 15:53:03
Iran on Tuesday reported a new single-day record death toll of 229 from the novel coronavirus, after weeks of rising numbers in the Middle East's worst-hit country.
"Sadly, we lost 229 of our compatriots to the COVID-19 infection in the past 24 hours," health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said.
"This raises the overall toll to 14,634," she said in televised remarks.
Lari also raised the country's caseload to 278,827, with 2,625 more people testing positive for the disease in the past day.
Iran closed schools, cancelled public events and banned movements between its provinces in March, but gradually lifted restrictions from April to try to reopen its sanctions-hit economy.
2020-07-21 15:37:28
The University of Oxford's possible COVID-19 vaccine could be rolled out by the end of the year but there is no certainty that will happen, the lead developer of the vaccine said on Tuesday.
"The end of the year target for getting vaccine rollout, it's a possibility but there's absolutely no certainty about that because we need three things to happen," Sarah Gilbert told BBC Radio, saying it needed to be shown to work in late stage trials, there needed to be large quantities manufactured and regulators had to agree quickly to licence it for emergency use.
2020-07-21 15:15:15
LinkedIn has said it would cut about 960 jobs of its global workforce, as the coronavirus pandemic is having a sustained impact on demand for its recruitment products.
Jobs will be cut across sales and hiring divisions of the group globally. Announcing the plan in a message posted on LinkedIn’s website, Chief Executive Ryan Roslansky said the company would provide at least 10 weeks of severance pay as well as health insurance for a year for US employees, and will hire for newly-created roles from laid-off staff.
2020-07-21 14:53:41
2020-07-21 14:32:16
A legislative void that enabled thousands of Romanians infected with the new coronavirus to walk out of hospitals or not be treated at all ends on Tuesday as a new law comes into effect.
Until this month, the government through a series of cabinet decrees has managed the outbreak by hospitalising those who were infected and by quarantining or home-isolating people who might have been exposed.
A new law fast-tracked in parliament comes into effect on Tuesday and covers the legislative void.
"From tomorrow we have a law, we can hospitalise, we can isolate," Health Minister Nelu Tataru told private television station Digi 24 late on Monday. "If we enforce these levers we can reduce the number of infections."
Romania had recorded a total of 38,139 cases, of whom 22.747 recovered and 2,038 died
2020-07-21 14:03:13
Australia's second most populous state of Victoria reported on Tuesday three deaths from the new coronavirus and logged 374 daily cases of infections compared with 275 cases a day earlier.
The state so far has recorded just under 6,300 total confirmed cases of COVID-19, which is nearly half of the total infections in Australia.
Victoria's government has enforced a six-week partial lockdown in the city of Melbourne and asked residents to wear face masks when they step outside their houses or risk fines to contain a flare-up in infections
2020-07-21 13:41:11
2020-07-21 13:22:55
Passengers of China-bound flights must provide negative COVID-19 test results before boarding, China’s aviation authority said on Tuesday, as the government looks to further reduce the risk of imported coronavirus cases amid increased international travel.
Nucleic acid tests must be completed within five days of embarkation, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said on its website. Tests should be conducted at facilities designated or recognised by Chinese embassies in host countries, it said.
The embassies will carefully assess the testing capacity of host countries and formulate travel procedures when testing conditions are met, CAAC said.
2020-07-21 13:04:09
Rawalpindi, Gujrat, Sialkot and Gujranwala will undergo a seven-day smart lockdown till July 27th as the province crossed the 90,000 coronavirus cases mark on Monday.
Under the lockdown, “All markets, shopping malls, restaurants, offices (public and private) shall remain closed in these areas. There shall be a complete ban on the movement of people to and from these areas by public and private transport except for the limited movement of one person per vehicle to and from the exempted facilities.”
Read more here.
2020-07-21 12:39:55
The spread of coronavirus has lately been showing a downward trend in Pakistan, which is the main reason for a marked drop in daily testing, Faisal Sultan, the key person on COVID-19 for Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Monday.
WHO has recommended Pakistan increase daily testing to above 50,000, but after peaking at 31,000 tests exactly a month ago, the South Asian nation tested less than 20,000 people on Sunday.
"There is no magic number that you have to achieve, what you have to do is a good contact tracing that you are able to find the maximum numbers of exposed persons," Sultan told Reuters. "The downward trend of the epidemic is the primary reason for the reduced demand in tests."
Pakistan has registered 265,082 infections and 5,599 deaths.
Read more here.
2020-07-21 12:19:32
European Union leaders reached an “historic” deal on a massive stimulus plan for their coronavirus-hit economies at a pre-dawn meeting on Tuesday after a fractious summit that lasted almost five days.
Summit chairman Charles Michel tweeted “Deal” shortly after the 27 leaders finally reached agreement at a 5.15am (0315 GMT) plenary session.
“This agreement sends a concrete signal that Europe is a force for action,” Michel said at a dawn news conference
“It is about a lot more than money. It is about workers and families, their jobs, their health and their well-being. I believe this agreement will be seen as a pivotal moment in Europe’s journey, but it will also launch us into the future.”
Read more here.
2020-07-21 11:47:22
Oil prices were little changed on Tuesday, trapped in the narrow trading band of the past three weeks as investors gauged hopes for a recovery in oil demand against fears of new lockdowns due to a growing number of coronavirus cases.
Prices were offered some support by positive news on the development of vaccines as drugmakers and medical institutions rush to find a way to counter the world’s worst health crisis in a century.
2020-07-21 11:27:05
Saudi authorities have said this year's Hajj will take place on July 29 with only 1,000 pilgrims as the country battles a surge in coronavirus infections.
This year's Hajj will be held under strict hygiene protocols, with access limited to pilgrims under 65 years old and without any chronic illnesses.
"The stand of pilgrims on Mount Arafat, the peak of the Hajj ritual, falls on Thursday," the official Saudi Press Agency cited the Supreme Court as saying, indicating that Wednesday would be the first day of the annual event.
Read more here.
2020-07-21 10:55:45
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 266,096 after 1,013 new infections were reported in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 90,444 cases in Punjab, 113,553 in Sindh, 32,243 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,441 in Balochistan, 14,625 in Islamabad, 1,868 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,922 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also reported 40 new fatalities over the last 24 hour taking the death toll to 5,639.
2020-07-21 10:21:29
Indigenous communities comprising half a million people around the world are especially vulnerable to the new coronavirus pandemic due to often poor living conditions, WHO warned on Monday.
Director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that as of July 6, there were more than 70,000 cases reported among indigenous peoples in the Americas, with over 2,000 deaths
He urged nations to take all necessary health precautions, with special emphasis on contact tracing, to try and curb the COVID-19 disease's spread.
2020-07-21 09:57:54
SAPM on Health Dr Zafar Mirza has said the testing capacity for coronavirus is being further enhanced in the country, reported Radio Pakistan.
Speaking to a private news channel, Dr Mirza said the death ratio of coronavirus patients remained low in the country due to better arrangements made by the government in this regard.
He added it was a good thing that the number of positive cases in the country have also declined. However, he said, the people should follow the standard operating procedure (SOPs) to combat the virus.
The SAPM added the government would ensure the implementation of SOPs to control coronavirus.
2020-07-21 09:25:19
Brazil;s coronavirus death toll surpassed 80,000 on Monday, according to health ministry figures, as the country hit second-hardest in the world continued struggling to control the pandemic.
The figure, second only to the death toll in the United States, quadrupled in two months. Brazil passed the mark of 20,000 COVID-19 deaths on May 21.
The country has confirmed 2.1 million total infections.
2020-07-21 09:09:56
The United States on Monday recorded more than 60,000 new cases of coronavirus infection for the seventh consecutive day, Johns Hopkins University reported in its real-time tally.
With another 488 deaths and 61,288 cases registered in 24 hours, the country has a total of 140,922 deaths and 3.82 million cases, the Baltimore-based university said.
2020-07-20 23:59:50
The Ballon d'Or will not be awarded this year due to the extraordinary conditions created by the coronavirus pandemic, organisers France Football said.
It will be the first time the trophy given for the world's best men's footballer has not been awarded since Englishman Stanley Matthews won the inaugural edition in 1956.
"There will be no edition in 2020, because it turns out, after thoughtful consideration, that all the conditions are not met," said Pascal Ferre, the editor of the magazine.
2020-07-20 23:50:21
A young emergency doctor Monday became Lebanon's first medic to die of coronavirus, state media said, as daily infections rise in the eastern Mediterranean country.
Loay Ismail, 32, "died from coronavirus at the Nabih Berri hospital in Nabatiyeh", southern Lebanon, the National News Agency said.
The Lebanese-Italian Hospital in the nearby city of Tyre where he worked said Ismail contracted the illness "while carrying out his medical and humanitarian duty".
Firass Abiad, head of the main public hospital treating COVID-19 patients in Beirut, said: "Today we mourn Dr. Loay, our young colleague, who fell while doing his duty, treating a patient with #Covid19."
2020-07-20 23:40:56
The number of deaths in France from the new coronavirus rose to 30,177 on Monday from 30,152 on Friday, the country’s health department said.
There was no count for Saturday and Sunday.
The Health ministry said the number of people in hospital with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, fell to 6,589 from 6,688 on July 17, continuing a weeks-long downtrend.
The number of people in intensive care units was down to 467 against 477 on Friday .
2020-07-20 23:30:26
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said at least 897 people recovered from the novel coronavirus across the province over the past 24 hours, bumping the tally to 92,934 and translating into an 81% recovery rate.
In a statement issued from the CM House, Shah said 26 deaths were also reported alongside 546 new infections the past day. The new cases — which took Sindh's total number to 113,553 — were identified after 7,069 tests were conducted.
According to the chief minister, 17,824 of the 18,600 patients currently under treatment were in self-isolation, 64 at isolation centres, and 712 at various different hospitals across Sindh. Of the 535 critical patients, 75 were shifted to ventilators.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-20 23:20:17
The prevalence of the novel coronavirus in Spain has risen three-fold over the last three weeks as authorities struggle to contain a rash of fresh clusters, mainly in the Catalonia and Aragon regions, Health Ministry data showed on Monday.
since restrictions on movement were lifted and Spaniards relaxed back into daily life, some 201 new clusters have appeared, with heavy concentrations in and around the Catalan cities of Barcelona and Lleida.
The occurrence of the novel coronavirus has jumped from eight cases per 100,000 inhabitants at the end of June, when the country’s state of emergency ended, to 27 per 100,000, deputy health emergency chief Maria Sierra told a news conference on Monday.
Over the weekend 4,581 new cases were recorded, bringing the total to 264,836, she added. More than 28,000 people have died.
“Where measures have been relaxed is where these clusters appear,” Health Minister Salvador Illa said. “We’re talking about gatherings of extended family and spaces associated with nightlife.”
2020-07-20 23:10:43
Balochistan reported five new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 11,441 with five one more person succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 133, the health ministry said.
2020-07-20 22:59:14
Veteran British Pakistani Barrister Iftikhar Ahmad has filed a petition against the British government over 14 days’ mandatory quarantine policy for those coming from countries like Pakistan – terming it as his unlawful house arrest in breach of fundamental human rights.
In a petition to the UK government, Iftikhar Ahmad, a former PPP senator and legal advisor to late Benazir Bhutto, has stated that prior to leaving for London from Pakistan through Qatar Airlines on 15 July, he had followed all the standard operating procedures (SOPs) and use of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) was also made mandatory for all passengers travelling by the respective airlines.
Barrister Iftikhar Ahmed, who is currently practising law in Islamabad and London, lives in North London and has placed himself in quarantine in a rented accommodation obtained specifically for this purpose.
According to the letter written by Ahmad’s solicitors to Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, Ahmad’s airline made it compulsory for all passengers travelling from Pakistan to obtain a negative COVID-19 test report from one of their nominated laboratories or else they would be denied boarding.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-20 22:50:33
South Africa’s growing COVID-19 epidemic should be an alert to the rest of the continent to strengthen disease surveillance, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe also reported significant increases in cases over the past week, WHO’s top emergencies expert Mike Ryan told a news conference.
“Even though the numbers in those other countries are smaller I think what we starting to see is a continued acceleration of transmission in a number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and I think that has to be taken very, very seriously,” he said.
“South Africa may unfortunately be a precursor, it may be a warning for what will happen in the rest of Africa. So I think this isn’t just a wake-up call for South Africa ... we need to take what is happening in Africa very very seriously.”
2020-07-20 22:41:15
Indigenous communities comprising half a million people around the world are especially vulnerable to the new coronavirus pandemic due to often poor living conditions, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned.
Director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that as of July 6, there were more than 70,000 cases reported among indigenous peoples in the Americas, with over 2,000 deaths
He urged nations to take all necessary health precautions, with special emphasis on contact tracing, to try and curb the COVID-19 disease’s spread.
“We do not have to wait for a vaccine. We have to save lives now,” he told a virtual briefing from the UN agency’s headquarters in Geneva.
2020-07-20 22:31:18
AstraZeneca’s is looking to test two high doses of its experimental vaccine against the new coronavirus in later stage trials rather than focus on approval for single or lower doses of the vaccine, its biopharma chief said.
“Right now, the safe thing to do is go with two doses, and then we’ll start exploring single doses or lower doses,” Mene Pangalos, executive vice-president for BioPharmaceuticals R&D, told reporters.
2020-07-20 22:22:01
US President Donald Trump has signed off on an effort to seek an additional $1 trillion in coronavirus economic relief, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said, as Republicans laid out their initial proposal for talks with Democrats.
“We’ll focus on starting with another trillion dollars. We think that will have a big impact,” Mnuchin told reporters as he met with Trump and the two top Republicans in the US Congress.
2020-07-20 22:11:02
2020-07-20 21:59:45
New York state reported the fewest hospitalisations from the coronavirus in four months just as New York City entered a new phase of reopening, but the progress was eclipsed by the rapid spread of COVID-19 elsewhere in the United States.
The state, at one time the epicenter of the pandemic, recorded eight deaths on Sunday while the total number of people hospitalized for the disease fell to 716, the fewest since March 18, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.
Cuomo called the figures “good news,” although a Reuters analysis of data from the COVID Tracking Project showed cases rose in the past week for the first time since April, to more than 5,000, breaking a 13-week streak of declines.
Elsewhere, nearly every metric for the country as a whole was growing worse including a rising number of cases, deaths, hospitalizations and rates of positive test results. The virus has killed 140,000 Americans and infected some 3.7 million, both figures leading the world.
The city of Los Angeles is on the brink of issuing a new stay-at-home order and at least 14 states have reported record hospitalizations so far in July, including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Texas.
2020-07-20 21:44:05
Air France-KLM has struck a tentative deal with French pilots to transfer some domestic services to low-cost subsidiary Transavia, as the airline group steps up restructuring in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, the main pilots’ union said.
A draft deal is “on the table” but has yet to be signed subject to approval by members, a spokeswoman for Air France’s main SNPL pilots’ union said, confirming a report by French daily La Tribune. Air France declined to comment.
The Franco-Dutch group aims to cut some 7,580 jobs by the end of next year as airlines struggle to weather the COVID-19 pandemic and a resulting slump in global travel.
Chief Executive Ben Smith is accelerating cost-cutting measures including the transfer of French domestic services from Air France and its HOP! unit to Transavia. The move requires changes to union agreements that currently bar the no-frills division from competing on domestic routes.
2020-07-20 21:14:08
Israel is in advanced negotiations with AstraZeneca for the future purchase of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine, Israel’s YNET news website reported.
A Health Ministry spokesman said the ministry “does not disclose contacts being held in this sensitive matter.”
The experimental coronavirus vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford university was safe and produced an immune response in early-stage clinical trials, data showed on Monday, keeping alive the hope it could be in use by the end of the year.
2020-07-20 21:01:01
An experimental coronavirus vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford university was safe and produced an immune response in early-stage clinical trials, data showed on Monday, keeping alive the hope it could be in use by the end of the year.
The vaccine, called AZD1222, has been described by the World Health Organization’s chief scientist as the leading candidate in a global race to halt a pandemic that has claimed more than 600,000 lives.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose government has helped to fund the project, hailed the results as “very positive news.”
However, the researchers cautioned the project was still at an early stage.
“There is still much work to be done before we can confirm if our vaccine will help manage the COVID-19 pandemic,” vaccine developer Sarah Gilbert said.
“We still do not know how strong an immune response we need to provoke to effectively protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection,” she said, adding researchers needed to learn more about COVID-19 and continue late stage trials which have already commenced.
2020-07-20 21:28:21
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 157 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 32,243 with five more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 1,147, the health ministry said.
2020-07-20 20:51:22
Brazil’s Citizenship Minister Onyx Lorenzoni said he had tested positive for the new coronavirus, the country’s third minister to be infected amid the world’s second-worst outbreak.
Lorenzoni, a close ally of President Jair Bolsonaro, credited relatively mild symptoms to an anti-malarial drug touted by the president on social media and at public rallies.
“I already feel the positive effects,” the minister wrote on Twitter about his regimen of chloroquine, along with azithromycin and ivermectin, as a treatment against the virus.
2020-07-20 20:37:29
PARIS: Governments around the world are scrambling to save companies battered by coronavirus lockdowns but the world is nevertheless facing a massive surge in bankruptcies by a third, a study conducted by a trade insurance firm said Monday.
"COVID-19 is creating an insolvency time bomb," said the report by Euler Hermes, predicting a 35% cumulative jump in the number of companies that go bust between 2019 and 2021.
The firm said this would be a record for its global insolvency index and that about half of the countries worldwide would be setting new highs since the 2009 financial crisis.
Bankruptcies are expected to soar 57% in the US in 2021, 45% in Brazil, 43% in Britain, 41% in Spain, and 20% in China.
Read more on this here
2020-07-20 19:59:15
Russia hopes to complete trials of a coronavirus vaccine in August and produce 200 million doses with foreign partners by the end of the year, the head of its sovereign wealth fund said.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which manages some $10 billion, is working with a government research institute on one of several vaccine projects in the country.
RDIF chief executive Kirill Dmitriev said he hoped the project would receive permission next month to begin production, after the first phase of a vaccine trial was completed last week.
"Immediately after that we are planning to begin mass production," Dmitriev said in a statement on Russia's state anti-coronavirus portal.
2020-07-20 19:49:24
AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine was safe and produced an immune response in early-stage clinical trials in healthy volunteers, data showed on Monday, with the strongest response seen in people who received two doses. The vaccine, called AZD1222 and being developed by AstraZeneca and scientists at Britain’s University of Oxford, did not prompt any serious side effects and elicited antibody and T-cell immune responses, according to trial results published in The Lancet medical journal.
“There is still much work to be done before we can confirm if our vaccine will help manage the COVID-19 pandemic, but these early results hold promise,” vaccine developer Sarah Gilbert said.
“We still do not know how strong an immune response we need to provoke to effectively protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
2020-07-20 19:39:25
A COVID-19 vaccine developed by CanSino Biologics Inc and China’s military research unit has shown to be safe and induced immune response in most of the recipients, researchers said.
The CanSino candidate, named Ad5-nCOV, is one of a handful of vaccines that have shown some promise in human testing and are gearing up for late-stage trials, along with projects involving Moderna Inc, BioNTech SE and Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc.
While CanSino’s vaccine has yet to start late-stage large-scale clinical trials to assess how well it works to prevent people from becoming infected, it has received the greenlight to be used in China’s military.
The results from the mid-stage study, published in the medical journal Lancet, supports the testing of the vaccine candidate in a large trial, the study authors said..
2020-07-20 19:19:13
German biotech firm BioNTech and U.S. drugmaker Pfizer on Monday reported additional data from their experimental COVID-19 vaccine that showed it was safe and induced an immune response in patients.
The companies said the data also demonstrated an induction of high level of T-cell responses against the novel coronavirus.
The results were disclosed from a trial in Germany testing 60 healthy volunteers, and come after the companies earlier this month reported data from a corresponding early-stage trial in the United States.
The trial showed that volunteers given two doses of the vaccine produced virus-neutralizing antibodies, similar to the US trial.
2020-07-20 19:09:00
After more than half a millennium guarding the Tower of London from rebellions and invaders, Beefeaters are facing redundancies for the first time because visitor numbers have plummeted due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Officially called Yeoman Warders and instantly recognisable with their distinctive red and blue hats and uniforms, the Beefeaters live with their families inside the fortress which houses the Crown Jewels, glittering symbol of the British monarchy.
“The closure of our six sites for almost four months has dealt a devastating blow to our finances, which we expect to continue for the rest of the financial year and to be compounded by the slow recovery of international tourism,” said John Barnes, chief executive of Historic Royal Palaces.
“We simply have no choice but to reduce our payroll costs,” said Barnes. “We urgently need the public to support us by visiting our sites now they have re-opened.”
“We think this is the first time the Yeoman Warders have faced redundancy,” said Historic Royal Palaces.
2020-07-20 19:29:14
The International Cricket Council (ICC) postponed the 2020 ICC World T20 till October 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decision was made during a meeting of the IBC Board (the commercial subsidiary of the ICC) today.
Following the meeting, the world cricket's governing body said "windows for the next three ICC men’s events were also agreed to bring clarity to the calendar and give the sport the best possible opportunity over the next three years to recover from the disruption caused by COVID-19."
The ICC said that following the rescheduling of its calendar, next year's World T20 will be followed by another in 2022, whereas the 50-over World Cup will be played according to plan in 2023.
2020-07-20 18:59:00
US Senate Democrats are prepared to block Republicans from moving forward on a partisan coronavirus aid bill, the chamber’s top Democrat warned on Monday, as Republican leaders were expected to meet at the White House to discuss legislation.
The Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic-led House of Representatives have less than two weeks to hammer out a new relief package before enhanced unemployment benefits run out for tens of millions of American workers made jobless by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy were due to discuss legislation with President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at the White House on Monday, a White House official said over the weekend.
But Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned Republicans not to try to move forward on their own legislation, saying Senate and House Democrats would unite to demand bipartisan action.
“We will stand together again if we must,” Schumer said in a letter to colleagues. “A bipartisan, bicameral process will result in a much better bill for the American people.”
2020-07-20 18:49:18
The government had introduced the smart lockdown strategy to maintain a balance between life and livelihood during the coronavirus pandemic in Pakistan. Initially, the strategy received a lot of criticism, but now that it has come to fruition with a lower positivity rate (of daily infections against the tests), there is some due credit to be given.
The government has joined hands with the local technology partners, including TPL Trakker Ltd, to trace the possible infections and impose lockdowns.
TPL, which is a mapping and tracking services provider, worked with the government to identify the coronavirus hotspots across the country.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-20 18:39:32
Indian police have arrested 14 people on suspicion of selling locally made doses of Gilead Sciences Inc’s remdesivir at five times the maximum retail price as a surge of novel coronavirus cases boosts demand for the antiviral drug.
Police in the financial hub of Mumbai and in the southern city of Hyderabad said they have arrested, in all, 14 people for selling the drug on the black market for as much as 30,000 rupees ($400) a dose, compared with the maximum retail price of 5,400 rupees.
Police seized 23 vials of remdesivir produced by Cipla and privately held Indian drugmaker Hetero Labs from the suspects, they said.
2020-07-20 18:29:19
British retailer Marks & Spencer plans to cut 950 jobs as part of a store management revamp, dealing a further blow to a sector ravaged by the COVID-19 crisis.
Marks & Spencer, which has a UK workforce of 78,000, said it had started a consultation with its employee representative group and set out its intention to first offer voluntary redundancy to affected workers across central support functions, central operations and property and store management.
The 136-year old group has been seeking to reinvent itself anew after a decade of failed revivals.
M&S said in May the pandemic would indelibly change its business and that it would accelerate its latest turnaround effort, which included cost cuts and store closures. It labelled the programme “Never the Same Again”.
2020-07-20 18:19:00
Express COVID-19 testing will be available for some passengers at Russia’s busiest airport from Monday as part of a pilot project aimed at allowing air travel and tourism to resume safely.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport said the diagnostic tests, which give results in one hour, would be available for all passengers on domestic flights at Terminal B on Monday, as part of a wider plan to create coronavirus-free airport hubs.
The portable testing system, which fits in two small suitcases, is already used at production sites by some Russian companies and was deployed at Russia’s World War Two Victory Day military parade, held on June 24, the RDIF said.
“If you’re at an airport and you need to be tested for three hours, this is not a workable solution,” RDIF head Kirill Dmitriev told Reuters in an interview last week, adding the project aims to provide test results “within an hour”.
“We are doing a pilot in an airport in Japan and in Moscow, Sheremetyevo, and in an airport in the United Arab Emirates.”
2020-07-20 18:09:17
UAE reported 271 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 57,193 with one more person succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 340, the health ministry said.
2020-07-20 17:59:22
2020-07-20 17:49:47
Big banks are making a lot less money from their deposits than they did before the coronavirus pandemic.
Net interest income, the difference between what banks pay for money and what they receive lending it out, fell by $5 billion, or 10%, at the four biggest US banks in the second quarter from a year earlier.
The plunge came after the Federal Reserve pushed down overnight interest rates in March to near zero to support the economy’s struggle against the coronavirus pandemic.
With rates down on loans and securities, the banks earned less investing their deposits. JPMorgan Chase & Co, for example, reported that its net interest spread from consumer deposits fell to 1.52% in the second quarter, from 2.60% a year earlier when the Fed benchmark was 2.25%.
“Those deposits aren’t as valuable in a lower-rate environment,” Chief Financial Officer Paul Donofrio told analysts. “You’re now seeing us getting hurt.”
Read complete story here.
2020-07-20 17:39:51
2020-07-20 17:29:03
The chairman of Kenya’s senate committee overseeing the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis has quit the post after police said he flouted an overnight curfew to enjoy drinks with others in a Nairobi bar.
“I will bear responsibility ... I apologise to Kenyans and I will face the full consequences of the law,” Johnson Sakaja, who represents Nairobi county and is a close ally of President Uhuru Kenyatta, told reporters on Monday.
His lawyer and fellow senator Mutula Kilonzo said Sakaja would appear in court on Tuesday to face undisclosed charges.
2020-07-20 17:19:04
Show consideration for other passengers. If you need to cough or sneeze, make sure you cover your mouth with your inner elbow COVID-19, the World Health Organisation said in a Facebook post.
2020-07-20 17:09:59
A group representing UK airlines including British Airways, easyJet, and Ryanair called on the UK government to suspend a tax on flights to boost demand and help the industry recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
Airlines UK said that the government should waive Air Passenger Duty for a year to save routes and up to 8,000 jobs in an industry that has been battered by the virus, and which is already facing over 30,000 job cuts.
“UK airports are in danger of losing many valuable routes over the coming months unless the government steps in with a support package for our sector – starting with an emergency APD waiver to get us through the winter and into the recovery,” said Airlines UK CEO Tim Alderslade.
Airlines UK said that APD relief would boost passenger demand by around 12% over the next 12 months.
2020-07-20 16:59:21
Punjab Governor Chaudhary Muhammad Sarwar said the entire nation was proud of the country's medical workers who are fighting against coronavirus on the frontline, Radio Pakistan reported.
Addressing a ceremony at University of Health Sciences in Lahore, he said strict implementation of SOPs in the cattle markets, during Eid-ul-Azha and Muharrum-ul-Haram will surely help overcome this pandemic.
2020-07-20 16:49:46
Islamabad recorded 23 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most cases in Sector I-8/2, the district health officer said.
2020-07-20 16:40:58
Uber Technologies Inc has quietly launched a service to give public health officials quick access to data on drivers and riders presumed to have come into contact with someone infected with COVID-19, company officials told Reuters.
The service, offered free of charge, could help burnish the image of the ride-hailing giant, which recently launched a new ad campaign spotlighting its “No Mask, No Ride” policy in the United States.
Now being promoted to government health officials in all the countries where it operates, the service provides health departments with data about who used Uber’s services and when and allows health agencies to urge affected users into quarantine, the company officials said.
Though Uber has provided the data for months now, it has not been put to use in many US virus hotspots.
2020-07-20 16:33:55
The Malaysian government is considering making wearing face masks mandatory in public places, after the discovery of 13 new coronavirus clusters this month, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said.
Malaysian health authorities recorded 21 new coronavirus cases on Monday, lifting the total since the outbreak began to 8,800 cases and 123 deaths.
Monday’s was the second straight daily double-digit rise in infections, after Malaysia managed to broadly hold daily growth to single digits since the lockdown was eased on June 10. The number of positive cases climbed by 15 on Sunday, and by 18 two days prior.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-20 16:25:19
GSK is to buy a 10% stake in German biotech company CureVac for 130 million pounds ($163.67 million), the two companies said on Monday, in a deal that bets on new technologies already being used in potential COVID-19 vaccines.
The deal points to a valuation of more than $1.6 billion for CureVac as it prepares for a stock market launch this year.
“CureVac’s experience complements our own expertise,” said Roger Connor, President of GSK Vaccines.
2020-07-20 15:59:00
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he could not promise there would be successful vaccine against COVID-19 developed by the end of this year, saying "we're not there yet" even as Britain lines up supplies.
"To say that I'm 100% confident that we'll get a vaccine, this year or indeed next year, is alas, just an exaggeration. We're not there yet," Johnson said after Britain announced supply deals for two more vaccines under development
2020-07-20 15:27:06
Britain has secured access to 90 million doses of potential coronavirus vaccines in deals with biotech firms BioNTech, Pfizer and Valneva, the government said Monday.
Business Secretary Alok Sharma said Britain would now have access to three different types of vaccines being developed domestically and around the world, and it had also launched a website for volunteers to sign up for vaccine studies.
"The hunt to find a vaccine is a truly global endeavour and we are doing everything we can to ensure the British public get access to a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine as soon as possible," said Sharma.
Britain has been one of the worst affected countries in the world since the outbreak began, suffering more than 45,000 deaths.
2020-07-20 15:07:30
Russia reported 5,940 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday, pushing its total infection tally to 777,486, the fourth largest in the world.
In a daily readout, officials said 85 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 12,427.
2020-07-20 14:49:27
French authorities have reported 400 to 500 active coronavirus outbreak clusters but there are no signs of an imminent "second wave," Health Minister Olivier Veran said Monday.
Many of the current virus clusters involve abattoirs or other contained professional settings such as old age homes, he said.
"At this point we are very far from a second wave," Veran told Franceinfo radio, as face masks were made mandatory in all enclosed public spaces including shops, covered markets and administrative buildings.
"The goal is not to worry people excessively, but to keep them on their guard," he said.
France has been one of the hardest-hit countries in Europe, with a coronavirus death toll of over 30,150 people.
2020-07-20 14:30:02
The Punjab Health Department has said medical camps will function in 12 cattle markets in Lahore, reported Radio Pakistan.
According to a notification, doctors and paramedical staff will perform duty in these camps, providing free of cost medical care to all visitors.
2020-07-20 14:03:27
2020-07-20 13:47:47
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said EU leaders were making progress towards an agreement on a plan to revive economies throttled by the coronavirus pandemic, but warned discussions could still fall apart.
“At times it didn’t look good last night, but I feel that on the whole we are making progress,” Rutte told reporters in Brussels.
EU leaders were at an impasse on Monday after three days of haggling over the plan, with summit chairman Charles Michel describing the task as “mission impossible”.
2020-07-20 13:15:56
New Zealand's economy is doing better than predicted, thanks to an early economic and health response to the coronavirus pandemic, the finance minister said on Monday.
The government announced plans to tackle a potential second wave of infections by setting aside NZ$14 billion ($9.16 billion) from a COVID Response and Recovery Fund included in this year's budget in May.
"The economy is doing better than expected and is more open than anywhere else in the world," Grant Robertson told a news conference.
"We want to manage debt as tightly as possible and remain prepared for a rainy day."
Robertson said the government was no longer considering 'helicopter' cash handouts, or the direct distribution of free cash to individuals as a form of policy stimulus for the economy, a strategy it had said in May was being discussed.
Read more here.
2020-07-20 12:24:20
More than 14.5 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 604,232 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-07-20 12:05:17
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 249 to 201,823, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The reported death toll rose by two to 9,086, the tally showed.
2020-07-20 11:17:42
A surge in COVID-19 cases in Australia's second-biggest city could take weeks to subside despite a lockdown and orders to wear masks, Australia's acting chief medical officer said on Monday as the country braces for a second wave of infection.
Australia's Acting Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said it would take "weeks" to slow the outbreak to levels seen as recently as June, when Victoria and the rest of Australia reported single or double-digit daily infections.
"We have learned over time that the time between introducing a measure and seeing its effect is at least two weeks and sometimes longer than that," Kelly told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.
Australia has recorded about 11,800 coronavirus cases, a fraction of what has been seen in other countries, and the disease has been effectively eliminated from most states.
2020-07-20 10:53:22
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 265,083 on Monday after 1,587 new infections were reported in the country in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 113,007 cases in Sindh, 90,191 in Punjab, 33,086 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,436 in Balochistan, 14,599 in Islamabad, 1,915 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and 1,849 in Gilgit Baltistan.
The country also reported 31 fatalities during the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,599.
2020-07-20 10:13:36
Over 100 or so people gathered in London's Hyde Park on Sunday against the government's decision requiring people wear masks in shops and supermarkets in England with a view the coronavirus legislation as a crackdown on our civil liberties.
2020-07-20 09:55:24
Florida reported over 12,000 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, the fifth day in a row the state has announced over 10,000 new infections.
According to a Reuters analysis deaths in Florida have risen by over 500, or 78%, during the last two weeks compared with the prior two weeks.
2020-07-20 09:36:42
Turkey has suspended flights to Iran amid a coronavirus outbreak in the Islamic Republic, a spokesman for Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation, Reza Jafarzadeh, said on Sunday, according to the official IRNA news agency.
The suspension of flights had begun on Saturday, he said.
2020-07-20 09:11:02
The United States recorded 63,872 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, Johns Hopkins University reported in its real-time tally.
That put the total number of cases in the US, the nation hardest hit by the global pandemic, at 3,762,081, the Baltimore-based university said.
Another 514 deaths were reported, bringing total fatalities to 140,474.
The US has recorded more than 60,000 new cases every day for the last six days, peaking at a record 77,638 infections on Friday.
2020-07-19 23:59:35
Presumptive Democractic presidential candidate Joe Biden currently leads by eight points over incumbent President Donald Trump in a new poll carried out by Fox News.
If Americans were to vote today, 49% would vote for Biden versus 41% for Trump. "Coronavirus infected the election," Fox News' Dana Blanton quipped.
Read more here.
2020-07-19 23:35:19
A downward trend can be seen in Pakistan's daily cases in a five-day moving average graph on Johns Hopkins titled "Have countries flattened the curve?"
Downward trends can be seen in other countries in the region, like Iran and Bangladesh.
In contrast, India's cases are on the rise.
Read more here.
2020-07-19 23:00:00
Punjab chief minister Usman Buzdar has urged the public to learn to live with the coronavirus and follow the government's advice to prevent its spread as it cannot be predicted about how long the crisis will continue.
He also said the public's cooperation is significant to checking its spread, calling on everyone to be responsible citizens.
2020-07-19 22:35:00
The National Command and Operation Centre has said 204,276 patients — 77.5% — have recovered from the novel coronavirus so far.
2020-07-19 22:24:00
Planning minister Asad Umar has said the numbers of COVID-19 cases are clearly and promptly decreasing across the country due to the PTI government’s "smart lockdown".
The minister urged Pakistanis to adopt standard operating procedures (SOPs) such as maintaining social distancing, wearing masks and frequently washing hands during Eid-ul-Azha and Muharram.
2020-07-19 22:05:00
People in France will risk a fine of 135 euros starting tomorrow (Monday) for failure to comply with a new decree to wear a mask in public places indoors, the government has announced.
As officials noted signs of an uptick in virus circulation, Prime Minister Jean Castex on Thursday said masks will become compulsory in enclosed public spaces from next week in a bid to prevent a second wave of coronavirus infections.
Masks are already required on public transport, punishable with a fine of the same amount, in a country that has lost over 30,150 people to the epidemic.
2020-07-19 21:45:00
The Zambia Super League has resumed one day behind schedule after a match involving leaders Forest Rangers was postponed because 28 of the players and staff tested positive for coronavirus.
Football in the southern Africa nation was suspended during March when the COVID-19 disease swept through a continent with fragile public health systems.
Zambia decided to restart the 2019/2020 season behind closed doors amid the health crisis with 2,810 confirmed infections in the country and 109 deaths.
In the opening match, Buildcon rallied to draw 1-1 with Power Dynamos thanks to a Chanda Mushili goal after Biston Banda put Dynamos ahead.
Defending champions Zesco United were surprisingly held 1-1 by lowly Kansanshi Dynamos in the second match of a double-header at Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in central city Ndola.
2020-07-19 21:29:18
The Balochistan health department has reported 12 more cases in the province, taking the total to 11,436.
One more death was also reported, taking the total number to 132.
2020-07-19 21:18:34
Testing in Bangladesh has fallen to almost half, officials say.
The news comes amid a large scandal involving "fake screening" that has taken the country by storm.
2020-07-19 20:49:00
Malls in Baghdad have begun to reopen after a long closure due to coronavirus.
2020-07-19 20:23:00
A French insurance company has said it will challenge a court ruling that has asked it to pay half a million euros to give hotels that experienced losses due to the coronavirus outbreak.
2020-07-19 19:47:00
The German state of Bavaria will soon start offering free coronavirus tests at airports for people returning from holiday, state premier Markus Soeder has said.
Germany has fared better than many of its neighbours in suppressing the virus but concerns are mounting that travellers returning from abroad could bring a surge in new COVID-19 cases.
"I think we really need to focus on these returning holidaymakers," Soeder told broadcaster ZDF.
He said local authorities were working on installing testing centres at Bavarian airports "where anyone can be tested for free any time".
The scheme is expected to be up and running within days.
2020-07-19 19:18:00
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 601,822 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT.
At least 14,303,420 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 7,810,200 are now considered recovered.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
On Saturday, 5,237 new deaths and 221,954 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Brazil with 921 new deaths, followed by United States with 832, and Mexico with 578.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 140,120 deaths from 3,711,835 cases. At least 1,122,720 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 78,772 deaths from 2,074,860 cases, United Kingdom with 45,273 deaths from 294,066 cases, Mexico with 38,888 deaths from 338,913 cases, and Italy with 35,042 deaths from 244,216 cases.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 85 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by United Kingdom with 67, Spain 61, Italy 58, and Sweden 56.
China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 83,660 cases (16 new since Saturday), including 4,63 deaths (0 new), and 78,775 recoveries.
Europe overall has 205,207 deaths from 2,938,771 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 160,866 deaths from 3,776,927 infections, the United States and Canada 149,002 deaths from 3,821,830 cases, Asia 48,998 deaths from 2,049,522 cases, Middle East 22,642 deaths from 999,405 cases, Africa 14,956 deaths from 703,572 cases, and Oceania 151 deaths from 13,397 cases.
As a result of corrections by national authorities or late publication of data, the figures updated over the past 24 hours may not correspond exactly to the previous day's tallies.
2020-07-19 18:59:56
PRAGUE: The tally of active cases of the new coronavirus has risen to 4,764, above the previous high of 4,737 seen in April, health ministry data showed on Sunday.
On Saturday 113 new cases were identified, bringing the total since the beginning of March when first cases were found to 13,885.
The central European country of 10.7 million has had 358 deaths from the COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus, far fewer than many western European nations.
The rise in active cases has grown as daily infections held above 100 in the past days, outpacing the number of recoveries. The new cases — many in the country’s industrial north-east where a mine outbreak occurred — have so far been milder than before.
2020-07-19 18:38:24
BRUSSELS: European Union leaders toiled in search of a coronavirus stimulus deal for a third day on Sunday but German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the mounting acrimony over the level of spending might not easily be overcome.
Germany and France, the EU’s powerbrokers, are seeking a deal on a 1.8 trillion euro ($2.06 trillion) economic recovery package to rescue the bloc’s economies that are facing their worst recession since World War Two.
Sticking points are the size of the new recovery fund and what proportion should be in grants and loans, with some “frugal” richer states led by the Netherlands pushing to limit it, underscoring the depth of the EU’s north-south split.
Separately, the summit faces difficulties in agreeing the scale of EU budget rebates for richer countries, as well as a dispute over a proposed new rule of law mechanism, which could freeze EU funding to countries flouting democratic principles.
Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose country was only just recovering from its 10-year debt crisis when the pandemic hit, made a plea for unity, saying the EU could not afford to look “divided or weak”.
2020-07-19 18:22:46
LONDON: Indian actresses Sonam Kapoor and Mouni Roy have broken a strict 14-day quarantine law imposed by the UK and could be prosecuted or fined £1,000 for putting other people's lives in danger and setting a bad example by violating the rules.
Sonam Kapoor took to social media and shared her picture working out in central London while Mouni Roy posted a picture having coffee at a cafe in full public view in the British capital.
Both actresses can be reported — and arrested — by the police for breaking the strict laws.
Almost all European Union countries, as well as Australia, Turkey, and several others, are currently exempted from the UK's quarantine rules but countries such as the US, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are in the list of quarantine nations.
After spending the entirety of the coronavirus lockdown in India, Sonam Kapoor and her entrepreneur husband, Anand Ahuja, arrived in London less than a week ago, with the actress instantly taking to Instagram to share videos of her arrival.
Read more here.
2020-07-19 18:13:07
HONG KONG: The deadly coronavirus is spreading out of control in Hong Kong with a record 100 new cases confirmed, the finance hub´s leader said Sunday as she tightened social distancing measures to tackle the sudden surge in infections.
The finance hub was one of the first places to be struck by the virus when it emerged from central China.
But the city had impressive success in tackling the disease, all but ending local transmissions by late June.
However, in the last two weeks, infections have spiked once more and doctors fear the new outbreak is now spreading undetected in the densely packed territory of 7.5 million people.
On Sunday chief executive Carrie Lam said more than 500 infections had been confirmed in the last fortnight alone, nearly a third since the outbreak began.
On Sunday 108 new infections were recorded by health authorities, a daily high for the finance hub, bringing the total to 1,886 cases.
"I think the situation is really critical and there is no sign the situation is being brought under control," Lam told reporters.
Lam announced new social distancing measures last week, shuttering many businesses including bars, gyms and nightclubs, and ordering everyone to wear masks on public transport.
Restaurants were ordered to only offer takeout services in the evenings.
2020-07-19 17:54:29
The coronavirus claimed 19 more lives and infected 889 more people in the province, shared Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Sunday.
"As many as 889 new cases of coronavirus emerged when 7,977 samples were tested raising the tally to 113,007 cases while 19 more patients lost their lives lifting the death toll to 1,993," said CM Murad while giving the daily update of coronavirus patients in the province.
The CM stated that currently, 18,977 patients were under treatment, in the province.
2020-07-19 17:44:03
MADRID: Authorities in Catalonia on Sunday urged more than 96,000 people in three towns to stay at home, as coronavirus cases continued to rise in one of Spain’s worst-hit regions.
This is in addition to some four million people in the region, including in its capital Barcelona, that were on Friday urged to stay at home as regional authorities toughened their response to the crisis.
In a statement on Sunday, authorities urged people living in Figueres and Vilafant, in the province of Girona, and Sant Feliu de Llobregat, near Barcelona, to stay at home except for essential journeys.
The latest figures from Catalonia’s regional health ministry on Saturday showed a daily increase of 1,226 cases.
The stay-home call stops short of imposing a mandatory lockdown, but is the strongest measure taken to returning people to home confinement since Spain emerged from a nationwide lockdown last month.
2020-07-19 17:31:37
Nationwide cases rose to 263,962 after 196 new cases were reported by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The nationwide death toll also rose 5,571 with two new deaths reported by in the province.
2020-07-19 17:24:45
LONDON: British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Sunday he was "absolutely confident" in allegations by the UK and its allies that Russia targeted labs conducting coronavirus research, branding the behaviour "outrageous and reprehensible".
Britain, the United States and Canada on Thursday accused a hacking group called APT29 of spearheading the online attacks on various organisations involved in COVID-19 vaccine development.
They said the collective is "almost certainly" linked to Russian intelligence, and intended to steal information and intellectual property.
Moscow quickly rejected the accusations as "groundless", and its ambassador to London said in a British television interview Sunday the claims made "no sense".
However, Raab reiterated that the trio's conclusions were based on assessments by Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and its counterparts in the US and Canada.
2020-07-19 17:00:27
Turkey has suspended flights to Iran amid a coronavirus outbreak in the Islamic Republic, a spokesman for Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, Reza Jafarzadeh, said on Sunday, according to the official IRNA news agency.
The suspension of flights had begun on Saturday, he said.
2020-07-19 16:56:16
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has dispatched the 11th tranche of medical equipment to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
According to the NDMA, 135,364 face masks have been dispatched to KP and includes N-95, K-N-95 and surgical masks. The equipment dispatched also includes 62,988 protective suits, over 79,000 gowns; 4,316 gloves, over 14,000 caps. The dispatch also includes 60,000 glasses and 10,914 face shields. Meanwhile, Balochistan has been given 8,695 shoe cover, 1,628 plastic boots.
The authority also shared that the other provinces are also being provided with protective equipment.
2020-07-19 16:28:31
Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar has announced that the Punjab government will recommend the federal government to bestow the highest civil award to deceased Nishtar Medical University vice chancellor Prof Dr Mustafa Kamal Pasha.
“Services of Dr Mustafa Kamal Pasha in the war against coronavirus will be remembered,” said CM Buzdar. He added that the VC put his life in danger and led his team.
2020-07-19 16:18:15
Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab shared an "important" public service message regarding why the mask should not be brought to the chin area.
2020-07-19 16:01:34
Iranian health officials sought on Sunday to play down the president’s estimate that some 25 million people have been infected with the coronavirus, saying it was based on serological blood tests that measure exposure to the illness and that cannot be relied on to show the current state of disease.
The 25 million figure put forward by Rouhani on Saturday is nearly a third of the population and massively higher than the official number of COVID-19 cases. Official case numbers rose to 273,788 on Sunday, with 14,188 deaths, Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said.
In announcing the 25 million estimate on Saturday, Rouhani did not say what the figure was based on, but added that 30-35 million more were possibly at risk.
2020-07-19 15:42:55
Non-essential Hong Kong civil servants will work from home from Monday as the global financial hub tightens social distancing restrictions further amid an escalating third wave of coronavirus cases, the city's leader Carrie Lam said on Sunday.
Lam said the city recorded more than 100 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the tally since late January close to 2,000 patients, 12 of whom have died.
2020-07-19 14:38:11
People in Melbourne must now wear masks when leaving their homes as Victoria, Australia’s second most-populous state, marked two weeks of triple-digit increases in new coronavirus infections on Sunday.
Melbournians not wearing face coverings will be fined A$200 ($140), said Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews.
Victoria, which has forced nearly 5 million people into a partial six-week lockdown on July 9, reported 363 new cases of the coronavirus on Sunday, after 217 cases the previous day.
“We’re going to be wearing masks in Victoria and potentially in other parts of the country for a very long time,” Andrews told a televised briefing.
“There’s no vaccine to this wildly infectious virus,” he said. Masks are “a simple thing, but it’s about changing habits, it’s about becoming a simple part of your routine.”
2020-07-19 13:54:18
Russia on Sunday reported 6,109 new cases and 95 more deaths from the coronavirus.
The nationwide tally of infections has risen to 771,546 cases, Russia's coronavirus crisis response centre said.
The death toll now stands at 12,342, and 550,344 people have recovered.
2020-07-19 13:21:15
Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab has said 3,249 children under the age of 10 and 22,554 people above the age of 50 have been infected with coronavirus in the province.
“Please exercise all precautions, wear masks and people should not go out unnecessarily. Infection rate has come down but we have to ensure there’s no spike during Eid,” he said in a post on Twitter.
2020-07-19 12:51:59
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 202 to 201,574, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.
The reported death toll rose by 1 to 9,084, the tally showed.
2020-07-19 12:22:56
Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Shibli Faraz has said the resolute and steadfast handling of coronavirus pandemic despite meagre resources shows the competence of the leadership.
“The resolute and steadfast handling of the coronavirus despite our meagre resources and outdated health infrastructure. Imran Khan has steered the country balancing lives and livelihoods in an amazing display of competence and leadership,” Faraz said in a tweet.
2020-07-19 11:38:50
Australia's second-most populous state, Victoria, on Sunday reported 363 new cases of the novel coronavirus, after 217 cases were recorded on Saturday.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said people in Melbourne will be required to wear face masks outside their houses or will be fined A$200 ($140) for not complying. Three more people had died of COVID-19, bringing the state's total deaths to 38 since the start of the pandemic, Andrews said
2020-07-19 11:09:04
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 263,496 after 1,579 new infections were reported in the country in the past 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 112,118 cases in Sindh, 89,793 in Punjab, 31,890 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,424 in Balochistan, 14,576 in Islamabad, 1,807 Gilgit Baltistan and 1,888 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also reported 46 fatalities in the past 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,568.
The number of recoveries from coronavirus stand at 204,276.
2020-07-19 10:55:07
China reported 16 new COVID-19 cases, up from 22 reported a day earlier, the Chinese national health authority said on Sunday.
Of the new infection, 13 were found in Urumqi, the capital of China's far western region of Xinjiang. The other three were imported infection involving travellers from overseas, according to the National Health Commission (NHC) and Xinjiang local health commission.
The far west city went into "wartime mode" on Saturday, launching an emergency response plan after the city reported 16 new coronavirus cases in the previous day.
2020-07-19 10:19:33
WHO reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Saturday, with the total rising by 259,848 in 24 hours.
The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a daily report. The previous WHO record for new cases was 237,743 on Friday. Deaths rose by 7,360, the biggest one-day increase since May. 10.
2020-07-19 09:50:14
More than 14.3 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 600,497 have died from COVID-19, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-07-19 09:28:43
The United States on Saturday recorded 60,207 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, Johns Hopkins University reported in its real-time tally.
That put the total number of cases in the US, the nation hardest-hit by the global pandemic, at 3,698,209, the Baltimore-based university said.
Another 832 deaths were reported, bringing total fatalities to 139,960.
The latest numbers capped a week which saw the US set records in new cases for three consecutive days, topping out at 77,638 infections recorded on Friday.
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2020-07-19 01:09:29
2020-07-19 00:28:14
2020-07-18 22:51:41
Director general of the World Health Organisation Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said that the COVID-19 situation can still be turned around if the world acts on Nelson Mandela's wisdom.
Paying tribute to the great South African leader on Mandela Day, Tedros recalled how Mandela had said: "It always seems impossible until it is done."
The WHO leader said "we all need to push hard with the courage and commitment we learned from him", urging everyone to battle the cause "together".
2020-07-18 22:12:34
The Balochistan health department has reported 19 more cases in the province, taking the total to 11,424.
No new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.
2020-07-18 22:02:07
Chances of a deal on a coronavirus economic recovery scheme at a Eurooean Union summit on Saturday are "very slim", a diplomat from an EU members state said, after two full days of talks failed to produce a breakthrough.
"The chance is very slim that an agreement will be reached tonight. Very slim," the person said, adding that the thrifty camp of wealthy northern EU countries were pressing for deeper cuts to the new proposed recovery fund and bigger rebates on the core EU budget, among other demands.
2020-07-18 21:23:55
2020-07-18 21:10:19
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres accused world powers of ignoring inequality in global institutions, but said the coronavirus pandemic has created a “generational opportunity” to build a more equal, sustainable world.
Delivering the annual lecture for the Nelson Mandela Foundation via internet, Guterres pushed for a so-called New Global Deal to ensure power, wealth and opportunity are shared more broadly and fairly at the international level.
“The nations that came out on top more than seven decades ago have refused to contemplate the reforms needed to change power relations in international institutions,” Guterres said. “The composition and voting rights in the United Nations Security Council and the boards of the Bretton Woods system are a case in point.”
“Inequality starts at the top: in global institutions. Addressing inequality must start by reforming them,” he added.
2020-07-18 20:59:22
An 85-year-old cancer patient and his septuagenarian wife have recovered from COVID-19 in Odisha's Kendrapara district, officials said.
Surendra Pati, who is suffering from throat cancer, and his 78-year-old wife Sabitri have been cured of COVID-19 and both have been discharged from a medical facility, Kendrapara district Collector Samarth Verma said.
2020-07-18 20:44:11
Indian posted 34,884 new coronavirus cases and 671 deaths in the last 24 hours, bumping the overall infections to 10,38,716, while the death toll stands to 26,273, the Ministry of Health said.
Of the total cases, 6,53,750 have recovered. There are 3,58,692 active cases of COVID-19 in India.
2020-07-18 20:25:49
England fast bowler Jofra Archer will be available to play in next week's third and final Test against the West Indies after being ruled out of the second match for a breach of coronavirus protocols, the England and Wales Cricket Board said.
Both teams have been living in "bio-secure bubble" sites at the Ageas Bowl, the venue for last week's first Test, and Emirates Old Trafford, where the final two matches of the series are taking place.
Archer broke the rules by going home to Hove on Monday, during which time he met with an unnamed individual from outside the "bubble" following England's four-wicket loss in the first Test at Southampton last week before the team travelled to Manchester.
He was then left out of the ongoing second Test that started Thursday, with Archer self-isolating in an onsite hotel room at Old Trafford for five days.
2020-07-18 20:13:46
The World Health Organisaiton has advised masses to avoid 3 Cs where the possibility of contracting the virus is high.
- Crowded places
- Close-contact settings
- Confined and enclosed spaces
2020-07-18 19:59:28
France will enforce mask-wearing in enclosed public spaces including banks, shops and indoor markets from July 20, Health Minister Olivier Veran said, as part of efforts to curb a resurgence of COVID-19 across the country.
The government has accelerated plans to make it compulsory to wear masks after series of indicators have suggested the virus could be gaining momentum, especially in areas in western and southern France that had been relatively spared during the height of the outbreak between March and May.
“From Monday, mask-wearing will be mandatory in closed spaces,” Veran said on Twitter. “That concerns shops, buildings open to the public, covered markets and banks.”
2020-07-18 19:42:55
EU leaders debated new proposals for a huge post-coronavirus economic recovery plan, seeking to overcome resistance from the Netherlands and Austria on the second day of an extraordinary summit.
European Council president and summit host Charles Michel proposed a fresh plan after his initial blueprint for a 750-billion-euro ($850 billion) recovery package ran into stiff resistance from the member states known in Brussels as the "Frugals".
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has insisted that member states retain the final say over approval of any EU funding for national recovery plans for partners like Spain and Italy, whose economies were ravaged by the virus and its attendant lockdowns.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-18 19:28:06
Fatima Amtir, the head nurse at a hospital treating COVID-19 patients in southern Libya, has not seen her family in over a month. Along with 16 other colleagues, she spends her days and nights on the front line.
2020-07-18 19:13:47
Balochistan Government Spokesman Liaquat Shahwani said that coronavirus infection cases in the province are gradually decreasing due to smart lockdown policy.
2020-07-18 18:52:59
Islamabad recorded 50 cases in the past 24 hours, with the most in Sector G-7, the district health officer said.
2020-07-18 18:33:37
Urumqi, the capital of China’s far western region of Xinjiang, has gone into “wartime mode” and launched an emergency response plan after the city reported 16 new coronavirus cases.
State broadcaster CCTV cited unnamed officials as telling a press conference on Saturday that the city had suspended gatherings and ordered communities to restrict visits to other households.
It urged people not to make unnecessary trips outside the city and ordered infection tests for anyone who needed to leave Urumqi, aiming to prevent the spread of the virus. It has also carried out city-wide free infection tests, officials told the press conference as part of what the officials termed a “wartime” response.
Rui Baoling, director of the disease control and prevention centre in Urumqi, told the news conference that recent cases in the city were associated with a cluster of activities, with all confirmed cases and asymptomatic infections reported in Tianshan District, CCTV said. She didn’t say what activities were involved.
“The epidemic has developed rapidly,” Rui was quoted saying.
2020-07-18 18:22:43
Indian actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and her daughter are in hospital after testing positive for coronavirus this week, days after her husband and father-in-law were admitted, the Times of India reported.
Rai’s father-in-law Amitabh Bachchan, 77, and her husband Abhishek Bachchan, 44, also major Bollywood celebrities, were admitted to Mumbai’s Nanavati Hospital early this week, the highest-profile patients in India’s epidemic of COVID-19.
Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World, and her eight-year-old daughter, Aaradhya Bachchan had been in home quarantine.
The Times of India said they had been admitted to the top private hospital on Friday.
2020-07-18 18:11:18
Indonesia has increased tax incentives for businesses in a move to try and limit the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, its tax office said.
Previously announced tax relief that were due to expire in September, have been extended until the end of the year, a statement said. They include tax breaks for some manufacturing workers and small and medium-size enterprises, and a discount on corporate tax installments.
The government has also expanded the type of companies eligible to apply for the tax breaks, including, for example, forestry businesses in the scheme.
It has allocated nearly $50 billion in state spending to fight the coronavirus pandemic. That, and a projected drop in fiscal revenues, are seen expanding its 2020 budget deficit by more than three times the government’s original plan, to 6.34% of gross domestic product.
2020-07-18 17:58:02
Britain said it was pausing its daily update of the death toll from the coronavirus after the government ordered a review into the calculation of the data over concerns the toll might have been exaggerated.
Academics have said the way that Public Health England (PHE), the government agency responsible for managing infectious disease outbreaks, calculates the figures in England means they may be distorted compared to other parts of the United Kingdom.
“Currently the daily deaths measure counts all people who have tested positive for coronavirus and since died, with no cut-off between time of testing and date of death,” a message on the government’s website said.
“There have been claims that the lack of cut-off may distort the current daily deaths number. We are therefore pausing the publication of the daily figure while this is resolved.”
2020-07-18 17:42:23
Indonesia overtook China as the country with the most confirmed coronavirus cases in East Asia with 84,882 infections, and authorities said the actual infection rate could be higher due to undetected cases.
Data from the country’s COVID-19 task force showed 1,752 new coronavirus infections on Saturday and 59 fatalities, taking the coronavirus-related death toll to 4,016.
“There are possibility of undetected positive cases without symptoms,” said task force spokesman Achmad Yurianto, adding that authorities would continue to prioritise contact tracing.
2020-07-18 17:20:24
Prime Minister Imran Khan has said so far 250,000 Pakistanis have returned home despite global air travel disruptions due to the coronavirus pandemic, adding that his government had fulfilled its promise to bring back stranded Pakistanis and overseas workers.
“Despite massive disruptions in global air travel, we have fulfilled our promise of bringing back stranded Pakistanis and our overseas workers. 250,000 Pakistanis from around the world have been brought home,” PM Imran said in a tweet on Saturday.
He added his government would continue to support overseas Pakistanis in every way possible.
2020-07-18 16:46:00
England fast bowler Jofra Archer will be available to play in next week’s series finale against the West Indies after being ruled out of the second Test for a breach of coronavirus protocols, the England and Wales Cricket Board announced Saturday.
Both teams have been living in "bio-secure bubble" sites at the Ageas Bowl, the venue for last week’s first Test, and Emirates Old Trafford, where the final two matches of the series are taking place.
Archer broke the rules by going home to Hove on Monday following England’s four-wicket loss in the first Test at Southampton last week before the team travelled to Manchester.
He was then left out of the ongoing second Test that started Thursday, with Archer self-isolating in a hotel room for five days at the ground.
But following a disciplinary hearing on Friday, the Barbados-born quick has been fined an "undisclosed amount".
Archer also received an official written warning, following a hearing chaired by England managing director Ashley Giles, at which his "impeccable record" was taken into account.
2020-07-18 16:33:52
China launched mass health screenings in Xinjiang on Saturday after a spike in coronavirus cases raised fears of a fresh outbreak in the far western province.
The new cases illustrate the continuing difficulty China faces in stamping out the contagion, which emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year before spreading around the world.
The new testing regime comes a day after authorities curtailed most flights into regional capital Urumqi and shut down local subway and public transport services.
The city had recorded 17 new coronavirus infections as of Saturday, authorities said in a briefing.
Mass screening for the virus will begin in buildings which had reported new cases and eventually cover all of Urumqi, said local health commission chief Zhang Wei.
2020-07-18 16:31:23
President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday that 35 million Iranians may contract the coronavirus, as the country still did not have herd immunity although a quarter of the population may be infected.
It appears to be the first time a senior Iranian official has indicated the country is seeking to defeat COVID-19 via herd immunity.
The virus has killed more than 588,000 people and infected nearly 14 million around the world since first being detected in China late last year.
Iran has been battling a resurgence of COVID-19, with figures showing a rise in both new infections and deaths since a two-month low in May.
On Saturday, the health ministry reported another 188 coronavirus deaths and 2,166 cases of infection in the past 24 hours.
2020-07-18 15:26:57
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has delayed the opening of parliament for several weeks as the new coronavirus continued spreading through the country's two most populous states.
Morrison asked the speaker of the parliament to cancel a two-week session due to start on August 4, out of concern about the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The government cannot ignore the risk to parliamentarians, their staff, the staff within the parliament and the broader community," Morrison said in a written statement, adding he acted based on the advice of medical authorities.
2020-07-18 14:51:30
Australia's second-most populous state, Victoria, on Saturday reported 217 new cases of the coronavirus cases, after a record 428 cases seen on Friday.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said two more people had died of COVID-19, bringing the state's total deaths to 34 since the start of the pandemic.
Neighbouring New South Wales, the country's most populous state, reported 15 new coronavirus cases on Saturday
2020-07-18 14:25:29
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has said 25 million Iranians have been infected with the coronavirus and that another 35 million are at risk of acquiring it.
“Our estimate is that as of now 25 million Iranians have been infected with this virus and about 14,000 have lost their dear lives,” Rouhani said in the speech.
“There is the possibility that between 30 and 35 million other people will be at risk,” he said.
2020-07-18 13:46:54
British ministers are making plans to distribute millions of free coronavirus antibody tests after a version backed by the UK government passed its first major trials, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported late on Friday.
The fingerprick tests, which can tell within 20 minutes if a person has ever been exposed to the coronavirus, were found to be 98.6% accurate in secret human trials held in June, the newspaper reported.
It added the test was developed by Oxford University in partnership with leading UK diagnostics firms.
2020-07-18 13:10:07
The new coronavirus outbreak in hard-hit Brazil has plateaued, says WHO urging the country to seize the opportunity to drive down transmission.
"The rise in Brazil is no longer exponential, it has plateaued," WHO health emergencies chief Michael Ryan told a virtual news conference.
Brazil is the second worst virus affected country in the world after the United States, counting nearly 77,000 deaths and more than two million cases.
He urged Brazil to "take control", acknowledging that "it is going to take a very sustained, concerted action in order for that to occur".
"Up to now, in many countries, including in Brazil, the virus has been in charge, the virus sets the rules," he said.
"We need to set the rules for the virus."
2020-07-18 12:47:15
The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) held its first ever meeting in Sindh on Saturday at the Chief Minister House.
Chief Minister Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah apprised the NCOC about Sindh's capacity to conduct 12,000 COVID-19 tests in a single day, though the number had dropped in the past few days.
The chief minister revealed that the provincial government had set up two hospitals in Karachi for COVID-19 patients. Discussing the safety precautions for cattle markets in the city, he said that sacrificial animals can only be bought at places designated by the government.
"Buying and selling of animals in streets have been prohibited," he told the NCOC.
Read more here.
2020-07-18 12:18:19
US President Donald Trump said he would not consider a national mandate requiring people to wear masks to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
Asked in an interview on Fox News to be broadcast on Sunday if he would consider a mandate, Trump said: "No, I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don’t believe in that."
2020-07-18 11:37:58
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 261,917 after Pakistan reported 1,918 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 111,238 confirmed cases in Sindh, 89,465 in Punjab, 31,669 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,405 in Balochistan, 14,504 in Islamabad, 1,796 Gilgit-Baltistan and 1840 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also reported 47 fatalities in the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 5,522.
The number of recoveries from coronavirus stands at 198,509.
2020-07-18 11:06:42
Brazil registered 34,177 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and 1,163 new deaths on Friday, the health ministry said.
Total cases in Brazil, the world's second most affected country after the United States, have now risen to 2,046,328 while deaths totaled 76,688.
2020-07-18 10:49:26
Global coronavirus infections passed 14 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, marking the first time there has been a surge of 1 million cases in under 100 hours.
The US with more than 3.6 million confirmed cases, is still seeing huge daily jumps in its first wave of COVID-19 infections. The country has reported a daily global record of more than 77,000 new infections on Thursday.
The pandemic has now killed more than 590,000 people in almost seven months.
India, the only other country with more than 1 million cases, has been grappling with an average of almost 30,000 new infections each day for the last week.
2020-07-18 10:26:42
A recent spike in coronavirus cases in Canada is worrying and can be linked to groups of young people gathering in bars and elsewhere, a top medical official said on Friday.
"When we examine recent trends in case reporting, there is some cause for concern. After a period of steady decine, daily case counts have started to rise," deputy chief public health officer Howard Njoo told a briefing.
“This coincides with increasing reports of individuals contracting COVID-19 at parties, nightclubs and bars as well as increasing rates of transmission among young Canadians,” Njoo said.
“Singing, mingling and dancing in close contact with others in closed spaces and crowded places is not the way to party this summer. These are ideal conditions for the spread of COVID-19.”
Canada has reported 109,266 total cases and 8,827 deaths, far fewer than the United States.
2020-07-18 10:00:56
WHO reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Friday, with the total rising by 237,743 in 24 hours.
The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a daily report. The previous WHO record for new cases was 230,370 on July 12. Deaths have held steady and averaged less than 5,000 a day in July.
Total global coronavirus cases were approaching 14 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, marking another milestone in the spread of the disease that has killed more than 590,000 people in seven months.
2020-07-18 09:32:48
China reported 22 new coronavirus cases up from 10 cases a day earlier, the health authority said on Saturday.
Of the new infections, 16 were in the far western region of Xinjiang, according to a statement by the National Health Commission. The other six were imported cases.
As of Friday, mainland China had 83,644 confirmed coronavirus cases, the health authority said. The COVID-19 death toll remained at 4,634.
2020-07-18 09:04:10
The United States marked a record number of coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day, notching 77,638 new infections in 24 hours, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
The country also recorded 927 deaths in one day, according to the count by the Baltimore-based university.
The country, the hardest-hit by the coronavirus in the world in absolute terms, has suffered 139,128 total fatalities out of 3.64 million confirmed cases.
2020-07-18 00:14:19
Sindh reported 1,170 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, taking the overall cases to111,238 in the province, while 30 more people succumbed to the virus, pushing the death toll to1,952, the province's chief mintier Murad Ali Shah said.
2020-07-18 00:03:52
Punjab reported eight deaths, taking the death toll to 2,067, while 442 more people were infected with the coronavirus, bumping the overall cases to 89,465, authorities confirmed.
2020-07-17 22:38:22
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 183 new infections, taking the province's total to 31,669.
The province has also recorded six more deaths, taking the death toll to 1,130.
2020-07-17 22:33:17
The Balochistan health department has notified 20 more infections in the province, taking the tally to 11,405.
It also reported three more deaths, taking the grim total to 131.
2020-07-17 22:01:19
The federal government and religious scholars have agreed to implement standard operating procedures (SOPs) to stem the spread of coronavirus through Muharram-ul-Haram processions and gatherings.
The safety measures were finalised in a meeting with prominent ulema convened by President Arif Alvi on Thursday at the Aiwan-e-Sadr.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-17 21:41:50
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that her city’s public school district, the third-largest in the United States, was planning to host some classes remotely and some in-person this fall in an effort to prevent outbreaks of the novel coronavirus.
The mayor said the reopening plan was not finalized and encouraged parents to give their feedback ahead of students’ return to school.
“This is a dialogue that will require all of us to confront a challenge that no one has faced before,” Lightfoot said.
“There is no safe way to re-open anything during a pandemic,” Union President Jesse Sharkey wrote in a statement on Wednesday.
“We believe that a hybrid model will be the best model to meet the needs of all of our students throughout the city,” Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Janice Jackson said on Friday.
2020-07-17 21:31:53
US economic output is expect to contract by 6.6% in 2020 due to the shock of the coronavirus pandemic, but a resurgence in coronavirus infections and a systemic increase in poverty could worsen that outlook, the staff of the International Monetary Fund warned.
After concluding a regular Article IV review of the world’s largest economy, IMF staff cited other risks, including a big increase in government and corporate debt levels, and the prospect of a long period of low, or even negative, inflation.
“There are tremendous uncertainties surrounding the economic propagation of the COVID-19 shock,” the note said. “It will likely take a prolonged period to repair the economy and to return activity to pre-pandemic levels.”
2020-07-17 21:19:50
The capital of China's far-western Xinjiang region curtailed most flights into the city and has shut down subway and public bus services after several coronavirus infections were detected, government authorities and state-controlled media said.
So far, at least five cases linked to Urumqi have been discovered, including a man who was confirmed positive after he travelled from the city to the eastern province of Zhejiang, state media said.
The infections were detected beginning on Wednesday, and news of the cases prompted state media outlets in Urumqi to issue assurances on Friday that supermarkets had ample stocks of food — an apparent attempt to discourage panic-buying.
Strict lockdowns across the country and widespread COVID-19 testing largely brought the outbreak under control within Chinese borders.
2020-07-17 21:09:11
A California man was arrested and ordered held without bond for fraudulently obtaining some $9 million in coronavirus relief funds and using some of the money to gamble in Las Vegas.
Andrew Marnell, 40, a resident of the Beverly Grove neighborhood of Los Angeles, allegedly submitted a number of fraudulent loan applications in relation to the coronavirus pandemic and obtained millions in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds.
Prosecutors say he used some of the money to make risky stock market bets, and squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino and other gambling establishments in Las Vegas as recently as last weekend.
The PPP loans were part of the unprecedented $2.2 trillion CARES Act, which provided aid for millions of Americans suffering the economic effects of the pandemic.
2020-07-17 20:56:44
2020-07-17 20:44:47
Hong Kong authorities reported 50 locally transmitted coronavirus cases on Friday, stoking further concern about an escalating third wave of infections in the global financial hub.
Including imported cases, the number of new cases in the past 24 hours was 58, taking the tally since late-January to 1,714 patients, 10 of whom have died.
Hong Kong on Thursday posted 63 locally transmitted cases, the highest on record for a single day.
2020-07-17 20:29:18
Czech authorities tightened coronavirus restrictions in the northeast of the country on Friday after a spike in cases, reinstating compulsory face coverings, limiting restaurant opening hours and ordering checks on cross-border commuters.
The area, which includes the city of Ostrava, is home to around 11 percent of the country’s 10.7 million population.
Since lifting a strict nationwide lockdown imposed in March, the authorities have pledged to avoid future countrywide measures and instead respond to local outbreaks regionally.
Health Minister Adam Vojtech told a televised news briefing that the OKD outbreak was under control but new hotspots of infections appeared in several companies and among cross-border commuters, and hospitals were reporting more patient admissions.
“We have signals that...there are new cases of quite serious cases of patients diagnosed 7-10 days ago,” Vojtech said. “Better be more careful now than try catch a speeding train later.”
2020-07-17 20:10:17
Barcelona mayor Ada Colau said that a ban on gatherings of more than 10 people in the Catalan capital would enter into force on Saturday, as part of a package of measures to curb an increase in coronavirus cases.
“We have to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people .. Only 10 people will be allowed in weddings and funerals from Saturday”, Colau said at a press conference.
Regional authorities on Friday urged some four million people in Catalonia, including its capital Barcelona, to stay home.
2020-07-17 19:50:17
A new report published Thursday said that people in some 25 countries are set to face devastating levels of hunger in coming months due to the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the greatest concentration of need is in Africa, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in the Middle East and Asia – including middle-income countries — are also being ravaged by crippling levels of food insecurity, according to the Early Warning Analysis of Acute Food Security Hotspots, compiled by the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
2020-07-17 19:35:33
Islamabad's coronavirus recovery rate jumped past 81%, the district health office said.
2020-07-17 19:23:24
Top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said state and local leaders should be as forceful as possible on wearing masks to prevent spreading the deadly coronavirus, as the state of Georgia and its major cities tussle over masks.
“I would urge the leaders -the local political leaders in states and cities and towns — to be as forceful as possible in getting your citizenry to wear masks,” Fauci, the director of the National Institue of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with the Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
2020-07-17 19:14:21
Authorities on Friday urged some four million people in Catalonia, including its capital Barcelona, to stay home, appealing to people to act responsibly as the region battles a growing number of new coronavirus clusters.
The stay-home call stopped short of imposing a mandatory lockdown, but was the strongest measure a region has taken to returning people to home confinement since Spain emerged from a nationwide lockdown last month.
Gatherings of more than 10 people have been banned. Residents of Barcelona, its suburbs and the areas of Segria and Noguera, further away from the city, were urged to shop online and leave their home only to go to work, to visit a doctor or carry other essential activities.
“We recommend that people don’t move around if it’s not absolutely necessary,” Catalonia’s health chief Alba Verges told a news conference, saying most infections came from gatherings of family or friends.
2020-07-17 18:56:00
His poll numbers are sinking, protests are growing and economically punishing restrictions have just been reimposed: surging coronavirus cases in Israel have left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encircled by trouble.
After a late-night cabinet meeting, the government on Friday announced that stores, markets and various other public spaces would be closed on weekends.
It said restaurants would be limited to takeaway services through the week, with a later statement specifying the measure would start from Tuesday.
Netanyahu's office said the premier wanted to avoid another "general lockdown" — a move that would likely infuriate a public battered by the pandemic.
But it is clear that coronavirus stumbles by Netanyahu, a right-winger, have dented his support.
A poll this week by Channel 13 found that 61% of voters were "displeased" by his handling of the crisis.
That marks a stark reversal for Netanyahu, whose response early in the outbreak won praise.
After his government curbed flights and imposed lockdown measures in March, Israel briefly reduced its daily tally of newly confirmed cases to the single digits in early May, but in recent weeks new cases have regularly topped 1,000 per day.
According to the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, 57.5% of the public supported Netanyahu's coronavirus management at the beginning of April.
As of July 12, that number had fallen to 29.5%.
2020-07-17 18:49:53
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp urged all people in his state to wear masks for four weeks to halt the spread of the coronavirus but refused to back down on his position banning state and local authorities from mandating the wearing of masks.
“While we all agree that wearing a mask is effective, I’m confident that Georgians don’t need a mandate to do the right thing. I know that Georgians can rise to this challenge and they will,” Kemp told a news conference.
2020-07-17 18:31:37
Next year’s Tokyo Olympics will follow an almost identical competition schedule as the one planned for this year before the event was postponed due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, organisers said.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japanese government decided in March to postpone the Games until 2021 and organisers have been working to rearrange an event almost a decade in the making.
The new date for the opening ceremony at the newly-built National Stadium — July 23, 2021 — had already been announced but the full schedule was pending final approval until Friday when the Tokyo 2020 organising committee made a presentation to the IOC Session in Lausanne.
The new schedule means women’s softball will kick off competition at 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) in Fukushima on July 21, two days before the Games officially open, with all events taking place a day earlier than the 2020 schedule.
2020-07-17 18:21:11
Indian state refiners’ petrol and diesel sales declined in the first half of July from the same period last month, according to preliminary data, as a renewed lockdown in parts of the country and rising retail prices hit demand.
Fuel demand growth in India, the world’s third-biggest oil importer and consumer, plunged to historic lows in April when the federal government imposed a country-wide lockdown.
State-refiners’ diesel sales, which account for two-fifth of overall refined fuel sales in India, fell by 18% to 2.2 million tonnes in the first half of July from the same period in June, and by about 21% from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Indian Oil Corp.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-17 14:45:52
Ireland is likely to retain its advice that travellers from Britain and the United States self-isolate for 14 days on arrival when it publishes a “green list” of countries exempt from quarantine on Monday, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said.
Ireland, which has been more cautious than much of Europe on the reopening of its economy and air travel as it lifts coronavirus curbs, has advised its citizens against non-essential travel since March and requires anyone arriving in the country to self-isolate for 14 days.
“I think it’s very unlikely that either the UK or the US will be on that green list. It’s not going to be a particularly long list,” Coveney said in an interview with Newstalk radio.
2020-07-17 14:09:42
More than 1,000 climate friendly projects could line up for a piece of the EU’s post-coronavirus recovery package, as ministers begin to discuss the bloc’s 2021-27 budget and economic stimulus fund, according to research seen by Reuters.
The EU Commission has proposed a 1.1 trillion euro ($1.25 trillion) budget plus a 750 billion euro recovery fund aimed at rebuilding economies most affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Commission says the overall package will drive a recovery that boosts “green” industries and technologies, to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases fuelling climate change.
2020-07-17 12:45:48
The reproduction rate of the novel coronavirus in the Brittany region, popular with tourists, has risen sharply in less than a week, according to government data, the latest indication that the virus is again gaining momentum in France.
According to data released on Friday, the disease’s reproduction rate, known as the R0, in Brittany had risen from 0.92 to 2.62 between July 10 and July 14.
2020-07-17 12:10:05
Opposition from the Netherlands and the threat of a Hungarian veto weighed on chances of a deal on the eve of EU talks on a mass stimulus scheme to kickstart economies hammered by the coronavirus.
The 27 national EU heads will meet face-to-face in Brussels on Friday and Saturday for the first time since COVID-19 pushed the bloc into a sweeping lockdown, as well as its deepest-ever recession, forecast at 8.7% this year for euro zone members.
They will haggle over their 2021-27 budget proposed at just above 1 trillion euros and a linked recovery fund of 750 billion euros in grants and loans designed to help rebuild southern states like Italy where the virus took the biggest toll.
“Does 1,750 billion euros seem like a lot of money to you? Believe me, it does to the European heads... But it is worth it,” the chairman of the meeting, Charles Michel, said on Thursday in stressing the EU’s economic answer to the pandemic would top that of the United States or China.
2020-07-17 18:10:46
Coronavirus is the public's enemy, but the actions of several governments and people does not reflect this, WHO chiefTedros Adhanom said.
2020-07-17 17:47:56
2020-07-17 17:29:57
Pakistan's confirmed tally for coronavirus infections has now crossed Spain's total, data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Centre shows.
Pakistan now has 259,999 confirmed cases, whereas Spain has 258,855.
2020-07-17 17:16:11
South Korea approved an early stage clinical trial of Celltrion Inc’s experimental COVID-19 treatment drug, making it the country’s first such antibody drug to be tested on humans.
Drugmakers worldwide are scrambling to develop vaccines and treatments for the flu-like illness caused by the novel coronavirus that has infected nearly 14 million people and killed more than 580,000 globally.
Celltrion’s antibody treatment is directed against the surface of the virus and designed to block it from locking on to human cells.
The company plans to enrol 32 healthy volunteers in collaboration with a local hospital for Phase I study of the drug, which demonstrated an up to 100-fold reduction in viral load in animal tests.
Celltrion said overseas human trials of its treatment will begin soon across Europe, including the UK, which will be followed by global second and third trials in patients with mild and moderate symptoms.
It anticipates primary results from these studies by the end of this year and aims to commercialize the drug by early 2021, it said.
“Our human trials are conducted globally, so we will be able to export for sure, but will offer it to patients abroad only after securing domestic supplies for South Korea,” Kee Woo-sung, its chief executive officer, told Reuters.
2020-07-17 17:07:35
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the problems other countries are currently experiencing with the COVID-19 pandemic shows what can go wrong if rules are not followed by the public.
“Look at other countries around the world, we can see all too clearly what could go wrong if we don’t continue to follow the guidance, if we don’t continue to keep this thing under control,” he said at a Downing Street media briefing.
“There are parts of the world where it’s continuing to spike, we don’t want to see that in this country,” he said, without naming any countries.
2020-07-17 16:57:38
The leading US expert on infectious diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci, implored younger people to continue social distancing and other measures to curtail spread of the novel coronavirus, which has surged in some parts of the country.
“Please assume the societal responsibility of being part of the solution, not part of the problem,” he said in a live interview with Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.
He cautioned that even asymptomatic people can spread the coronavirus to others, increasing the likelihood that the virus could infect a more vulnerable person.
Fauci said some states have moved forward with reopening even though they did not meet guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In other states “the citizenry ... put caution to the wind,” he said, citing photos showing people congregating at bars without face coverings.
2020-07-17 16:47:20
Swiss officials have opened investigations into importers and dealers of defective respiratory masks, they said, warning users of protective devices to be vigilant for flawed products rushed into the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Swiss Federal Office for Accident Prevention (BFA) and Swiss National Accident Insurance Fund (SUVA) said 60% of the protective masks they reviewed offered insufficient protection.
The call by the agencies does not pertain to soft hygienic masks people commonly wear in public or while riding trains and buses, but to more robust respiratory protective devices to help protect medical workers from the deadly disease.
Most of the masks were labelled KN95, the agencies said, a label that may indicate approval in China.
“SUVA and BFU noticed...reports that numerous defective products were in circulation,” the agencies said. Products, mostly purchased online, were tested in a SUVA laboratory.
2020-07-17 16:35:08
Health Minister Matt Hancock ordered a review into how England reports coronavirus deaths after academics said the daily figures may include people who have died of other causes.
The way Public Health England, a government agency responsible for managing infectious disease outbreaks, calculates the figures means they might look worse there than in other parts of the United Kingdom, according to two academics.
Yoon Loke, from the University of East Anglia, and Carl Heneghan, from the University of Oxford, said Public Health England cross-checks the latest notifications of deaths against a database of positive test results – so anyone who has tested positive can be recorded as dying from the virus.
“Matt Hancock is going to be doing a review of those statistics with Public Health England,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a media conference on Friday.
In a blog called “Why no-one can recover from COVID-19 in England”, the academics said that patients who tested positive for coronavirus, but are successfully treated, will still be counted as dying from the virus “even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later”.
2020-07-17 16:33:24
Researchers in Australia have devised a test that can determine novel coronavirus infection in about 20 minutes using blood samples in what they say is a world-first breakthrough.
The researchers at Monash University said their test can determine if someone is currently infected and if they have been infected in the past.
“Short-term applications include rapid case identification and contact tracing to limit viral spread, while population screening to determine the extent of viral infection across communities is a longer-term need,” the researchers said in a paper published in the journal ACS Sensors on Friday.
Their test, using 25 microlitres of plasma from blood samples, looks for agglutination, or a clustering of red blood cells, that the coronavirus causes.
2020-07-17 16:23:15
The United States shattered its daily record for coronavirus infections, reporting more than 77,000 new cases as the number of deaths in a 24-hour period rose by nearly 1,000, according to a Reuters tally.
The loss of 969 lives was the biggest increase since June 10, with Florida, South Carolina and Texas all reporting their biggest one-day spikes on Thursday.
The hardest-hit areas in Texas and Arizona are running out of places to store bodies as their morgues fill up and are bringing in coolers and refrigerated trailers.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, has warned that cases could soon top 100,000 a day if Americans do not come together to take steps necessary to halt the spread of the virus.
2020-07-17 16:03:20
ALMATY/BISHKEK: Kyrgyzstan added thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths to its COVID-19 tally on Friday, describing them as cases of pneumonia most likely caused by the novel coronavirus which had not been detected by tests.
Its neighbour Kazakhstan, which has also reported a jump in pneumonia cases, said it would do the same starting next month, which would also cause a one-off spike in numbers.
Both Central Asian nations are struggling to curb the spread of the virus after ending their initial lockdowns in May, and Kazakhstan this month imposed a second lockdown after hospitals filled up in several major cities.
Kyrgyzstan reported a total of 23,783 cases of COVID-19 and COVID-like pneumonia as of Friday, having previously reported only 12,498 COVID-19 cases. The number of deaths, with the same adjustments, surged to 785 from 167.
Kazakh healthcare minister Alexei Tsoy told a briefing on Friday the Nur-Sultan government would start reporting combined figures from Aug. 1.
The number of deaths from pneumonia has jumped 75% so far this year compared with the same period of 2019, he said, reaching 3,327. Kazakhstan has reported 66,895 COVID-19 cases as of Friday, with 464 deaths.
2020-07-17 15:51:08
The National Disaster Management Authority announced on Sunday that Uzebkistan has donated 25 metric tonnes of protective gear and medicines to Pakistan.
NDMA stated that that Uzbek Charge D'affaires handed over to the NDMA.
2020-07-17 15:45:58
KARACHI: Over 2,500 cops from the port city have contracted the coronavirus, said a spokesperson for the Sindh Police on Friday.
According to the Sindh Police spokesperson, 155 police officials contracted COVID-19 in the last two days. He said that 16 police officials succumbed to the disease while they were on duty.
The spokesperson, sharing details of the cops who had passed away due to the coronavirus, said that out of the 16 police officers, 14 hailed from Karachi while two resided in Hyderabad. The spokesperson revealed that 906 police officers have also recovered from the virus.
Read more here.
2020-07-17 15:44:30
Prime Minister Imran Khan has said Pakistan is among one of those 'fortunate countries' where coronavirus cases have gone down.
PM Imran urged the nation to strictly adhere to the SOPs to 'sustain the positive trend'. He also asked the nation to celebrate the Eid in simplicity.
2020-07-17 15:36:27
Pakistan Islamic Medical Association and Gallup Pakistan published the results of a new survey on Friday according to which the respondents felt it may take more than a year to control the coronavirus in the country.
The 400 respondents of the survey — conducted by the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association and Gallup Pakistan — were doctors and those associated with the health profession.
In response to the question as to when the world will be able to control the pandemic, 55% responded by saying that it would take more than a year while 41% were of the view that the COVID-19 situation will be brought under control in a few months. Only 4% thought it would take a few weeks for the situation to be controlled throughout the world.
Sixty-six percent of the respondents urged the government to impose a lockdown till the situation did not improve. Four percent were of the view that the lockdown should be imposed till Eid-ul-Azha while 8% thought it should be lifted immediately.
The survey's results stated that 60% of the respondents, who were doctors, were not happy with the country's response to the pandemic while 39% were satisfied.
Read more here.
2020-07-17 15:34:43
The National Institute of Health estimates, based on a recent survey, that the number of coronavirus cases in Islamabad can be as high as 290,000 — much higher than the official tally of infections in the federal capital, which stands at 14,454.
For the survey, the NIH team visited seven areas of the federal capital: Chathar, Mohrian, Tarlai Khurd, Tamair, Kirpa, Kiri and Alipur.
The surveillance team took samples from 4,328 people, of which 626 people tested positive for COVID-19.
The survey revealed that people in the age group of 31-50 were most affected by the virus.
It also deduced that men had a two times higher rate of infections than women.
Read more here.
2020-07-17 13:42:00
Jofra Archer's breach of the coronavirus regulations was a potential "disaster" that could have cost "tens of millions of pounds", according to England managing director Ashley Giles.
England dramatically announced fast bowler Archer had been left out of their side to play the West Indies in the second Test just hours before play got underway at Emirates Old Trafford on Thursday.
Archer was omitted after he went home to Brighton on Monday to meet an unnamed individual following the end of last week´s first Test in Southampton -- directly contravening strict guidelines.
The person Archer met has since tested negative for COVID-19.
Archer´s breach of the rules followed a concerted effort by the England and Wales Cricket Board to persuade both the West Indies and Pakistan to go ahead with their scheduled tours despite tens of thousands of coronavirus deaths in Britain.
Ireland and Australia are also scheduled to visit this season.
2020-07-17 15:00:37
LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to pour 3 billion pounds ($3.8 billion) into England’s National Health Service (NHS) to try to ward off any resurgence of the coronavirus, as he sets out the next stage of his recovery plan for Britain.
Britain is the worst-affected country in Europe by COVID-19 with a death toll from confirmed cases of more than 45,000.
The government has faced criticism over several different aspects of its response to the pandemic, including that it was too slow to impose a lockdown and failed to ramp up testing capacity quickly enough.
In recent weeks, the country has eased lockdown restrictions as infection rates have fallen but the government said it must now begin to prepare for a potential second peak in cases over winter.
2020-07-17 13:36:17
TOKYO: The Japanese government is facing potentially damaging blowback after excluding Tokyo residents from a multibillion dollar campaign aimed at reviving domestic tourism, even as the capital on Friday reported a record number of new COVID-19 cases.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s $16 billion “Go To” tourism campaign was intended to promote travel across the country, but officials agreed on Thursday to exclude Tokyo because of the resurgence in infections there.
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike reported 293 new cases on Friday, a fresh daily record after the city recorded 286 cases a day earlier.
Abe has borne the brunt of the negative reaction to Tokyo’s exclusion from the travel subsidy programme, adding to growing criticisms of his handling of the crisis that analysts said could erode his support.
“What makes you think that business trips or commuting won’t spread the coronavirus? Do you think it’s fair to exclude Tokyoites from a campaign that’s using taxpayers money?” said opposition lawmaker Ren Ho on Friday morning in a tweet addressed to Abe.
The hashtag #TokyoExcluded was trending on Twitter on Friday, amassing almost 100,000 tweets.
2020-07-17 13:05:23
MOSCOW: Russia’s death toll from the novel coronavirus passed 12,000 on Friday, as the country reported 186 new deaths in the past 24 hours.
The country’s coronavirus crisis response centre registered 6,406 new cases, bringing its nationwide tally of infections to 759,203, the world’s fourth highest caseload.
The death toll now stands at 12,123. Russia says 539,373 people have recovered.
2020-07-17 11:57:25
LONDON/OTTAWA: Hackers backed by the Russian state are trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research from academic and pharmaceutical institutions around the world, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said on Thursday.
A co-ordinated statement from Britain, the United States and Canada attributed the attacks to group APT29, also known as Cozy Bear, which they said was almost certainly operating as part of Russian intelligence services.
“We condemn these despicable attacks against those doing vital work to combat the coronavirus pandemic,” said NCSC Director of Operations Paul Chichester.
Cybersecurity researchers said an APT29 hacking tool was used against clients located in United States, Japan, China and Africa over the last year.
Russian news agency RIA cited spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying the Kremlin rejected London’s allegations, which he said were not backed by proper evidence.
2020-07-17 11:55:57
2020-07-17 11:34:23
British Airways, the world’s largest operator of Boeing 747, said late Thursday it would retire its entire jumbo jet fleet with immediate effect due to the downturn in travel industry caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Global curbs imposed to stem the spread of the virus led to a turbulence in air travel, placing the future of many airline companies in doubt.
“It is unlikely our magnificent ‘queen of the skies’ will ever operate commercial services for British Airways again,” the company said in a statement.
BA, which is owned by International Consolidated Airlines Group, added that it will operate more flights on modern, fuel-efficient aircraft such as its new A350s and 787s and expects such aircraft to help in achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
A wave of restructuring triggered by the virus outbreak is hitting airlines and industrial firms across the world.
2020-07-17 10:32:06
BERLIN: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 583 to 200,843, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Friday.
The reported death toll rose by 4 to 9,082, the tally showed.
2020-07-17 10:03:43
Confirmed cases in the country jumped to 259,999 on Thursday after 2,085 new infections were reported during the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 110,068 cases in Sindh, 89,023 in Punjab, 31,486 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,385 in Balochistan, 14,454 in Islamabad, 1,775 Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,808 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also recorded 49 fatalities in the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 5,475.
The number of recoveries from coronavirus currently stands at 183,737.
2020-07-17 09:37:52
NEW DELHI: India’s cases of novel coronavirus crossed the million mark, the health ministry data showed on Friday, as infections spread out into the smaller towns and the countryside following the lifting of a vast lockdown.
Only the United States and Brazil have a higher number of cases. India’s total deaths stood at 25,602 the health ministry said.
2020-07-17 09:21:18
With training camps set to open in less than two weeks, 72 National Football League players had tested positive for COVID-19 as of July 10, according to the players’ association.
It was not immediately clear who the players were or which teams they play for.
The NFL plans to move forward with its regular season kickoff on Sept. 10, with several clubs anticipating reduced capacity — or no fans at all — at stadiums on game days to allow for social distancing, as the league finds a path forward amid the coronavirus outbreak.
With players set to report to training camps July 28, ESPN reported that the NFL and the players’ association (NFLPA) have been negotiating COVID-19 protocols, including how to classify a player’s potential positive coronavirus diagnosis.
2020-07-17 08:37:38
SYDNEY: Australia’s Victoria state on Friday reported a record daily increase in COVID-19 cases while neighbouring New South Wales said it was banning dancing, singing and mingling at weddings as authorities struggle to contain a new wave of infections.
Victoria, which has forced nearly 5 million people in the country’s second most populous state into a partial lockdown for more than a week, said it has found 428 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours.
Such is the size of the Victoria outbreak, Australia posted its biggest one-day rise in new COVID-19 infections since late March even with several states still to report.
The findings stoked expectations Victoria will be forced to implement tougher restrictions on its residents, which in turn will damage Australia’s national economy.
“We are in the fight of our lives,” Victoria state’s Minister for Health Jenny Mikakos told reporters in Melbourne.
Australia has recorded just over 11,000 cases of COVID-19.
The death toll rose to 116 after the death of three people in Victoria on Friday, still well below many other countries.
2020-07-16 23:59:32
Iraq will reopen its airports for scheduled international traffic on July 23, the Higher Committee for Health and Public Safety said, after suspending regular commercial flights in March because of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
The country will lift a nationwide night-time curfew after the Muslim holiday of Eid-ul-Azha and reopen restaurants and malls as long as they implement preventative health and social distancing measures, the committee added in a statement.
It did not provide further details on flights. Some international flights have left Baghdad in recent weeks with passengers needing prior approval to travel.
2020-07-16 23:52:32
With training camps set to open in less than two weeks, 72 National Football League players had tested positive for COVID-19 as of July 10, according to the players’ association.
It was not immediately clear who the players were or which teams they play for.
The NFL plans to move forward with its regular season kickoff on Sept. 10, with several clubs anticipating reduced capacity — or no fans at all — at stadiums on game days to allow for social distancing, as the league finds a path forward amid the coronavirus outbreak.
With players set to report to training camps July 28, ESPN reported that the NFL and the players’ association (NFLPA) have been negotiating COVID-19 protocols, including how to classify a player’s potential positive coronavirus diagnosis.
2020-07-16 23:45:52
2020-07-16 23:35:23
Punjab reported 484 new coronavirus cases, raising the total to 89,023 with eight more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 2,059, authorities said.
2020-07-16 23:25:13
The US Homeland Security Department said it will extend restrictions on non-essential travel at US land borders with Canada and Mexico through August 20.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf announced the 30-day extension on Twitter that “close collaboration with our neighbors has allowed us to respond to #COVID19 in a North American approach and slow the travel-related spread of the virus.”
The restrictions do not apply to travelers who are getting to work, or people travelling for family care, educational or humanitarian reasons.
2020-07-16 23:15:42
Rio de Janeiro’s golden beaches are sparkling a lot more during the coronavirus pandemic, as residents and visitors stay away, revealing miles of pristine sand along the spectacular shore.
While Rio has in recent weeks relaxed lockdown measures aimed at curbing the spread of the virus, most locals are still shunning famed beaches like Copacabana and Ipanema as a precaution.
Where once there was a forest of umbrellas, music blaring, and hardly an inch of sand unoccupied, now the only sound is the turquoise sea lapping at the largely empty bays, dotted with the occasional sunbather. The beach volleyball courts are empty.
Biologist Mario Moscatelli told Reuters the dearth of visitors and traffic was giving the city’s beaches a breather in several ways.
“It is something positive from the pandemic... without humans on the beaches, the empty space is being occupied by native fauna that have not been seen here for a long time,” he said. “Also, there is less trash.”
Read complete story here.
2020-07-16 23:00:17
Abbott Laboratories said demand for its coronavirus tests will likely remain high even after a safe and effective vaccine is available as the medical device maker forecast full-year profit above analysts’ estimates.
“It’s clear that the need for testing is large and it isn’t going away,” Chief Executive Officer Robert Ford said on a post-earnings conference call.
“Even when you have a vaccine ... I can see patients going to physician’s office with a fever, and they want to know is it influenza? Is it the flu? Is it COVID?”
2020-07-16 22:52:44
Sindh information minister Nasir Hussain Shah has shared an awareness message to urge people to seek counselling if they find themselves depressed and in need of psychosocial support.
The Sindh government, in collaboration with UNDP and Unicef, have set up a helpline, 1093, for the purpose.
2020-07-16 22:40:28
Uganda began the mass testing of its 426 legislators and their staff for the new coronavirus, a parliamentary spokeswoman said.
Uganda has officially recorded only 1,051 cases and zero deaths since March, but MPs requested the tests due to the nature of their work which involves meeting many people, said the parliament´s acting communications chief, Helen Kawesa.
Kawesa denied reports that an MP had been admitted to hospital with the virus, after a lawmaker wrote on Twitter that one of his colleagues was ill.
"The medical screening of MPs for COVID-19 began this morning (Thursday). After the MPs have been screened, the parliamentary staff will be next", she said.
2020-07-16 22:30:49
Spain reported the steepest daily jump in coronavirus infections in over two months, with 580 new cases registered as of the previous day, up from 390 reported on Wednesday and with the regions of Aragon and Catalonia leading the increase.
Authorities have reimposed restrictions in some areas of Catalonia, including home confinement in the Lleida area affecting some 160,000 people, and health officials there said measures would have to be taken in the capital Barcelona, but gave no further details.
Spain’s health ministry put the number of cases confirmed over the past 24 hours in the region at 142, up from 91 the previous day. In Aragon in the east, the number of infections jumped to 266 from 160, according to the health ministry.
2020-07-16 22:21:10
2020-07-16 22:10:33
American Airlines and JetBlue Airways said they were forming a strategic partnership to boost flying options in New York and Boston and create what executives called a “growth engine” to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
It makes American “a more-powerful player in the country’s economic center,” said Scott Mayerowitz at the Points Guy, helping it to fill international flights and compete for lucrative corporate contracts without investing in a network of domestic routes.
“This allows us to recover more quickly,” Scott Laurence, JetBlue’s head of revenue and planning, told Reuters. “It means that airplanes that would otherwise have been in a desert, they’re going to be flying and generating revenue.”
2020-07-16 21:59:21
Kuwait reported 791 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 57,668 with three more people succumbing to the disease, pushing the death toll to 402, the health ministry said.
2020-07-16 21:42:03
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 269 coronavirus cases and four deaths, bumping the overall infections tally to 31,486 and death toll to 1,124.
2020-07-16 21:31:12
Florida reported the largest one-day increase in deaths from the novel coronavirus since the pandemic began and its second-largest increase in cases ever.
Florida announced 13,965 new cases, bringing the total number of cases in the state and the center of the latest outbreak to over 315,775, according to the state health department.
Florida’s COVID deaths rose by 156 to a total of 4,782, surpassing its previous one-day record of 133 new deaths on July 12.
2020-07-16 21:22:16
2020-07-16 21:10:40
Balochistan reported 63 coronavirus cases and one death, bumping the overall infections tally to 11,385 and death toll to 128, the province's health department confirmed.
Meanwhile, the province has reported 8,161 recoveries from the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-07-16 20:59:49
Republicans will significantly limit the number of attendees at the party’s August convention nominating President Donald Trump for a second White House term in Jacksonville, Florida, as coronavirus cases continue to spike sharply across the state.
The shift to a smaller gathering is the latest in a series of changes sought by organizers as they scramble to host a large-scale event next month amid the health crisis.
“We had hoped to be able to plan a traditional convention celebration to which we are all accustomed. However, adjustments must be made to comply with state and local health guidelines,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a letter delivered on Thursday to delegates.
Only the approximately 2,500 regular delegates will be permitted to attend the first three nights of the four-night event, according to a Republican source with knowledge of the plans.
2020-07-16 20:50:53
Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa has offered all possible assistance to Italy in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic during a meeting with Rome's ambassador, Andreas Ferrarese, the military's media wing said in a statement.
According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Ferrarese, the Italian ambassador to Pakistan, called on Gen Bajwa at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-16 20:40:33
The novel coronavirus will likely return several times in the coming years, triggering new waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, the British government’s chief scientific adviser said.
“I think it’s quite probable that we will see this virus coming back in different waves, over a number of years,” Patrick Vallance told lawmakers.
2020-07-16 20:31:18
The United Kingdom’s death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose to 45,119, up 66 on the previous day, the government said.
2020-07-16 20:23:04
Britain has not achieved a good outcome in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the government’s chief scientific adviser said, adding that he was sure mistakes had been made in the response to the crisis.
“It’s very difficult to know exactly where we stand at the moment. It’s clear that the outcome has not been good in the UK, I think we can be absolutely clear about that,” Patrick Vallance told lawmakers, adding that some countries had done worse.
“There will be things, decisions made, that will turn out not to have been the right decisions at the time, I’m sure about that as well.”
“What we’re dealing with now is a suppressed first wave,” he said. “I think it’s quite probable that we will see this virus coming back in different waves over a number of years.”
2020-07-16 20:11:48
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro told reporters in Brasilia that he has tested positive for coronavirus again, a week after he announced he had become ill with COVID-19, and said he would get tested once more in a few days.
Local outlet CNN Brasil had reported the positive test result earlier on Wednesday.
2020-07-16 20:00:38
Portuguese police detained five people after raiding health clinics allegedly exploiting the coronavirus pandemic by claiming “ozone therapy” prevents or cures the highly contagious disease.
In a statement, Portugal’s criminal investigation police agency, the PJ, said the suspects allegedly took advantage of the “fragility and vulnerability of people afraid of the virus or even infected”.
The clinics - not named by the PJ - may have contributed to the spread of the disease, the police said, adding they also conducted various tests, namely to detect the coronavirus, without holding a license or meeting the required standards.
2020-07-16 19:50:30
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro again extolled the supposed virtues of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to fight COVID-19, as he said that he again tested positive for the coronavirus, a week after he first announced he had become infected.
“I was medicated from the beginning with hydroxychloroquine, with a doctor’s recommendation. I felt better the next day,” Bolsonaro said in a video posted on social media. “Whether it is a coincidence or not... it worked for me.”
2020-07-16 19:39:14
Health authorities have ordered the culling of all 93,000 mink at a farm in eastern Spain to prevent human contagion after discovering that most of the animals there had been infected with the coronavirus.
The farm in the village of La Puebla de Valverde in the region of Aragon, 200 km (125 miles) east of Madrid, came to the attention of the authorities after the wife of one of its workers tested positive in May.
Joaquin Olona, head of the Aragon agriculture department, told reporters that seven farm workers had subsequently tested positive, including the woman’s husband.
Authorities initially ordered that the animals should be isolated. But a few weeks later, after several rounds of testing, they decided to cull the mink, which are farmed for their fur. As many as 80% of a sample of the animals tested positive.
2020-07-16 19:28:47
France accelerated plans to make it compulsory to wear face masks in enclosed public spaces because of concerns about renewed flare-ups of COVID-19.
“We were considering implementing (this measure) on August 1,” Castex told the Senate. “I have heard and understood that this deadline appeared late or raised some questions, so the decree will come into force next week.”
Health Minister Olivier Veran, speaking in the lower house of parliament, encouraged people to start wearing masks now, without waiting for the decree, calling wearing masks a matter of social responsibility.
2020-07-16 19:19:22
Hackers backed by the Russian state are trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research from academic and pharmaceutical institutions around the world, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said on Thursday.
A co-ordinated statement from Britain, the United States and Canada attributed the attacks to group APT29, also known as ‘Cozy Bear’, which they said was almost certainly operating as part of Russian intelligence services.
“We condemn these despicable attacks against those doing vital work to combat the coronavirus pandemic,” said NCSC Director of Operations, Paul Chichester.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-16 19:04:36
The US dollar strengthened as investors focused on poor Chinese retail sales instead of its stronger than expected economic growth in the past quarter, with the focus now shifting more to a European Union summit this weekend.
The euro remained untouched by the outcome of the European Central Bank meeting, with monetary policy left unchanged after taking a series of unprecedented measures over the past four months to salvage an economy that is fighting the biggest recession in living memory because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“No one really wants to buy a lot more (equities) here because they’re concerned about a second wave of COVID, they’re concerned about the pace of corporate earnings deterioration,” said Stephen Gallo, European head of FX strategy at BMO Capital Markets.
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2020-07-16 18:48:00
World Health Organisation Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus joined the leadership of Spain, paying homage to those who have lost their lives in the country due to COVID-19, saluting the heroic efforts of heath workers and praising the government’s resolute and robust response to reverse the virus’s transmission.
“It is with great respect that I join the King of Spain, the Prime Minister and the entire government of the country to pay tribute to the people who have fallen victim to COVID-19,” said Dr Tedros. “I extend my deepest condolences to the families of all people who have lost their lives due to this virus in Spain, and around the world.”
2020-07-16 18:38:03
The European Central Bank left policy unchanged, pausing after taking a series of unprecedented measures over the past four months to salvage an economy that is fighting its biggest recession in living memory due to the coronavirus.
With Thursday’s decision, the ECB remains on track to buy up to 1.35 trillion euros worth of debt through next June under its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme and up to 1.8 trillion euros if other purchases are also included.
It also kept its deposit rate unchanged at a record low minus 0.5% while the main refinancing rate remains at zero.
2020-07-16 18:28:59
Domino’s Pizza beat Wall Street estimates for quarterly same-restaurant sales and profit, as diners ordered in more pies since dine-in options were limited due to lockdowns triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pizza chain’s shares, that have risen about 41% this year so far, were up about 1.5% before the bell.
Domino’s is one of the few restaurant chains to see a boost in sales as consumers sought the comfort of pizzas and relied on their fast delivery. Second quarter U.S. same-store sales surged 16.1%, beating analysts’ estimates of 10.67%.
2020-07-16 18:14:02
Germany’s health minister urged the World Health Organisation (WHO) to speed up its review of how it handled the pandemic, apparently signalling Europe’s tougher line on the United Nations body.
Spahn told reporters he had discussed the review of the WHO’s management of the crisis with its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus twice over the last 20 days.
“In both conversations I encouraged him very clearly to launch this independent commission of experts and to expedite its launch,” Spahn said.
Spahn said the review was important now, even if the pandemic is still raging across the world, because “we can already draw conclusions.”
This could lead to quick actions over the body’s governance and to improve “cooperation between the political and the scientific level” of the organisation, Spahn added.
2020-07-16 18:04:31
Canada added 1,042,900 jobs in June as business reopened after shutdowns related to COVID-19, led by hiring in the trade, transportation and utilities sector, according to a report from payroll services provider ADP.
The May data was revised to show 2,951,400 jobs were lost rather than a gain of 208,400. The report is derived from ADP’s payrolls data and measures more than two million workers in Canada.
2020-07-16 17:53:03
The England and Wales Cricket Board announced that England's Jofra Archer was ruled out of the second Test against the West Indies and sent into five days of isolation for breaking "bio-secure protocols" aimed at stopping coronavirus infections,
Both teams have been living in secure "bubble" sites at the Ageas Bowl, the venue for last week's first Test, and Emirates Old Trafford where the final two matches of the series will take place, in a bid to combat the spread of COVID-19.
The fast bowler apologised for putting his teammates in "danger", although the nature of the breach was not disclosed. His removal from the squad was announced just three hours before Thursday's scheduled 1000 GMT start in Manchester.
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2020-07-16 17:42:34
2020-07-16 17:31:53
Global debt surged to a record $258 trillion in the first quarter of 2020 as economies around the world shut down to contain the coronavirus pandemic, and debt levels are continuing to rise, the Institute for International Finance said in a report.
The IIF, which represents global banks and financial institutions, said the first-quarter debt-to-GDP ratio jumped by over 10 percentage points, the largest quarterly surge on record, to reach a record 331%.
While the rise in debt levels was well below average quarterly gains seen from 2015 to 2019, the pace of global debt build-up by governments, companies, financial institutions and households had accelerated since March, it said.
Overall gross debt issuance hit an “eye-watering” record of $12.5 trillion in the second quarter, compared with a quarterly average of $5.5 trillion in 2019, the IIF said. It noted that 60% of those issues came from governments.
“While increasing debt levels raise concerns about debt sustainability, over 92% of government debt is investment-grade,” the report said.
2020-07-16 17:22:29
The federal government has increased the Ehsaas Programme's budget to Rs203 billion, SAPM on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Sania Nishtar said.
The government has expanded the emergency cash target to reach out to around 16.9 million deserving families — affected due to COVID-19, she said.
Ehsaas has taken the lead in radically expanding social safety nets to help mitigate the effects of the COVID-19, a statement from the Press Information Department said.
2020-07-16 17:11:50
Federal Minister for Interior Brig (retd) Ijaz Ahmad Shah directed authorities to take stern action against that spreading disinformation on coronavirus and vowed to fully utilise available resources against them.
Shah asked Federal Investigation Agency's director cyber wing, to closely monitor and hold the responsible ones accountable for their actions. He reinforced the point that strict and immediate action should be taken against these people.
2020-07-16 16:59:53
The German abattoir hit by a coronavirus outbreak that led to a second lockdown for the entire region reopened its slaughterhouse, though the impact of new hygiene measures on the plant’s capacity is unclear.
Authorities on Wednesday said the Toennies slaughterhouse in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck could resume operations after it bolstered health and safety procedures. The meat processing and packing plant remains closed but is due to be inspected on Thursday.
The site, which is particularly important for the German pig farming sector, had closed in mid-June after about 1,500 workers tested positive for COVID-19. The outbreak in turn led to about 600,000 people in the surrounding Guetersloh region being put back in lockdown, which has since been lifted.
“It is now important that considerable numbers are again slaughtered at Rheda,” said Torsten Staack, head of the ISN association of German pig farmers.
“There are now about 400,000 pigs waiting to be slaughtered, which is about half the volume for the whole of Germany in a normal week.”
The Rheda-Wiedenbrueck plant in North Rhine-Westphalia normally slaughters about 14% of Germany’s pigs.
2020-07-16 16:43:34
Hopes of an effective COVID-19 vaccine being developed in the near future have been raised after two separate studies showed potential positive results, British media reported Thursday.
A University of Oxford trial showed its prototype vaccine generated an immune response against the virus, the reports said.
Blood samples taken from a group of some 1,000 volunteers who were given the vaccine stimulated antibodies and "killer T-cells", according to the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Previous research has shown that T-cells can remain in the body for years and help fight viruses.
Results of the trial are expected to be published in The Lancet medical journal next week, Oxford said in a statement.
2020-07-16 16:30:08
Americans who received enhanced unemployment benefits due to the coronavirus pandemic spent more than when they were working, a study released on Thursday said, adding to concerns about a steep fall in spending when the emergency benefits expire.
The $600 weekly supplement added to jobless benefits as part of the CARES Act helped unemployed households spend 10% more after receiving benefits than they did before the pandemic, according to research by the JPMorgan Chase Institute.
Researchers analyzed transactions for 61,000 households that received unemployment benefits between March and May. Spending dropped for all households as the virus spread and led to business shutdowns, but then rose when households began receiving jobless benefits, the study found.
That contrasts with a typical recession, when households receiving unemployment benefits usually cut spending by 7% because regular jobless benefits amount to only a fraction of a person’s prior earnings, the research found.
The analysis highlighted how the additional unemployment benefits are helping to prop up the US economy and consumer spending after the pandemic led to a surge in joblessness across the country.
More than 30 million Americans are estimated to be receiving unemployment benefits - and they could be pushed off an income cliff when the supplemental benefits, which are due to expire at the end of July, are withdrawn.
“Our estimates suggest that expiration will result in large spending cuts, with potentially negative effects on both households and macroeconomic activity,” the researchers wrote.
2020-07-16 16:14:19
2020-07-16 15:56:57
Russia plans to produce 30 million doses of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine domestically this year, with the potential to manufacture a further 170 million doses abroad, the head of the country's sovereign wealth fund said.
A larger Phase III trial involving several thousand people is expected to begin in August, Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) head Kirill Dmitriev.
"We believe that based on the current results it will be approved in Russia in August and in some other countries in September..., making it possibly the first vaccine to be approved in the world," he told Reuters in an interview.
2020-07-16 15:29:52
SAPM on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Dr Sania Nishtar on Thursday announced that the government has decided to expand the scope of the Ehsas Emergency Cash programme and increase the budget from Rs144 billion to Rs203 billion.
“16.9 million deserving families will benefit from this scheme,” she said while addressing a press conference.
Dr Nishtar added the distribution of cash assistance would continue till the last deserving family got their amount.
2020-07-16 15:09:33
Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar has urged the provincial governments to ensure public adherence to precautionary measures during Eid-ul-Azha to contain spread of coronavirus, reported Radio Pakistan.
Umar made the remarks while chairing a meeting of the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) in Islamabad on Thursday.
The minister warned that any carelessness in observance of precautionary measures during Eid-ul-Azha may lead to a fresh spike in coronavirus cases.
2020-07-16 14:51:05
Most Chinese cinemas will be allowed to reopen next week with social distancing rules following months of coronavirus closures, authorities said Thursday, as domestic infections remained at zero for 10 straight days.
Movie theatres in "low-risk" areas of the country can resume operations on July 20, but must screen patrons for fevers and enforce mask-wearing, the China Film Administration said.
Cinemas are also required to sell tickets for no more than 30% percent of the available seats at each screening, and must keep groups of moviegoers at least one metre (about three feet) apart, the administration said.
2020-07-16 14:17:07
France will make it compulsory to wear a face mask indoors in public places from next week, the government said Thursday as the country reported an uptick in new coronavirus cases.
Obligatory gear on collective transport until now, masks will become compulsory in all indoor places frequented by the public, Prime Minister Jean Castex said in the Senate.
2020-07-16 13:56:20
2020-07-16 13:31:23
Russia's official coronavirus case tally reached 752,797 on Thursday, the fourth largest in the world, after authorities reported 6,428 new cases in the last 24 hours.
In their daily readout, officials said 167 people had died overnight, pushing the official death toll to 11,937.
2020-07-16 13:06:45
Tokyo is likely to see coronavirus cases top 280 on Thursday, Governor Yuriko Koike said, in what would mark a record daily high for the Japanese capital.
"It's still incomplete, but I'm hearing that the number will be above 280," Koike told reporters, noting that the metropolis was conducting more than 4,000 tests on Thursday.
2020-07-16 12:47:34
Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar has said there has been a decline in coronavirus cases in the country mainly due to a nearly 60% reduction in positivity.
The minister said that if the positivity rate had been over 22% which was in mid-June, the 24,262 tests done yesterday would have resulted in 5,500 cases, but the actual number of cases yesterday was 2,145.
2020-07-16 12:30:58
A Bangladesh hospital owner accused of issuing thousands of fake negative coronavirus test results to patients at his two clinics was arrested Wednesday while trying to flee to India in a burqa, police said.
The arrest marked the end of a nine-day manhunt for Mohammad Shahed over allegations of giving fake certificates to patients saying they were virus-free without even testing them.
Shahed, 42, was one of more than a dozen people detained by authorities over the past few days in connection with the scam.
Read more here.
2020-07-16 12:00:44
Australia's second-most populous state of Victoria reported two new coronavirus cases as the state logged a record daily rise in new infections on Thursday.
Victoria reported 317 new daily cases, the highest since the pandemic began. The state's previous high of 288 new cases came last week.
2020-07-16 11:37:21
The death rate for COVID-19 intensive care patients has dropped by about one-third since the start of the pandemic, due at least in part to better hospital care, a review of published studies found.
The research, led by Professor Tim Cook of England's Royal United Hospitals Bath, found the overall mortality rate of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units (ICUs) has fallen from almost 60% since the end of March to 42% at the end of May. The rate was not significantly different across Europe, Asia and North America.
Study authors offered several explanations, including "rapid learning that has taken place on a global scale due to the prompt publication of clinical reports early in the pandemic."
2020-07-16 11:07:08
Confirmed cases in the country jumped to 257,914 on Thursday after 2,145 new infections were reported during the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, there are 108,913 cases in Sindh, 88,539 in Punjab, 31,217 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,322 in Balochistan, 14,402 in Islamabad, 1,750 Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,771 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also recorded 40 fatalities in the last 24 hours taking the nationwide death toll to 5,426.
The number of recoveries from coronavirus currently stands at 178,737.
2020-07-16 10:49:45
SAPM on Health Services Dr Zafar Mirza has announced that over 60,000 health workers belonging to all the four provinces, the federal capital, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu Kashmir have completed their training under the “We Care” initiative, Radio Pakistan reported.
He said health workers were rendering exemplary services. “The protection of healthcare workers is the top priority of the government as they deal with the coronavirus situation on the front line,” Dr Mirza added.
2020-07-16 10:40:12
The Sindh government has extended the province-wide COVID-19 lockdown restrictions till August 15 in a bid to stem the infection from spreading.
The announcement was made via a circular by the Sindh Home Department on Thursday in which it was announced that the decision had been kept after holding discussions with the National Command and Operation Centre and when it was decided to extend the lockdown at the last National Coordination Council.
Read more here.
2020-07-16 09:56:36
Brazil on Wednesday reported 39,924 additional novel coronavirus cases in a day as the country's total tally inched closer to 2 million, the health ministry said.
Brazil now has 1,996,748 confirmed cases and 75,366 deaths, 1,233 more than on Tuesday
2020-07-16 09:34:37
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro told reporters on Wednesday in Brasilia that he has tested positive for coronavirus again, a week after he announced he had become ill with COVID-19, and said he would get tested once more in a few days.
Local outlet CNN Brasil had reported the positive test result earlier on Wednesday.
2020-07-16 09:06:56
The United States posted a new daily record of 67,632 new coronavirus cases in the previous 24 hours on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University, which tracks the spread of the disease.
For the past 10 days, the number of new cases being reported has been between 55,000 and 65,000 every 24 hours.
2020-07-15 23:54:32
The Balochistan health department has reported 83 new infections, taking the total to 11,322 in the province.
The province recorded no deaths from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours.
2020-07-15 23:37:13
The Punjab disaster management authority has reported 494 new cases, taking the province's total to 88,539.
It also reported 25 more deaths, bringing the death toll to 2,051.
2020-07-15 23:16:40
Walmart will require shoppers to wear face masks starting next week, the retail giant has announced, joining an increasing number of businesses in mandating the protection amid the latest spike in US coronavirus cases.
But the move by the world's biggest retailer, which had previously only encouraged consumers to use face coverings, could have added weight in the debate over an item used in countries around the globe but which has become a cultural flashpoint in the United States in the struggle with COVID-19.
Walmart said masks are "critically important" and the requirement will take effect July 20, which will give the company time to post signage and train "health ambassadors" to facilitate the new policy.
The company has more than 5,300 Walmart and Sam's Club stores in the United States and is a giant retail presence in many of the southern and western states that have seen increases in COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations in recent weeks.
2020-07-15 23:10:22
2020-07-15 22:59:12
The European Union executive urged member states to launch earlier and broader vaccination campaigns against flu this year to reduce the risk of simultaneous influenza and COVID-19 outbreaks in the autumn.
The European Commission wants to head off the risk of hospitals being again overwhelmed by a surge of patients, as happened at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe in March and April.
“Simultaneous outbreaks of seasonal influenza and COVID-19 would place a considerable strain on health systems,” the Commission said in a document that lists actions needed to gird for a possible large second wave of COVID-19 in the autumn.
To avoid what the Commission’s vice president, Margaritis Schinas, called “a cocktail of risks,” it said EU governments this year should buy more shots against influenza and increase the number of people who are vaccinated.
2020-07-15 22:45:01
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 216 new infections and six deaths from coronavirus, bumping the overall cases to31,217 and deaths to 1,120.
2020-07-15 22:32:01
Canada’s efforts to flatten the curve of coronavirus cases have put the country on the cusp of zero deaths from COVID-19 for the first time since March, but officials see worrying signs of a new spike as provinces lift restrictions.
For months, Canadians followed strict public health rules on social movement as the 10 provinces quickly shut down large parts of the economy, ramped up testing and boosted space in intensive care units.
Some provinces curbed internal journeys while Ottawa barred international visitors, closed the land border to non-essential travel with the United States, which has become a global pandemic epicenter, and deployed military staff to hard-hit nursing homes.
Canadian deaths edged up eight to 8,798 according to government data late Tuesday, while the total number of cases grew by 331, to 108,486. By contrast, the United States recently set a one-day record in new cases with 60,500 as the national death toll rose to more than 135,000.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-15 22:10:29
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is enforcing partial coronavirus restrictions in the capital for another two weeks, and warned that stricter curbs would be reinstated if the rise in new cases and deaths does not slow down.
The Philippines this week recorded Southeast Asia’s biggest daily jump in coronavirus deaths and saw hospital occupancy grow sharply, after a tripling of infections since a tough lockdown was eased on June 1 to allow more movement and commerce.
“It was clear during our discussion that if the spread of the virus in Manila will not slow, it is possible that stricter quarantine measures would be reimposed after two weeks,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque said late on Wednesday.
Schools are to remain closed, operations of shopping malls and dine-in eateries limited, mass gatherings banned, social distancing enforced on public transport, and children and the elderly urged to stay at home.
2020-07-15 21:50:14
Sweden’s decision to keep schools open during the pandemic resulted in no higher rate of infection among its schoolchildren than in neighbouring Finland, where schools did temporarily close, their public health agencies said in a joint report.
Its Public Health Agency has maintained that the negative consequences of a shutdown on the economy and society outweigh the benefits, and says this also applies to schools.
The report, which has not been peer-reviewed, found that during the period of February 24 to June 14, there were 1,124 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among children in Sweden, around 0.05% of the total number of children aged 1-19.
“In conclusion, (the) closure or not of schools had no measurable direct impact on the number of laboratory confirmed cases in school-aged children in Finland or Sweden,” the agencies said in the report, published last week.
2020-07-15 21:35:29
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt tests positive for coronavirus Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has tested positive for coronavirus and is believed to be the first US governor to be infected by the virus, The Oklahoman newspaper reported.
Stitt, Oklahoma’s first-term Republican governor, announced his positive test results on Wednesday in a conference call with reporters, the newspaper said.
2020-07-15 21:18:00
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced on Wednesday a tightening of containment measures in the capital Caracas and neighboring Miranda state to try to halt the spread of the coronavirus.
According to official figures, Venezuela was one of the least affected countries in Latin America by the virus pandemic for the first couple of months but has seen an alarming rise in cases and deaths in recent weeks.
It took 70 days for Venezuela to record its first 1,000 cases but just three days to go from 7,000 to 8,000 cases.
"Due to the increase in COVID-19 cases, because of the illegal entry of people into the country, ... I've taken the decision to apply a radical quarantine in Caracas and Miranda state," Maduro said on Twitter.
2020-07-15 21:02:52
Part of a huge German abattoir and meatpacking complex at the centre of a coronavirus outbreak can reopen, German authorities said on Wednesday.
The Toennies slaughterhouse and meat packing complex in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck in western Germany has been closed since mid-June after some 1,500 workers tested positive for COVID-19. This caused a lockdown for 600,000 people in the surrounding Guetersloh region that was lifted on July 6.
Part of the complex was allowed on Wednesday to reopen after new health, safety and hygiene concepts were agreed, the Rheda-Wiedenbrueck local government authority said.
The reopened plants have 597 employees involved in slaughtering and seven in meat processing and work can start immediately, the authority said.
Toennies has also applied for the reopening of the rest of its meatpacking plant, the authority said. Health and safety experts will visit the plant on Thursday to examine the company’s hygiene concept and a test reopening is possible on Friday, it said.
2020-07-15 20:48:38
The United Kingdom’s death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose to 45,053, up 85 on the previous day, the government said.
2020-07-15 20:30:13
Barcelona may bring back some restrictions on daily life after the number of coronavirus cases tripled in a week, its mayor said, as around 160,000 people in another part of Catalonia went back under lockdown to stem a new surge in cases.
Just weeks after a nationwide lockdown was lifted and life returned largely to normal as infection rates dropped, Spain’s second-most populous region reported on Tuesday three deaths and 938 new coronavirus cases.
Some 63% of those new cases were detected in Barcelona and its surroundings, fuelling fears the regional capital and popular tourist destination might again become an epicentre of the virus.
“What worries us the most would be to lose control of infections,” Mayor Ada Colau told Ser Catalunya radio.
2020-07-15 20:14:23
Belgium postponed a further easing of rules on social gatherings after an uptick in the number of coronavirus infections, and the prime minister said she could not rule out the reintroduction of lockdowns in areas worst affected.
Sophie Wilmes told a news conference that the reproduction rate of COVID-19 infections had risen above 1 once more, indicating that the virus was again spreading exponentially in the country.
“This means that the epidemic is getting worse, gaining strength, even if it is still limited right now,” she told a news conference after a meeting to decide on next steps. “But it is not good and we are monitoring the situation very closely.”
2020-07-15 20:02:09
South Africa’s cases of COVID-19 were set to reach 300,000, the most in Africa and in the top 10 in the world, despite a swiftly imposed lockdown aimed at preventing infections spiralling as they did in the West.
Africa’s most industrialised nation has 298,292 cases at the last count, and with positive tests now increasing at a rate of more than 10,000 a day, it is all but certain to vault over the 300,000 mark when the ministry releases nightly figures on Wednesday.
At the end of March, President Cyril Ramaphosa took aggressive, early action, shutting shops, ordering people to stay at home and sending the army on to the streets to enforce it - when South Africa had only 400 cases and no recorded deaths.
The government later eased many curbs over fears for its struggling economy.
2020-07-15 19:50:43
British broadcaster BBC said it would cut 520 jobs in its news operation, 70 more than the number of layoffs announced in January which were put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Director of BBC News and Current Affairs Fran Unsworth said the corporation, which is mainly funded by a licence fee paid by British TV viewers, had to change to be sustainable.
The plan will see the broadcaster produce fewer stories, with its output more targeted and aiming to have more impact.
2020-07-15 19:32:44
Canada’s economic growth will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2022, the Bank of Canada said, in an outlook that was cautious on US growth and assumed there would not be a global second wave of COVID-19.
The Bank also said that its central scenario now sees Canadian oil production on a “considerably lower path than before the COVID-19 crisis,” due to weaker investment in the face of reduced demand and low oil prices.
“Overall, the risks appear to be tilted to the downside, largely because of the potential for a second wave of the virus,” the central bank said.
2020-07-15 19:21:56
India posted a trade surplus of $790 million in June, its first in over 18 years, with imports plunging as the coronavirus pandemic depressed domestic demand for crude oil, gold and other industrial products, reflecting a slowing economy.
Indian exports and imports have been falling since March and worsening India-China relations, shrinking global demand and disruptions in supply chains are likely to pressure the trade outlook over the next few quarters, analysts said.
Asia’s third largest economy is projected to contract by up to 5% this financial year, beginning April, from an earlier government estimate of nearly 6% growth as an over two-month-long COVID-19 lockdown has hit economic activities and consumer demand.
2020-07-15 19:10:18
US import prices increased by the most in more than eight years in June amid a surge in the cost of fuel, but the overall trend remained weak, suggesting inflation could stay tame despite a jump in consumer prices last month.
Still, the report from the Labor Department further diminished fears that the economy was in danger of deflation, a decline in the general price level, which is harmful during a recession as consumers and businesses may delay purchases in anticipation of lower prices.
Import prices accelerated 1.4% last month, the largest increase since March 2012, after rising 0.8% in May.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast import prices, which exclude tariffs, gaining 1.0% in June.
2020-07-15 18:51:50
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed to holding an inquiry into the country’s handling of the coronavirus crisis but said now was not the time as the battle to combat the pandemic was ongoing.
“We will seek to learn the lessons of this pandemic in the future and certainly we will have an independent inquiry into what happened,” he told parliament.
His spokesman declined to comment further on the inquiry, but said further details would be set out “in due course”.
2020-07-15 18:41:05
2020-07-15 18:30:48
Russian scientists hailed the results of their first clinical trial of a potential coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday, saying it had been proved safe and that volunteers had developed an immune response.
Speaking to a crowded room without wearing masks, three of 18 volunteers monitored over a month at the Sechenov University said they all had experienced few side-effects.
A larger-scale trial, intended to ascertain the strength of the immune response produced by the vaccine and how long protection will last, is expected to begin in Russia in mid-August.
"We were primarily testing for safety," Elena Smolyarchuk, a department director at Sechenov University and one of the coordinators of the trial, said.
"On non-specific immunity we can only talk about preliminary results. These show a good, positive tendency, a strengthening of non-specific immunity," she said.
However any final conclusions about the immune response among the volunteers will be drawn by the Gamaleya Institute, which developed the vaccine, and are expected towards the end of the month.
2020-07-15 18:00:58
Village councils and community groups in India have been asked to protect children from traffickers and help authorities identify and rescue missing residents, amid concerns that the coronavirus pandemic is pushing more people into modern slavery.
India’s home affairs ministry this month issued an advisory urging state governments to set up or improve local anti-trafficking units, and work closely with community leaders to warn people about traffickers taking advantage of the outbreak.
Local councils may be asked to keep a register of villagers and track their movements to prevent children being “transported on a large scale for wage labour, prostitution and trafficking”, said the directive by the ministry’s women safety division.
As India slowly opens up after months of lockdown to control the spread of COVID-19, officials and activists fear countless people without work, food or money may fall prey to traffickers.
2020-07-15 17:47:26
The Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination has issued a report on the infected healthcare workers in Pakistan.
The ministry's report said that 445 healthcare professionals tested positive for the virus within the past two weeks.
The report said in the same time period, nine healthcare workers succumbed to COVID-19, while the total death toll reached 72 across the country.
The total tally of infected healthcare professionals also rose to 6,196 in Pakistan.
The report said within a week, 256 doctors in the country got infected while the total tally surged to 3,839.
So far 717 nurses and 1,640 hospital staff members have caught the virus while 299 health workers are receiving treatment at various hospitals.
The report said that 4,111 health professionals have so far recovered from the coronavirus in the country.
2020-07-15 17:20:39
Some 160,000 people in the Spanish region of Catalonia went back into confinement on Wednesday as authorities scrambled to control a fresh surge of coronavirus infections in the area, just weeks after a nationwide lockdown was lifted.
But just as a judge approved the regional government’s stay-at-home order for residents of the Lleida area, about 180 km (110 miles) west of Barcelona, tensions rose over how to handle an increase in cases in a suburb of the Catalan capital.
Tourism-dependent Spain, one of Europe’s hardest-hit countries with more than 28,000 deaths from the pandemic, brought a tough national lockdown to an end on June 21.
2020-07-15 16:55:49
Austria will lift its travel warning for Lombardy, the region at the centre of Italy’s novel coronavirus outbreak, because of a fall in infections, Austria’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
The relaxation could pave the way for the resumption of flights between Lombardy’s capital Milan and Vienna, since such travel warnings come with a ban on direct connections.
It will, however, make little difference for those travelling by land as Austria lifted controls at the shared border a month ago, three months after they were introduced when Italy’s outbreak worsened.
2020-07-15 16:37:57
Oman announced 1,679 new coronavirus infections, bumping the total number of confirmed cases in the Sultanate to 61,247.
2020-07-15 16:52:33
The Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department Punjab has completed another plan of the coronavirus testing.
The healthcare department said the government laboratories will now send people the virus test results via messages. Similar to the private laboratories, those taking the tests can view the report online too.
Punjab Health Secretary Mohammad Usman said that so far more than 130,000 people have been informed about test results via SMS. He urged people to dial 1033 helpline in case of any difficulty in availing the facility for tests.
2020-07-15 15:52:04
Tokyo raised its coronavirus alert to the highest “red” level on Wednesday, alarmed by a recent spike in daily new cases to record highs, with Governor Yuriko Koike describing the situation in the Japanese capital as “rather severe”.
The resurgence of the virus in Tokyo could add to the growing pressure on policymakers to shore up the world’s No.3 economy, which analysts say is set to shrink at its fastest pace in decades this fiscal year due to the pandemic.
“We are in a situation where we should issue warnings to citizens and businesses,” Koike told a press conference, urging residents to refrain from unnecessary travel.
The infection rate in Tokyo is at stage “red”, the highest of four levels in the metropolis’ system, Koike said, citing the analysis by health experts who cautioned earlier in the day that infections were going up quite a bit and “exceeding peaks”.
2020-07-15 15:44:49
Home rental firm Airbnb said on Tuesday its guests have booked more than 1 million nights globally on July 8, offering an early sign of recovery after a slowdown in reservations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A major part of the bookings are for trips that will start on or before Aug. 7, the company said, adding it hit the 1 million mark for the first time since March 3.
Airbnb said it was partly due to pent-up demand, with affordable and closer destinations making up for the bulk.
The home rental firm has been reeling under weak demand as millions of tourists canceled their vacation plans, work trips and family visits due to the pandemic, prompting it to suspend marketing activities for the year and cut about 25% of its workforce.
2020-07-15 15:06:41
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza on Wednesday said that the polio vaccination campaign, which was halted due to coronavirus pandemic, will resume from July 20.
2020-07-15 15:01:23
Sindh Information Minister Nasir Hussain Shah has said the provincial government will make sure that there are no violations on the ban of weddings or large gatherings in the province due to the coronavirus pandemic, reported The News.
“The only exception to this ban are the gatherings held on a limited scale inside homes to solemnise marriages, but the government will ensure implementation of the ban on wedding feasts,” Shah said during talks with representatives of wedding hall owners on Tuesday.
Shah said the provincial government was well aware of the sufferings of those associated with the business of wedding halls in the city; however, these activities need to remain suspended because there would be no compromise on the health and lives of the people at risk of contracting coronavirus.
2020-07-15 14:54:06
TOKYO: The Tokyo Olympics may have to be postponed again if the novel coronavirus mutates into a stronger pathogen, Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a prominent Japanese government adviser, said on Wednesday.
However, a recent spike in cases in Tokyo is due to a failure to stick to guidelines to prevent contagion, he said.
A physician who served as a science adviser to the Japanese cabinet from 2006-2008, Kurokawa also headed an independent probe into the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Currently, he is advising the government on the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think the virus is mutating all the time ... it may be a much stronger virus that triggers a second wave,” Kurokawa told Reuters. “The Olympics may be postponed again, but I can’t predict.”
“I think it’s small incidents happening in Tokyo ... new cases are because people are not abiding by recommendations,” Kurokawa said of the current spike in infections. “But if there are some mutations, that is a completely different story. That could happen anywhere in the world.”
2020-07-15 15:00:35
MULTAN: Nishtar Medical University Vice-Chancellor Dr Mustafa Kamal Pasha passed away due to COVID-19 at a private hospital on Wednesday where he was undergoing treatment.
Dr Pasha had been admitted at the private hospital since June 14 after he tested positive for the coronavirus.
According to Pro Vice-Chancellor Dr Masood Ijaz, a team of specialist doctors were treating Dr Pasha. He started experiencing difficulty in breathing three days ago and had been on a ventilator ever since.
2020-07-15 14:38:00
The Philippines' health ministry on Wednesday reported 11 new coronavirus deaths and 1,392 additional infections.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total deaths had risen to 1,614, while confirmed infections reached 58,850.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is due to decide whether or not to maintain partial restrictions in the capital, set to expire on Wednesday, to slow the spread of the virus as some hospitals reach critical care capacity.
2020-07-15 14:23:00
Indonesia reported 87 new coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, its biggest daily jump, bringing the total number of fatalities to 3,797, its health ministry said.
Indonesia also reported 1,522 new coronavirus infections, taking the overall tally to 80,094 cases, ministry official Achmad Yurianto told a televised news briefing.
2020-07-15 14:02:01
New Zealand must prepare for new coronavirus outbreaks as the pandemic spreads globally but will not drop its elimination strategy if community transmission was discovered, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Wednesday.
Ardern said the epidemic was now "exploding" outside New Zealand and countries that had been models in the fight against COVID-19 had now experienced further community outbreaks.
"No system is 100% fool proof and around the world we are seeing even the most rigorous measures being tested by the virus," she told reporters in Wellington.
2020-07-15 13:50:56
Australia's most populous states will impose harsher restrictions on movement if a COVID-19 outbreak is not quickly bought under control, state premiers said on Wednesday.
In recent days Australia has seen a surge in new cases, culminating with 10 days of triple-digit gains as of Wednesday.
Victoria state reported another 238 cases in the past 24 hours, even after reimposing a lockdown last week on about five million people in Melbourne, Australia's second-biggest city.
In New South Wales, which has seen several dozen COVID-19 cases in the past week, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the state will likely need new restrictions.
2020-07-15 13:15:10
Russia on Wednesday reported 6,422 new coronavirus cases, pushing its confirmed national tally to 746,369, the fourth highest in the world.
Officials said 156 people had died of the virus in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 11,770.
2020-07-15 12:48:56
Millions of people went into new lockdowns as coronavirus cases continue to rise across the globe.
With countries and cities across the globe reimposing restrictions in the face of new outbreaks of the disease, infections in India have continued to soar.
The country of 1.3 billion people had been easing its lockdown to lessen the economic impact— particularly on vast numbers of poor Indians who lost their jobs.
Bangalore, home to more than 13 million people, has emerged as a new global hotspot. Firms in the city's lifeblood IT sector handling the back-office operations of dozens of global corporations can continue operating, but with only half the staff allowed on premises.
Transport is banned except for emergencies, and only shops selling essential items are allowed to open.
2020-07-15 12:34:39
Street artist Banksy returned to the London underground with a new piece encouraging people to wear a face mask.
A video posted on the artist’s Instagram page showed a man, believed to be Banksy asking passengers to move as he gets to work stencilling rats around the inside of a train carriage.
However, Transport for London has said the artwork was removed “some days ago" because it violated the transportation agency's "strict anti-graffiti policy.”
2020-07-15 12:25:10
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 351 to 199,726, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by three to 9,071, the tally showed.
2020-07-15 12:12:01
2020-07-15 11:38:14
Tokyo is on its highest coronavirus alert level after a spike in new cases, the city's governor warned Wednesday, as experts said the rising infections were a clear "red flag".
"The experts just told us that the situation of infections is at the fourth level of the four-level system, which means 'the infections seem to be spreading,'" Governor Yuriko Koike said.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lifted a nationwide state of emergency in late May, however, new daily cases have climbed after the state of emergency was removed, reaching a fresh record last week of 243 in Tokyo, the epicentre of the fresh outbreak.
Authorities say many of the new cases come from night-life entertainment districts in the capital and those infected appear to be people in their 20s and 30s, who are less likely to become seriously ill with the coronavirus.
2020-07-15 11:13:59
US President Donald Trump said in an interview on Tuesday that it was a "mistake" for the two largest California school districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, to keep schools closed in the fall.
Trump has pushed for schools to open up for the school year even as states across the country see a surge in cases of the coronavirus and amid questions about whether schools can hold in-person classes safely.
2020-07-15 10:34:18
Brazil recorded 41,857 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours and 1,300 additional deaths, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
The nation has now registered 1,926,824 total confirmed cases of the virus and 74,133 deaths.
2020-07-15 10:15:04
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 255,768 on Wednesday after 2,165 new cases were detected in the country in the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, the breakdown of cases in the country stands as 107,773 in Sindh, 88,045 in Punjab, 31,001 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,239 in Balochistan, 14,315 in Islamabad, 1,708 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,688 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also reported 67 fatalities from the virus taking the death toll to 5,386.
Moreover, 172,810 patients have so far recovered from the virus in the country.
2020-07-15 09:38:41
Saudi Arabian officials says the Kingdom has seen a decrease in the number of new coronavirus cases over the past seven days.
The Kingdom recorded 2,692 new infections on Tuesday, the fourth day in a row the numbers have stayed below 3,000. Saudi Arabia has recorded a total of 237,803 cases with 2,283 deaths.
The number of new daily infections had reached their highest point of 4,919 on June 16, but those numbers have been steadily declining since early July, falling below 3,000 for the first time on July 10.
"We've noticed a decrease in the number of cases, and in particular the number of critical cases," Health Ministry spokesman Mohammed Abdelali told a news conference.
"We've noticed a stabilisation of the numbers of cases we're monitoring and a decline in the curve."
2020-07-15 09:08:42
The United States has recorded 63,262 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, according to a tally by the Johns Hopkins University.
The total number of cases recorded in the country since the start of the pandemic now exceeds 3.42 million, according to the Baltimore-based university.
COVID-19 also claimed 850 new victims in the United States in the past 24 hours, bringing the total death toll to 136,432, according to the institution's tracker.
The world's wealthiest country has in recent weeks seen a surge in infections, mainly in its south and west, which have kept it by far the most affected nation.
In Florida, which was one of the first states to lift lockdown restrictions, for example, officials reported 132 deaths Tuesday— a new daily record for the state— while more than 9,000 new cases of the virus were detected there in the past 24 hours.
2020-07-14 23:59:25
2020-07-14 23:49:09
A French government minister buried her face in her hands after she realised she had arrived at the annual national day parade and forgotten her mask.
Agnes Pannier-Runacher, a junior minister responsible for the industry portfolio, arrived in a chauffeur-driven car at the Place de la Concorde in Paris for the start of the Bastille Day military parade.
She greeted other dignitaries - many of them wearing face coverings - but then realised she did not have her own mask. She briefly tried to run after her car to retrieve the mask, but the vehicle had driven off.
She could be seen waving her hands, talking animatedly to officials around her, and pointing to her face. A few moments later, an official saved the minister’s blushes by bringing her a spare mask.
2020-07-14 23:40:49
France will make it compulsory for people to wear masks in shops and other enclosed public spaces from next month to stop a resurgence of the COVID-19 outbreak, President Emmanuel Macron said.
“We have some signs that it’s coming back a bit,” Macron said in an interview with French broadcasters. “Faced with that, we must anticipate and prepare.
“I ask fellow citizens to wear masks as much as possible when they are outside, and especially so when they are in an enclosed space,” Macron said.
“We will put ourselves in a position where we could, for example, make it completely mandatory from Aug. 1,” he added.
2020-07-14 23:31:57
The US state of Florida — one of the current epicenters in the nation's coronavirus crisis — posted a record number of deaths for a 24-hour period at 132.
The state department of health announced the grim milestone in its daily statistics on the virus pandemic. It reported more than 9,000 new cases in the same 24-hour span.
Overall, Florida has recorded more than 290,000 cases and more than 4,400 deaths.
2020-07-14 23:20:36
Sindh reported 1,151 infections and 37 deaths from coronavirus, bumping the overall cases to 107,773 and death toll to 1,863, the province's health department said.
2020-07-14 23:10:40
The Washington-based Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is concerned about the high coronavirus mortality in the Americas region, PAHO director Carissa Etienne said.
Coronavirus related deaths are rising in the region, especially in Brazil, Mexico and the United States, added Etienne.
2020-07-14 22:54:02
It might be the unlikeliest instructional video ever, but footage of two Japanese amusement park executives demonstrating how to "scream inside your heart" to avoid spreading COVID-19 while on a rollercoaster has been a roaring success.
"Now our customers stay silent while riding on rollercoasters," a spokeswoman for amusement park operator Fujikyuko told AFP, after the video on riding etiquette for the coronavirus era went viral.
The video features the executives, one in a full suit and tie, the other in a shirt and bowtie, sitting stiffbacked and straightfaced in silence, with only the only sounds coming from the whipping of the wind and the grinding of the rollercoaster.
As they plunge downwards, one executive serenely readjusts his hair, and his facemask, but both otherwise remain stoically silent, even as they sway violently in the coaster car.
At the end of the ride, one man lifts his hands off the seat handles, visibly trembling. A black screen follows featuring advice that some social media users have dubbed a slogan for 2020: "scream inside your heart."
The video was first posted last month, as coronavirus restrictions eased and reopening theme parks asked visitors to avoid screaming and keep social distance.
"Even though the amusement park association's guidelines ask you to 'refrain from speaking loudly' we have received complaints it is 'difficult' or 'impossible', so Fujikyu Highland offers a good example," the operator said on its website with the video.
It promised customers who could keep their screams silent would get a discount on photos taken of them on the park´s signature Fujiyama coaster, which plunges riders from a height of more than 71 metres.
2020-07-14 22:44:01
The Punjab disaster management authority has shared important helpline numbers to keep handy.
The COVID-19 helpline for Punjab is 1033, whereas the national helpline is 1166.
2020-07-14 22:16:00
Canada and the United States are preparing to extend the closure of their border to non-essential travel because of the coronavirus pandemic until August 21, a source familiar with the talks said Tuesday.
The world's longest frontier has been closed to everything but goods trade since March 21.
The current shutdown runs out on July 21 and is expected to be extended for a month, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The leaders of several Canadian provinces have spoken out against reopening the border as the United States sees an explosion of virus cases in some states.
A recent poll showed that more than 80% of Canadians want the border to stay closed for now.
Half of Americans are in favor of reopening it, compared to just 11 percent of Canadians, according to the Legere poll carried out July 3-5.
2020-07-14 21:59:09
Basra Children’s Hospital which specialises in cancer treatment has cut admissions by half since May due to the novel coronavirus, its director said, and is battling to keep children safe from infection with a new isolation ward and testing of staff.
Hospital director Ali Abulhussein al-Idani said that since June, five children were diagnosed with the illness upon admission to the hospital, including a six month-old child, who died of complications.
“The immune system of cancer patients is very weak, it can be close to nil. If a patient (with cancer) catches the coronavirus, he or she will be affected badly and rapidly,” he added.
The hospital has boosted ward cleaning and limited visitors to just one per child, is treating more patients as outpatients, as well as routinely testing staff.
Awatef Mohamed, sitting next to her 4 year-old daughter Iman, who is being treated for kidney cancer, said: “If she falls ill with the coronavirus, her health condition will deteriorate. She’ll have to stop chemotherapy to be treated for this other disease”.
2020-07-14 21:45:05
Afghanistan faces “catastrophe” as growing COVID-19 cases stretch a health infrastructure already severely weakened by decades of war, the Afghan Red Crescent Society said.
Some 34,740 coronavirus cases and 1,062 deaths from the respiratory pandemic have been officially reported in Afghanistan, according to government figures.
“Afghanistan is on the edge of potential health, social and economic catastrophes caused by COVID-19 as the disease places a crippling burden on one of the 10 most fragile states in the world,” the Red Crescent Society said in a statement.
“The real toll of the pandemic on the Afghan population is expected to be much higher and remains under-reported due to limited testing and weak health systems,” it added.
Afghanistan’s health department said it was concerned that less than a third of those confirmed to have the disease were women, which officials believed was due to a lack of female access to healthcare in a deeply conservative society.
“The Ministry of Health is concerned about women’s access to health services, especially now that we are at the height of the corona crisis...What we have done is to hire more female staff, and we have separated (out) wards for women in hospitals,” health ministry deputy spokeswoman Masouma Jafari said.
2020-07-14 21:31:30
US airlines carried 89% fewer passengers in May compared with last year, a massive decline that is still better than a historic low in April amid the coronavirus pandemic, the US Transportation Department said.
The 20 largest US airlines carried 7.9 million passengers in May down from 74.8 million passengers in May 2019. Still, the airlines carried more than twice as many passengers in May than in April, when passenger traffic fell 96%, up from 3 million passengers on all US airlines in April. International US traffic fell 98% in May to 182,000 passengers, down from 9.9 million.
2020-07-14 21:18:17
The European Union has decided to drop Serbia and Montenegro from its safe list of countries from which non-essential travel is allowed, and did not even discuss including the United States given its sharp rise in coronavirus cases, EU officials said.
EU diplomats approved a proposal from Germany, now holding the rotating EU presidency, to exclude non-EU Serbia and Montenegro because of spreading infections, officials told Reuters.
The updated list will be published in coming hours or days. The listing is only a recommendation; not all of the 27 EU member countries are applying its provisions.
EU countries also discussed dropping Algeria and Morocco from the safe list due to a rise in COVID-19 cases but most opposed the move as numbers there were still relatively low. The two North African countries are therefore set to remain on the safe list for the moment. The list is updated regularly.
2020-07-14 21:01:26
Balochistan reported 47 new coronavirus cases and one death, taking the overall cases to 11,239 and the death toll to 127, the province's health department said.
2020-07-14 20:52:47
From July 7 - 13 the United States recorded 426,100+ cases and 5,300+ deaths
Brazil registered 262,800+ infections and 7,200+ deaths.
India reported 180,800 cases and 3,400+ deaths.
South Africa recorded 82,000+ infections and 860+ deaths.
Russia registered 45,800+ cases and 1,100+ deaths.
Mexico reported 42,900+ cases and 4,300+ deaths.
2020-07-14 20:38:51
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview with CNN she would “absolutely” be willing to delay or forgo the August recess to come to an agreement on a fifth coronavirus relief bill.
2020-07-14 20:26:32
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 254 new coronavirus cases and eight death, bumping the overall cases to 31,001 and death toll to 1,114, the provincial health department said.
2020-07-14 20:14:16
The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) has begun to sterilise its hospitals and health centres by using smart robots, in line with precautionary measures to enhance the safety of all staff members and patients across the DHA health facilities.
The sterilisation process coincides with the return of all diagnostic and therapeutic services for patients. Using smart technology makes the sterilisation process thorough, efficient and less time-consuming.
Kholoud Abdullah Al Ali, Project Manager and leader of the DHA’s Dubai Future Accelerators team, said that the Authority has begun using eight intelligent robots to perform UV sterilisation scans for all rooms and corridors in its health facilities.
2020-07-14 19:59:16
More than 930 employees of private contractors running US immigration detention centers have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to congressional testimony given by company executives.
2020-07-14 19:46:48
The government of Sharjah sold $1 billion in 30-year Formosa bonds on Tuesday at 4%, a document showed.
Gulf states are seeking to bolster their finances amid the economic impact of the coronavirus and the crash in oil prices, and the third largest of the United Arab Emirates sold $1 billion of sukuk, or Islamic bonds, last month.
The Formosa bond - a category of debt sold in Taiwan by foreign borrowers and denominated in currencies other than the Taiwanese dollar - is Sharjah’s first non-Islamic benchmark bond.
The emirate received around $3.7 billion in orders for the bond and tightened the yield after it began marketing at around 4.375% earlier on Tuesday.
2020-07-14 19:33:28
Saudi Arabian officials said the kingdom has seen a decrease in the number of new coronavirus cases over the past seven days.
The kingdom recorded 2,692 new infections on Tuesday, the fourth day in a row the numbers have stayed below 3,000. Saudi Arabia has recorded a total of 237,803 cases with 2,283 deaths.
The number of new daily infections had reached their highest point of 4,919 on June 16, but those numbers have been steadily declining since early July, falling below 3,000 for the first time on July 10.
“We’ve noticed a decrease in the number of cases, and in particular the number of critical cases,” Health Ministry spokesman Mohammed Abdelali told a news conference.
“We’ve noticed a stabilisation of the numbers of cases we’re monitoring and a decline in the curve.”
2020-07-14 19:14:18
Singapore’s trade-reliant economy plunged into recession in the second quarter with a record contraction, signalling a rough first half globally and an equally challenging outlook as the coronavirus crisis exacts a heavy toll on business and demand.
Gross domestic product (GDP) dived by a record 41.2% in the three months ended June, on a quarter-on-quarter annualised basis, preliminary data from the Ministry of Trade and Industry showed on Tuesday.
That was worse than economists’ expectations for a 37.4% decline in the quarter when Singapore was under a lockdown to curb the spread of the virus.
The first in Asia to report second-quarter GDP data, the grim numbers for the wealthy city-state - a bellwether for the global economy - underscore the sweeping worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and point to an arduous road ahead. Many major economies are already facing their steepest downturn in decades.
“If you want to read something into this, it is what is going to happen to economies that have taken a similar sort of lockdown,” said Rob Carnell, chief economist, Asia-Pacific at ING Bank.
2020-07-14 18:59:23
Punjab has extended the coronavirus lockdown for another 15 days to July 30, a notification from the province's primary and secondary health department said.
The following restrictions have been notified:
- Educational institutions, wedding halls, restaurants, parks and cinema halls will remain closed
- Gathering for social, religious or sports activities will not be allowed
2020-07-14 18:47:10
Ukraine’s parliament passed a bill ending a decade-long ban on gambling in a move aimed at boosting budget revenues by almost $150 million a year.
Ukraine’s economy has been gutted by a six-year-long military conflict with Russia-backed separatists in the east and is under additional pressure from the coronavirus pandemic.
The government expects casinos, bookmakers and slot machine operators to contribute at least four billion hryvnias (about $148 million) to the state budget annually through taxes and licence fees.
Under the new law, which still needs to be signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a specially created state regulator will issue licences to companies offering gambling services.
2020-07-14 18:34:59
Philippine authorities and police will carry out house-to-house searches for COVID-19 patients to prevent wider transmission, a minister said on Tuesday, amid soaring death and infection numbers and some areas returning to a stricter lockdown.
The tough approach comes during a week where the Philippines recorded Southeast Asia biggest daily jump in coronavirus deaths and saw hospital occupancy grow sharply, after a tripling of infections since a tough lockdown was eased on June 1 to allow more movement and commerce.
“We don’t want positive patients to stay home in (self) quarantine especially if their homes don’t have the capacity,” Ano told a news conference.
“So what we will do ... is to go house-to-house and we will bring the positive cases to our COVID-19 isolation facilities.”
2020-07-14 18:27:48
Cases of transmission of COVID-19 from pregnant mothers to their babies are rare and should not spark undue concern, experts said on Tuesday after a case study was published suggesting the novel coronavirus may be able to cross the placenta.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, described a case in France where the COVID-19-causing virus was found in the blood of a baby born prematurely to a 23-year-old mother who was diagnosed with the pandemic disease in March.
The detection of the virus in placental tissue, as well as in the mother’s and baby’s blood, suggests that “transplacental transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) may be possible,” the doctors detailing the case wrote. They added, however, that further studies would be needed to confirm this.
Marian Knight, a professor of maternal and child population health at Britain’s Oxford University, said the case was interesting, but should not be a major worry for pregnant women.
“Among the many thousands of babies born to mothers with SARS-CoV-2 infection, a very few have been reported to also have a positive test – around 1-2%,” she said. “It is still unclear whether the virus passes across the placenta; this report provides evidence that it may.”
2020-07-14 18:23:36
US consumer prices increased by the most in nearly eight years in June as businesses reopened, but the underlying trend suggested inflation would remain muted and allow the Federal Reserve to keep injecting money into the ailing economy.
The Labor Department said on Tuesday its consumer price index increased 0.6% last month, the biggest gain since August 2012, after easing 0.1% in May. The increase, which ended three straight months of declines, was driven by rises in the prices of gasoline and food.
In the 12 months through June, the CPI climbed 0.6% after gaining 0.1% in May, which was the smallest year-on-year rise since September 2015.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the CPI increasing 0.5% in June and advancing 0.6% year-on-year.
Businesses have reopened after shuttering in mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19. But new cases of the respiratory illness have surged in large parts of the country, prompting some states to dial back or pause reopenings.
2020-07-14 17:44:00
US industrial conglomerate 3M Co has partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a rapid antigen test for COVID-19, the company said on Tuesday.
The test would produce results within minutes and could be administered on a low-cost, paper-based device, similar to a home pregnancy test, that could be delivered at the point of care.
"We are seeking to improve the speed, accessibility and affordability of testing for the virus, a major step in helping to prevent its spread,” said John Banovetz, the chief technology officer at 3M.
The research effort is being aided by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, which is running a project called Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) that funds the development of new testing technologies in academia and business.
The program aims to have the new tests available for use by late summer or early fall.
2020-07-14 17:34:25
Luiz Augusto Rizzo, 29, is no specialist in infectious diseases, but he is part of perhaps the most important scientific endeavor in the world today: the hunt for a vaccine against the novel coronavirus.
The pediatric surgeon is one of 2,000 volunteers in Brazil’s largest city of Sao Paulo taking part in mass human trials for the experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by researchers at the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc. It is one of the brightest hopes in the global bid to contain the virus.
“They needed people,” Rizzo told Reuters via video call.
“There probably won’t be a cure... They said the only way (to beat the virus) is to have a vaccine, and you need to test, you need to make the most of those who are healthy, those who are able to tick all the boxes needed to participate,” he said.
Volunteers have to record their temperature once a day, fill in an online diary about their condition and attend periodic consultations. Participants, who will be monitored of a year, do not know if they have been given the vaccine or a placebo.
Hematologist Vinicius Molla, 33, who frequently conducts clinical studies in his own area, also wanted to help.
“I do clinical trials, I know the difficulty of getting volunteers to participate,” he said.
2020-07-14 17:16:00
Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi Tuesday expressed his gratitude to all those who had prayed and conveyed their well wishes and messages for his early recovery from the COVID-19 infection.
The foreign minister in a media statement said that he had been shifted to his home and was convalescing and feeling much better.
He advised the nation to adhere to the precautionary measures and immediately seek medical help after feeling initial symptoms of coronavirus.
Sharing his experience, Qureshi said that after feeling symptoms, he immediately cancelled all the meetings. His health conditions improved due to timely test and treatment.
The minister also paid tribute to the doctors and all the paramedical staff who had been working day and night for the care of patients and fighting the coronavirus.
2020-07-14 17:38:23
DUBAI: Oman will start allowing its citizens to fly outside the country, but they must apply with authorities to do so and quarantine upon their return, state television reported on Tuesday.
Oman TV also said on its Twitter account that the Gulf Arab state had decided to maintain a lockdown on two regions, Dhofar and Masirah, without specifying for how long.
The sultanate has been gradually easing coronavirus restrictions that were imposed in March. Oman TV did not specify when Omani citizens would be able to travel abroad.
2020-07-14 17:01:55
Delta Air Lines warned it will be more than two years before the industry sees a sustainable recovery from the “staggering” impact of the coronavirus pandemic, with demand largely tracking the curve of infections in different places.
“We’re at a stall right now,” CEO Ed Bastian told Reuters, saying demand that built up over June for travel to places like Las Vegas, Florida or New York had suffered due to fresh cases and quarantines, while picking up to some mountain and international destinations.
“We haven’t gone backwards,” he said. But “we’re not growing,” he added.
“There’s a lot of risk because it’s hard forecasting what’s going to happen with the virus,” he said.
2020-07-14 16:55:53
Islamabad recorded 93 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, with the most in Sector G-8, the district health office's data showed.
2020-07-14 16:57:11
Three out of four Pakistani adults are suffering from moderate or high levels of stress during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, showed preliminary findings of a mental health study conducted by the Agha Khan University.
The study also found that nearly one in three are experiencing moderate or severe anxiety. The research was conducted by the university's department of community health sciences (CHS) by carrying out an online survey of 373 respondents between April and May.
The study’s first phase used validated screening tools to determine if people had generalised anxiety disorder. More than 90% of the participants were from Sindh and Punjab in the research.
"Respondents ranked the top three causes of anxiety and stress as being fear of contracting the virus, financial losses during the pandemic and losing a loved one to COVID-19," said the press release.
2020-07-14 16:32:26
According to a report by the Health Department, around 71% of the coronavirus patients, who passed away, had underlying health conditions.
The report, which was forwarded to Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah, stated that the virus could not cause greater damage in people who had no prior ailments.
It said that collectively 5,266 people died of the coronavirus, but 1,377 of the patients did not have any other disease.
However, 3,362 COVID-19 victims had other ailments, said the report.
2020-07-14 16:26:42
Oman announced 1,389 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Sultanate to 59,568.
2020-07-14 16:18:26
Britain faces a potentially more deadly second wave of COVID-19 in the coming winter that could kill up to 120,000 people over nine months in a worst-case scenario, health experts said.
With COVID-19 more likely to spread in winter as people spend more time together in enclosed spaces, a second wave of the pandemic “could be more serious than the one we’ve just been through,” said Stephen Holgate, a professor and co-lead author of a report by Britain’s Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS).
“This is not a prediction, but it is a possibility,” Holgate told an online briefing. “Deaths could be higher with a new wave of COVID-19 this winter, but the risk of this happening could be reduced if we take action immediately.”
The United Kingdom’s current death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 is around 45,000, the highest in Europe. Including suspected cases, more than 55,000 people have died, according to a Reuters tally of official data sources.
The AMS said there is a “high degree of uncertainty” about how the UK’s COVID-19 epidemic will evolve, but outlined a “reasonable worst-case scenario” where the reproduction number — or R value — rises to 1.7 from September 2020 onwards.
The R value — the average number of people an infected person will pass a disease on to — is currently between 0.7 and 0.9 in the UK and daily case and death numbers are falling. An R value above 1 can lead to exponential growth.
“The modelling estimates 119,900 hospital deaths between September 2020 and June 2021,” the AMS report said, more than double the number that occurred during the first wave.
2020-07-14 15:58:28
The United Kingdom's COVID-19 death toll has hit 55,873, including suspected cases, according to a Reuters tally of official data sources.
The Reuters tally comprises fatalities where COVID-19 was mentioned on death certificates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland up to July 3, and up to July 5. It also includes more recent hospital deaths.
The government's daily toll, which only records deaths following positive coronavirus tests, stands at 44,830
2020-07-14 15:41:55
Shoppers in England will have to wear face coverings in shops and supermarkets from July 24 to help reduce the risk of a new pick-up in the spread of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office said.
“The prime minister has been clear that people should be wearing face coverings in shops and we will make this mandatory from July 24,” a spokesperson for Johnson’s Downing Street office said on Monday.
Britain has Europe’s highest coronavirus death toll, with almost 45,000 confirmed deaths.
2020-07-14 15:18:19
India’s high-tech hub of Bangalore will go back into a coronavirus lockdown for a week on Tuesday after a surge of infections, threatening to derail government efforts to revive a stuttering economy.
Places of worship, public transport, government offices and most shops will shut down again from the evening, and people will be confined to their homes, only allowed out for essential needs.
Schools, colleges and restaurants will stay shut, authorities said.
Bangalore began seeing a surge in infections from late June as both testing and people’s movements picked up, Hephsiba Korlapati, a senior official in the city’s COVID-19 response team, told Reuters.
Read more here.
2020-07-14 14:51:08
Australian states tightened have borders and Japan has stepped up tracing as a jump in novel coronavirus cases across Asia fanned fears of a second wave of infections.
Many parts of Asia, the region first hit by the coronavirus that emerged in central China late last year, are finding cause to pause the reopening of their economies, some after winning praise for their initial responses to the outbreak.
Australia largely avoided the high numbers of cases and casualties seen in other countries with swift and strict measures, but a spike in community-transmitted cases in Victoria state and a rise in new cases in New South Wales has worried authorities.
2020-07-14 14:20:21
Russia on Tuesday reported 6,248 new cases of the novel coronavirus, pushing its confirmed national tally to 739,947, the fourth largest in the world.
Officials said 175 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 11,614.
2020-07-14 13:54:59
SAPM on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Dr Sania Nishtar has said more than Rs153 billion have been distributed so far to more than 12 million families under the Ehsaas Emergency Cash programme.
2020-07-14 13:36:45
Britain's economy slumped almost a fifth in the three months to May compared with the prior December-February period as the coronavirus lockdown ravaged activity, official data showed Tuesday.
"GDP fell by 19.1% in the three months to May, as government restrictions on movement dramatically reduced economic activity," the Office for National Statistics said in a statement, adding however that output grew by 1.8% in May.
2020-07-14 13:12:36
Argentina is trying to solve a medical mystery after 57 sailors were infected with the coronavirus after 35 days at sea, despite the entire crew testing negative before leaving port.
The Echizen Maru fishing trawler returned to port after some of its crew began exhibiting symptoms typical of COVID-19, the health ministry for the southern Tierra del Fuego province said Monday.
According to the ministry, 57 sailors, out of 61 crew members, were diagnosed with the virus after undergoing a new test.
2020-07-14 12:44:04
Australian states have tightened restrictions on movement as authorities struggle to contain a fresh coronavirus outbreak in the country's southeast that is starting to spill into other areas.
With growing fears of a second coronavirus wave nationally, two states extended border restrictions and Australia's most populous state-imposed limits on the number of people allowed in large pubs.
The changes come as scores of new cases were uncovered in Victoria, the country's COVID-19 hotspot, despite a return to lockdown last week for nearly 5 million people in state capital Melbourne.
Active cases in the state rose to nearly 2,000 after another 270 infections were detected in the past 24 hours, authorities said, taking Australia's total number of cases to about 10,000, with 107 deaths.
2020-07-14 12:10:43
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has said he is feeling "very good" and will return to work if he tests negative for the new coronavirus on Tuesday, but that he will continue to isolate himself until he is free of the virus.
The right-wing president told broadcaster CNN Brasil he has not felt out of breath, nor has he lost his sense of taste.
"I am very well," Bolsonaro said. "Tomorrow is scheduled - I don't know if it's confirmed - a new exam. And if everything is good, we'll go back to work. Otherwise, we wait a few days."
Bolsonaro tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Tuesday last week, after coming down with a fever.
2020-07-14 11:45:10
2020-07-14 11:27:07
Singapore’s trade-reliant economy plunged into recession in the second quarter with a record contraction, signaling a rough first half globally and an equally challenging outlook as the coronavirus crisis exacts a heavy toll on business and demand.
Gross domestic product (GDP) dived by a record 41.2% in the three months ended March, on a quarter-on-quarter annualised basis, preliminary data from the Ministry of Trade and Industry showed on Tuesday.
That was worse than economists’ expectations for a 37.4% decline in the quarter when Singapore was under a lockdown to curb the spread of the virus.
Read more here.
2020-07-14 11:14:32
Top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci has ascribed the surge in US coronavirus cases to the country's failure to shut down completely, then a rush to reopen too soon, and urged a commitment to guidelines to snuff out the disease.
"We did not shut down entirely and that's the reason why when we went up," Fauci told Stanford Medicine in an interview.
"We started to come down and then we plateaued at a level that was quite high— about 20,000 infections a day. Then as we started to reopen, we're seeing the surges that we're seeing today as we speak in California, your own state, in Arizona, in Texas, in Florida and several other states."
"Unfortunately, it did not work very well for us," Fauci added.
2020-07-14 10:26:47
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 253,604 after 1,979 new infections were recorded in the country in the last 24 hours, data from the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) showed on Tuesday.
According to the NCOC, there are 106,622 cases in Sindh, 87,492 in Punjab, 30,747 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,192 in Balochistan, 14,202 in Islamabad, 1,694 Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,655 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also recorded 50 fatalities taking the death toll to 5,320.
Moreover, the NCOC said 170,656 people have recovered so far from the virus in the country.
2020-07-14 09:52:04
A second coronavirus wave in Britain this winter could see 120,000 deaths in hospitals alone in a "reasonable worst-case scenario", scientists warned on Tuesday.
The Academy of Medical Sciences report, commissioned by the government's chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance, urged immediate action to mitigate a second wave.
With hospitals also battling seasonal flu cases, a second wave could eclipse the current outbreak resulting in up to 120,000 deaths between September and June next year.
Britain has seen almost 45,000 deaths so far in the first wave— the highest toll in Europe and third only to the United States and Brazil.
Stephen Holgate, who led the study Academy of Medical Sciences study, said the 120,000 figure was "not a prediction but it is a possibility".
"The modelling suggests that deaths could be higher with a new wave of COVID-19 this winter, but the risk of this happening could be reduced if we take action immediately."
2020-07-14 09:37:24
The United States recorded 59,222 new coronavirus cases in the previous 24 hours, Johns Hopkins University reported in its daily tally.
That put the total number of cases in the US, the nation hardest-hit by the global pandemic, at more than 3.36 million, the Baltimore-based university said. Another 411 deaths were reported, bringing that total toll to 135,582.
The country has seen a resurgence of cases in the so-called Sun Belt, stretching across the south from Florida to California.
That uptick has prompted some states to backtrack on loosening their anti-virus restrictions— or to reinstate tougher measures.
2020-07-14 09:00:30
The number of coronavirus infections rose to 13 million on Monday, according to a Reuters tally, climbing by a million in just five days.
World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said there would be no return to the “old normal” for the foreseeable future, especially if preventive measures were neglected.
“Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one,” he told a virtual briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva.
“If basics are not followed, the only way this pandemic is going to go, it is going to get worse and worse and worse. But it does not have to be this way.”
Read more here.
2020-07-14 00:36:52
Punjab’s tally of coronavirus cases reached 87,492 after 449 new cases were confirmed in the province on Monday.
2020-07-13 23:48:30
Moscow’s health department said it had recorded 3,408 deaths related to the novel coronavirus in June, saying they helped account for an increase of nearly 42% in the city’s mortality rate compared to the same month last year.
The local health department in Moscow, the area worst-hit by the pandemic in Russia, said it had recorded 13,128 deaths in June, including 3,408 it attributed to the coronavirus.
The department identified 1,605 cases in which the coronavirus had been the main cause of death and said that 1,803 others had died of other causes while testing positive for the virus.mm
2020-07-13 23:38:14
2020-07-13 23:28:44
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 3,296,599 cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 60,469 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 312 to 134,884.
2020-07-13 23:18:54
Top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci attributed the current surge in coronavirus cases to the United States not having shut down completely to snuff out outbreaks of the disease.
“We did not shut down entirely and that’s the reason why when we went up,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with Stanford Medicine.
“We started to come down and then we plateaued at a level that was really quite high - about 20,000 infections a day. Then as we started to reopen, we’re seeing the surges that we’re seeing today as we speak in California, your own state, in Arizona in Texas in Florida and several other states.”
2020-07-13 22:59:08
Balochistan reported only seven new cases, taking the coronavirus infections in the province to 11,192, the province's health department confirmed.
2020-07-13 22:48:41
Oil prices were little changed after falling earlier as a record daily rise in global coronavirus cases boosted concerns that demand could fall again, while a producer meeting this week was expected to recommend an increase in output.
Brent futures remained unchanged at $43.24 a barrel by 11:23 a.m. EDT (1523 GMT), while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose 4 cents, or 0.1%, to $40.59.
“The energy patch is under pressure this morning from both sides of the supply/demand equation today,” said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho in New York, noting “Increases in COVID-19 cases has dented the demand side, and (OPEC) appears determined to increase supply.”
Oil traders also remained on edge as the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) prepares to meet on Tuesday and Wednesday to recommend levels for future supply cuts.
OPEC and allies including Russia, a group known as OPEC+, are expected to ease their production cuts to 7.7 million barrels per day (bpd) after a recovery in global oil demand. OPEC+ cut output by a record 9.7 million bpd for May, June and July.
2020-07-13 22:27:12
Florida recorded more than 12,600 new coronavirus cases, its second-highest daily total since the outbreak began, coinciding with the US state’s attempt to revive tourism and attract visitors to the recently reopened Disney World.
Florida along with Arizona, California and Texas have emerged as the new U.S. epicenters of the pandemic. Infections have risen rapidly in about 40 of the 50 states over the last two weeks, according to a Reuters analysis.
Linda Stuart, 70, a lifelong resident of Orlando, Florida, said she and her family were staying at home except to go to the grocery and were “painfully aware” how quickly cases are rising.
“But sadly, too many people aren’t listening,” she said. “This should be terrifying them, but it isn’t. Not enough people are even wearing masks.”
Read complete story here.
2020-07-13 22:16:47
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that people should wear masks in confined spaces such as shops and that the government would say more in the next few days about what “tools of enforcement” would be used.
Asked if he would make it compulsory to wear masks in shops, Johnson said: “Masks have a great deal of value in confined places.”
“I do think that in shops it is very important to wear a face covering,” Johnson said. “Yes - face coverings I think people should be wearing them in shops.”
“In terms of how we do that, whether we make it mandatory or not, we will be looking at the guidance and will saying a little bit more in the next few days,” he said.
2020-07-13 21:59:25
Southwest Airlines Chief Executive Gary Kelly told employees it needs a dramatic jump in passenger demand or it will be forced to take new steps to reduce staffing.
Employees face a Wednesday deadline whether to participate in a voluntary incentive program to leave the airline. “Although furloughs and layoffs remain our very last resort, we can’t rule them out as a possibility obviously in this very bad environment,” Kelly said in a message to employees. “We need a significant recovery by the end of this year —and that’s roughly triple the number of passengers from where we are today.”
2020-07-13 21:49:25
The Saudi Ministry of Health confirmed 2,852 new cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the total number to 235,111.
2020-07-13 21:34:36
The United Kingdom’s death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose to 44,830, up 11 on the previous day, the government said.
The increase in the daily number of deaths is the lowest since early-March, although a lower number of deaths is generally reported during the weekend.
2020-07-13 21:10:09
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported261 new infections and three deaths from coronavirus, bumping overall cases to 30,747 and death toll to 1,106.
2020-07-13 20:55:00
The new coronavirus pandemic raging around the globe will worsen if countries fail to adhere to strict healthcare precautions, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned.
“Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from the U.N. agency’s headquarters in Geneva.
“If basics are not followed, the only way this pandemic is going to go - it is going to get worse and worse and worse.”
“There will be no return to the old normal for the foreseeable future ... There is a lot to be concerned about,” Tedros added, in some of his strongest comments of recent weeks.
2020-07-13 20:49:29
Latin America has become the world's second worst-hit region for virus deaths as it surged past the United States and Canada while a Spanish court blocked a move to lock down some 200,000 people.
Meanwhile, South Africa has reimposed a nationwide curfew to prevent a "coronavirus storm" from ravaging the continent's hardest-hit nation.
Since the start of July, nearly 2.5 million new infections have been detected across the globe, with the number of cases doubling over the past six weeks, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
And with cases surging in Latin America, the continent on Monday had officially declared a total of 144,758 deaths, passing the 144,023 recorded in the United States and Canada.
It now stands second only to Europe, where 202,505 people have died.
Although life in parts of Europe has been returning to some semblance of normality, authorities across the continent are worriedly watching dozens of areas where cases have resurged.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-13 20:39:02
Walt Disney is temporarily closing its Hong Kong Disneyland theme park from July 15 amid rising coronavirus cases in the Chinese-ruled city, the company said.
The announcement came two days after Disney reopened its biggest resort, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, as coronavirus cases surged in the state.
“As required by the government and health authorities in line with prevention efforts taking place across Hong Kong, Hong Kong Disneyland park will temporarily close from July 15,” a Disney spokeswoman said in a statement.
2020-07-13 20:26:03
2020-07-13 20:13:35
Sri Lankan shares fell more than 2%, hurt by losses in financial and consumer staple companies, as several clusters of coronavirus infections emerged in the island nation.
2020-07-13 19:58:50
A Russian institute developing one of the country’s potential coronavirus vaccines hopes to start its final stage testing in a small section of the general public in mid-August, the RIA news agency cited the institute’s director as saying.
Globally, of 19 experimental COVID-19 vaccines in human trials, only two are in final Phase III trials - one by China’s Sinopharm and another by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. China’s Sinovac Biotech is set to become the third later this month.
Early results from the first small-scale human trial of the vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow has shown it to be safe for use, according to a separate RIA report on Sunday.
“Around 14-15 August, I hope, the small amount of vaccine that we should be able to produce will enter public circulation,” Alexander Ginsburg, the institute’s director, was quoted as saying.
This will be equivalent to a Phase III trial, since people getting the vaccine will remain under supervision, RIA reported, citing Ginsburg.
2020-07-13 19:43:49
Lonza Group said that China’s Junshi Biosciences is using the Swiss contract drug manufacturer’s technology to help produce a neutralizing antibody against COVID-19.
Lonza said Junshi’s first neutralizing antibody against the new coronavirus was expressed using the Swiss company’s GS Xceed gene expression system and has entered into clinical trials in China, in which the first healthy volunteer was dosed in June in an early-stage safety study.
2020-07-13 19:32:34
Very few of 2,000 school children and teachers tested in the German state of Saxony showed antibodies to COVID-19, a study found, suggesting schools may not play as big a role in spreading the virus as some had feared.
Germany began reopening schools in May, though debate continues as to the role children may play in spreading the virus to vulnerable adults at home as well as to older teachers and school staff.
The study by the University Hospital in Dresden analysed blood samples from almost 1,500 children aged between 14 and 18 and 500 teachers from 13 schools in Dresden and the districts of Bautzen and Goerlitz in May and June.
The largest study conducted in Germany on school children and teachers included testing in schools where there were coronavirus outbreaks.
Of the almost 2,000 samples, only 12 had antibodies, said Reinhard Berner from the University Hospital of Dresden, adding the first results gave no evidence that school children play a role in spreading the virus particularly quickly.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-13 19:20:49
Kazakhstan will extend its second coronavirus lockdown by two weeks until the end of July, and will once again offer financial aid to those who have lost their source of income, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Monday.
Kazakhstan, which reported explosive growth in fresh COVID-19 and pneumonia cases after lifting restrictions in May, entered a second, albeit less stringent, lockdown on July 5 in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus.
“There are first signs now that the situation is beginning to improve,” he said in a tweet. “The next two weeks are important for the full stabilization of the situation.”
2020-07-13 19:08:24
Sindh recorded 31 deaths and 1,089 new infections, bumping the death toll to 1,826, and overall cases to 106,622, the province's chief minister Murad Ali Shah.
In a statement, the chief minister said that the province's detection rate stands at 18%, while the death rate stood at 1.7%
The number of patients recovered has reached 63,829, taking the recovery toll to 60%.
2020-07-13 18:57:28
The German economy is rebounding from a pandemic-induced slump after hitting bottom last month, a real-time indicator developed by the country’s central bank showed.
Launched in the wake of coronavirus outbreak, the Bundesbank’s Weekly Activity Index is based on data ranging from electricity consumption and air traffic to Google searches and cash withdrawals.
It showed the German economy was still shrinking but, since mid-June, the pace of that contraction had become gentler and gentler.
Specifically, the WAI indicated that economic activity in Germany in the 13 weeks to July 12 was 2.7% lower than in the preceding 13 weeks, the Bundesbank said.
This was an improvement from the previous week’s reading of -3.5% and compared to a low of -7.05% on June 14.
2020-07-13 18:47:15
Tattoo shops, beauty salons and massage parlours in England reopened after being forced to close for almost four months in the latest easing of the coronavirus lockdown.
Customers are required to wear masks while face tattoos, eyebrow trimming, face waxing and facials are prohibited under government guidelines.
People clamouring to get a new tattoo returned to body art studios such as Skins and Needles in Durham in the north of England. A limited number of customers can now only be inside at once and whereas people previously could walk in for appointments, there is now about a two-week waiting list.
After spending thousands of pounds opening the studio in February, the surge in coronavirus cases forced manager Paige Harker to shut a month later as part of the lockdown.
“It is really good to be back and now all the staff are back together and customers are returning it is almost like the last few months never happened,” said Harker, 25. “We are on the road to normality with a few complications.”
2020-07-13 18:38:55
One in three South Korean patients seriously ill with COVID-19 showed an improvement in their condition after being given Gilead Sciences Inc’s antiviral remdesivir, health authorities said.
More research was needed to determine if the improvement was attributable to the drug or other factors such as patients’ immunity and other therapies, they said.
Remdesivir has been at the forefront of the global battle against COVID-19 after the intravenously administered medicine helped shorten hospital recovery times in a U.S. clinical trial.
Several countries including South Korea have added the drug to the list of treatment for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. There is no approved vaccine for it.
In its latest update on the drug, Gilead said on Friday an analysis showed remdesivir helped reduce the risk of death in severely ill COVID-19 patients but cautioned that rigorous clinical trials were needed to confirm the benefit.
2020-07-13 18:28:29
President Joko Widodo said the coronavirus outbreak in Indonesia is expected to peak in August or September, the state news agency Antara reported, two to three months later than earlier projected.
“Based on data the peak is (now) estimated to be in August or September, that’s the latest estimate I received, but if we don’t do something the numbers could be different,” Widodo said as cited by Antara.
A government adviser had said in April that COVID-19 cases were likely to peak in May or June, with the number of infections expected to reach around 95,000.
Widodo said he was pushing his ministers to work harder to control the spread of the virus, which had infected 76,981 people in the Southeast Asian country as of Monday, with 3,656 fatalities, the highest in East Asia outside China.
2020-07-13 18:20:51
Turkish industrial production shrank a less-than-expected 19.9% year-on-year in May, data showed, as a monthly measure indicated some recovery in the sector that was hit by action to curb the spread of the coronavirus
Many factories and businesses halted operations after Turkey identified its first COVID-19 case on March 11. The economy is expected to face its second sharp contraction in as many years as a result of the large disruption.
In a Reuters poll, industrial output had been expected to have contracted 22.5% annually in May, when Turkey began to ease its lockdown, compared to a 31.4% contraction in April.
Month-on-month, industrial production was up 17.4% in May on a calendar and seasonally adjusted basis, the Turkish Statistical Institute data showed.
Enver Erkan, economist at Tera Yatirim, said a possibility of a second wave of infections made the recovery fragile.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-13 18:09:23
Fans across India prayed on Monday for Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan and others members of his movie star family who have fallen sick with the coronavirus as the one-day rise in infections hit a new record without any sign of a peak.
Bachchan, 77, and his son, Abhishek, remained in hospital in Mumbai while daughter-in-law and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and his eight-year-old granddaughter, who also tested positive were at home, quarantined.
The Bachchans are the highest-profile Indians to have contracted the virus, which is spreading faster after a months-long lockdown was eased at the end of May to revive a battered economy.
Special Hindu rituals were performed in temples all over India by fans praying for the recovery of an actor adored and respected for a career spanning decades.
“It feels like not only Amitabh Bachchan has fallen sick, but an entire generation has become sick,” Vijay Patodia, a member of the All Bengal Amitabh Bachchan Fans’ Association, told Reuters in a temple in the eastern city of Kolkata.
Read comolete story here.
2020-07-13 17:59:39
Pfizer and partner BioNTech SE said two of their experimental coronavirus vaccines received ‘fast track’ designation from the US health agency, speeding up the regulatory review process.
The companies are in a global race with Moderna, AstraZeneca Plc and others to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus, which has claimed over 568,500 lives globally, according to a Reuters tally.
There are no approved vaccines for COVID-19, and the United States and other countries have poured billions into their development as they seek to secure a safe and effective vaccine.
The fast track status could potentially make Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine candidates, BNT162b1 and BNT162b2, eligible for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s ‘priority review’, under which the agency aims to decide on an approval within six months.
2020-07-13 17:48:02
AMC Entertainment Holdings said it had reached an agreement with bondholders to reduce its debt by up to $630 million, as the theater industry suffers from the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.
Major theater operators in the United States have laid off thousands of employees and borrowed funds to stay afloat amid weeks-long lockdowns, which may be extended as infections continue to surge.
AMC, the world’s largest movie theater operator, said the deal with a group that holds about 73% of its $2.3 billion in senior subordinated bonds would reduce its total debt by between $460 million and $630 million.
The company added it had raised $300 million in new first lien financing, helping its shares rise more than 5% in premarket trading.
2020-07-13 05:45:00
Global coronavirus infections passed 13 million on Monday, according to a Reuters tally, marking another milestone in the spread of the disease which has killed more than half a million people in seven months.
The first case was reported in China in early January and it took three months to reach one million cases. It has taken just five days to climb to 13 million cases from 12 million recorded on July 8.
The number of cases is around triple that of severe influenza illnesses recorded annually, according to the World Health Organisation.
There have been more than 568,500 deaths linked to the coronavirus so far, within the same range as the number of yearly influenza deaths reported worldwide. The first death was reported on Jan. 10 in Wuhan, China, before infections and fatalities surged in Europe and then later in the United States.
Many hard-hit countries are easing lockdowns put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19. Other places, such as the Australian city of Melbourne, are implementing a second round of shutdowns.
The Reuters tally, which is based on government reports, shows the disease is accelerating the fastest in Latin America. The Americas account for more than half the world’s infections and half the deaths.
2020-07-13 05:42:00
Global coronavirus infections passed 13 million on Monday, according to a Reuters tally, marking another milestone in the spread of the disease which has killed more than half a million people in seven months.
The first case was reported in China in early January and it took three months to reach one million cases. It has taken just five days to climb to 13 million cases from 12 million recorded on July 8.
The number of cases is around triple that of severe influenza illnesses recorded annually, according to the World Health Organisation.
There have been more than 568,500 deaths linked to the coronavirus so far, within the same range as the number of yearly influenza deaths reported worldwide. The first death was reported on Jan. 10 in Wuhan, China before infections and fatalities surged in Europe and then later in the United States.
Many hard-hit countries are easing lockdowns put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19. Other places, such as the Australian city of Melbourne, are implementing the second round of shutdowns.
The Reuters tally, which is based on government reports, shows the disease is accelerating the fastest in Latin America. The Americas account for more than half the world’s infections and half the deaths.
2020-07-13 17:28:00
Hong Kong will tighten back limits on public gatherings from Wednesday amid growing worries over an escalating third wave of coronavirus infections in the city, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Monday.
The government will limit group gatherings to four people -from 50 - a measure last seen during a second wave in March. Some establishments, such as gyms and gaming centres, will have to shut down for a week, while restaurants will only be allowed to give out takeaway after 6.00 p.m.
The global financial hub recorded 52 new cases of coronavirus on Monday, including 41 that were locally transmitted, health authorities said. Since late January, the Chinese-ruled city has reported 1,522 cases and local media reported an eighth death on Monday.
2020-07-13 05:23:00
Hong Kong will tighten back limits on public gatherings from Wednesday amid growing worries over an escalating third wave of coronavirus infections in the city, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Monday.
The government will limit group gatherings to four people -from 50 - a measure last seen during the second wave in March. Some establishments, such as gyms and gaming centres, will have to shut down for a week, while restaurants will only be allowed to give out takeaway after 6.00 p.m.
The global financial hub recorded 52 new cases of coronavirus on Monday, including 41 that were locally transmitted, health authorities said. Since late January, the Chinese-ruled city has reported 1,522 cases and local media reported the eighth death on Monday.
2020-07-13 17:07:00
Sri Lanka ordered government schools across the nation to shut Monday, just a week after they re-opened, following a surge in new coronavirus cases.
The country has reported just 2,617 cases with 11 deaths, but army chief Shavendra Silva said nearly half the 1,100 residents and staff at a drug rehab facility near the capital had tested positive in the past week, and some visitors may also have been infected.
At least 16 cases had emerged in villages elsewhere across the nation, officials said, most in the central-northern region.
"Based on the direction of health authorities, it is decided to close schools this week," the education ministry said in a statement, adding that private colleges were also encouraged to shut their doors.
"We will review the situation next week."
Postal voting for next month´s parliamentary elections would be delayed in villages affected by the virus, the independent election commission said.
Sri Lanka´s ruling party on Sunday called off its rallies ahead of the upcoming poll and postponed the re-opening of the international airport, which was planned for early August.
A repatriation programme that has brought home some 12,000 Sri Lankans from overseas has also been suspended.
2020-07-13 16:42:00
The IMF Monday again sharply lowered its Middle East and North Africa economic forecast, to its lowest level in 50 years, over the "twin shock" of the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices.
The region´s economy will contract by 5.7 percent this year, and shrink by as much as 13 percent in countries torn by conflict, the Washington-based International Monetary Fund warned.
2020-07-13 16:22:00
Britain's new immigration system will provide faster and cheaper visas for skilled health and social care workers, the government announced on Monday, setting out further details of the points-based system that will come into effect in January.
A new post-Brexit immigration system will apply to skilled workers and ends free movement of labour between Britain and the European Union (EU) following Britain's departure from the bloc earlier this year.
The state-funded National Health Service (NHS), which employs more than 1.2 million people and is Britain's front line in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic, relies on labour from both the EU and other countries around the world.
On Monday, the government outlined a new "Health and Care Visa" which will lower fees, cut application times and provide greater support for eligible applicants who will work in the NHS, social care or supporting companies.
2020-07-13 16:00:29
Latin America surged past the United States and Canada to become the second-worst affected region in the world for coronavirus deaths, according to an AFP tally on Monday.
With 144,758 deaths the region surpassed the US and Canada's total of 144,023 and is now behind only Europe with 202,505 deaths.
Brazil accounts for almost half of Latin America's recorded fatalities, with 72,100 deaths. Mexico which has recorded 35,006 fatalities, has overtaken Italy and lies in fourth place.
More than 3.37 million infections have been recorded in Latin America, putting it just behind the US and Canada, whose tally stands at more than 3.4 million.
2020-07-13 15:45:42
Germany can prevent a second wave of the coronavirus in the autumn if people stay vigilant, particularly during the summer vacation season, Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Monday.
Spahn told a news conference it was important to remain alert when travelling abroad and said he was worried by pictures showing holidaymakers partying in Mallorca at the weekend and ignoring social distancing rules.
“I understand the impatience, but where there are parties the infection risk is particularly high,” he said.
“That’s why we have to try particularly now in the holiday season to prevent infections. We don’t automatically have to expect a second wave in the autumn and winter. Together, as a society, we can prevent that, as we did once before: breaking the wave and keeping the pandemic in check.”
2020-07-13 15:21:06
Companies around the world will take on as much as $1 trillion of new debt in 2020, as they try to shore up their finances against the coronavirus, a new study of 900 top firms has estimated.
The unprecedented increase will see total global corporate debt jump by 12% to around $9.3 trillion, adding to years of accumulation that has left the world’s most indebted firms owing as much as many medium-sized countries.
“COVID has changed everything,” said Seth Meyer, a portfolio manager at Janus Henderson, the firm that compiled the analysis for a new corporate debt index. “Now it is about conserving capital and building a fortified balance sheet”.
Companies tapped bond markets for $384 billion between January and May, and Meyer estimates that recent weeks have set a new record for debt issuance from riskier “high yield” firms with lower credit ratings.
2020-07-13 15:01:18
Russia has claimed to become the first country to have completed clinical trials of the coronavirus vaccine after Sechenov University said that it had concluded its study.
Russian news agency TASS quoted Sechenov University Center for Clinical Research on Medications head and chief researcher Elena Smolyarchukas as saying: “The research has been completed and it proved that the vaccine is safe. The volunteers will be discharged on 15 July and 20 July.”
2020-07-13 14:37:36
Hong Kong recorded 52 new cases of coronavirus, including 41 that were locally transmitted, health authorities said, as worries over an escalating third wave of infections in the global financial hub grow.
Since late January, the Chinese-ruled city has reported more than 1,500 cases and seven deaths.
2020-07-13 14:07:25
The National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) has directed local administrations to ensure that cattle markets should operate from 6am to 7pm ahead of the coronavirus.
The NCOC during its meeting in Lahore under Federal Planning Minister Asad Umar also decided it was mandatory to screen those entering the markets.
The public will be asked to ensure they are wearing face masks and practicing social distancing, with officials tasked to ensure that only a designated number of people will be allowed inside at one time to avoid over-crowding.
Read more here.
2020-07-13 13:38:52
Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab has said that the coronavirus testing capacity in other provinces is less than Sindh with 12,004 tests performed per million in Sindh.
Wahab in a statement said there were 5,427 tests carried out per million in Punjab, 4,952 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 4,348 in Balochistan.
He added the Sindh government was working hard to prevent the virus while other provinces had less testing capacity due to which fewer cases were being reported.
“We need to make a concerted effort to prevent the spread of the corona virus as the corona virus epidemic has taken a global toll,” Wahab said.
2020-07-13 13:26:19
Russia on Monday reported 6,537 new cases of the novel coronavirus, pushing its overall tally to 733,699, the fourth largest reported in the world.
Authorities said 104 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 11,439.
2020-07-13 12:52:36
One in three South Korean patients seriously ill with COVID-19 showed an improvement in their condition after being given Gilead Sciences antiviral remdesivir, health authorities said.
More research was needed to determine if the improvement was attributable to the drug or other factors such as patients' immunity and other therapies, they said.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Saturday results from a first group of 27 patients given remdesivir in different hospitals.
Nine of the patients showed an improvement in their condition, 15 showed no change, and three worsened, KCDC deputy director Kwon Jun-wook told a briefing.
2020-07-13 12:24:26
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has said the Olympics must go ahead next year as a symbol of world unity in overcoming the novel coronavirus, even as her city grapples with stubborn spikes in cases.
The 2020 Olympics were scheduled to start this month but were postponed because of the coronavirus. Koike has pledged to win public support for the Games, although a media survey showed a majority think they should be cancelled or postponed again.
“I want to host them as a symbol of the world coming together to overcome this tough situation and of strengthened bonds among humankind,” Koike told Reuters.
2020-07-13 11:54:28
The United States recorded 59,747 new cases over the last 24-hour period, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.
The number of cases in the US has rocketed in recent weeks, hitting a record of 66,528 in 24 hours on Saturday.
The country has now registered a total of 3,301,820 infections, the Baltimore-based university said. The death toll stood at 135,171 with 442 additional deaths counted.
2020-07-13 11:34:48
A special meeting of National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) will be held in Lahore today to discuss the implementation of SOPs and management of cattle markets ahead of Eid-ul-Azha, Radio Pakistan reported.
Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar will preside over the meeting.
2020-07-13 10:57:24
Deaths in Mexico from the coronavirus pandemic crossed the 35,000 mark, with the Latin American country overtaking Italy for the world’s fourth-highest death total, according to Reuters data.
Mexico on Sunday recorded 276 additional fatalities and 4,482 new infections to bring its coronavirus death toll to 35,006, with 299,750 confirmed cases. Italy has recorded 34,954 deaths and 243,061 cases. Mexico trails the United States, Brazil and the UK in total deaths.
2020-07-13 10:14:48
Confirmed cases in Pakistan climbed to 251,625 on Monday after 2,769 new infections were reported over the last 24 hours, data from the National Command and Control Centre showed (NCOC).
According to the NCOC, Sindh has reported 105,533 cases, Punjab 87,043 cases, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 30,486 cases, Balochistan 11,185 cases, Islamabad 14,108 infections, Gilgit Baltistan 1,671 and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 1,599 cases.
The country also reported 69 fatalities during the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,266.
The NCOC added 161,917 patients have recovered from the virus so far in the country.
2020-07-13 09:58:42
The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 565,000 people out of nearly 13 million registered cases worldwide, has been accelerating sharply since the start of July, according to a count carried out by AFP from official sources.
The three biggest daily worldwide increases in new cases were seen on Saturday (more than 230,000), Friday (more than 225,000) and Thursday (nearly 220,000).
The United States (3,247,782 cases), Brazil (1,839,850), India (849,553), Russia (727,162) and Peru (322,710) account for more than half of the global total.
Europe is the most affected continent in terms of fatalities, with 202,396 out of 3,355,128 cases while the hardest-hit country the United States has registered 134,815 deaths.
Read more here.
2020-07-13 09:28:51
The World Health Organisation reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 230,370 in 24 hours.
The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a daily report. The previous WHO record for new cases was 228,102 on July 10. Deaths remained steady at about 5,000 a day.
Global coronavirus cases were approaching 13 million on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, marking another milestone in the spread of the disease that has killed more than 565,000 people in seven months.
2020-07-13 09:05:38
Mexico's death toll from the coronavirus pandemic is poised to overtake Italy's and shoot above 35,000 with the Latin American nation set to post the world's fourth highest deaths total, according to Reuters data.
Mexico on Saturday recorded 539 additional fatalities to bring its coronavirus toll to 34,730, with 295,268 confirmed cases. Italy has recorded 34,945 deaths and 242,827 cases.
Mexican authorities have gradually raised the projections of total fatalities and as recently as June forecast up to 35,000 deaths through October. In early May, the estimate was 6,000.
The coronavirus death toll per million residents in Mexico, whose population numbers about 120 million, is the 16th highest in the world, according to data by research firm Statista.
2020-07-12 23:35:31
The Sindh health department has released the city-wise distribution of coronavirus cases.
2020-07-12 23:09:57
The Balochistan health department has reported 28 new infections in the province, taking the province's total to 11,185.
No new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours. Moreover, 177 recoveries were recorded.
2020-07-12 23:00:02
The Trump administration has again pressed for full school reopenings in the fall, even as resurgent COVID-19 infections raise mounting criticism that a premature return to classes can pose a danger of greater spread of the disease.
In two television interviews, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos insisted on the need for schools to reopen, even as several states were registering record numbers of coronavirus cases and hospitals in many cities were struggling to cope.
“Kids need to get back to school, they need to get back in the classroom,” DeVos said on CNN, while acknowledging that local conditions should be taken into account. “Families need for kids to get back in the classroom. And it can be done safely.”
The pressure to reopen schools has come from the top, with Trump threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that refuse to reopen—a stance that DeVos reconfirmed.
2020-07-12 22:48:13
The government of Spain’s Catalonia region has ordered residents in and around the northeastern town of Lerida to go back into home confinement as cases of coronavirus spike.
“The people must stay at home,” regional health official Alba Verges told a news conference. The area, with a population of more than 200,000, was already ordered isolated from the rest of the region last weekend.
2020-07-12 22:17:29
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged immediate financial aid to Israelis whose livelihoods have been devastated by the coronavirus, as his government faces mounting anger over its pandemic response.
Thousands of protesters turned out in Tel Aviv on Saturday to voice frustration at Netanyahu, who won praise for his early response to the outbreak but has come under criticism amid a resurgence in cases.
Netanyahu did not mention the Tel Aviv protest ahead of his weekly cabinet meeting, but promised that financial help was on the way, starting with cash disbursment of up to 7,500 shekels ($2,170) to the self-employed.
“This support, this grant, is not dependent on legislation and we have instructed that it be put into effect today. The button will be pressed and the money will reach accounts in the coming days,” he said.
He also announced a broader aid package for workers and small business owners would advance through Israel's parliament, the Knesset, in “a lightning legislative process” over the coming days.
2020-07-12 21:51:00
The mayor of the French Mediterranean city of Nice has lamented a lack of social distancing at a shoreside DJ set thronged by partying crowds, vowing that in future masks would be obligatory at such outdoor events.
Prominent French electro house music producer The Avener hosted the set organised by the municipality late Saturday in his home city, with crowds massing on central Nice’s famous Promenade des Anglais esplanade.
The density of the crowd as people danced the night away provoked fury on social media at a time when France is wary of a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We regret that these rules have not been sufficiently respected,” mayor Christian Estrosi wrote on Twitter.
He said the city would ask the government to review national rules to make it obligatory to wear a mask at such events, even outside. “In Nice, it will now be mandatory for all our events,” he added. All those attending events indoors such as concerts already must wear masks.
The municipality insisted that the maximum number of 5,000 people allowed at any gathering in France had not been exceeded, even in an area that in usual times can accommodate 36,000.
2020-07-12 21:28:00
A top US health official has said that with deaths from COVID-19 expected to continue rising in coming weeks, “everything should be on the table,” including renewed lockdowns in hard-hit states.
“We’re all very concerned,” said Admiral Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health, on ABC’s “This Week.”
In particular, he called for the re-closing of bars, greater spacing in restaurants and the near-universal wearing of masks in the areas most afflicted, which are largely in southern states that reopened aggressively.
“For this to work we have to have 90% of people wearing masks in public in the hot-spot areas,” he said. “If we don’t have that we won’t get control of the virus. It’s absolutely essential.”
2020-07-12 21:09:00
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 408 new cases, taking the provincial total to 30,486.
It also reported 12 more deaths, taking the provincial death toll to 1,099.
2020-07-12 20:42:00
Berlin’s clubs and concert halls, closed for four months due to the coronavirus pandemic, have received an average of 81,000 euros each in aid from the city, according to figures published by the daily Tagesspiegel.
The clubs, which are mainly techno and have helped to build Berlin’s reputation as a “party city”, find themselves in a difficult financial situation since their closure on March 14 due to the spread of the virus.
The Berlin authorities, however, decided to grant emergency aid to 46 clubs, festivals and concert halls, according to figures from Georg Kossler, a Green member of the state government, quoted by the Tagesspiegel. “I want people to be able to dance and party when the days of the coronavirus are over, so our clubs must survive,” said Kossler.
2020-07-12 20:07:30
Hungary's government has said it is barring travel from Africa, most of Asia apart from China and Japan, and restricting entry from several European countries after worldwide spikes in coronavirus cases.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Chief of Staff Gergely Gulyas said that Hungarian health officials have placed 154 countries into three risk categories based on numbers of coronavirus infections.
"We need to protect our security so that the virus is not introduced from abroad... the level of active infection cases at home is falling, and we want to keep it like that," he told reporters in Budapest.
Entry into Hungary would be barred for citizens from countries assessed as "red" from Tuesday midnight, including all African and Asian countries apart from China and Japan.
2020-07-12 19:29:00
The novel coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 20,000 people across the Middle East, half of them in Iran, according to an AFP tally at 1000 GMT based on official tolls.
But despite having 907,736 reported infections and 20,005 deaths from the COVID-19 illness, the Middle East has been relatively lightly hit by the virus which has killed over half a million people across the globe.
Iran, which has been struggling to contain the outbreak since announcing its first cases in February, has reported more than 12,829 deaths and 257,303 infections, according to Sunday´s official figures.
With a population of more than 80 million, Iran is the 9th worst-affected country in the world and has seen the region´s deadliest outbreak.
Infections in the Islamic republic have been on the rise since early May, prompting authorities to make wearing masks mandatory in enclosed public spaces.
2020-07-12 18:59:29
BEIRUT: Lebanon has recorded more than 100 new coronavirus infections in the last day, its highest daily increase yet, with most of the cases among workers of a cleaning company, the health minister said on Sunday.
“To reassure people, the source is known,” health minister Hamad Hassan told broadcaster LBC. He added that up to 75% of the cases were linked to what he described as a big cleaning company, were symptom-free and non-Lebanese.
Hassan said 800 workers from the cleaning company in question needed to be tested, along with another 1,000 workers from two other companies with whom they were connected.
“The number will remain high this week,” he said.
Lebanon has recorded more than 2,000 infections and 36 deaths from coronavirus since February.
2020-07-12 18:30:38
RAWALPINDI: Municipal Corporation Rawalpindi (MCR) has imposed a ban on the entry of sacrificial animals to protect the city from COVID-19 ahead of Eid ul Azha.
Under the ban, the sale and purchase of sacrificial animals has been restricted.
The decision to ban sale/purchase of sacrificial animals had been imposed to maintain cleanliness and avoid waste pollution in the city.
2020-07-12 18:15:07
KARACHI: Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that the coronavirus has claimed 48 more lives within the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 1,795.
The CM Sindh said that 1,713 people have tested positive for the virus within a day, against 10,276 test samples.
2020-07-12 17:39:44
Federal Minister for Housing and Works Tariq Bashir Cheema has been moved to the PIMS hospital in Islamabad after testing positive for the virus.
According to reports, the minister was moved to the isolation ward of the hospital last night.
2020-07-12 17:21:51
TEHRAN: Iran's supreme leader Sunday called the resurgence of the novel coronavirus in the country "truly tragic" and urged all citizens to help stem what has been the region's deadliest outbreak.
"Let everyone play their part in the best way to break the chain of transmission in the short term and save the country," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a video conference with lawmakers, according to his office.
2020-07-12 17:06:41
Balochistan government spokesperson Liaquat Shahwani stated that if the coronavirus cases keep on rising at the pace as they are today then the positive cases will cross 300,000.
Shahwani, said that the virus spread during the last Eid, adding that if SOPs are not followed then there is a chance of increasing case after Eid ul Azha.
2020-07-12 16:54:10
BUDAPEST: Hungary has imposed new restrictions on cross-border travel as of next Wednesday in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus after a surge in new cases in several countries, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff said on Sunday.
Hungary lifted most of its lockdown restrictions in May and opened its borders to travellers from European Union states and neighbouring non-EU members.
On Sunday, Gergely Gulyas told an online news conference that new restrictions were needed to keep the coronavirus “outside the borders” in order to avoid the re-introduction of domestic lockdown measures.
“These restrictions serve to protect our freedom,” Gulyas said.
Under the new rules, Hungarian nationals returning from high risk countries listed as “yellow” and “red” will have to go through health checks at the border and will have to go into 14 days of quarantine even if they are not infected. This can only be avoided with two negative COVID-19 tests from the previous 5 days, Gulyas said.
2020-07-12 16:33:11
MUMBAI: Three generations of Bollywood’s Bachchan family were hit by the coronavirus as former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and her daughter on Sunday joined her father-in-law Amitabh and husband Abhishek in testing positive for the virus that causes COVID-19.
Maharashtra state health minister Rajesh Tope said in a tweet that Aishwarya and her eight-year-old daughter had tested positive for the virus.
It was not clear whether they had been admitted to hospital, as Amitabh, a legendary Indian actor, and Abhishek were on Saturday, when they said they had mild symptoms of COVID-19.
Hospital officials and government health authorities said earlier on Sunday that Amitabh and his son were in stable condition.
Aishwarya, 46, who often features on “most beautiful” lists, has worked in several Bollywood and Hollywood films. She is a brand ambassador for several multinational companies, including L’Oreal.
Amitabh’s wife Jaya, also an actor, has tested negative, said the health minister.
The minister later deleted his tweet, but another government official confirmed to Reuters the information was accurate. A spokeswoman for Aishwarya declined comment.
Read more here.
2020-07-12 16:00:43
Thai researchers say they plan to begin human trials of a potential vaccine for the new coronavirus in November and are preparing 10,000 doses, aiming for a vaccine that could be ready for use by late next year.
Following favourable results in trials on primates, the next step is to manufacture doses for human trials, said Kiat Ruxrungtham, director of the Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University vaccine development program.
Thailand’s first facility should complete production in October and send the products to a second facility, which should finish by November, he said.
2020-07-12 15:30:09
The head of a coronavirus vaccine research team at London's Imperial College says enough vaccine doses are being made for everybody in the UK in “the first half of next year” if trials are successful.
Professor Robin Shattock warned there was still no guarantee that its fast-track research would produce an inoculation with immunity against coronavirus, the Independent reported.
“Assuming funding is there to purchase, we could have that vaccine rolled out across the UK in the first half of next year,” he said.
2020-07-12 15:05:29
Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood has said the government will take strict administrative actions for the implementation of SOPs in schools after they reopen, reported Radio Pakistan.
Speaking to a private TV channel Mahmood said the reopening of schools depends on the evolution of the pandemic over the coming months.
The minister said discussions will be held next month in light of the coronavirus situation in the country.
2020-07-12 14:47:17
Walt Disney World opened to the public for the first time in four months today as guests and employees wore face masks, underwent temperature screenings and maintained social distance everywhere from streets to rides.
2020-07-12 14:15:12
The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development has suspended debt service repayments for some countries including Pakistan, for the current year.
The Fund provides financial assistance to companies in the United Arab Emirates and to developing countries, which has included Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.
Debt service repayments would be suspended for eligible countries and individual companies in the developing world from January 1 until December 31, the fund said in a statement.
Read more here.
2020-07-12 13:48:21
Russia on Sunday reported 6,615 new coronavirus cases, taking its nationwide tally of infections to 727,162.
The country's coronavirus crisis response centre said 130 people had died from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 11,335.
Russia said 501,061 people have recovered from the virus.
2020-07-12 13:19:22
Gilead Sciences has said an analysis showed its antiviral remdesivir helped reduce the risk of death in severely ill COVID-19 patients, but cautioned that rigorous clinical trials were needed to confirm the benefit.
In the latest analysis, Gilead said it analysed data from 312 patients treated in its late-stage study and a separate real-world retrospective cohort of 818 patients with similar characteristics and disease severity.
Findings from the analysis showed that 74.4% of remdesivir-treated patients recovered by Day 14 versus 59.0% of patients receiving standard of care, the company said.
The mortality rate for patients treated with remdesivir in the analysis was 7.6% at Day 14, compared with 12.5% among patients not on remdesivir.
Read more here.
2020-07-12 12:40:48
Tokyo officials confirmed 206 new coronavirus infections on Sunday, public broadcaster NHK reported, as Japan’s capital struggles with a resurgence in cases after the government lifted a state of emergency.
The total marks the fourth straight day of more than 200 cases.
2020-07-12 12:07:37
President Donald Trump finally yielded to pressure and wore a face mask in public for the first time on Saturday as the US posted another daily record for coronavirus cases.
Trump had repeatedly avoided wearing a mask, even after staffers at the White House tested positive for the virus and as more aides have taken to wearing them.
Read more here.
2020-07-12 11:41:48
Authorities cancelled one of southern Brazil’s biggest footballing derbies less than 24 hours before kick-off after 14 members of one side tested positive for coronavirus.
The match was due to kick off on Sunday at 4pm was cancelled on the orders of the state’s Health Secretariat.
“One of the teams had 14 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and it is necessary for all the players to follow the necessary protective measures,” it said in a statement.
2020-07-12 11:16:53
Brazil, the world's second coronavirus hotspot after the United States, recorded 1,071 new deaths from the outbreak on Saturday, with a total of 1,839,850 confirmed cases, the Health Ministry said.
Brazil has now recorded a total of 71,469 deaths, the ministry said.
2020-07-12 10:43:27
Confirmed cases in the country rose to 248,872 after 2,521 new infections were recorded in the country over the last 24 hours.
Sindh leads the country’s positive cases tally with 103,836 cases followed by Punjab with 86,556 cases. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 30, 078, in Balochistan 11,157, in Islamabad 14,023, in Gilgit Baltistan 1,658 and in Azad Jammu and Kashmir 1,564 cases have been recorded.
The country’s also recorded 74 more fatalities taking the death toll from the virus to 5,197.
The number of recovered patients in the country stands at 156,700.
2020-07-12 10:01:42
The United States posted 66,528 new cases, a record for a 24-hour period, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.
The country has now recorded a total of 3,242,073 infections, the Baltimore-based university said. The death toll stood at 134,729 with 760 additional deaths counted.
The US has now seen daily new cases top 60,000 in four of the past five days.
2020-07-12 09:39:18
Australia’s Victoria state reported 273 new cases of the coronavirus and another COVID-19 death on Sunday, marking a week of triple-digit increases in infections, as state authorities battle fresh outbreaks of the pandemic.
Melbourne, the capital of Australia’s second most-populous state, went under a six-week lockdown on Thursday after a spike in community-transmitted cases.
Sunday’s cases, the second highest for Victoria, home to a quarter of Australia’s 25 million people, follow a record 288 infections reported on Friday.
2020-07-12 09:06:18
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 248 to 198,804, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.
The reported COVID-19 death toll rose by three to 9,063, the tally showed.
2020-07-12 00:31:07
The Punjab disaster management authority has reported 565 new cases, taking the provincial tally to 86,556.
It also reported 21 more deaths, taking the provincial death toll to 2,006.
2020-07-11 23:54:39
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 303 cases and 13 more deaths from coronavirus, lifting the overall cases to 30,078 and pushing the death toll to 1,087.
2020-07-11 23:38:23
Abhishek Bachchan also tested positive for COVID-19, Indian media reported.
2020-07-11 22:46:00
Sweden’s herd immunity experiment has proved to be fatal for the country.
2020-07-11 22:37:00
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases reached 11157 after 29 more cases were detected in the province.
2020-07-11 21:48:00
The United Kingdom's death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose to 44,798, up 148 on the previous day, the government said on Saturday.
2020-07-11 22:42:08
Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan on Saturday said that he has tested positive for coronavirus and has been hospitalised.
2020-07-11 21:19:00
RIO DE JANEIRO: Michelle Bolsonaro, the wife of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who is sick with the new coronavirus, said on Saturday that she and her two daughters had tested negative for the virus.
The president announced that he had tested positive on Tuesday, and said he was quarantining while also taking the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine.
More than 1.8 million people in Brazil have tested positive for coronavirus and over 70,000 have died. Only the United States has worse statistics.
Michelle Bolsonaro, whose grandmother was rushed to hospital and intubated last week, made the announcement on Instagram. She has two daughters, one of whom she had with the president.
2020-07-11 20:48:00
ROME: Serie A club Parma announced on Saturday that a member of its staff had tested positive for coronavirus and been placed in isolation.
This is the first case of coronavirus in Italian football since the competition resumed exactly one month ago.
"This person, who was completely asymptomatic, was quickly isolated in accordance with federal and ministerial guidelines," the Serie A club said in a statement.
"The club states that all other members of the team-group tested negative and began isolation at the sports centre. They will be able to continue their activities normally and will be monitored on an ongoing basis," the club added.
Parma, 12th in Serie A, are due to host Bologna team on Sunday evening.
2020-07-11 20:38:00
Israeli police on Saturday said they had flooded central Tel Aviv with officers and closed main thoroughfares, ahead of a rally by critics of the government’s handling of the COVID 19 crisis.
"Hundreds of police will be deployed in a number of security cordons," a police statement said. "The mission is protection of the participants and preservation of public order."
Organisers of the protests said they expected thousands of Israel’s self-employed to turn out in protest at what they say is the government’s abandonment of them after forcing their businesses to close under coronavirus regulations.
Student unions said they would also take part in the event at the city’s Rabin Square, to show their concern at the large numbers of young people made jobless by closures.
Israel imposed a broad lockdown from the middle of March, allowing only staff deemed essential to go to work and banning public assembly.
Places of entertainment were closed, hitting the leisure industry hard.
2020-07-11 20:18:31
India’s Biocon Ltd has received regulatory approval for its drug Itolizumab to be used on coronavirus infected patients suffering from moderate to severe respiratory distress, the biopharmaceutical company said in a statement.
The drug, which is also used to cure the skin disease psoriasis, was cleared by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for usage in India.
“The randomised control trial indicated that all the patients treated with Itolizumab responded positively and recovered,” said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the firm’s executive chairperson.
The control group which did not receive Itolizumab unfortunately suffered deaths, she said, adding that the “first-in-class” drug will save lives and help reduce the mortality rate in India.
2020-07-11 20:08:20
Kolkata's legendary Eden Gardens cricket stadium is to be used as a quarantine centre for Indian police who have the coronavirus, officials said.
With the city's hospitals under growing pressure, hundreds of beds are to be set up in the 80,000 capacity stadium that was used for the 1987 World Cup final.
Nearly 550 Kolkata police have tested positive for the coronavirus and two have died.
"It is our duty to help and support the administration in this hour of crisis. The quarantine facility will be used for police personnel who are COVID-19 warriors," said Cricket Association of Bengal president Avishek Dalmiya.
2020-07-11 19:55:32
American billionaire Bill Gates said he was "optimistic" about the battle against COVID-19 and called for medicines and vaccines to be distributed to those who need them rather than to the "highest bidders".
Gates' foundation pledged $7.4 billion to global vaccines alliance Gavi in June to help immunisation programmes disrupted by coronavirus.
"If we just let drugs and vaccines go to the highest bidders, instead to the people in the place where they are most needed, we will have a longer and more unjust, deadlier pandemic," said the Microsoft founder in Saturday's video message to a virtual international conference on COVID-19 and AIDS.
"We need leaders to make these hard decisions about distributing based on equity, not just on market driven factors."
2020-07-11 19:40:46
Germany’s 16 states are planning to take on 95 billion euros ($107 billion) in new debt as part of their spending efforts to cushion the economy from the worst of the coronavirus shock, Der Spiegel magazine reported.
The borrowing comes on top of the 218.5 billion euros of debt the Federal Government plans to issue to help finance support to an economy that is expected to shrink more than 6% this year because of the crisis and lockdowns.
Der Spiegel calculated, after surveying regional finance ministries, that Germany’s states, which enjoy wide autonomy under the country’s highly devolved system of governance, were taking on an additional 95 billion euros in debt.
2020-07-11 19:25:54
2020-07-11 19:13:14
Dubai has announced a new package worth 1.5 billion dirhams ($408 million) to help the economy cope with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the crown prince of the emirate, Hamdan Bin Mohammed Al-Maktoum, said on Twitter.
The package is the third announced by Dubai, the second-largest and second-wealthiest member of the United Arab Emirates federation. The three packages are worth a total of 6.3 billion dirhams, Sheikh Hamdan said.
The latest intervention includes cancelling certain fines imposed by the government and the customs department, tax reimbursements to hotels and restaurants, financial guarantee refunds to the construction sector and exonerating private schools from licensing renewal fees.
2020-07-11 18:55:26
Chinese vaccine developer CanSino Biologics is in talks with Russia, Brazil, Chile and Saudi Arabia to launch a Phase III trial of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine, its co-founder said on Saturday.
China’s success in driving down COVID-19 infections has made it harder to conduct large-scale vaccine trials, and so far only a few countries have agreed to work with it.
“We are contacting and Russia, Brazil, Chile and Saudi Arabia (for the Phase III trial) and it’s still in discussion,” Qiu Dongxu, executive director and co-founder of CanSino, told an anti-viral drug development conference in Suzhou, in eastern China.
He said its Phase III trials were likely to start “pretty soon,” and the company plans to recruit 40,000 participants for the tests.
2020-07-11 18:39:23
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that the coronavirus has claimed 34 more lives within the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 1,747.
The CM Sindh said that 1,452 people have tested positive for the virus within a day, against 1,0815 test samples.
Shah said 1,274 patients have also recovered in the same time, taking the tally of recoveries to 60,439.
2020-07-11 18:32:46
Deputy Commissioner Peshawar Muhammad Ali Asghar said that the lockdown in Hayyatabad Phase 4 will be lifted tomorrow (Sunday) night.
The DC Peshawar said smart lockdown is ending due to a drop in cases, urging people to properly follow the SOPs.
He said that due to the smart lockdown, the number of cases has visibly reduced in certain areas.
The DC Peshawar warned of strict action against the violation of the SOPs.
2020-07-11 18:25:04
Croatia said on Saturday that wearing face masks will be obligatory in most closed public spaces from next week as the number of COVID-19 cases keeps rising.
The number of new infections reached 140 on Saturday, the highest recorded so far in a single day. Most cases are in the capital Zagreb and in east of the country.
The national civil protection directorate said that from Monday face masks will be obligatory for both employees and clients in shops, and also for employees in bars, restaurants and other places where there is close contact with customers.
2020-07-11 18:11:55
The National Information Technology Board has said that the government's COVID-19 portal covid.gov.pk now has a tool for self-assessment to check whether one is potentially suffering from the contagious disease.
It has strongly encouraged one use the tool before meeting others.
2020-07-11 17:28:11
Prime Minister Imran Khan's special representative on Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq has congratulated the team working at the Angor Adda Border Crossing for having opened it two days before the proposed date of July 12.
Border crossings had been closed off for trade due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
2020-07-11 17:10:47
Islamabad reported 99 new coronavirus infections, with the most, 11, in Sector G-7.
2020-07-11 17:00:46
The medium-term outlook for the Indian economy remains uncertain with supply chains and demand yet to be restored fully while the trajectory of the coronavirus spread and the length of its impact remain unknown, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Saturday.
According to most estimates, the Indian economy will register a record contraction of over 4.5% in the current fiscal year that started on April 1 due to the pandemic.
“The Indian economy has started showing signs of getting back to normalcy in response to the staggered easing of restrictions,” Das said in an address to an online forum.
“It is, however, still uncertain when supply chains will be restored fully. How long will it take for demand conditions to normalise and what kind of durable effects will the pandemic leave behind on our potential growth?” he said.
Das said that the 2008 global crisis and the current crisis show that such economic shocks have “fatter tails” than generally believed, and that the country’s financial system should have larger capital buffers.
Das said that the central bank has to carefully unwind the unusual monetary and regulatory measures taken to cushion the economic shocks in the post pandemic world, as the financial sector should return to normal functioning without relying on the regulatory relaxations as the new norm.
2020-07-11 16:52:40
Indonesia reported 1,671 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total count to 74,018, Health Ministry official Achmad Yurianto told a televised news briefing.
Fatalities from the virus rose by 66 on Saturday, bringing the total tally to 3,535, he said, while 34,719 people have recovered.
2020-07-11 16:41:03
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will tell employers next week to start ordering staff back into their places of work, as long as it is safe to do so, in order to stem the coronavirus hit to the economy, the Daily Mail said.
Johnson has told top civil servants to set an example by starting to return staff to their desks and he has also asked companies including Goldman Sachs to get more employees back after working from home, the newspaper said.
The prime minister would announce the change in an update on coronavirus next week, it said.
On Friday, Johnson said he thought it was time for people to start shifting away from working from home.
“I want people to go back to work as carefully as possible,” he said in a question-and-answer session with members of the public.
2020-07-11 16:31:37
Iran said that it cannot afford to shut down its sanctions-hit economy, even as the country's novel coronavirus outbreak worsens with record-high death tolls and rising infections.
Iran must continue "economic, social and cultural activities while observing health protocols", President Hassan Rouhani said during a televised virus taskforce meeting.
"The simplest solution is to close down all activities, (but) the next day, people would come out to protest the (resulting) chaos, hunger, hardship and pressure," he added.
2020-07-11 16:23:38
New cases of COVID-19 rose by over 69,000 across the United States on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, setting a record for the third consecutive day as Walt Disney Co stuck to its plans to reopen its flagship theme park in hard-hit Florida.
A total of nine US states — Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Ohio, Utah and Wisconsin — also reached records for single-day infections.
In Texas, another hot zone, Governor Greg Abbott warned on Friday he may have to impose new clampdowns if the state cannot stem its record-setting caseloads and hospitalizations through masks and social distancing.
“If we don’t adopt this best practice it could lead to a shutdown of business,” the Republican governor told local KLBK-TV in Lubbock, adding it was the last thing he wanted.
2020-07-11 16:12:52
The Philippines’ health ministry reported 12 new coronavirus deaths and 1,387 additional infections.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total deaths have increased to 1,372 while confirmed cases have reached 54,222. The Philippines has reported record daily high infection numbers on three of the past eight days.
2020-07-11 15:29:39
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates called for COVID-19 drugs and an eventual vaccine to be made available to countries and people that need them most, not to the "highest bidder," saying relying on market forces would prolong the deadly pandemic.
"If we just let drugs and vaccines go to the highest bidder, instead of to the people and the places where they are most needed, we'll have a longer, more unjust, deadlier pandemic," Gates said on Saturday.
"We need leaders to make these hard decisions about distributing based on equity, not just on market-driven factors."
With hundreds of vaccine projects under way and governments in Europe and the United States investing billions of dollars in research, trials and manufacturing, there is concern that richer nations could scoop up promising medicines against the new coronavirus, leaving developing countries empty-handed.
The European Commission and the World Health Organisation have warned of an unhealthy competition in the scramble for a medicine seen as key to saving lives and resolving economic chaos sowed by virus, while some officials in Washington have indicated they would seek to prioritize US residents.
2020-07-11 14:43:42
WHO in its latest brief has said there is new scientific evidence available that the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 the virus that causes COVID-19 through the air.
In the brief issued this week, WHO formally acknowledged the possibility that the novel coronavirus can remain in the air in crowded indoor spaces, where “short-range aerosol transmission… cannot be ruled out”.
2020-07-11 14:17:53
Russia on Saturday reported 6,611 new coronavirus cases, taking its nationwide tally of infections to 720,547.
The country's coronavirus crisis response centre said 188 people had died from the virus in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 11,205.
Russia said 497,446 people have recovered from the virus.
2020-07-11 13:36:16
Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar has said it is necessary to follow precautionary measures against coronavirus.
In a tweet, Umar said the success of smart lockdown has shown result with the number of cases showing a significant decrease. "If precautions not followed then we could have the same fate as US, Brazil and India," the minister added.
2020-07-11 12:48:45
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 378 to 198,556, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday.
The reported death toll rose by six to 9,060, the tally showed.
2020-07-11 12:30:50
The US has welcomed a probe by World Health Organisation into the origins of the novel coronavirus in China, its ambassador to the UN said Friday.
"We welcome the WHO's investigation. We view the scientific investigation as a necessary step to having a complete and transparent understanding of how this virus has spread throughout the world," ambassador Andrew Bremberg told reporters.
It was an unexpected endorsement, given that the WHO has faced fierce US criticism over its handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Bremberg said the US expected the Chinese authorities "will offer the team of scientists full access to data, samples and localities, and look forward to its timely report".
Read more here.
2020-07-11 11:55:43
Australia's second most-populous state reported one of its highest daily increases in new coronavirus infections and warned the numbers would get worse before they got better as it began its first weekend under a six-week lockdown.
Victoria state recorded 216 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19 in the 24 hours to Saturday morning, down from a record 288 cases the previous day but still one of the biggest daily increases of any part of the country since the pandemic arrived.
The state put its capital city, Melbourne, into lockdown this week amid concern that community transmission was causing a second wave of the virus. The authorities had previously attributed most new cases to people returning from overseas.
2020-07-11 11:24:17
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 246,351 on Saturday after 2,752 new infections were recorded in the country in the last 24 hours, data from the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) showed.
According to the NCOC, Sindh leads with the number of cases with 102,368, followed by Punjab with 85,991. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa there are 11,128 cases, in Balochistan, 13,927, in Islamabad, 1,630 in Gilgit Baltistan and 1,532 in Azad Kashmir.
The country also reported 65 fatalities from the virus taking the nationwide tally to 5,123.
The NCOC added so far 153,134 people have recovered from the virus.
2020-07-11 10:38:24
WHO has urged countries grappling with coronavirus to step up control measures, saying it is still possible to rein it in, as some nations clamp fresh restrictions on citizens.
With case numbers worldwide more than doubling in the past six weeks, Uzbekistan on Friday returned to lockdown and Hong Kong said schools would close from Monday after the city recorded "exponential growth" in locally transmitted infections.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on countries to adopt an aggressive approach, highlighting Italy, Spain, South Korea and India's biggest slum to show it was possible to stop the spread, no matter how bad the outbreak.
Read more here.
2020-07-11 10:07:22
California will release up to 8,000 inmates early from state prisons to slow the spread of COVID-19 inside facilities, state authorities said on Friday.
Several California prisons have suffered large coronavirus outbreaks and the state corrections department said inmates could be eligible for release by the end of August.
The release marks the biggest move yet by California to "decompress" prison populations and reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission by creating more space for social distancing and quarantines.
"These actions are taken to provide for the health and safety of the incarcerated population and staff," California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Ralph Diaz said in a statement.
2020-07-11 09:11:58
The United States recorded 63,643 new coronavirus cases on Friday, according to a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
The country also recorded 774 deaths in the past 24 hours, the Baltimore-based university said.
The worst-hit country in the world by the pandemic, the US has recorded a total of 133,969 deaths out of 3.18 million cases.
Thursday saw a record surge in cases, with 65,551 new infections. Experts fear there will soon be a spike in deaths.
In recent days, Texas and Florida reported record numbers of virus deaths.
Read more here.
2020-07-10 23:46:00
The Balochistan health department has reported 29 new infections, taking the provincial tally to 11,128.
One more death was also reported, taking the tally to 126.
2020-07-10 23:29:00
The Sindh health department has released the city-wise distribution of cases over the last 24 hours.
The province has breached a total of 102,000 cases. It is however nearing 60,000 recoveries. There are currently 41,490 active cases.
2020-07-10 22:58:34
Dr Mike Ryan, head of the World Health Organization’s emergencies programme, said it was unlikely that the new coronavirus would be eliminated.
“In the current situation it is unlikely we can eradicate this virus,” he told an online briefing from Geneva.
He said that, by extinguishing clusters of infection, the wrorld could “potentially avoid the worst of having second peaks and having to move backwards in terms of lockdown”.
2020-07-10 21:39:00
The World Health Organisation has said that coronavirus "can still be brought under control", AFP reports.
2020-07-10 22:18:18
Balochistan government spokesperson Liaquat Shahwani has said that another four to six months of a complete lockdown would have pushed 93.3% of the province's households into poverty.
He said that 829,000 households "lived in extreme poverty prior to COVID-19". During the lockdown, 520,000 plunged into "extreme poverty".
With a continued lockdown, the province would have been looking at 1,771,000 households hit by poverty.
2020-07-10 21:01:05
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa department has notified 369 new infections in the province, taking the total to 29,775.
It also reported 11 more deaths, taking the grim total to 1,074 in KP.
2020-07-10 20:30:09
BioNTech SE and Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate is expected to be ready to seek regulatory approval by the end of 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing the German biotech firm’s chief executive officer.
The experimental vaccine, which showed promise against the fast-spreading respiratory illness in early-stage human testing, is expected to move into a large trial involving 30,000 healthy participants later this month, pending regulatory nod.
If it receives marketing approval, the companies are preparing to make up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020 and another 1.2 billion doses by the end of 2021 at sites in Germany and the United States, Reuters reported last week.
Several hundred million doses could be produced even before the approval, according to the WSJ report.
2020-07-10 20:18:09
India said it was suspending the release of headline industrial output numbers for May, part of a more-than two-month lockdown imposed to combat the coronavirus pandemic, due to inadequate data collection.
Most industrial businesses were not operating from March onwards, a statement released by the Ministry of Statistics said. The government earlier suspended the release of industrial production numbers for April as well as retail inflation data for April and May.
Industrial output contracted 34.71 in May according to Reuters calculations based on available data. Analysts’ in a Reuters poll had forecast a 37.8% drop.
The government said “it may not be appropriate to compare the IIP for May 2020 with those of months preceding the COVID 2019 pandemic.”
2020-07-10 20:09:50
Gilead Sciences said additional data from a late-stage study showed its antiviral remdesivir reduced the risk of death and significantly improved the conditions of severely ill COVID-19 patients.
Remdesivir has been at the forefront of the battle against COVID-19 after the intravenously administered medicine helped shorten hospital recovery times in a clinical trial.
Gilead’s late-stage study evaluated the safety and efficacy of five-day and 10-day dosing durations of remdesivir administered intravenously in hospitalized patients with severe manifestations of COVID-19, caused by the new coronavirus.
Findings from the analysis of its late-stage study showed that 74.4% of remdesivir-treated patients recovered by Day 14 versus 59.0% of patients receiving standard of care, the company said.
2020-07-10 20:01:37
Brazilian inflation as measured by the IPCA consumer price index rose 0.26% in June over May, picking up after the deflation reported in the previous month, according to government statistics agency IBGE.
In the 12 months to June, Brazil recorded 2.13% inflation, roughly in line with a Reuters poll of economists which had predicted prices would increase by 2.16%.
Inflation, as measured by the IPCA index, sank 0.38% in May, as falling fuel and air travel costs due to the coronavirus crisis brought the steepest monthly decline in consumer prices since August 1998.
Annual inflation is well below the central bank’s official 2020 target of 4.0%, even allowing for the margin of 1.5 percentage points allowed on either side of that figure.
2020-07-10 19:51:04
Special Assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan on Health Dr Zafar Mirza said that the nation should follow coronavirus safety measures to mitigate the spread of the pandemic during Eid-ul-Azha.
"We are fast approaching a major challange in EidulAdha. As a nation we have to take a collective responsibility. If we don’t, we may cause another spike in COVID-19 cases," he said.
2020-07-10 19:42:53
Oil prices steadied but were still set for weekly declines as inventories rose and record-breaking new coronavirus cases in the United States stoked concern about the pace of economic recovery and fuel demand.
Brent crude was up by 1 cent, or 0.02%, at $42.36 a barrel by 1338 GMT, and US oil was up 4 cents, or 0.1%, to $39.66 a barrel.
Brent was set for a weekly decline of almost 1% and US crude for a fall of almost 2%.
“Further job losses are on the horizon as several states reimpose lockdown restrictions. America is still in the throes of the pandemic and this spells bad news for the oil demand outlook,” said Stephen Brennock of oil broker PVM.
“While the oil market has undoubtedly made progress ... the large, and in some countries, accelerating number of COVID-19 cases is a disturbing reminder that the pandemic is not under control,” the IEA said.
2020-07-10 19:34:10
Russia moved to defend its Avifavir anti-viral drug on Friday following an inconclusive clinical trial in Japan that tested it against COVID-19 and as the country’s total death toll from the infection surpassed 11,000.
Russia is gradually lifting coronavirus-related restrictions, in place since March and set to reduce its gross domestic product by up to 6% this year, despite recording thousands of new cases daily.
After re-opening sport facilities and restaurants, Moscow now aims to open doors to cinemas from Aug 1 as it continues trials of a number of anti-viral drugs against COVID-19 at home.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is leading the race with its anti-viral drug Avifavir, sending a first batch of 100,000 treatment courses to 35 Russian regions and Belarus last month, with plans to produce more in July.
Avifavir, known generically as favipiravir, was first developed in the late 1990s by a Japanese company later bought by Fujifilm. There is no vaccine for COVID-19 for now.
Russia’s ChemRar, Avifavir’s manufacturer and an RDIF partner, said on Friday that trials completed in Japan were ‘preliminary’ and did not allow a final conclusion to be drawn about how effective favipiravir and favipiravir-based drugs are.
Andrey Ivashenko, ChemRar’s board chairman, said in a statement that Avifavir has the most impact when used on early and mid-coronavirus stages but has less impact if taken later.
2020-07-10 19:24:53
New bank lending in China rose 22.3% in June as authorities continued to boost credit and ease policy to get the world’s second-largest economy humming again after a sharp coronavirus-induced contraction.
Chinese banks extended 1.81 trillion yuan (204 billion pounds)in new yuan loans in June, up from 1.48 trillion yuan in May and slightly exceeding analysts’ expectations, according to data released by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on Friday.
That pushed bank lending in the first half of this year to a record 12.09 trillion yuan ($1.72 trillion), beating a previous peak of 9.67 trillion yuan in the first half of 2019 and roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Canada.
2020-07-10 19:14:17
The key to ensuring a faster US economic recovery is wearing masks and slowing the spread of the coronavirus, Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan said.
“How the virus proceeds and what the incidence is is going to be directly related to how fast we grow,” Kaplan told Fox Business Network in an interview. “While monetary and fiscal policy have a key role to play, the primary economic policy from here is broad mask wearing and good execution of these health care protocols; if we do that well, we’ll grow faster.”
2020-07-10 19:05:56
A Rome zoo showed off two lions cubs on Friday, both born during the city’s long coronavirus lockdown.
Staff said the sisters were the first Asiatic lions born at Bioparco zoo since it started keeping the endangered species 22 years ago.
“A true symbol of hope and resurgence,” Rome’s mayor Virginia Raggi said as she welcomed the news.
Seven-year-old mother Sajani and four-year-old father Ravi looked on as the cubs posed for pictures. At one point they had a play fight with their mother’s tail before she whisked it away.
“We saw just two days before that she was behaving kind of strange, and we suspected she was pregnant,” keeper Yitzhak Yadid said.
“Not all mothers can succeed usually the first time that they give birth. She’s a very, very good mother,” Yadid said.
2020-07-10 18:56:57
Britain will suffer the sharpest peak-to-trough economic slump of any major economy this year, rating agency Moody’s warned on Friday, and ramp up national debt as a share of GDP by nearly a quarter.
Moody’s said the UK government’s latest 30 billion pound ($37.9 billion) stimulus package, announced this week, would aid a gradual economic recovery but add further pressure to the UK’s fiscal position.
“The UK’s public debt ratio will likely rise by 24 percentage points of GDP or more relative to 2019 levels,” a group of Moody’s top analysts wrote in a note.
“We forecast a contraction of 10.1% in the UK’s GDP for this year, but expect a gradual subsequent recovery on the back of the easing in lockdown measures, with growth rebounding to 7.1% next year”.
2020-07-10 18:48:37
Canada added some 952,900 jobs in June, mostly in the service sector, Statistics Canada said. The jobless rate improved to 12.3%.
Employment in the goods producing sector rose by 158,600. The services sector gained some 794,400 positions.
2020-07-10 18:40:46
Britain will set out its position on the European Union coronavirus vaccine scheme later on Friday, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, adding any decision would be based on what is deemed to be in the country’s interests.
Earlier, the Telegraph newspaper reported citing sources that Britain had decided not to join the scheme because of concerns there could be costly delays in securing the vaccine.
The European Commission said a possible decision by the United Kingdom not to join an EU scheme to buy potential COVID-19 vaccines up front will not affect ongoing talks the bloc is carrying out with several drugmakers.
2020-07-10 18:31:51
2020-07-10 18:22:43
Belgium faces a potentially risky summer as its citizens take vacations abroad, but it is vastly more prepared than at the start of the year when skiing holidaymakers brought the new coronavirus back, its health minister said.
“We took all the measures to be prepared for a second wave. Now the dangers are the vacations... people coming back from vacation as we saw in the month of March,” Maggie De Block told Reuters in an interview on Friday.
De Block said a lack of greater coordination with Belgium’s neighbours was a “big concern”. France, Germany and the Netherlands all eased restrictions on visitors from non-EU countries, the Dutch initially opening to 14 countries.
Belgium has not permitted non-essential trips from outside the European Union or Schengen free travel zone, which includes some non-EU countries including Norway and Switzerland.
Belgium has reported 9,781 fatalities from COVID-19, which has seen it placed at the top of tables as the worst hit country on a per capita basis.
“Some say we were very brave, some people say we were very naive to report all the deaths,” she said.
2020-07-10 18:12:49
Islamabad recorded 98 infections in the last 24 hours, among which Soban Garden area registered the most cases.
2020-07-10 18:04:00
The estimated reproduction number for COVID-19 for England edged up to between 0.8 and 1, the government said, from 0.8 to 0.9 the week before.
Across the whole United Kingdom, the so called R number is unchanged between 0.7 and 0.9, indicating the pandemic is shrinking.
The growth rate of infections per day for the UK is -5% to -2%, while for England it is -4% to -1%.
2020-07-10 17:56:31
Israel has recorded its highest number of coronavirus infections over a 24-hour period, with nearly 1,500 new cases confirmed in the most recent daily count, the health ministry said.
Israel had won early praise for its virus containment efforts, but cases have surged since a broad re-opening began in May.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in a late Thursday press conference that the decision to allow businesses, including bars and event spaces, to re-open may have been made "too soon".
"I take responsibility for it," he told reporters.
2020-07-10 17:45:49
When an 80-year-old woman collapsed last week in the streets of the Brazilian capital’s poorest and most populous suburb, she was rushed to hospital and put on a ventilator, neighbors told local media.
But this was not just any suspected COVID-19 case.
Maria Aparecida Ferreira is the grandmother of Brazilian first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, who grew up in Ceilandia, a sprawling, dusty satellite city that has become a hot spot for coronavirus contagion around Brasilia.
The modernistic capital was the first big Brazilian city to adopt social distancing measures to curb the pandemic in March and was weathering the crisis well, until the lifting of quarantine rules triggered a surge in cases, health experts say.
Among the city’s spate of high-profile patients is President Jair Bolsonaro himself, who said on Tuesday he tested positive for the novel coronavirus after running a fever.
Under pressure from Bolsonaro, mayors and governors across Brazil are loosening isolation orders even as confirmed infections explode past 1.7 million cases, with nearly 70,000 dead – the world’s worst outbreak outside the United States.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-10 17:35:22
More than 60,500 new COVID-19 infections were reported across the United States, according to a Reuters tally, setting a one-day record as weary Americans were told to take new precautions and the pandemic becomes increasingly politicized.
The total represents a slight rise from Wednesday, when there were 60,000 new cases, and marks the largest one-day increase by any country since the pandemic emerged in China last year.
As infections rose in 41 of the 50 states over the last two weeks, Americans have become increasingly divided on issues such as the reopening of schools and businesses. Orders by governors and local leaders mandating face masks have become particularly divisive.
“It’s just disheartening because the selfishness of (not wearing a mask) versus the selflessness of my staff and the people in this hospital who are putting themselves at risk, and I got COVID from this,” said Dr. Andrew Pastewski, ICU medical director at Jackson South Medical Center in Miami.
2020-07-10 17:25:24
Australia will halve the number of citizens allowed to return home from overseas each week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, as authorities struggle to contain a COVID-19 outbreak in the country’s second-most populous city.
The state of Victoria reported 288 new cases on Friday, a record daily increase for any part of the country, and sparking fears of a wave of community transmission in a country where most cases have involved returned travellers.
“The news from Victoria remains very concerning,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra.
“The decision that we took... was to ensure that we could put our focus on the resources needed to do the testing and tracing and not have to have resources diverted to other tasks,” Morrison said.
2020-07-10 17:17:05
Norway will lift travel restrictions to and from more than 20 European countries from July 15, including France, Germany and Britain as well as three of the 21 provinces of neighbouring Sweden, the government said.
Citizens and foreign residents of Denmark, Iceland and Finland have been allowed to enter Norway since June 15, the first countries to be approved following Norway’s decision in mid-March to shut its borders to contain the coronavirus spread.
Spain, Greece and the Netherlands were among those added to the list of approved nations on Friday, which will be reviewed at least every 14 days based on data such as infection rates and hospital admissions in each country.
2020-07-10 17:06:50
US stock index futures slipped on Friday as a record increase in coronavirus cases raised fears of another hit to Corporate America with several states delaying the easing of business restrictions.
About 41 of the 50 US states have reported an increase in COVID-19 cases over the last two weeks, while the country registered the largest single-day increase in new infections globally for the second day in a row on Thursday.
The surge has forced Americans to take new precautions, with several states backpedaling on reopening plans but likelihood of a lockdown similar to February and March seems unlikely, according to market experts.
Attention now shifts to the second-quarter earnings season, which will begin with reports from big banks on Tuesday. Overall profits for S&P 500 firms are expected to plunge the most since the financial crisis, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
2020-07-10 16:58:10
Sindh reported 36 deaths and 1,468 coronavirus infections, provincial chief Murad Ali Shah said, as the province's death toll reached1,713 and the overall cases stand at102,368.
Meanwhile, another1,538 patients recovered from the virus, lifting the recovery toll to 59,165.
2020-07-10 16:47:55
Thailand plans to set up an centre to help revitalise an economy hit by the coronavirus outbreak and is considering more relief measures for small businesses, government officials said on Friday.
A rehabilitation centre will work similar to the government’s health-focused COVID-19 administration, but its task will be addressing economic issues, said Kobsak Pootrakool, deputy secretary-general of the Prime Minister’s Office.
“From now on, it must be a balance between disease issues and the mouth and stomach of the people,” he told reporters.
A planned 50 billion baht ($1.6 billion) fund to aid SMEs will be considered by the state planning agency, which is supervising some spending under the government’s 1 trillion baht of borrowing to help recovery from the pandemic.
2020-07-10 16:37:42
TheMinistry of National Health Services Regulations and Coordination has issued health guidelines to curb the spread of COVID-19 during slaughtering of animals and during Eid prayers on the occasion of Eid-ul -Adha.
2020-07-10 16:27:38
2020-07-10 16:12:23
An advance team from the World Health Organization (WHO) has left for China to organise an investigation into the origins of the novel coronavirus which sparked the global pandemic, a spokeswoman said.
The two WHO experts, specialists in animal health and epidemiology, will work with Chinese scientists to determine the scope and itinerary of the investigation, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a UN briefing in Geneva.
“They have gone, they are in the air now, they are the advance party that is to work out the scope,” she said.
“One of the big issues that everybody is interested in, and of course that’s why we’re sending an animal health expert, is to look at whether or not it jumped from species to a human and what species it jumped from,” Harris said.
“We know it’s very, very similar to the virus in the bat, but did it go through an intemediate species? This is a question we all need answered,” she said.
2020-07-10 15:55:10
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government inaugurated the "first" National COVID Hospital in Peshawar, said Special Assistant to CMKP for Local Government and Rural Development Kamran Bangash.
Bangash who accompanied KP CM Mahmood Khan and Health Minister Taimur Jhagra at the inauguration stated the facility had multiple emergency response systems like Isolation wards, ICUs, and HDUs.
2020-07-10 15:45:42
ROME: Italy will likely extend a state of emergency beyond its current deadline of July 31 due to the new coronavirus crisis, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday.
“The possible extension simply means that we are in a position to continue taking the necessary measures” to face the epidemic, Conte said, speaking on the sidelines of a ceremony in Venice.
Italy declared a six-month state of emergency at the end of January, allowing the government to cut through red tape quickly if needed, after two Chinese tourists tested positive for the new coronavirus in the first cases detected in the country.
2020-07-10 14:51:10
BRUSSELS: European Council President Charles Michel on Friday laid out plans for a long-term EU budget of 1.074 trillion euros and a recovery fund of 750 billion euros for pandemic-hammered economies, the starting point for negotiations at a summit next week.
In a bid to make the bloc’s mass economic stimulus more palatable to thrifty northern member states, Michel proposed maintaining the so-called rebate that these countries receive from their contributions to the budget.
2020-07-10 13:43:12
2020-07-10 12:54:56
WELLINGTON: New Zealand’s former prime minister Helen Clark warned if the world remained “flat-footed” in its response to pandemics it faces future economic, social and political crisis, after she was appointed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to lead a review of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
WHO announced late on Thursday that Clark and Liberia’s former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will lead a panel scrutinising the global response.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called both women “strong-minded, independent leaders”, aiming to underscore their freedom in assessing his agency’s and governments’ COVID-19 responses.
In an interview with local broadcaster TVNZ on Friday, Clark said this was the sixth time in 17 years that the WHO has declared a public health emergency.
“This is going to happen again. If the world is as flat-footed in response as it has been to this we are in serious ongoing economic, social, political crisis,” Clark told TVNZ.
2020-07-10 12:47:34
The federal government has issued guidelines for the upcoming Eid Ul Azha that will be celebrated in the country.
The guidelines which have been issued by the federal health ministry will can be accessed online at the government run COVID website.
2020-07-10 12:08:26
TOKYO: Oil prices fell on Friday, adding to steep losses from the previous session, and were headed for weekly declines on worries that renewed lockdowns following a surge in coronavirus cases in the United States and elsewhere would suppress fuel demand.
Brent crude LCOc1 was down by 25 cents, or 0.6%, at $42.10 a barrel by 0341 GMT after falling more than 2% on Thursday. US oil CLc1 fell 33 cents, or 0.8%, at $39.29 a barrel after a drop of 3% in the previous session.
Brent looks set for a weekly decline of nearly 2% and US crude for a fall of more than 3%. Trading was quiet with Singapore on holiday for an election.
While many analysts are expecting economies and fuel demand to bounce back from the pandemic, record daily increases in coronavirus infections in the United States, the world’s biggest oil consumer, raised concerns about the pace of any recovery.
2020-07-10 11:32:53
The US State department's Bureau for South and Central Asian Affairs has lauded the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA) for raising over $1 million.
2020-07-10 10:43:16
HONG KONG: Hong Kong is set to announce the suspension of all schools after a spike in locally transmitted coronavirus cases that has fuelled fears of a renewed community spread in the city, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.
The newspaper cited a medical source as saying that at least 30 more people had tested positive for the virus.
The Asian financial hub reported 42 new cases on Thursday, of which 34 were locally transmitted, marking the second consecutive day of rising local infections.
The total number of cases in the city since late January now stands at 1,366. Seven people have died.
2020-07-10 10:09:25
Confirmed coronavirus cases in the country jumped to 243,599 after 2,751 new cases were detected in the country over the last 24 hours, data from the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) showed.
According to the NCOC, the number of cases in Azad Jammu and Kashmir is 1,485, Balochistan 11,099, Gilgit-Baltistan 1,619, Islamabad Capital Territory 13,829, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 29,406, Punjab 85,261 and Sindh 100,900.
The country also reported 75 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide tally to 5,058.
The NCOC added, 23,255 tests were conducted in the country over the past day.
2020-07-10 09:46:31
SYDNEY/MELBOURNE: Australia will halve the number of citizens allowed to return home from overseas each week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, as authorities struggle to contain a COVID-19 outbreak in the country’s second most populous state.
Since March, Australia has allowed only citizens and permanent residents to enter the country. Once they arrive, they enter a mandatory 14-day quarantine in hotels, which is paid for by state governments.
Morrison said from Monday, Australia will cap the figures at 4,000 people each week. Those who return will also have to pay for their quarantine stays.
“The decision that we took... was to ensure that we could put our focus on the resources needed to do the testing and tracing and not have to have resources diverted to other tasks,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra after a meeting of the national cabinet.
The announcement of new travel restrictions comes days after Victoria state reimposed lockdowns in the country’s second largest city, Melbourne.
The lockdown will last for six weeks following a surge in coronavirus cases linked to social distancing breaches in hotels where returned travellers were held in quarantine.
2020-07-10 09:20:58
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump, who has avoided being seen wearing a face covering in public, said on Thursday he expects to wear a mask when he next visits US troops at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington.
“I expect to be wearing a mask when I go into Walter Reed. You’re in a hospital setting. I think it’s a very appropriate thing. I have no problem with a mask,” Trump told Fox News in an interview.
Trump said he would be visiting wounded soldiers as well as front-line workers seeking to contain the COVID-19 pandemic when he visits the government medical facility in Bethesda, Maryland.
Trump did not say when he would visit, and the White House did not immediately respond to a query about his schedule. CNN has previously reported Trump plans to go on Saturday.
It was unclear whether Trump might be photographed wearing a mask since such visits are often closed to the media to protect the privacy of the wounded soldiers.
Trump, who had become increasingly isolated within the Republican Party for not promoting wearing a mask, has in recent weeks spoken more favorably about their use as COVID-19 cases have surged in the United States.
2020-07-10 08:51:08
BEIJING: China’s aviation industry sank further into the red, losing 34.25 billion yuan ($4.89 billion) in the second quarter, only slightly narrower than in the first quarter, underlining the colossal financial impact from the coronavirus pandemic.
In the first quarter the industry, which includes airlines, airports and other aviation companies, lost 38.1 billion yuan, according to data released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) on Friday.
China’s aviation industry has been recovering faster than most countries emerging from the COVID lockdowns, underpinned by a steady recovery in the domestic travel market after the epidemic was largely brought under control.
But passenger numbers showed the sector is still way below pre-COVID-19 levels, according to the latest official data. June passenger numbers fell 42.4% from a year earlier to 30.74 million, the CAAC said, although that was better than a 52.6% decline in May.
In the first half this year, total passenger numbers dropped by 45.8% from a year ago.
2020-07-09 23:59:58
US President Donald Trump continues to see a malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, as a promising drug to be used to prevent infection with the coronavirus, the White House said, though the US Food and Drug Administration has said its efficacy and safety were unproven.
“The president has always said that he sees hydroxychloroquine as a very promising prophylactic but that every person should not take it unless they get a prescription from their doctor,” White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said at a news conference.
2020-07-09 23:43:43
British health secretary Matt Hancock said he will spell out soon how people will be able to visit relatives in care homes, in a further easing of the coronavirus lockdown.
“In the next few days we will be setting out how COVID-secure visiting can happen in care homes, how we can have more visits of loved ones in a way that is very careful and in a way that keeps care homes safe,” he told ITV News.
2020-07-09 23:34:33
Morocco extended an emergency decree until August 10 giving local authorities leeway in taking restrictive measures in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
The cabinet maintained the decree in force to allow for restoring lockdowns on a region-by-region basis depending on the coronavirus developments.
Morocco has unlocked since June 25 most of the economy allowing cafes, restaurants, sports clubs, and other services and entertainment businesses to resume activity at half capacity except in the provinces where infections remain higher such as Tangier, Marrakech and Safi.
Domestic travel has resumed, while borders are set to reopen on July 14 to nationals in addition to foreign residents and their families.
2020-07-09 23:20:11
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 3,047,671 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 64,771 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 991 to 132,056.
2020-07-09 23:09:57
2020-07-09 22:55:24
Balochistan recorded 47 new infections and one death from the novel coronavirus, the provincial health department said in a report.
The province's recoveries have reached 6,931, while the death toll stands at 125 and the overall cases have reached 11,099.
2020-07-09 22:48:41
South Africa authorities sought to calm fears over coronavirus deaths after health officials in the country's most-populated province said they were ready to bury more than a million people.
Excavators have this week sprung into action to dig long rows of graves in cemeteries throughout Gauteng, which includes the cities of Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, for possible mass burials.
After performing inspections of burial sites in Pretoria, the provincial head of health, Bandile Masuku, said Wednesday that Gauteng was preparing over 1.5 million graves.
"All our municipalities have been putting up capacity and acquiring more in terms of the land that they'll need for burial," Masuku said.
"The province does not have over a million already open, dug graves," the provincial health department said in a statement released on Thursday. "The (figure of) over a million graves refers to the collective capacity municipalities can take," it said.
The health department said the government was working to improve and increase both the health system's infrastructure and human resource capacity to deal with increasing pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Government's response to COVID-19 is informed by the imperative to prevent infections and SAVE lives," the minister of cooperative governance, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, tweeted.
2020-07-09 22:35:41
Slovakia reported its biggest daily jump in new coronavirus cases since April 22 in a jolt to a country with one of the fewest number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 in Europe so far.
Prime Minister Igor Matovic said 53 new cases recorded on Wednesday - the seventh day since June 30 the daily rise was in double digits - was “not a positive figure” but that he believed Slovakia could still head off a second wave of the pandemic.
On Monday epidemiological authorities in the central European country will look at whether tighter restrictions need to be imposed again to contain the contagion.
Matovic said this could include a legal amendment so that people returning from riskier destinations abroad could be contacted by text message and required to report to authorities.
Earlier on Thursday he hinted the state could again reimpose restrictions when he wrote on his Facebook page: “Too many (cases) for us to continue to rely on people’s responsibility.”
2020-07-09 22:31:08
Chinese ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing on Thursday lauded National Command and Control Centre's role in mitigating coronavirus in the country.
"Commanding system of NCOC is contributing greatly for the prevention and control of this terrible virus," Jing said in a video message after attending the inauguration ceremony of the Isolation Hospital and Infections Treatment Centre in Islamabad.
Spread over 40-Kanal land, the 250-bed pre-fabricated facility is fully equipped to combat COVID-19 pandemic providing all modern facilities including five Intensive Care Units, ventilators, nurse calling system as well as maiden E-ICU facility to allow doctors from abroad to treat the patients through telemedicine.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-09 22:21:03
With masks mandatory and advance booking required, Disneyland Paris will gradually reopen from July 15 after a four-month closure due to the coronavirus crisis.
Like other major Paris attractions such as the Versailles palace and the Louvre museum, Europe’s most visited theme park will limit capacity and impose a minimum distance of one metre between visitors to prevent infection risk.
Disney declined to say by how much capacity will be reduced but said that in order to have control over the number of visitors, no tickets will be sold at the entrance and rides where social distancing is difficult will not yet reopen.
Playgrounds and make-up workshops will remain closed for now and in order to make sure that people are not seated next to strangers, Disney has suspended its “single rider” system under which individuals can jump often long queues by taking available seats next to people other than in their own party.
2020-07-09 22:08:44
The chairman of Prime Minister Imran Khan's task force on science and technology, Dr Attaur Rahman, said Pakistani researchers are working on a "100 genome project" to observe changes in the structure of the coronavirus genome with samples taken from different patients.
During an interview with the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP), the renowned scientist said: "Scientists and researchers at Jamilur Rahman Centre for Genome Research, Karachi, have isolated the coronavirus and discovered changes in its structure at eight places as compared to the original virus found in China."
Read complete story here.
2020-07-09 21:53:37
Five companies developing coronavirus vaccines will testify before a sub-committee of the US House Of Representatives later this month, sharing information about their research and development efforts.
Officials from Merck & Co, Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson will testify on July 21, the House Committee of Energy and Commerce said on Thursday.
“This hearing will provide an opportunity for both Congress and the American people to hear directly from some of the manufacturers currently developing potential COVID-19 vaccines,” the committee said.
The five companies, alongside several others, are racing to develop vaccines for COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, and the United States has poured billions in funding some of them to secure access to vaccines should they work.
At the hearing, the companies are also expected to share information about their preparations to manufacture and distribute an eventual vaccine.
2020-07-09 21:33:24
Theatres in England will be able to hold outdoor performances from this weekend and beauticians can reopen next week in a further easing of the coronavirus lockdown, a minister said.
Indoor gyms and swimming pools in England will also be able to reopen from July 25, culture minister Oliver Dowden said at a news conference from Downing Street.
2020-07-09 21:25:31
The coronavirus epidemic risks overwhelming Ghana’s health sector if the government does not take urgent action such as guaranteeing health workers have sufficient protective gear, national medical groups said on Thursday.
As of the end of June, 779 health workers had contracted COVID-19 and many more were unable to work as they waited for test results in isolation, jeopardising care for the growing number of patients requiring hospital care, four associations said in a joint statement.
“The current state of affairs has the potential to over-stretch the already fragile health system,” they said.
“We entreat the government to take swift and practicable measures to avert the imminent calamitous ramifications,” they said.
2020-07-09 21:11:44
African countries must carry out more coronavirus testing and make people use masks, a regional disease control body said as cases topped half a million in the continent.
New cases in Africa were up 24% over the past week, with data from governments and the World Health Organization showing it had 512,499 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 11,930 deaths.
“The pandemic is gaining full momentum,” John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told a virtual news briefing from Addis Ababa.
Nkengasong said African countries, many of which do not have reliable data, must adopt an aggressive approach to encourage the wearing of face masks and ramp up testing and tracing.
“This will save lives and save (the) economy.”
2020-07-09 20:58:28
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded 354 new infections and nine deaths from coronavirus, taking the overall cases in the province to 29,406 and death toll to 1,06.
2020-07-09 20:48:54
2020-07-09 20:38:53
As the number of new coronavirus cases in the United States rose to a single-day record, fresh government data showed another 1.3 million Americans filed for jobless benefits, highlighting the pandemic’s devastating impact on the economy.
The grim US numbers come on top of extraordinarily high jobless figures, although they came in lower than economists had forecast.
Initial unemployment claims hit a historic peak of nearly 6.9 million in late March. Although they have gradually fallen, claims remain roughly double their highest point during the 2007-09 Great Recession.
2020-07-09 20:29:01
The coronavirus crisis will cost banks across the world a combined $2.1 trillion in losses on loans by the end of next year, credit ratings agency S&P Global estimated.
This year is expected to see a $1.3 trillion hit, more than double the 2019 level, S&P predicted. Around 60% of the losses are likely to be in Asia-Pacific it added, though the highest relative increases — more than double on average compared with 2019 — will occur in North America and Western Europe.
2020-07-09 20:11:34
The Brazilian Press Association filed a criminal complaint to the Supreme Court against President Jair Bolsonaro, after he took off his mask in a televised interview in which he announced he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
Bolsonaro made his announcement on Tuesday. His illness is a potent symbol of his government’s botched response to the outbreak in Brazil, the second-worst in the world. More than 1.7 million people in Brazil have tested positive for coronavirus and nearly 68,000 have died.
Brazilian broadcasters pulled journalists off the job after they were exposed to Bolsonaro in the interview, quarantining them until they test negative for the disease.
In its complaint, the press association alleged that Bolsonaro had committed at least two crimes related to putting someone’s life or health at imminent risk and failing to prevent the spread of an infectious disease.
2020-07-09 19:53:22
New applications for US jobless benefits fell last week, but a record 32.9 million Americans were collecting unemployment checks in the third week of June, suggesting the labor market was struggling to claw out of the COVID-19 pandemic slump.
Economists cautioned against reading too much into the drop in weekly jobless claims reported by the Labor Department on Thursday, noting that the period included the July 4 Independence Day. Claims data are volatile around holidays.
Large parts of the country, including densely populated states like Florida, Texas and California, are dealing with record spikes of new COVID-19 cases, which have forced a scaling back or pausing of reopenings and sent some workers home again.
“Jobless claims may have been held down due to the holiday, but don’t be fooled, the economy’s troubles aren’t over yet, not by a long shot,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York. “The total number out of work and receiving benefits is the worst yet in this recession.”
2020-07-09 19:43:36
World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan has said that while the coronavirus can survive in the air sometimes and then be transmitted, it only happens in very "limited environments".
Talking to India Today, Dr Swaminathan noted that when someone speaks, shouts, sings, or even breathes, there are a lot of droplets that come out of their mouth.
"These are of different sizes and what happens is that the larger droplets, they fall to the ground [after travelling] one or two metres and that is why social distancing is recommended — so that these do not fall from one person to another directly," she said.
"There are also smaller droplets these are small, less than five microns in size — called aerosols at times. They can stay in the air and take a little longer to settle down. They can move around by wind and so these particles could be inhaled by other people in the vicinity, and this can be called air transmission," Dr Swaminathan said.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-09 19:31:07
India has conveyed its concerns to the United States about a new immigration order that could force a large number of Indian students to return home, the foreign ministry said.
US President Donald Trump’s administration issued a new rule this week that would bar foreign students from remaining in the United States if their universities are not holding in-person classes during the upcoming fall semester because of coronavirus.
“We have urged the US side that we need to keep in mind the role that educational exchanges and people to people relations have played in the development of our relations,” Anurag Srivastava, spokesman at India’s foreign ministry told a news conference.
2020-07-09 19:16:10
Serbia dropped plans for a weekend lockdown in the capital to curb a new spread of the coronavirus after two days of violent protests against any reimposition of restrictions.
A government crisis group tasked with fighting the virus decided instead on a more limited ban on outdoor and indoor public gatherings of more than 10 people to minimize the risk of further infections.
It also said that working hours at indoor restaurants and cafes would have to end at 9 p.m.
“The lockdown would have been be the most efficient measure...but we decided to take this interim step instead,” Prime Minister Ana Brnabic told reporters after the crisis group meeting.
2020-07-09 18:55:36
The French government backed union calls to avoid compulsory job cuts at Airbus as several hundred workers marched from the company’s headquarters to Toulouse-Blagnac airport.
Airbus plans to cut up to 15,000 jobs because of a drop in demand due to coronavirus crisis, which has sharply lowered air travel and damaged airline finances.
French Junior Economy Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher urged Airbus to avoid compulsory redundancies, echoing a demand from unions in France and Germany where it has its biggest plants.
“There should be no forced departures, which means everyone should be able to choose and be helped; that is our line,” she told Radio Classique.
2020-07-09 18:47:09
Two of the biggest names on the British high street said they would cut more than 5,000 jobs after conceding that customers were unlikely to return to their old ways after the COVID-19 crisis upended retail.
Health and beauty chain Boots, owned by Walgreens Boots Alliance, said it would cut 4,000 jobs and close 48 optician stores after shopper numbers plunged 85% in April at the height of the coronavirus lockdown.
John Lewis, middle England’s favourite department store, said it would close eight stores and lose a possible 1,300 jobs after it predicted that online sales would make up to 70% of its total sales this year and next, from 40% prior to the crisis.
“Closing a shop is always incredibly difficult,” said Sharon White, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership. “However, we believe closures are necessary to help us secure the sustainability of the Partnership.”
2020-07-09 18:35:37
The Asia Cup 2020 has been postponed until next year, the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) announced, putting an end to cricket's second-biggest saga of the calendar year.
The ACC cited the novel coronavirus pandemic as the reason behind the tournament's postponement.
The Asian governing body said it was hopeful that the tournament could be played in June 2021.
2020-07-09 18:26:45
Greece’s economy will contract by 7.5-10.5% this year due to the impact of COVID-19, the country’s influential think tank IOBE said.
The quarterly projection by the Foundation of Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE) was a downgrade of its previous forecast of 5%-9% economic contraction made in April.
Greece lost a quarter of its economic output during its 10-year debt crisis. Its economy grew by 1.9% last year and the government was initially aiming for 2.8% growth this year.
2020-07-09 18:13:36
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said that 40 more people succumbed to the coronavirus within the past day, while 1,538 new cases were reported across the province.
In a statement issued from the CM house, Shah said that the provincial death toll has reached 1,677 as of today, constituting 1.6 % death rate.
He said that 1,538 new patients were detected by testing 9,860 samples, taking the current detection rate to 16%.
According to CM Sindh, around 1,254 patients have recovered within the last 24 hours, adding that the number of patients recovered so far has reached 57,627. The provincial recovery rate is 57 %, he added.
2020-07-09 17:49:10
At a call centre functioning as a coronavirus hotline in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek, the volunteers manning the telephones are under siege.
Call centre coordinator Askhat Abdykerimov says he and his team of more than 60 medics and medical students are now fielding at least 3,000 calls per week.
"When the call centre first opened, we had plenty of calls of a non-medical nature," Abdykerimov told AFP. "Now nearly all calls are people ringing in with symptoms of coronavirus infections."
Bishkek has become a new regional epicentre of the disease that has re-emerged with a vengeance since Kyrgyzstan and fellow ex-Soviet neighbours Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan began relaxing stay-at-home restrictions in May.
2020-07-09 17:37:12
GENEVA: The World Health Organisation, which faced criticism for its handling of the coronavirus crisis, said Thursday it had launched an independent pandemic response panel headed by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
"Through you the world will understand the truth of what happened and also the solutions to build our future better as one humanity," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the UN agency´s headquarters in Geneva.
2020-07-09 15:56:01
Here is how particles from our respiratory system can become airborne, as scientists warn of the risk of COVID-19 infections through aerosols.
2020-07-09 15:29:40
Iran's total number of cases for the coronavirus has reached 250,458, the Health Ministry said on Thursday, adding that 221 people had died in the past 24 hours taking the toll to 12,305.
Iran has been facing a sharp rise in the number of daily infections and deaths in past weeks as lockdown measures have eased.
2020-07-09 14:46:40
Emirates laid off more pilots and cabin crew this week in another round of job cuts as the Gulf airline shrinks its workforce due to the coronavirus pandemic, four sources said.
The Dubai state-owned carrier is cutting thousands of jobs, including pilots and cabin crew as it manages a cash crunch caused by the pandemic, sources have said.
A company spokeswoman on Thursday did not say how many employees had been made redundant in this week's job cuts or from which departments. The workforce of 4,300 pilots and nearly 22,000 cabin crew could shrink by almost a third from its pre-coronavirus levels, sources have previously told Reuters.
Mostly Airbus A380 pilots were affected by the job cuts this week, two sources said, and one of those sources said more redundancies were expected.
Emirates laid off pilots and cabin crew last month as well.
2020-07-09 14:11:20
Russia on Thursday reported 6,509 new cases of the novel coronavirus, pushing its official nationwide tally to 707,301, the fourth largest caseload in the world.
The national coronavirus taskforce said 176 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official virus death toll to 10,843.
2020-07-09 13:32:30
Prime Minister Imran Khan has inaugurated an isolation hospital and infectious treatment center in Islamabad on Thursday.
The 250 bed state of the art facility was constructed in record 40 days to meet additional requirements to ease pressure from capital hospitals.
Speaking to the media after the inauguration, the prime minister appealed to the nation to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha with simplicity, strictly observing SOPs against coronavirus. "Any carelessness on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha will lead to a fresh spike in coronavirus cases," he said.
Commending completion of the isolation hospital in a record short period, the premier said important tasks can be completed with political will.
The 250-bed state of the art medical facility has been constructed in record forty days at a cost of about Rs980 million .
2020-07-09 13:10:33
Tokyo has recorded 224 new cases of coronavirus infection on Thursday, public broadcaster NHK said, marking a new daily record in Japan’s capital since the crisis began.
The total confirmed cases surpassed the previous record of 206 recorded on April 17 when Tokyo and other major population centres were under a state of emergency.
Nationwide, Japan has had more than 20,000 confirmed cases and 980 deaths so far.
2020-07-09 12:39:41
All education institutions, including universities, will reopen from September 15, Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood announced on Thursday.
The minister said that the government will review its decision in the first week of September to monitor the coronavirus situation in the country by taking a look at the health indicators and may review the situation if the need arises.
"We are allowing universities to call PhD students, who are very few in number, to their laboratories for research work before September 15," he said. "As to how they do that, we leave it up to him."
Read the full story here.
2020-07-09 12:10:12
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany rose 442 to 197,783, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday, with the reported death toll up 12 at 9,048.
2020-07-09 11:36:57
A controversial campaign rally held by President Donald Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month likely contributed to a rise in the number of coronavirus cases there, a top local health official said on Wednesday.
Tulsa has confirmed hundreds of new cases of COVID-19 over the past two days, said Dr Bruce Dart, health director for the city and county.
Asked by a reporter if Trump's campaign event at the Bank of Oklahoma Center on June 20 could be responsible for that surge, he said: "In the past few days, we've had almost 500 cases. And we know we had several large events a little over two weeks ago, which is about right. So I guess we just connect the dots," Dart said, apparently referring to the rally and accompanying protests.
2020-07-09 11:04:19
Brazil exceeded 1.7 million confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus with the death toll rising to 67,964, the country's Health Ministry said on Wednesday.
In the last 24 hours, the country registered 44,571 new cases and an additional 1,223 deaths from the disease, ministry data showed.
2020-07-09 10:49:32
Confirmed coronavirus cases in the country jumped to 240,848 after 3,359 new cases were detected in the country over the last24 hours, data from the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) showed.
According to the NCOC, the number of cases in Azad Jammu and Kashmir is 1,459, Balochistan 11,052, Gilgit-Baltistan 1,605, Islamabad Capital Territory 13,731, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 29,052, Punjab 84,587 and Sindh 99,362.
The country also reported 61 fatalities over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide tally to 4,983.
The NCOC added, 1,491,437 tests were conducted in the country over the past day.
2020-07-09 10:22:24
Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate an infectious diseases hospital in Islamabad today, Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar announced on Twitter.
The specialised 250-bed infectious diseases hospital in Islamabad has been built by NDMA in just 40 days to meet the needs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-07-09 09:47:09
Five million people in Australia's second-biggest city began a new lockdown Thursday, returning to tough restrictions just weeks after they ended as Melbourne grapples with a resurgence of coronavirus cases.
Residents have been told to stay at home for six weeks after other measures to contain a spike in COVID-19 failed to prevent the virus spreading.
The state of Victoria has been effectively sealed off in an effort to preserve the rest of Australia's success in curbing the virus.
Queensland state announced Thursday it would turn away all travellers from Victoria— for the first time removing an option that had allowed them to spend 14 days in quarantine on arrival.
2020-07-09 09:08:48
The United States recorded 55,000 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours Wednesday, a tally by Johns Hopkins University showed, bringing its total to 3,046,351 recorded infections since the pandemic began.
The country also added an additional 833 virus deaths, bringing the death toll to 132,195, the Baltimore-based institution said.
Coronavirus cases are surging in several southern hotspots including Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Arizona, but the pandemic has almost entirely receded from its former epicenter in New York and the north-east.
2020-07-08 23:59:14
The numbers of new coronavirus cases and deaths in France reported were higher than the daily average seen over the last week, as health officials warned of a possible second wave of the respiratory disease.
Confirmed COVID-19 cases were up by 663, at 169,473, versus 475 on Tuesday and a daily average of 536 over the last seven days. In June, that average stood at 435, in May at 715 and in April at 2,582.
Top health official Jerome Salomon told Le Figaro newspaper that the country “should brace itself for a pick-up of the pandemic, even for a second wave”.
The COVID-19 death toll rose by 32 from the previous day to stand at 29,965. That figure is almost twice as high as the daily average of 18 seen over the last seven days. In June, France counted 34 additional deaths every day on average, in May 143 and in April 695.
2020-07-08 23:41:31
2020-07-08 23:31:52
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 2,982,900 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 50,304 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 932 to 131,065.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on July 7 compared with its previous report a day earlier.
The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
2020-07-08 23:21:08
Britain’s finance minister promised an additional 30 billion pounds ($38 billion) to head off an unemployment crisis on Wednesday, funnelling money to employers, homebuyers and beleaguered hospitality firms to drive a recovery.
Rishi Sunak, who was already on course to take state borrowing to World War Two levels with 133 billion pounds of initial coronavirus emergency measures, said he would return the public finances to a sustainable footing over the medium term.
But the former Goldman Sachs analyst promised to press on with using the power of the state to shore up the economy, which has forced his Conservative Party to suspend its traditional pro-market instincts.
2020-07-08 23:12:28
Global leaders called for a comprehensive approach to counter the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which International Labour Organization chief Guy Ryder said on Wednesday had plunged the world of work into “unprecedented crisis”.
“Let’s be clear: it’s not a choice between health or jobs and the economy. They are interlinked: we will either win on all fronts or fail on all fronts,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told an ILO summit that will be addressed by dozens of heads of state and government via recorded messages.
World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the summit the world had a special duty to protect the millions of healthcare workers at the front line of the crisis and suffering increasing cases of infection and death.
“Together we have a duty to protect those who protect us,” he said.
2020-07-08 23:00:29
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said on Wednesday he would sign an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings outdoors to prevent a resurgence of the novel coronavirus whenever social distancing is not possible.
The order, when formally announced later in the day, would be one of the most stringent coronavirus restriction on public activity in the United States. Many states require use of masks in public indoor areas and recommend they be used outside.
2020-07-08 22:50:27
The Balochistan health department has reported 133 new cases, taking the provincial tally to 11,052.
No new cases were reported in the last 24 hours.
2020-07-08 21:40:25
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 371 new cases, taking the total to 29,052.
Nine more lives were also reported lost in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 1,054.
2020-07-08 20:22:44
The World Health Organisation in Pakistan has shared its joy over the use of COVID-19 awareness information being disseminated to people in Balochistan's Chaman district.
2020-07-08 19:40:10
Harvard and MIT asked a court Wednesday to block a US government order revoking visas for foreign students whose entire courses have moved online because of the coronavirus.
The universities launched the lawsuit against President Donald Trump´s administration in a Massachusetts district court.
"We will pursue this case vigorously so that our international students, and international students at institutions across the country, can continue their studies without the threat of deportation," Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said in a statement.
Read more here.
2020-07-08 19:07:00
German Chancellor Angela Merkel laid out a vision of greater unity and democracy to ensure the European Union emerges stronger from the coronavirus crisis, which she called its biggest challenge.
Merkel told the European Parliament in Brussels that her priorities during Germany’s six-month presidency of the European Council, which began on July 1, include shoring up fundamental rights that the health emergency has threatened.
She also underlined the need for solidarity across the 27-nation bloc, which has been tested in recent months as governments sometimes acted alone to secure medical kit and close their borders.
“We all know that my visit today is taking place against the background of the biggest trial the European Union has faced in its history,” she said on her first visit in person to the chamber since the easing of coronavirus lockdowns across Europe.
2020-07-08 18:43:50
The Philippines’ health ministry on Wednesday reported 2,539 new coronavirus cases, marking the biggest single-day increase in confirmed infections, and five additional deaths.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total deaths have increased to 1,314 while infections have reached 50,359, a fifth of which were confirmed in the past five days.
The government has warned it might tighten anew the world’s longest lockdown to contain the spread of the virus. It eased quarantine restrictions in the capital in June to partially restart the economy.
2020-07-08 18:28:25
Italy called for new precautionary measures for passengers travelling to European Union countries from outside the bloc to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
Italy has suspended all flights from Bangladesh for one week due to a “significant number” of passengers who tested positive to COVID-19 on a flight to Rome on Monday.
“I would consider it appropriate to outline together new rigorous precautionary measures for arrivals from non-Schengen and non-EU areas,” Health Minister Roberto Speranza said in a letter addressed to the EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides and Germany’s Health Minister Jens Spahn.
2020-07-08 18:09:33
The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) formed a committee under chairmanship of Interior Minister Brig (retd) Ejaz Ahmed Shah to prevent spread of disinformation and fake news about COVID-19 pandemic on social media.
The committee will prepare legal framework to prevent and counter dis-information and suggest action against those involved in spreading false information about the pandemic.
Representatives of ministries of Information and Broadcasting, National Health Regulation and ISPR and other related departments will also be part of the committee.
The first meeting of the committee will be held in few days to finalise modalities and measures for preventing dis-information about COVID-19 on social media.
2020-07-08 18:01:28
Turkey’s industrial production is expected to have contracted 22.5% annually in May due to the near economic standstill brought on by measures to stem the spread of coronavirus.
Turkey logged its first infection on March 11 and soon after many factories halted operations, leading to a larger than expected drop of 31.4% in April production.
Reuters polled six institutions for the median estimate of how much the calendar-adjusted index fell in May. Forecasts ranged between contractions of 16.6% and 31.4%.
Industrial production, viewed as a pre-cursor to economic growth, had expanded for six consecutive months before March.
Turkey’s economy expanded by 4.5% year-over-year in the first quarter of the year thanks to a strong January and February. GDP growth surged in the second half of 2019 as the economy emerged from its last recession.
2020-07-08 17:51:15
Britain will raise the threshold of a tax on property purchases from 125,000 pounds to 500,000 pounds to boost activity in the housing market after the coronavirus lockdown, finance minister Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday.
“This will be a temporary cut running until 31st March 2021. And, as is always the case, these changes to stamp duty will take effect immediately,” Sunak told parliament during a statement on the outlook for the economy.
He said the average stamp duty bill will fall by 4,500 pounds, and nearly nine out of ten people buying a main home this year will pay no stamp duty at all.
2020-07-08 17:39:28
New measures to help Britain’s economy recover from the economic damage from COVID-19 will cost up to 30 billion pounds ($38 billion), Britain’s finance ministry said.
A Job Retention Bonus for up to 9 million workers brought back from furlough could cost up to 9.4 billion pounds, depending on how many stay in work.
A cut in value-added tax for the hospitality and domestic tourism sector would cost 4.1 billion pounds, while a reduction in property purchase taxes would cost 3.8 billion pounds, according to a document published after finance minister Rishi Sunak spoke to parliament.
The 30 billion pound total also included 5.6 billion pounds for infrastructure spending announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on June 30.
2020-07-08 17:29:54
When the new coronavirus hit Tanzania in mid-April, President John Magufuli called for three days of national prayer to seek God’s protection from the scourge. Barely a month later, he claimed victory over the disease and invited tourists to return to his East African nation.
His rush to reopen came despite alarm from the World Health Organization (WHO) over an almost total lack of information on the spread of the virus in the country of 55 million people, which has one of the region’s weakest healthcare systems.
The shortage of reliable data afflicts many African nations, with some governments reluctant to acknowledge epidemics or to expose their crumbling health systems to outside scrutiny. Other nations simply cannot carry out significant testing because they are so ravaged by poverty and conflict.
Sharing information is vital to tackling the pandemic in Africa – both for planning the response and mobilising donor funding - public health experts say. As things stand, it is impossible to gauge the full severity of the contagion across the continent.
According to the latest data collated by Reuters, Africa, with a population of 1.3 billion people, had over 493,000 confirmed cases and 11,600 deaths. By comparison, Latin America, with roughly half the population, had 2.9 million cases and 129,900 deaths.
The official numbers make it seem as though the illness has skirted much of Africa, but the real picture is certain to be worse, with WHO special envoy Samba Sow warning on May 25 of a possible “silent epidemic” if testing was not prioritised.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-08 17:13:31
The US coronavirus outbreak crossed a grim milestone of over 3 million confirmed cases as more states reported record numbers of new infections, and Florida faced an impending shortage of intensive care unit hospital beds.
Authorities have reported alarming upswings of daily caseloads in roughly two dozen states over the past two weeks, a sign that efforts to control transmission of the novel coronavirus have failed in large swaths of the country.
California, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases. The biggest jumps occurred in Texas and California, the two largest U.S. states, with more than 10,000 each. About 24 states have reported disturbingly high infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted over the past week.
2020-07-08 16:59:20
2020-07-08 16:33:38
Sindh reported 23 more coronavirus deaths and 1,736 infections, taking the death toll to 1,637 and overall cases to99,362, province's chief minister Murad Ali Shah said.
2020-07-08 16:00:04
Three hundred drones took to the evening sky over the Han River in South Korea to dispense coronavirus prevention advice through a synchronised light display featuring images of hand-washing and social distancing.
A horde of pin-point lights lifted into the air in military-like formation before rearranging themselves to form the image of a white face mask, with red circles symbolising the new virus which has led to almost 300 deaths in the country.
The 10-minute display, organised by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, also showed images of medical workers in protective suits and messages of support including “#ThanksToChallenge” written above a hand cradling a another flashing a thumbs-up, in reference to a social media campaign encouraging people to express their gratitude to health staff.
2020-07-08 15:41:23
Iran's death toll from the coronavirus passed 12,000 on Wednesday, Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said in a statement on state TV.
There were 153 deaths from the new coronavirus in the past 24 hours, giving a total of 12,084. The total number of infections in the country has reached 248,379, with 209,463 people having recovered, she said
2020-07-08 15:17:32
China criticised the United States' planned withdrawal from the World Health Organisation (WHO), saying on Wednesday that the move will have grave implications for developing countries.
Beijing was urging the international community to step up support for the WHO, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters during a daily briefing.
The United Nations said on Tuesday the United States will leave the WHO on July 6, 2021 after receiving notification of the decision by President Donald Trump, who has accused the agency of becoming a puppet for China during the coronavirus pandemic
2020-07-08 14:48:24
The total number of cases in Russia passed 700,000 on Wednesday, as the country reported 6,562 new infections in the past 24 hours.
The country's coronavirus crisis response centre said 173 people had died from the virus overnight, taking the official death toll to 10,667.
Total infections stand at 700,792. Russia says 472,511 people have recovered.
2020-07-08 14:12:26
The government of Pakistan has launched a web portal for the convenience of Ehsas Emergency Cash applicants, Dr Sania Nishtar, Prime Minister's Special Assistant to the PM announced on Wednesday.
“Web portal has been launched today on which applicants can find out their eligibility by entering their ID card number,” she tweeted.
2020-07-08 13:45:46
Serbian police fired tear gas as thousands of protesters flooded into Belgrade on Tuesday night, angry at the return of a weekend coronavirus curfew.
The crowds protested in the city centre over the government's handling of the crisis, with infections now spiking after Serbia shed its initial lockdown measures two months ago.
Scuffles broke out between police and a group of protesters who stormed into the parliament building and police unleashed tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd.
The demonstrators, who also lit flares and were seen throwing stones at police on local TV, chanted for President Aleksandar Vucic to "Resign!".
In the past two weeks, daily infections have shot up and now regularly top 300.
Last week, the government imposed some new restrictions in several hotspot cities and towns, including Belgrade, where wearing masks in indoor spaces was made obligatory.
2020-07-08 13:08:43
New French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Wednesday that in case of a new major coronavirus outbreak, any new lockdown would be targeted, not nationwide.
He also said in an interview with news channel BFM that after talks on pension reform were halted due to a two-month coronavirus lockdown, new talks with unions would start before July 20.
2020-07-08 12:40:02
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 397 to 197,341, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by 12 to 9,036, the tally showed.
2020-07-08 12:11:11
Scientists have warned of a potential wave of coronavirus-related brain damage as new evidence suggested COVID-19 can lead to severe neurological complications, including inflammation, psychosis and delirium.
A study by researchers at University College London (UCL) described 43 cases of patients with COVID-19 who suffered either temporary brain dysfunction, strokes, nerve damage or other serious brain effects.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-08 11:47:12
More than 11.85 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 542,706 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-07-08 11:06:48
US coronavirus task force response coordinator Dr Deborah Birx has said that United States and other countries could have had a stronger initial response to COVID-19 if China had been more forthcoming about key features of the virus.
Birx said the US would have been more focused on identifying COVID-19 patients without symptoms if China has shared information about the frequency with which COVID-19 patients, particularly young people, are asymptomatic.
President Donald Trump has leveled blame at China for the outbreak, saying the country should have warned the world much sooner.
“I have to say if we had known about the level of asymptomatic spread, we would have all looked at this differently,” Birx said at the panel. “That’s usually the initial countries’ responsibility ... and I think that did delay across the board our ability to really see or look for this.”
2020-07-08 10:23:10
Confirmed cases in the country in the country climbed to 237,489 after 2,980 new coronavirus cases were recorded in the country during the last 24 hours.
According to the national dashboard, Punjab has recorded 83,559 cases, Sindh 97,626, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 28,681 cases, Balochistan 10,919 cases, Islamabad 13,650 infections, 1,595 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,419 in Azad Kashmir.
The country also recorded 83 fatalities from the virus over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide toll to 4,922.
The number of recovered patients is more than the active COVID-19 cases in Pakistan, with 140,965 people recovering from the virus so far.
2020-07-08 09:46:48
Shoppers in Australia's second-biggest city stripped supermarket shelves Wednesday as millions in Melbourne prepared for a return to virus lockdown.
Five million residents were ordered back into a six-week lockdown beginning midnight Wednesday into Thursday as soaring community transmission of the coronavirus brings more than 100 new cases daily.
Around 3,000 people in the city have already been locked inside their homes since Saturday in Australia's strictest coronavirus response to date after a cluster emerged in a high-rise public housing estate.
Australia has recorded almost 9,000 cases of COVID-19 and 106 deaths from the virus.
2020-07-08 09:16:33
Confirmed cases in the US crossed 3 million as more states reported record numbers of new infections.
California, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases. The biggest jumps occurred in Texas and California, the two largest US. states, with more than 10,000 each.
About 24 states have reported disturbingly high infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted over the past week.
In Texas alone, the number of hospitalised patients more than doubled in just two weeks.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-07 23:59:16
Further waves of the novel coronavirus are surely on the way and they will be one of the determinants of Britain’s economic outlook, Bank of England Chief Economist Andy Haldane said on Tuesday.
“How big will be the second and third and fourth wave peaks? They surely will come,” Haldane said in an online talk for Buckingham University.
“What’s to play for is how large those peaks will be.”
Haldane, who last week described the shape of Britain’s economic recovery from the coronavirus lockdown as “so far, so V”, said household spending was bouncing back sharply.
“Since ‘Super Saturday’, we’ve seen something of a pick up too of people spending in restaurants and bars,” Haldane said, referring to the reopening of pubs and eateries at the weekend.
“That leaves the level of activity still materially below its pre-COVID levels. But nonetheless, the direction of travel has been upwards.”
2020-07-07 23:31:21
Serbia will reintroduce a weekend curfew as the Balkan state battles an "alarming" second surge of coronavirus cases, President Aleksandar Vucic has announced.
The decision came after 13 deaths were reported over the past 24 hours, a record for Serbia, which has recorded more than 16,700 infections among its population of some seven million.
"Starting Friday, we are going to have a long curfew ending Monday," the president said in a televised press conference.
A government crisis team managing the pandemic will decide whether the measure applies nationwide or only to the capital Belgrade, he said.
2020-07-07 23:20:39
The World Health Organization said that experts from the global body would travel to China at the weekend to prepare a study of the origins of the novel coronavirus and how it jumped from animals to humans.
“The best place to start is clearly where the disease emerged in humans first, and where the disease emerged in humans first, where the first clusters of atypical pneumonia occurred, was in Wuhan,” Dr Mike Ryan head of the WHO’s emergencies programme, told a news briefing in Geneva.
Heavily criticised by the United States and others who have accused it of secrecy and a late response to the outbreak, which emerged in the central city of Wuhan late last year, China has said it was transparent throughout the early stages of the pandemic.
2020-07-07 23:13:51
The number of people who have died from coronavirus infection in France rose by 13 to 29,933 on Tuesday, but that figure takes into account a downward revision of fatalities in nursing homes.
The number of people who died in hospitals increased by 34 to 19,457, compared to the daily average of 23 over the past seven days.
The health ministry also reported the death toll in nursing homes now stands at 10,476, versus 10,497 a week earlier.
2020-07-07 23:01:02
The Sindh health department has released the city-wise distribution of the coronavirus cases and deaths to have occurred in the last 24 hours.
2020-07-07 22:51:23
The Balochistan health department has notified 78 new infections in the province, taking the tally of infected to 10,919.
One more death was also reported, taking the death toll to 124.
2020-07-07 22:34:26
Beijing reported zero new coronavirus cases for the first time since the emergence of a cluster in the Chinese capital in June that prompted fears of a domestic second wave.
A total of 335 people have been infected since a cluster emerged at the city's massive Xinfadi wholesale market in early June.
The news comes as millions of students in the city and around the country gather in exam halls to take the all-important national college entrance exam after days of tracking their health.
Beijing's health commission said on Tuesday it detected only one asymptomatic case the previous day, which China does not include in its count of confirmed infections.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-07 22:24:32
Latin America and the Caribbean now account for 50% of the COVID-19 cases in the Americas, and the number of registered cases continues to accelerate, the World Health Organization’s regional director Carissa Etienne said.
“This is a pandemic of staggering proportions and we have no option but to continue to put all our energy into controlling it,” she said in a virtual briefing from Washington with Pan American Health Organization directors.
PAHO wished Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro a speedy recovery from his positive test result for COVID-19.
“The message is that this virus in unpredictable and does not respect race, class or people in power, despite security around any president,” said PAHO director for communicable diseases Marcos Espinal.
2020-07-07 22:16:24
Visitors from three more US states who travel to New York will be required to quarantine for 14 days to control the spread of coronavirus, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, as alarm grew over a surge in infections in large parts of the country.
New York state unveiled the travel advisory last month in an effort to prevent a resurgence after the state got its outbreak under control.
Delaware, Kansas and Oklahoma, all of which are grappling with “significant” community spread of the virus, have been added to the list, Cuomo announced in a statement, bringing the total number of states under the travel advisory to 19.
New Jersey also added the three states to its quarantine order.
Parts of the United States, including Florida, Texas and California, have experienced a sharp rise in infections in the past two weeks, an indication that the pandemic remains largely uncontrolled despite the end of lockdowns to control its spread.
2020-07-07 22:05:53
2020-07-07 21:47:25
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he has tested negative for coronavirus, a step he needed to take before traveling to Washington to meet with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
Lopez Obrador, who will meet with Trump to celebrate a new North American trade deal, said he was prepared to have another test in the United States if necessary.
2020-07-07 21:36:23
British finance minister Rishi Sunak will Wednesday unveil a mini-budget to help kickstart the UK economy following devastation wreaked by coronavirus fallout, featuring green investment worth £3.0-billion ($3.7-billion, 3.3 billion euros).
Chancellor of the Exchequer Sunak hopes the plan will help to support more than 100,000 green jobs, including across the construction sector.
He will offer £2.0 billion in grants for households to insulate homes and make them more energy efficient, the Treasury said in a statement Tuesday.
Sunak will also provide £1.0 billion in green grants for public sector buildings, including hospitals, schools and social housing. In England, the government aims to pay for at least two thirds of homeowner costs on green upgrades.
"As Britain recovers from the outbreak, it's vital we do everything in our power to support and protect livelihoods across the nation," Sunak said in the statement.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-07 21:23:16
The euro zone economy will drop deeper into recession this year and rebound less steeply in 2021 than previously thought, the European Commission forecast on Tuesday, with France, Italy and Spain struggling the most due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The downbeat assessment of Europe’s economy comes amid concern the U.S. recovery may also be faltering as a surge of new coronavirus infections prompts states to delay and in some cases reverse plans to let stores reopen and activities resume.
The EU executive said the 19-nation single currency area would contract by a record 8.7% this year before growing by 6.1% in 2021. In early May, the Commission had forecast a 2020 downturn of 7.7% and a 2021 rebound of 6.3%.
In Germany, the euro zone’s largest economy, where widespread testing has helped limit fatalities, the Commission moderated its estimates both of 2020’s downturn — to -6.3% from -6.5% forecast in May — and next year’s rebound.
2020-07-07 21:14:25
The usually grand Baalbek Music Festival, set among 3,000-year-old Roman ruins in Lebanon, was reduced to just a single concert this year by the COVID-19 pandemic.
For maestro Harout Fazlian, however, it was one of the most special of his career.
On a stage in the ancient temple of Bacchus, Fazlian conducted the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra and three choirs in an hour-long concert that included works by the Lebanese composer brothers Assi and Mansour Rahbani, Verdi and Beethoven.
There were no crowds due coronavirus restrictions, but the performance, captured by 14 cameras and drones, was broadcast live on almost all the main Lebanese TV stations as well as streamed online.
“Every person will have a front row seat,” said Fazlian, who came up with the idea during Lebanon’s coronavirus lockdown two months ago. “This beautiful temple has gone through so much for 3,000 years, but it has survived, and we will survive.”
Read complete story here.
2020-07-07 20:57:47
Iraq partially reopened its southern Shalamcheh border crossing with Iran after more than three months of closure to combat the spread of the new coronavirus, border officials said.
The crossing was being opened only for the trade of foodstuffs, allowing in some 500 trucks from Iran per week and would open every Wednesday and Sunday from now on, one of the officials said.
Iraq closed its international borders and provincial boundaries in March except for the delivery of essential goods such as food as it sought to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
2020-07-07 20:48:11
Britain’s daily death toll from confirmed COVID-19 cases has risen by 155 to 44,391, the government said on Tuesday.
2020-07-07 20:38:46
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, he said in a television interview on Tuesday.
2020-07-07 20:30:40
Sweden’s daily tally of new COVID-19 cases fell to its lowest since late May, a sharp reversal from June when expanded testing fuelled record numbers in a country that drew global attention for its rejection of a lockdown.
Cases in the Nordic country have declined sharply over the past few days and on Tuesday only 283 new cases were recorded.
Health Agency Director General Johan Carlson said the slow expansion of testing had left the country with a “testing debt” that produced a surge in cases when thousands with mostly mild symptoms rushed to get the tests suddenly available to them.
“In all likelihood, this was a mountain that we needed to dig away at,” he told a news conference.
2020-07-07 20:19:55
A huge German slaughterhouse and meat packing plant at the centre of a coronavirus outbreak cannot reopen until authorities are satisfied with its hygiene procedures, the chief executive of the Guetersloh district said.
Some 600,000 people in Guetersloh, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, were forced back into lockdown on June 23 after more than 1,500 workers at the Toennies slaughterhouse and meat packing plant tested positive for COVID-19.
Sven-Georg Adenauer said in a news conference broadcast online that the plant could only be reopened if there is “no threat to the people who work in this company and also not to the people in the Guetersloh region”.
The company had presented a hygiene plan to authorities that went in the right direction but “still needs work and I believe the company will undertake this”, he said, adding it was still not possible to say when the plant would reopen.
The outbreak sparked a national debate about whether consumers should be prepared to pay more for meat to improve standards in German meat packing plants.
The plant has provisionally been ordered to close up to July 17, Adenauer said. Health and safety officials continue to inspect it and negotiate with the company over the new hygiene plan. Another round of assessments will be made on Thursday.
2020-07-07 20:04:36
A top Israeli health official resigned Tuesday, saying her guidance on combatting the coronavirus was being disregarded and the country's containment efforts were "disoriented" as it faced a surging caseload.
The resignation of Siegal Sadetzki, the health ministry's director of public health services, came after Israel re-imposed several lockdown measures in an effort to curb the virus's spread.
"For a few weeks now, our compass for dealing with the pandemic has become disoriented," Sadetzki wrote in a Facebook post announcing her decision to step down.
"Despite repeated warnings in different forums, we are watching with frustration as our window of opportunity (to contain the virus) is running out," added Sadetzki, an epidemiologist.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-07 19:42:03
In Dubai’s Atlantis resort, at the head of a palm tree-shaped island, workers in face masks clean cushions, sofas and king-size beds in luxury suites that have largely been vacant since the coronavirus pandemic.
The resort and seven other hotels in the regional tourism hub contacted by Reuters are seeing business pick up as Dubai reopened to foreign visitors on Tuesday, but do not expect a significant increase before the fourth quarter of 2020.
“Bookings have started to increase,” Tim Kelly, managing director at Atlantis Dubai, said, adding he expected a “solid” fourth quarter for the resort, known for its giant aquarium and water slides.
The resort shut in March as the United Arab Emirates imposed a coronavirus lockdown and reopened in mid-May when restrictions started easing gradually. Curfews were fully lifted late last month and commercial business and public venues have reopened.
The coronavirus outbreak delivered a blow to Dubai, one of the most visited cities globally, where tourism accounts for more than 11% of GDP. Dozens of hotels closed while occupancy rates fell to less than 10% in others.
2020-07-07 19:32:27
India’s Sovereign Pharma said it has dispatched the first batch of generic remdesivir for drugmaker Cipla Ltd, as the country recorded more than 22,000 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday.
At current capacity, Sovereign can supply 50,000 to 95,000 vials per month of the injectable, the company said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. It did not disclose how many vials are there in the batch for Cipla.
Privately held Sovereign Pharma is manufacturing and packaging Cipla’s remdesivir version.
Cipla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
2020-07-07 19:18:57
2020-07-07 18:59:34
The Rodin museum in Paris reopened on Tuesday and is hoping the sale of limited-edition cast bronzes of work by the 19th-century sculptor will help make up some of its financial losses from a fall in visitor numbers due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“The sale of the bronzes is an important element of our commercial strategy, which we have been developing for some years and which will contribute to the financial health of the museum,” its director Catherine Chevillot said.
The museum, which is self-financed, has a target to sell 3 million euros worth of bronzes each year, she said. Buyers range from museums worldwide to art collectors.
The museum, which houses Auguste Rodin masterpieces such as “The Kiss” and “The Thinker” was allowed by Rodin to cast and sell bronzes after his death.
It must, however, limit original editions to 12 casts, meaning pieces like “The Thinker” can no longer be cast while four more editions of “The Gates of Hell” can go on sale.
The museum expects a revenue shortfall of 4.4 million euros this year because of the pandemic’s impact on visitor numbers and other sources of revenue, Chevillot said.
2020-07-07 18:49:00
Five additional US airlines — Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines — have taken steps to seek federal loans amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, the US Department of Treasury said.
The airlines had signed letters of intent, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement, adding: “We look forward to working with the airlines to finalize agreements and provide the airlines the ability to access these loans if they so choose.”
2020-07-07 18:39:16
The United Arab Emirates Central Bank said the country’s banking sector can withstand any scale of shock as banks are well capitalised.
It said that while the coronavirus pandemic poses challenges to banks, “our stress tests demonstrate that the UAE banking sector is able to withstand macro-financial shocks of any size.”
The capital adequacy rate among UAE banks stood at 16.9% as of the end of March and the eligible liquid asset rate was 16.6% as of the end of May - “well in excess of the minimum regulatory requirements,” it said in a statement.
2020-07-07 18:28:39
Information Minister Shibli Faraz said that coronavirus could spread during Eid-ul-Adha if SOPs and other safety measures were not followed.
Addressing a press conference, he said: "The prime minister has decided to celebrate Eid-ul-Adha at home."
Advising people, the information minister said: "People should also refrain from going out and remain indoors during Eid."
2020-07-07 18:19:16
Germany’s eastern state of Saxony plans to allow large-scale events with more than 1,000 visitors from September 1, Bild newspaper cited the state’s health minister as saying on Tuesday, adding this would include football games.
Petra Koepping, Saxony’s health minister, said there would not be an upper limit to the number of guests allowed at large events but said it would need to be possible to trace them later if necessary, Bild reported.
It said that fairs would be allowed in Saxony from 18 July.
2020-07-07 18:11:00
Germany’s Lufthansa airlines will cut 20% of its leadership positions and 1,000 administrative jobs in a restructuring plan that it announced to cope with fallout from the coronavirus crisis.
Lufthansa Group, which employs about 138,000 people, said it would also halve its investment in new aircraft, although it said that meant it could still add up to 80 new planes by 2023.
2020-07-07 17:59:31
Britain’s GSK said it will develop and test a potential COVID-19 vaccine using its booster technology and Canadian biopharmaceutical firm Medicago’s coronavirus-like particles.
GSK, the world’s largest vaccine maker, said the companies aim to make their vaccine available in the first half of next year and produce about 100 million doses by the end of 2021. Early stage testing in humans is expected to begin in mid-July.
2020-07-07 17:49:14
Doctors in Sierra Leone, who are refusing to treat COVID-19 patients to press demands for bonus payments and more protective equipment, threatened on Tuesday to suspend care for other patients too if the dispute is not resolved by Sunday.
The doctors stopped handling coronavirus cases last Thursday after a more than month-long stand-off with the West African government over what they say is a misuse of funds for the COVID-19 response.
“We had a meeting with (the) government yesterday but their interest in resolving this did not appear significant,” said Dr. Samba Jalloh, Secretary General of Sierra Leone’s Medical and Dental Association.
“We plan to expand the strike to include treatment for general patients if a solution cannot be met by the end of this week,” he told Reuters.
2020-07-07 17:38:53
A consortium of six of the Philippines’ biggest conglomerates on Tuesday dropped a proposal to upgrade and operate the country’s main airport, as the impacts of the coronavirus hit the viability of the $2 billion project.
Modernising the ageing and congested Manila airport was among the largest projects of President Rodrigo Duterte’s $180 billion “build, build, build” planned infrastructure overhaul, his signature economic policy.
The consortium said it reviewed its plans in light of the impact of the coronavirus on global travel and proposed to the government changes to ensure the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) project was viable.
“Unfortunately, the government indicated that it is not willing to accept most of the consortium’s proposed options and the consortium can only move forward with the NAIA project under the options it has proposed,” the group said in a statement.
2020-07-07 17:30:38
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals said the US government signed a $450 million contract with the drugmaker to make and supply its potential double antibody cocktail for COVID-19.
The cocktail, REGN-COV2, is in separate clinical trials assessing its effectiveness in preventing and treating COVID-19, the company said reut.rs/2O2ADgu.
Regeneron signed the contract with the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the Department of Defense. The doses manufactured under the project will be owned by the federal government.
The contract comes under the government’s “Operation Warp Speed” program, aimed at accelerating access to vaccines and treatments to fight the coronavirus.
2020-07-07 17:19:24
2020-07-07 17:10:28
The World Health Organisation urged travellers to wear masks on planes and keep themselves informed as COVID-19 cases surge again in some countries, prompting new restrictions in places like Australia.
Spokeswoman Margaret Harris urged people not to be caught off-guard by resurgent local epidemics and quarantine measures, saying: “If it’s anywhere, it’s everywhere and people travelling have to understand that.”
“This virus is widespread and people have to take that very, very seriously.”
In the meantime, travellers should “remember things will change, or may well change”, Harris said at a Geneva briefing.
“We’re seeing a lot of upticks, a lot of changes in different countries, countries that had successfully shut down their first transmission are seeing second upticks,” she added, mentioning Australia and Hong Kong.
2020-07-07 17:09:41
Kuwait will disburse some 240.5 million dinars ($780 million) to support Kuwaiti citizens employed in the private sector as part of efforts to soften the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the finance ministry said.
The Public Authority for Manpower will transfer sums to Kuwaiti business owners and private sector employees for six months effective from last month.
Only around 70,000 Kuwaiti citizens work in the private sector, where most employees are foreigners. As companies have laid off large numbers of foreign workers, the government has sought to retain Kuwaitis.
Kuwait’s finances have been squeezed by the twin shock of the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices.
Despite its vast wealth, the country could see its deficit widen to more than 11% of gross domestic product (GDP) this year from a 4.8% surplus last year, the International Monetary Fund has estimated.
2020-07-07 16:59:21
Spain’s cabinet will on Tuesday approve the extension of measures aimed at easing the financial burden on rental tenants and homeowners hit by the coronavirus, government sources told Reuters.
With the new measures, tenants will be able to renew their existing contracts for six months under the same conditions, while a ban on utility companies cutting gas, electricity and water supplies will remain in place until Sept. 30, the sources said.
For qualifying homeowners, the deadline to apply for a holiday on mortgage payments will be pushed back until the end of September from July 20.
Battered by the pandemic lockdown and travel restrictions, Spain’s economic output is likely to have shrunk 20% in the second quarter, according to the central bank.
2020-07-07 16:49:39
Thailand’s household debt level to gross domestic product (GDP) rose slightly to 80.1% in the first quarter, the highest level in four years, central bank data showed, with the trend set to continue as the coronavirus outbreak squeezes the economy.
Southeast Asia’s second’s largest economy could shrink a record 8.1% this year, the central bank predicts.
As of March, household debt stood at 13.479 trillion baht ($431.47 billion), little changed from the 13.483 trillion baht at the end of last year, equal to 79.9% of GDP.
The debt to GDP ratio may jump to 88-90% at the end of this year, which would be the highest in the 18 years that the central bank has compiled records on household debt, according to Kasikornbank’s research centre.
2020-07-07 16:39:29
The US government has awarded Novavax Inc $1.6 billion to cover testing, commercialisation and manufacturing of a potential coronavirus vaccine in the United States, with the aim of delivering 100 million doses by January 2021.
Novavax shares jumped 35% in premarket trade.
The award is the biggest yet from “Operation Warp Speed”, the White House program aimed at accelerating access to vaccines and treatments to fight the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
“What this Warp Speed award does is it pays for production of 100 million doses, which would be delivered starting in the fourth quarter of this year, and may be completed by January or February of next year,” Novavax Chief Executive Stanley Erck told Reuters.
2020-07-07 16:30:36
Coronavirus claimed 42 more lives infected 1,388, taking the death toll to 1,614 and over cases to 97,626, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said in a statement.
The death rate of the province increased from 1.6% to 1.7% after new deaths were reported, CM Shah said.
"This needed to be controlled through awareness and timely treatment," he added.
2020-07-07 16:17:08
2020-07-07 16:00:01
With a "welcome" passport sticker and coronavirus tests on arrival, Dubai reopens its doors to international visitors Tuesday in the hope of reviving its tourism industry after a nearly four-month closure due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The reopening comes even as the number of COVID-19 cases in the United Arab Emirates climbs to 52,068 included 324 deaths, with millions of foreign workers living in cramped accommodation particularly hard hit.
Incoming tourists are required to present a negative test result taken within four days of the flight. If not, they can take the test on arrival, but must self-isolate until they receive the all-clear.
Dubai welcomed more than 16.7 million visitors last year, and before the pandemic crippled global travel, the aim had been to reach 20 million arrivals in 2020.
"We are ready to receive tourists while we take all necessary precautions," said Talal Al-Shanqiti of Dubai´s General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs in a video message tweeted on Sunday.
2020-07-07 15:45:18
Iran announced on Tuesday 200 more deaths from the coronavirus, the most in a single day since the Middle East´s deadliest outbreak began in February.
The country's overall death toll from the COVID-19 illness now stands at 11,931, health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on state television.
2020-07-07 15:33:37
The United Kingdom's suspected COVID-19 death toll has hit 55,398, according to a Reuters tally of official data sources that underline the country's status as one of the worst hit in the world.
The Reuters tally comprises fatalities where COVID-19 was mentioned on death certificates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland up to June 26, and up to June 28 in Scotland. It also includes more recent hospital deaths.
The Office for National Statistics said total deaths in England and Wales in the week to June 26 had now fallen below the five-year average for the second week running.
2020-07-07 15:10:41
Russia on Tuesday reported 6,368 new coronavirus cases, taking its nationwide tally of infections to 694,230.
The country's coronavirus crisis response centre said 198 people had died from the virus in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 10,494.
Russia said 463,880 people have recovered from the virus.
2020-07-07 14:44:54
The United States is still "knee-deep" in its first wave of coronavirus infections and must act immediately to tackle the recent surge, says the country's top infectious diseases expert.
Anthony Fauci said the number of cases had never reached a satisfactory baseline before the current resurgence, which officials have warned risks overwhelming hospitals in the country's south and west.
"It's a serious situation that we have to address immediately," Fauci said, adding, he did not strictly consider the ongoing rise in cases a "wave."
"It was a surge or a resurgence of infections superimposed upon a baseline," he said.
2020-07-07 14:00:05
Australia's second most populous state of Victoria will reimpose stay-at-home restrictions in metropolitan Melbourne and one regional area of the state, Premier Daniel Andrews said, after a record daily rise in coronavirus infections.
"These are unsustainably high numbers of new cases," Andrews said in a media briefing in Melbourne on Tuesday.
Victoria reported 191 new COVID-19 cases overnight, the biggest since the epidemic began. The state reported its previous high of 127 new cases on Monday.
The restrictions will become effective from Wednesday night and will be in place for six weeks
2020-07-07 12:53:44
The United Arab Emirates plans to test two million people, or about 20% of the population, for the novel coronavirus over the next two months after the infection rate climbed again following the lifting of restrictions, a government spokesperson said.
"While it is worrying to see a slight increase in cases in the past few days, it is a reminder that we all should be responsible and committed to follow health practices," government spokesperson Amna al-Shamsi said.
"UAE health authorities continue to increase testing capacity for COVID-19, with additional 2 million tests to be performed in the coming two months, across the country," she said in comments carried on the government Twitter account.
The UAE recorded 528 new cases on Monday, taking its tally to 52,068 with 324 deaths. The daily infection rate had dropped from a peak of over 900 in late May to average between 300 to 400, but rose over the weekend to some 700.
2020-07-07 12:01:00
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is reviewing a report urging it to update guidance on the novel coronavirus after more than 200 scientists, in a letter to the health agency, outlined evidence the virus can spread in tiny airborne particles.
The WHO says SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spreads primarily through small droplets expelled from the nose and mouth of an infected person that quickly sink to the ground.
“We are aware of the article and are reviewing its contents with our technical experts,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said on Monday in an email.
Read more here.
2020-07-07 11:23:20
India’s death toll from the coronavirus pandemic surpassed 20,000 on Tuesday and case numbers surged as the south Asian nation pushed ahead with relaxations to its almost two-month lockdown amid grim economic forecasts.
The rate of both new virus infections and deaths are rising at the fastest pace in three months, as officials lift a vast lockdown of India’s 1.3 billion people that has left tens of thousands without work and shuttered businesses.
The country reported 467 new deaths on Tuesday, taking the toll to 20,160. It also recorded 22,252 new infections, increasing the total to 719,665. India on Monday overtook Russia as the third most affected country globally, behind the United States and Brazil.
2020-07-07 10:49:42
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 234,509 on Tuesday after Pakistan reported 2,691 new coronavirus cases, latest data from the National Command and Control (NCOC) showed.
According to the data, the number of confirmed cases in Sindh stand at 96,236, 82,669 in Punjab, 1,383 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 10,841 in Balochistan, 1,587 in Gilgit Baltistan, 13,557 in Islamabad Capital Territory and 28,236 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The country also recorded 77 fatalities over the last 24 hours to take the nationwide death toll to 4,839.
The NCOC added 134,957 people have recovered from the virus so far in the country.
2020-07-07 10:21:48
Beijing on Tuesday reported zero new coronavirus cases for the first time since the emergence of a cluster in the Chinese capital in June that prompted fears of a domestic second wave.
A total of 335 people have been infected since a cluster emerged at the city's massive Xinfadi wholesale market in early June.
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.
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 neighbouring Hebei province to contain a fresh cluster there, adopting the same strict measures imposed at the height of the pandemic in the epicentre of Wuhan city earlier this year.
2020-07-07 09:28:07
The United States passed another grim coronavirus milestone as the death toll from the virus climbed past 130,000, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
The country also posted a worrying number of new daily infections, at 54,999— a few thousand shy of the record set just days ago— and 357 new deaths.
The country has reported a total of 2,931,142 COVID-19 cases and 130,248 deaths, the university reported.
The United States— the world's hardest-hit country, both in confirmed cases and deaths— has experienced a resurgence of the virus since June that has forced several states to suspend their phased economic reopenings.
2020-07-07 08:54:15
New Zealand has said its national airline will not take new bookings for three weeks as the country looks to limit the number of citizens returning home to reduce the burden on overflowing quarantine facilities.
Bookings on Air New Zealand flights will be managed to ensure the government can safely place citizens into managed isolation facilities, Housing Minister Megan Woods said in a statement.
“We are seeing rapid growth in the numbers of New Zealanders coming home as the COVID-19 pandemic worsens,” Woods said.
“The last thing we need are hastily set up facilities to meet demand.”
The government is also talking to other airlines about managing flows, she said.
New Zealand has 22 active cases of COVID-19, all from returning New Zealanders, with no known community transmission. It has recorded 22 deaths from 1,186 cases during the pandemic.
2020-07-06 23:59:51
Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta announced on Monday a phased reopening of the country from a COVID-19 lockdown, lifting restrictions on travel in and out of the capital Nairobi and allowing air travel to resume.
Kenyatta said the country has reached a reasonable level of preparedness for a partial loosening of restrictions but urged caution and warned against reckless behaviour.
“Today I order and direct that the cessation of movement into and out of the Nairobi metropolitan area, Mombasa county and Mandera county that is currently enforced shall lapse today or at 4 a.m. (0100 GMT) tomorrow, Tuesday the 7th of July 2020,” said Kenyatta in a televised address.
2020-07-06 23:45:24
2020-07-06 23:31:40
Uber Technologies said it would acquire Postmates Inc for $2.65 billion to expand its food delivery market share and significantly increase the business of supplying everyday goods at a time when the coronavirus has pummeled its core ride-hailing service.
The all-stock deal, still subject to regulatory approval, would give Uber a roughly 30% share of the US food delivery market, trailing only rival DoorDash, which commands some 45%, according to analytics firm Second Measure.
Uber said both companies’ boards have approved the deal, for which Uber currently expects to issue some 84 million shares of common stock. Uber offered a premium of about 10% on Postmates’ last valuation of $2.4 billion. Its shares were up 5% at $32.24.
Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi on Monday told analysts the tie-up would allow Uber Eats to distinguish itself by delivering not only restaurant food, but everything from groceries to personal care and fashion items.
“The vision for us is to become an everyday service,” the Uber CEO said.
2020-07-06 23:24:15
2020-07-06 23:17:24
Moody’s Investors Service is expecting Canadian provinces to shift rapidly to stabilising the additional debt burdens they are taking on due to the coronavirus crisis once economic growth resumes.
The ratings agency expects Canada’s economy to contract by 7% in 2020 and all 10 provinces to post “material deficits” in the fiscal year that began in April. That includes an expected deficit of more than 30% of revenue for Alberta, which faces the additional challenge of low oil prices.
That will lead to a sharp increase in debt burdens for the provinces this fiscal year, Moody’s said. But the ratings agency sees debt loads stabilizing in 2021-22 as revenue recovers, which could signal it is in no rush to downgrade the provinces’ debt.
“We forecast that the debt burden of each province will return to the respective pre-pandemic trend dynamics across the next three years,” Moody’s said.
2020-07-06 23:06:34
The French economy is on course to bounce back this quarter as much as it probably slumped in the previous three months, the central bank estimated, saying it might need to revise up its 2020 forecast.
The euro zone’s second-biggest economy could expand by an unprecedented 14% in the third quarter if activity remains at least at current levels, the Bank of France said.
It estimated that the economy had shrunk an equally unprecedented 14% in the second quarter as France began emerging from a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, slightly less than its previous projection for a 15% contraction.
The government imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe in mid-March, plunging the economy into a 5.3% slump in the first quarter alone. Lockdown restrictions began to be lifted on May 11.
The central bank estimated that the economy was operating down 7% from normal levels, an improvement from 9% last month and 32% at the start of the lockdown in March.
2020-07-06 22:57:51
2020-07-06 22:47:12
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign made the decision to “strongly encourage” masks at the Republican president’s next rally as a precautionary measure, the White House chief of staff said.
The Trump campaign plans an outdoor rally on Saturday in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
“Obviously we’re looking forward to being in the Granite State and back with the folks up in New Hampshire, and as we look at that it’s more a factor of precaution,” Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said in an interview with Fox News.
2020-07-06 22:37:37
Britain will invest nearly $2 billion in the arts and hopes to allow outdoor and socially distanced performances at cultural venues as it tries to help a high-profile sector hit hard by the coronavirus.
Spanning theatres in London’s West End, opera houses and ballet companies putting on big-budget performances to provincial venues up and down the country, the industry is a prominent British export and popular among tourists and locals alike.
But it has been left without a live audience since lockdown measures were imposed in March while other sectors begin to reopen.
“I want all our cultural institutions to return to normal,” minister Oliver Dowden told Sky News on Monday.
“Very soon I hope we will be able to permit outdoor performances and then later over the summer be able to have socially distant performances.”
2020-07-06 22:20:00
The number of coronavirus hospitalisations in New York state dropped to 817, its lowest since March 18, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.
The governor cited continued progress in the state’s fight against the virus and said nine people had died of COVID-19 on July 5.
“The numbers have actually declined since we started reopening,” Cuomo told a daily news briefing.
2020-07-06 22:11:37
Russian authorities have dug a trench around a remote Siberian village to enforce a quarantine, after dozens of residents contracted the coronavirus, which local officials believe was spread at a traditional shaman ritual.
The village of Shuluta, located some 30 kilometres south east of Lake Baikal in Siberia’s Buryatia region, has 37 confirmed cases of the virus among its 390 residents.
Ninety-five other people are believed to have been in contact with those infected and are also required to quarantine, said the head of the local administration, Ivan Alkheyev.
Alkheyev said the outbreak started after dozens of villagers took part in a shaman ritual on June 10, performed by an infected woman.
The ditches which encircled Shuluta were dug on June 29 as a measure to stop tourists from driving though the village to nearby Tunka National Park, as well as to limit movement by the local residents, some of whom were sceptical about an order to self-isolate.
“I don’t believe it! There should at least be symptoms and I don’t have any,” local resident Engelsina Shaboyeva, who has tested positive for the coronavirus, told a regional television crew filming in the village along with a group of volunteers who went to bring food.
2020-07-06 22:03:48
The number of U.S. coronavirus deaths exceeded 130,000, following a surge of new cases that has put President Donald Trump’s handling of the crisis under the microscope and derailed efforts to restart the economy.
The overall rate of increase in U.S. deaths has been on a downward trend despite case numbers surging to record levels in recent days, but health experts warn fatalities are a lagging indicator, showing up weeks or even months after cases rise.
Nationally, cases are approaching 3 million, the highest tally in the world and double the infections reported in the second most-affected country Brazil. Case numbers are rising in 39 U.S. states, according to a Reuters analysis.
2020-07-06 21:57:45
The European Commission has approved a 150 million euro ($170) million) subordinated loan to compensate Lufthansa’s Austrian Airlines for damages suffered due to the coronavirus outbreak, it said.
The loan would enable Austria to partly compensate Austrian Airlines for the damages it has incurred due to travel restrictions, Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said in a statement, adding that the aviation sector had been hit particularly hard.
“We continue working with member states to discuss possibilities and find workable solutions to preserve this important part of the economy in line with EU rules,” she said.
2020-07-06 21:47:42
2020-07-06 21:41:13
2020-07-06 21:29:16
Soccer-mad Argentines in the country’s farm belt city of Pergamino have devised a clever way to keep playing while avoiding risk of spreading COVID-19: a human foosball pitch with zones for each player to avoid physical contact.
The innovative approach has captured the imagination in the South American nation famed for producing soccer legends Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona, even as the country has seen cases of the novel coronavirus spike in recent weeks.
The game, known locally as “metegol humano” divides the pitch into rectangular zones with while lines limiting where a player can move - helping to enforce social distancing, though limiting slide tackles or pitch-length dribbles with the ball.
“It’s intended for two teams of five players who can run around maintaining distance and without the possibility of touching,” said Gustavo Cuiffo, a creator of the project told Reuters. “Limits are set by the rectangles each team occupies.”
“They are fixed positions like a goalkeeper, a defender, a midfielder and two forwards,” added the owner of the Play Fútbol club. Seen from above, the demarcated court resembles a large foosball table - though with real people and no swivel handles.
2020-07-06 21:13:35
The World Health Organization (WHO) is reviewing a report that suggested its advice on the novel coronavirus needs updating, after some scientists told the New York Times there was evidence the virus could be spread by tiny particles in the air.
The WHO says the COVID-19 disease spreads primarily through small droplets, which are expelled from the nose and mouth when an infected person breaths them out in coughs, sneezes, speech or laughter and quickly sink to the ground.
“We are aware of the article and are reviewing its contents with our technical experts,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in an email reply on Monday to a Reuters request for comment.
“Especially in the last couple of months, we have been stating several times that we consider airborne transmission as possible but certainly not supported by solid or even clear evidence,” Benedetta Allegranzi, the WHO’s technical lead for infection prevention and control, was quoted as saying in the New York Times.
2020-07-06 21:04:13
Swiss authorities are trying to figure out what to do with a potential surplus of ventilators which they snapped up in the scramble for equipment to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
The Swiss stockpile of hygienic masks has also swollen to more than 200 million, with more on the way, the defence ministry said, confirming a SonntagsZeitung newspaper report.
The paper cited minutes from a government coronavirus task force as saying that cantonal authorities were sending excess ventilators back to the federal government, which did not have the resources to store and maintain them.
That meant cantons could keep them, sell them to other countries or donate them, perhaps to developing countries, the paper said.
The defence ministry said of the 900 ventilators delivered by June 24, 261 were in storage at the army medical service and 639 were distributed to cantons. Another 300 ventilators were to arrive by mid-August.
The government tasked the army medical service to buy supplies that cantons could not arrange as the pandemic spread. It asked parliament to approve more than 2.5 billion Swiss francs ($2.66 billion) for this, of which around a fifth has been spent, the ministry said.
2020-07-06 20:53:26
World Health Organisation Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom lauded Pakistani government’s response against the coronavirus pandemic and ‘recognised the positive trend of virus curtailment’ in the country, Federal Minister Asad Umar said.
The minister on Twitter said that Prime Minister Imran Khan spoke to the WHO DG today, where he urged the WHO to formulate travel rules without any discrimination for all the countries in the light of the coronavirus pandemic
“PM asked WHO to develop travel guidelines to be adopted by all countries to ensure that low income countries are not discriminated against in global travel.”
Read complete story here.
2020-07-06 20:43:16
The coronavirus outbreak has highlighted serious weaknesses in Spain’s social security system and a failure to address the plight of the poorest people, a UN expert said.
“Spain’s social protection net was utterly inadequate before COVID-19, but the pandemic has since exposed just how deeply it is failing people,” Philip Alston, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said in a report on a fact-finding mission he made to Spain this year.
Alston said millions of Spaniards who were unable to work had to struggle through delays, glitches and other difficulties to access government support during the lockdown.
Alston, whose mandate ended in April, praised the government for adopting a national minimum income scheme in May, calling it an ambitious and impressive achievement, but said it was just the first of many urgently needed measures.
“Despite the truly outrageous conditions I observed during my visit, the government’s actions in response to the coronavirus pandemic are encouraging,” Alston said. “I hope that the governing coalition will double down on this direction and live up to the ambitious commitments.”
2020-07-06 20:35:40
Mylan NV said it would launch a generic version of Gilead Sciences Inc’s COVID-19 antiviral remdesivir in India at 4,800 rupees ($64.31), about 80% below the price tag on the drug for wealthy nations.
California-based Gilead has signed licensing deals with several generic drugmakers in an effort to make remdesivir available in 127 developing countries.
Mylan’s price was for 100 mg vials, but it was not immediately clear how many of those vials would be required for a full treatment course. Gilead has said for a five-day treatment course, a patient would need six vials of remdesivir.
Remdesivir is in high demand after the intravenously-administered medicine helped to shorten hospital recovery times in a clinical trial but there has been concerns over its supply.
Mylan said it would manufacture remdesivir in India at its injectables facilities and was working toward expanding access for patients in the 127 low- and middle-income countries where it is licensed by Gilead Sciences to do so.
2020-07-06 20:27:43
China’s SinoVac is starting Phase III trials of its potential coronavirus vaccine, it said, becoming one of three companies to move into the late stages in the race to develop an inoculation against the disease.
It will start recruiting volunteers this month, it said in a release published on China’s WeChat messaging app platform. Last week, Brazil gave the go-ahead for the company to start testing volunteers in the country.
The World Health Organization's (WHO) latest document released on Monday outlining the status of trials being conducted around the globe said SinoVac's was now at Phase III.
AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine, which was developed by researchers at the University of Oxford, and Sinopharm are the only other candidates in late-stage Phase III trials.
SinoVac is building a vaccine plant, which it hopes will be ready this year and capable of making up to 100 million shots a year.
Phase I and Phase II trials typically test the safety of a drug before it enters Phase III trials that test its efficacy.
2020-07-06 20:17:49
The Trump administration on Monday released the names of hundreds of thousands of businesses which took money from a high-profile $660 billion pandemic aid program, letting the public see for the first time how the majority of the cash was spent and whether it helped save jobs.
The US Treasury and Small Business Administration (SBA) said the $521.4 billion approved so far has supported employers of some 51.1 million jobs, or 84% of all small business employees.
The colossal data set on the Paycheck Protection Program, released by the Trump administration after some initial resistance, provides transparency for the first-come-first-served program that has been dogged by technology, paperwork and fairness issues.
The data could make life uncomfortable for borrowers that broke the spirit or letter of the rules of the program, the aim of which was to help cash-strapped companies keep workers employed, and for banks that shoveled the money out the door.
The Treasury and SBA released data for more than half a million loans of $150,000 or more, including recipient name, address, business type, jobs supported, and some demographic information. That accounts for roughly 73% of the dollars granted, but only 14% of the 4.9 million loans, SBA data through June 30 shows.
2020-07-06 19:40:00
US coronavirus deaths topped 130,000 on Monday amid a surge in COVID-19 cases that has put President Donald Trump's handling of the crisis under the microscope and derailed efforts to restart the economy.
The overall rate of increase in US deaths has continued to trend downward despite case numbers surging to record levels in recent days, but health experts warn that fatalities are a lagging indicator, showing up weeks or even months after cases rise.
At least five states have already bucked the downward trend in the death rate, according to a Reuters analysis. Arizona had 449 deaths in the last two weeks of June, up from 259 deaths in the first two weeks of the month. The state posted a 300% rise in cases over the full month, the most in the country.
Nationally, cases are approaching 3 million, the highest tally in the world and double the infections reported in the second most-affected nation Brazil.
Sixteen states have posted record daily increases in new cases since the start of July including Florida, which confirmed more than 11,000 in a single day. As well as the state's largest one-day spike so far, that was more than any European country reported in a single day at the height of the crisis there.
2020-07-06 19:22:00
Germany has only a few hundred doses of COVID-19 antiviral remdesivir, health minister Jens Spahn told European Union lawmakers on Monday, saying he was working to ensure the drug could be produced in Europe.
Remdesivir, produced by U.S. company Gilead Sciences Inc , is the only drug which has been granted a conditional marketing authorisation by the EU for its use in COVID-19 patients.
"We do not have a huge inventory now, (it's) a few hundred doses that we have," Spahn said at a video-conference hearing organised by the European Parliament.
His comments came in reply to questions from EU lawmakers about Germany's will to help other EU countries in the fight against the new coronavirus.
Last week Spahn said Germany had sufficient reserves of remdesivir to treat the limited number of COVID-19 patients the country currently has.
Concerns over the availability of the drug increased after the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said last week it had secured nearly all supplies of remdesivir over the next three months.
2020-07-06 19:00:31
Poland’s ministry of labour said the unemployment rate in June rose to 6.1%, compared to 6% in May.
The number of registered unemployed rose to 1.027 million last month, the ministry said in a statement.
2020-07-06 18:49:20
Japanese Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said the government had agreed with members of a new expert panel to ease restrictions on holding events from July 10.
“We agreed that the situation is different from April, when the government issued a state of emergency,” Nishimura said.
The relaxation comes despite Tokyo confirming 102 new coronavirus infections on Monday, according to public broadcaster NHK, the fifth straight day that the tally of fresh cases has exceeded 100.
2020-07-06 18:41:59
The number of people claiming temporary coronavirus-related unemployment payments in Ireland fell to 412,900 from 439,000 a week ago, government data showed, continuing a steady decline as the economy reopens.
Recipients of the payment, which is higher than regular jobless benefits and is due to be phased out next month, reached a high of just over 600,000 at the end of April.
Almost 50,000 of those have moved to a separate wage-subsidy scheme, the employment affairs department said. An estimated 410,000 employees are currently receiving a subsidy, a total which has been broadly stable for the last four weeks.
2020-07-06 18:34:11
Israel’s government reimposed a series of restrictions to fight a spike in coronavirus infections, deciding on the immediate closure of bars, night clubs, gyms and event halls, Israel Radio said.
At a special cabinet session that decided on the measures, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had to reverse course in the coronavirus crisis to avoid a wider lockdown.
2020-07-06 18:27:23
The US Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization (EUA) to Becton Dickinson and Co for a COVID-19 antigen test that can be administered at the point of care and produce results within 15 minutes, the company said.
Antigen tests are a relatively new type of test for COVID-19 that work by scanning for proteins that can be found on or inside a virus.
The FDA has touted the tests as an important tool for combating the pandemic because they can be produced quickly, at relatively low costs, and test patients in a variety of settings.
Becton Dickinson’s test can be used on its existing BD Veritor System platform, which is employed in about 25,000 healthcare facilities across the United States.
2020-07-06 18:17:47
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals said it began late-stage clinical trials to assess the effectiveness of its antibody cocktail in preventing and treating COVID-19, sending its shares up nearly 4%.
The trial, run jointly with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), would test REGN-COV2's ability to prevent infection in those who have had close exposure to a COVID-19 patient.
REGN-COV2, an experimental therapy, has also entered into mid-to-late stage phase of two trials testing its effectiveness in hospitalized and non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients, Regeneron said.
Regeneron is among the few front-runners who have begun human trials testing their experimental therapies to fight COVID-19, including Gilead Sciences, Eli Lilly, and AbbVie.
Regeneron in June began human trial of the antibody cocktail as a treatment for COVID-19, with an “adaptive” design to quickly move to include thousands of patients.
The late-stage trial will be conducted across 100 sites and expected to enroll 2,000 patients in the US.
2020-07-06 18:14:37
2020-07-06 17:51:31
In the past day, 46 people lost their lives to the coronavirus, taking the provincial death toll to 1,572 in the province, Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said on Monday.
According to CM Sindh 1,708 new cases were recorded against 12,479 tests within past 24 hours.
Shah said that 679 people recovered as of today, taking the number of recoveries in Sindh to 53,855 so far.
He added that Karachi recorded 919 cases within last 24 hours.
2020-07-06 17:22:17
Emergent BioSolutions Incsaid on Monday it had signed a five-year pact to make the drug substance used in Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ.N) COVID-19 vaccine candidate, adding to a series of contracts likely to put it at the heart of future global vaccine production.
Under the deal, starting next year Emergent will provide large-scale manufacturing services to produce the drug substance over five years, with the first two years valued at about $480 million.
The news follows a $135 million deal struck by the two companies in April, to use Emergent’s manufacturing facilities to help make more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine J&J is testing to stop the coronavirus.
2020-07-06 17:19:58
The number of coronavirus cases in Qatar exceeded 100,000 on Monday, adding 546 new cases and five deaths in the past 24 hours.
With a population of about 2.7 million people, the energy-rich Gulf state has one of the world’s highest per capita number of confirmed cases.
2020-07-06 15:58:56
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 233,526 after Sindh reported 1,708 new cases on Monday.
According to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, the provincial tally of confirmed cases now stands at 96,236.
The province also reported 46 deaths taking the total number of fatalities to 1,572.
Moreover, Shah said 53,855 people have recovered from the virus so far in the province.
2020-07-06 15:27:00
India has withdrawn a planned reopening of the Taj Mahal, citing the risk of new coronavirus infections spreading in the northern city of Agra from visitors flocking to see the monument.
Local authorities issued a new advisory late on Sunday ordering an extension of lockdown curbs on monuments in and around Agra. The government order did not specify the duration of the lockdown for monuments that have been closed since March.
“In the interest of the public, it has been decided that opening monuments in Agra will not be advisable as of now”, the district authorities said in a notice published in Hindi.
2020-07-06 15:08:11
At least six more areas in Lahore are expected to undergo “smart lockdown” as the cases continue to rise, sources informed Geo News.
According to sources, DHA, WAPDA Town, Johar, a private housing society in Sundar are among the areas recommended to be under lockdown.
A committee will decide lockdown in the areas.
2020-07-06 14:46:36
Director-General of the World Health Organisation (EHO) Tedros Ghebreyesus has recognised the positive trend in coronavirus curtailment in Pakistan in a phone call with Prime Minister Imran Khan, Planning Minister Asad Umar said on Monday.
“The PM Imran Khan had a call with DG of WHO. DG recognised the positive trend in disease curtailment in Pak. PM asked WHO to develop travel guidelines to be adopted by all countries to ensure that low income countries are not discriminated against in global travel,” Umar tweeted.
2020-07-06 14:11:53
The Louvre, the world's most visited museum, reopens after its coronavirus closure Monday, but with nearly a third of its galleries still shut.
Although most of the museum's most popular draws, like the "Mona Lisa" and its vast antiquities collection will be accessible, other galleries where social distancing is more difficult will remain closed.
Nor will there be any crowding in front of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece for a selfie, with visitors warned that they will have to stick to standing on well-distanced spots marked on the floor.
To avoid bottlenecks, arrows will guide visitors through the labyrinth of galleries, with doubling back banned, the museum said.
2020-07-06 13:39:15
So far Rs149.87 billion rupees have been disbursed amongst 12.384 million workers under Ehsaas Emergency Cash programme, reported Radio Pakistan.
As per the figures released by Ehsaas Programme, Rs67.156 billion have been disbursed in Punjab, Rs44.902 billion in Sindh, Rs25.874 billion in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Rs7.604 billion in Balochistan, Rs1.081 billion in Gilgit-Baltistan, Rs2.473 billion in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Rs780 million in Islamabad Capital Territory.
2020-07-06 13:18:36
Federal Minister Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhary has announced that the first batch of locally produced ventilators has been handed over to National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).
The minister announced in a post on Twitter, calling it a landmark achievement.
2020-07-06 12:54:30
Russia's official coronavirus case tally, the fourth largest in the world, rose to 687,862 on Monday after officials reported 6,611 new infections in the last 24 hours.
Authorities also said 135 people had died overnight, bringing Russia's official death toll to 10,296.
India overtook Russia over the weekend as the country with the third highest number of infections behind the United States and Brazil, which have the largest reported caseloads.
2020-07-06 12:35:47
Saudi Arabia has announced health protocols to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the 2020 Hajj season, banning gatherings and meetings between pilgrims.
In June, Saudi Arabia had decided to limit the number of domestic pilgrims attending Hajj to around 1,000 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, after barring Muslims abroad from the rite for the first year in modern times.
Touching the Holy Kaaba, the holiest site in Islam will be banned during the Haj this year, and a social distancing space of a meter and a half between each pilgrim during the rituals including mass prayers and while in the Kaaba circling area will be imposed.
Read more on this here.
2020-07-06 12:06:22
The border between Australia’s two most populous states will close from Tuesday for an indefinite period as authorities scramble to contain an outbreak of the coronavirus in the city of Melbourne.
The decision announced on Monday marks the first time the border between Victoria and New South Wales has been shut in 100 years. Officials last blocked movement between the two states in 1919 during the Spanish flu pandemic.
The number of COVID-19 cases in the Victorian capital of Melbourne has surged in recent days, prompting authorities to enforce strict social-distancing orders in 30 suburbs and put nine public housing towers into complete lockdown.
The state reported 127 new COVID-19 infections overnight, its biggest one-day spike since the pandemic began. It also reported two deaths, the first nationally in more than two weeks, taking the national tally to 106.
2020-07-06 11:43:10
India has over-taken Russia with the world’s third-highest number of novel coronavirus cases, at nearly 700,000, according to the latest data, as the outbreak shows no sign of slowing.
Health ministry data on Monday showed more than 23,000 new cases reported in the previous 24 hours, down slightly from Sunday’s record increase of almost 25,000.
There have been almost 20,000 deaths in India since the first case was detected there in January.
Read more here.
2020-07-06 10:55:30
Special Assistant to PM on Health Services Zafar Mirza has tested positive for the virus, he announced on Twitter on Monday
“I have tested positive for COVID-19. Under med advice I have isolated myself at home and taking all precautions. I have mild symptoms. Please keep me in your kind prayers. Colleagues, keep up the good work! You are making a big difference and I am proud of you,” Mirza tweeted.
2020-07-06 10:46:42
Brazil recorded 26,051 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours as well as 602 deaths, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.
Brazil has registered more than 1.6 million cases since the pandemic began, while cumulative deaths total 64,867, according to the ministry.
2020-07-06 10:09:58
Pakistan recorded 3,344 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours taking the nation-wide tally to over 231,000, data from the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) showed on Monday.
According to the NCOC, the country has detected 231,818 cases detected so far with 94,528 cases recorded in Sindh, 81,963 infections in Punjab, KP 28,116, Azad Jammu and Kashmir 1,342, Balochistan 10,814 and Gilgit Baltistan 1,561.
The country also recorded 50 deaths on Sunday, taking the death toll to 4,762.
131,649 people have recovered from the virus so far in the country, the NCOC said, adding that 22,271 tests were conducted over the last 24 hours in Pakistan.
2020-07-06 09:49:41
Hundreds of scientists say there is evidence that novel coronavirus in smaller particles in the air can infect people and are calling for the World Health Organisation to revise recommendations, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
The WHO has said the coronavirus disease spreads primarily from person to person through small droplets from the nose or mouth, which are expelled when a person with COVID-19 coughs, sneezes or speaks.
In an open letter to the agency, which the researchers plan to publish in a scientific journal next week, 239 scientists in 32 countries outlined the evidence showing smaller particles can infect people, the NYT said.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-06 09:31:41
The United States recorded 39,379 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, taking the toll to2,876,143, a tally by Johns Hopkins University showed Sunday, as infections continue to trend up around the country.
The world’s largest economy also recorded a further 234 fatalities, bringing the death toll to 129,891.
Sunday’s tally comes after a string of surging daily new infections, including a high of 57,683 on Friday.
The United States is the hardest-hit country in the global pandemic, both in caseload and deaths, and has struggled to respond to the devastation wrought by the virus.
2020-07-05 23:43:00
The United Nations (UN) has shared its apprehensions regarding the rampant spread of misinformation related to the novel coronavirus and has said that the "misinformation regarding COVID-19 is spreading faster than the virus itself".
In this regard, the global body has launched a campaign called "Pause" to counter the excessive flow of false information regarding the disease that has hampered the public health efforts by dangerously distorting sound scientific guidance.
Read more here.
2020-07-05 23:00:21
The Sindh health department has shared the city-wise distribution of cases.
2020-07-05 22:27:19
The Balochistan health department has reported 48 new infections in the last 24 hours, taking the provincial tally to 10,814.
No new deaths were reported in this time.
2020-07-05 22:16:27
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa department has reported 273 new infections, taking the total number of cases in the province to 28,116.
Eight more deaths were also reported, taking the death toll to 1,028.
2020-07-05 21:36:34
Britain’s death toll from confirmed COVID-19 cases has risen by 22 to 44,220, the department of health has said.
The number of deaths registered at the weekend is often lower than during the week. Including deaths from suspected cases, the toll is over 54,000, according to a Reuters tally.
2020-07-05 18:54:56
MADRID: The northwestern Spanish region of Galicia imposed restrictions on about 70,000 people on Sunday following a COVID-19 outbreak, a day after Catalonia also introduced a local lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
People living in A Marina along Spain’s northern coast in the region of Lugo will not be able to leave the area from midnight on Sunday until Friday, two days before regional elections in Galicia on July 12.
The regional government said people will be allowed to move around A Marina but only those who need to travel for work will be allowed to leave or enter the area.
Regional Health minister Jesus Vazquez Almuina told a news conference on Sunday that the biggest outbreaks were linked to several bars in the area. Regional health authorities said there were now 258 cases in Galicia, of which 117 were in Lugo.
Spain’s Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Sunday that the ministry was following the situations in Galicia and Catalonia very closely.
“Social distancing and lockdown measures were the key to flattening the curve. Now they are needed again to stop the outbreaks,” he said in tweet.
Spain has registered 205,545 coronavirus cases and 28,385 deaths according to health ministry data, making it one of Europe’s worst-affected countries.
2020-07-05 18:42:22
KARANGASEM: Bali conducted mass prayers on Sunday as the Indonesian resort island prepares to reopen to tourists shut out due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than a thousand people attended a prayer at Besakih Hindu temple in the town of Karangasem, expressing gratitude for the handling of the new coronavirus on the island and seeking blessings for the start of a “new normal”.
Bali has reported 1,849 coronavirus infections and 20 deaths so far, while Indonesia as a whole has recorded 63,749 cases and 3,171 deaths since early March.
The idyllic Southeast Asian island will gradually reopen this month for domestic tourists, while maintaining a “strict health protocol” to prevent the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, Bali provincial secretary Dewa Made Indra told reporters.
2020-07-05 18:13:27
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah visited newly established Sindh Infectious Diseases Hospital and Research Centre, NIPA set up by the provincial government in Karachi.
During the visit the Sindh CM inspected the facility and thanked the healthcare staff for their untiring and selfless services to treat coronavirus patients. The CM was also accompanied by Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho.
2020-07-05 17:38:41
Iran recorded its highest number of deaths from COVID-19 within a 24-hour period, official health ministry figures showed on Sunday.
The 163 deaths reported on Sunday exceed the previous record from last Monday, when the health ministry reported 162 deaths in a day.
The Islamic Republic has recorded a total of 11,571 deaths and 240,438 infections from the coronavirus, health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said in a statement on state TV. There have been 201,330 recoveries, she said.
The number of new daily infections and deaths has increased sharply in the last week following the gradual lifting of restrictions that began in mid-April.
Iranians who do not wear masks will be denied state services and workplaces that fail to comply with health protocols will be shut for a week, President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday as he launched new measures to try to curb the coronavirus.
2020-07-05 17:25:31
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that within past 24 hours, 25 people died of the coronavirus in Sindh, taking the provincial tally to 1,526 as of Sunday.
In the past 24 hours, around 2,222 new cases emerged against 10,705 tests.
Shah said that 770 new cases surfaced from Karachi, adding that currently 39,837 patients are getting treatment for the disease.
He said that in the past day, 777 patients recovered, taking the total tally of recoveries in Sindh to 53,164.
2020-07-05 17:16:07
DUBLIN: Ireland is to ease quarantine restrictions on people travelling from abroad on July 20, with people from a “green list” of countries with low COVID-19 rates to be exempt from isolating themselves for 14 days, transport minister Eamon Ryan said.
Former prime minister Leo Varadkar in June said that the restrictions would be eased from July 9.
“A so-called green list... will be published on July 20,” Ryan said in an interview with Newstalk radio station. “The green list will be operating after that.”
2020-07-05 15:54:59
The Philippines reported its biggest single-day jump in new coronavirus cases on Sunday, adding 2,434 confirmed infections and taking the total count to 44,254, the health ministry said.
The ministry said the rise could be attributed to increased contact among people as the country began easing lockdown measures to help reduce the pandemic's damage to the economy.
2020-07-05 15:43:22
Iranian health authorities on Sunday announced 163 new deaths due to the COVID-19 disease, the country's highest official one-day death toll since the outbreak began in February.
The previous record of 162 deaths was announced on Monday in Iran, which has been battling the Middle East's deadliest outbreak.
2020-07-05 15:07:33
China recorded eight new coronavirus cases for July 4, up from with three a day earlier, the national health authority said on Sunday, while city officials in Beijing said nearly all the cases in a recent outbreak in the capital were mild.
Of the new cases, six were imported and two were in Beijing, which has been scrambling to quash an outbreak traced to a massive wholesale market in the city early last month.
As of Saturday, mainland China had 83,553 confirmed coronavirus cases, the health authority said. China’s death toll from the COVID-19 remained 4,634, unchanged since Mid-May.
2020-07-05 14:44:17
Russia on Sunday reported 6,736 new cases of the novel coronavirus, raising the nationwide tally to 681,251.
Authorities said that 134 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 10,161.
2020-07-05 14:19:01
Saudi Arabia’s coronavirus infections have passed 200,000 and neighbouring United Arab Emirates 50,000, with the number of new cases climbing after the Arab world’s two largest economies fully lifted curfews last month.
Saudi Arabia, which has the highest count among the six Gulf states, reported more than 4,100 cases on Friday and on Saturday to take its total to 205,929, with 1,858 deaths. The daily tally first rose above 4,000 in mid-June, but had dipped.
The UAE, where daily infection rates recently dropped to between 300 and 400 from a peak of some 900 in late May, registered more than 600 cases on Friday and over 700 on Saturday, taking its toll to 50,857, with 321 deaths.
2020-07-05 13:42:41
isitors to the Taj Mahal will have to wear masks at all times, keep their distance and not touch its glistening marble surfaces when India’s 17th-century monument to love reopens on Monday after a three-month COVID-19 shutdown.
Only 5,000 tourists will be allowed in a day, split into two groups, a far cry from peak levels of 80,000 a day who would swarm the mausoleum built in the northern city of Agra by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his wife, in a 22-year effort.
“All centrally protected monuments & sites shall be bound by the protocols like sanitization, social distancing & other health protocols,” the federal tourism ministry said in a tweet.
Agra, one of India’s first big clusters of the virus, remains the worst-affected city in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state.
Read more here.
2020-07-05 13:15:50
PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif has tested negative for the virus, after he tested positive for the virus last month party spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb announced on Sunday.
“By the grace of Allah prayers and prayers of the nation, Shehbaz Sharif’s coronavirus test has come back negative. Doctors have ordered an antibody test for the next three weeks, Aurangzeb said in a post on Twitter.
She added the doctors have also instructed Shehbaz to continue taking strict precaution until the result of the antibody test comes back.
Shehbaz had tested positive for coronavirus on June 11.
2020-07-05 13:04:06
England eased restrictions and reopened after nearly three months of lockdown with people rushing to restaurants and saloons to get their first haircuts as the country took a step towards resumption of normal life.
Some pubs started serving from 6am sparking worries of over-indulgence on what the media dubbed a “Super Saturday” of restrictions being eased.
Britain has been the European country worst hit by the coronavirus, with more than 300,000 infections and an official death toll of 44,131.
Read more on this here.
2020-07-05 12:13:17
Mexico’s death toll from the new coronavirus rose to 30,366 on Saturday, propelling it past France to become the country with the fifth-highest number of fatalities in the global pandemic.
The Latin American country, with 127 million inhabitants, had surpassed Spain in the number of deaths last Wednesday.
In the Americas, the epicentre of the pandemic, it is the third-most affected country after the US and Brazil.
2020-07-05 12:03:14
The US recorded more than 43,000 new COVID-19 cases in 24 hours, a tally by Johns Hopkins University showed Saturday, amid a surge of infections around the country.
The Baltimore-based university's tracker showed 43,742 more cases, bringing the country´s total number of cases since the pandemic began to 2,836,764.
The university also recorded a further 252 fatalities, bringing the total death toll to 129,657.
The uptick in cases came after three consecutive days of record numbers of new infections, including a high of 57,683 on Friday.
2020-07-05 11:33:27
Pakistan registered 3,191 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours to take the nationwide tally to 2, 28,474, latest data from the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) showed.
According to the NCOC, the total number of cases in Punjab now stands at 81,317, in Sindh 92,306, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 27,843, Balochistan 10,766, Islamabad 13,409, Azad Jammu and Kashmir 1,288 and Gilgit Baltistan 1,545.
The country also recorded 93 deaths in the past 24 hours to take the death toll from the virus to 4,712.
1,39,830 patients have so far recovered from the disease in the country, the national dashboard showed.
2020-07-05 11:16:10
Brazil recorded 37,923 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours as well as 1,091 deaths, the Health Ministry said on Saturday.
Brazil has registered more than 1.5 million cases since the pandemic began, while cumulative deaths total 64,265, according to the ministry.
2020-07-05 10:00:15
Prime Minister Imran Khan has directed authorities to ensure strict implementation of SOPs, undertaking all required administrative actions to implement the strategy of smart lockdown, and subsequently continuing mass awareness campaign to curtail the spread of coronavirus, especially prevent its resurgence during Eid-ul-Azha.
He expressed these views on Saturday during his visit to National Command and Operation Centre on the occasion of completion of 100 days of its establishment.
During his visit, the prime minister was briefed in detail about the current situation and the pattern analysis of COVID-19 spread.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-05 09:46:28
WHO says it is discontinuing its trials of the hydroxychloroquine and combination HIV drug lopinavir/ritonavir in hospitalised patients with COVID-19 after the medicines failed to reduce mortality.
“These interim trial results show that hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir produce little or no reduction in the mortality of hospitalised COVID-19 patients when compared to standard of care. Solidarity trial investigators will interrupt the trials with immediate effect,” the WHO said in a statement, referring to large multicountry trials that the agency is leading.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-05 09:07:51
More than 11.29 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 529,505 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-07-04 23:58:00
The World Health Organisation has reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases, with the total rising by 212,326 in 24 hours.
The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil and India, according to a daily report here The previous WHO record for new cases was 189,077 on June 28. Deaths remained steady at about 5,000 a day.
Global coronavirus cases exceeded 11 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, marking another milestone in the spread of the disease that has killed more than half a million people in seven months.
2020-07-04 23:09:21
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that it is discontinuing its trials of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and combination HIV drug lopinavir/ritonavir in hospitalised patients with COVID-19 after they failed to reduce mortality.
The setback came as the WHO also reported more than 200,000 new cases globally of the disease for the first time in a single day. The United States accounted for 53,213 of the total 212,326 new cases recorded on Friday, the WHO said.
“These interim trial results show that hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir produce little or no reduction in the mortality of hospitalised COVID-19 patients when compared to standard of care. Solidarity trial investigators will interrupt the trials with immediate effect,” the WHO said in a statement, referring to large multicountry trials that the agency is leading.
2020-07-04 22:32:13
Punjab government spokesperson Musarrat Cheema has said that Punjab's positive cases have seen a decline from 23% to 13% in the last month.
"The commitment our healthcare and rescue workers showed in this crisis is why we are still ahead in this crisis. They deserve all our gratitude," Cheema said.
2020-07-04 22:22:44
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has notified a rise in the province's infections by 337, taking the total to 27,843.
It said that 18 more people have died of the disease, bringing the death toll to 1,020.
2020-07-04 21:50:00
Prime Minister Imran Khan's aide on health, Dr Zafar Mirza has lauded the efforts by the National Command and Operations Centre in the nation's fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
"NCOC has boosted coordination across all stakeholders," he said.
2020-07-04 22:17:39
The Balochistan health department has reported 49 new infections, taking the provincial total to 10,766.
One death was also reported, taking the death toll to 123.
2020-07-04 21:17:37
Islamabad's recovery rate reached 69% after 201 people recovered from coronavirus, the district health office said.
2020-07-04 21:04:04
Thai boxing matches resumed on Saturday after more than three months as the nation eases its coronavirus lockdown, but fans of the popular sport will have to make do with watching on television for now.
Leaders of the sport hailed the return to the ring after the shutdown, which left hundreds of boxers and referees without work, and said they hoped spectators would be allowed to attend matches again soon.
“I’m very happy and excited to get back to the ring ... But I feel a bit strange. I was used to the sounds of crowds cheering, but there’s no audience,” said Khathawut Tumthong, a 21-year-old boxer.
“Today is a good start for the boxing industry,” said Viboon Jampa-nguern, head of Thailand’s boxing committee.
“Boxers are in jeopardy, they don’t have alternative jobs. The same goes for those who work as boxing referees, they don’t have second jobs to support them,” he said.
2020-07-04 20:52:36
2020-07-04 20:34:45
An Indian man said he paid about $4,000 for a bespoke gold face mask to protect him from the coronavirus raging in the country.
The precious metal covering weighs 60 grams (two ounces) and took craftsmen eight days to make, said businessman Shankar Kurhade, from the western city of Pune.
“It is a thin mask and has tiny pores that is helping me to breathe,” Shankar told AFP.
“I am not sure if it will be effective to protect me from a coronavirus infection but I am taking other precautions,” he added.
When going out, the 49-year-old said he likes to adorn himself with gold jewelry weighing a kilogramme, including a bracelet, necklace and rings on each finger of his right hand.
“People are asking me for selfies,” he said.
“They are awestruck when they see me wearing the gold mask in markets.”
2020-07-04 20:25:33
2020-07-04 20:16:44
Florida’s confirmed coronavirus cases rose by a record 11,458 on Saturday, the state’s health department said, the second time in three days that its caseload increased by more than 10,000.
2020-07-04 20:04:31
Russia said that it recorded more than 10,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, a toll that is still far lower than in other countries with major outbreaks.
The number of deaths has now reached 10,027, the government information website said, up by 168 from Friday.
Russia has confirmed 674,515 cases, the third largest total in the world, although the daily infection rate has been falling over the last month.
The country's death toll is much lower than in other countries with large outbreaks, raising questions over possible underreporting of deaths.
2020-07-04 19:54:11
Italy is considering fiscal measures to spur investments in the auto and tourism industries, two of the sectors that have been hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Saturday.
Speaking at a conference organised by the UIL trade union, Conte said the government needed to “redefine” tax incentives in favour of green, digital investments of the future, adding “we must support the worst affected industries such as automotive and tourism”.
The government would start working on a comprehensive tax reform from next week, he said, but did not elaborate.
2020-07-04 19:42:10
he girlfriend of President Donald Trump's eldest son has tested positive for coronavirus, US media reported Friday.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News television personality who is dating Donald Trump Jr, had traveled to South Dakota to see the US president's Fourth of July speech and celebration fireworks at Mount Rushmore.
Guilfoyle, 51, was immediately isolated after discovering she had the virus in a routine test conducted on anyone expected to come in close contact with the president, the New York Times reported.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-04 19:32:23
Despite its claim to host the world's largest concentration of hospitals and research labs, the city of Houston is dangerously close to being overwhelmed by the explosion of coronavirus cases sweeping across Texas.
Since the Memorial Day weekend in late May and major anti-racism protests in June, "it is an unbelievable trajectory," as if the flood gates had opened, said Faisal Masud, director of critical care at Houston Methodist Hospital.
Masud has been on the front lines of the battle against COVID-19 since it reached Houston.
"This has been relentless for us," he told AFP. "We didn't get a break."
"These things are taking a physical and emotional strain on us... because we not only have to worry about ourselves but our families also."
Read complete story here.
2020-07-04 19:21:09
Mexican officials will install health checkpoints at various entry points along its northern border this weekend, as both Mexican and US officials fear a surge of crossings for the July 4 holiday could spread the coronavirus.
Mexican consulates across the United States issued warnings last week on social media of the ramped-up measures scheduled for July 2 through July 5, and urged people to refrain from crossing for recreation or tourism.
A ban on non-essential border travel has been in place since March in an attempt by both governments to limit coronavirus infections, yet cross-border traffic has been busy.
2020-07-04 19:12:16
Pakistan's coronavirus recovery rate reached 55.5% after the country reported 11,471 recoveries over the past 24 hours — the highest single-day jump in the country, according to the government's COVID-19 portal.
The total number of recovered cases in the country now stand at 125,094, while 2,460 patients are in critical condition.
The recoveries in Punjab stand at 42,854, Sindh 50,908, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 15,520, Islamabad 8,610, Balochistan 5,331, Gilgit-Baltistan 1,185, and Azad Jammu Kashmir 686.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-04 18:59:28
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike on Saturday urged residents of the Japanese capital not to travel beyond its borders as new coronavirus infections topped 100 for a third day, public broadcaster NHK reported.
Tokyo confirmed 131 new cases of infections of the coronavirus on Saturday, NHK said.
Cases in Tokyo have risen to a two-month high, driven by the spread of the virus in the capital’s night spots. Of Saturday’s tally, 100 were people in their 20s and 30s, Kyodo news agency said, citing Koike.
2020-07-04 18:51:23
Switzerland could start reducing the debt pile it accumulated to help cushion the coronavirus pandemic’s impact in two to three years and finish repaying it over 15 years, Finance Minister Ueli Maurer said in a radio interview.
If all goes “very, very, very well”, the extra debt the state is taking on to help fund short-hour work schemes and aid to businesses could hit 20 billion Swiss francs ($21.15 billion), he told broadcaster SRF in the interview aired on Saturday.
Otherwise the debt pile could hit 35 billion, he said. This is still less than the 40 billion francs the government originally projected for extra debt, but Maurer cautioned there was still lots of uncertainty about the numbers.
The government said this week it anticipates a budget deficit of around 1 billion francs next year, and said it would decide at year’s end how to pay back the billions of debt it has accumulated to provide relief for struggling business.
Maurer reiterated the state would not raise taxes to do so. He said a likely option for debt reduction was to earmark yearly profit distributions it gets from the Swiss National Bank, and dismissed calls for a special one-off SNB payout.
The central bank has to be independent, and politicians should not touch the assets it needs to intervene on currency markets to rein in the safe-haven Swiss franc’s strength, he said, calling this an important contribution to the export-led economy.
“It cannot be that we print money to pay state debt,” he said, calling for spending discipline.
2020-07-04 18:46:59
India recorded its highest singe-day spike of coronavirus cases, with over 22,000 new cases and 442 deaths, as infections rose in the western and southern parts of the country amid heavy monsoon rains.
The western state of Maharashtra, home to the densely packed financial capital Mumbai, has the country’s highest total, recording 6,364 fresh cases of the virus on Saturday and 198 deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Officials in Mumbai warned residents to stay away from the coast, as heavy rains were predicted for the next 48 hours. The monsoons typically cause waterlogging in many parts of the city and could scuttle coronavirus containment efforts by causing a further rise in infection numbers, experts say.
In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the second worst-hit state in India, the number of cases crossed 100,000.
India had imposed one of the world’s harshest lockdowns in March to control the virus spread, but it has been eased in phases in recent weeks to restart economic activity. Epidemiologists warn India’s peak could still be weeks or months away, suggesting the country’s already severely overburdened healthcare system will come under further stress.
2020-07-04 17:28:24
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that within past 24 hours, 42 people died of the coronavirus in Sindh, taking the provincial tally to 1,501 as of Saturday.
In the past 24 hours, around 1,585 new cases emerged against 10,718 tests.
Shah said that 928 cases surfaced from Karachi, adding that currently 38,417 patients are getting treatment for the disease.
He said that in the past day, 1,480 patients recovered, taking the total tally of recoveries in Sindh to 52,388.
2020-07-04 16:42:17
Iranians who do not wear masks will be denied state services and workplaces that fail to comply with health protocols will be shut for a week, President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday as he launched new measures to try to curb the coronavirus.
Iran has been battling the spread of the coronavirus, with the total number of cases hitting 237,878 on Saturday and a further 148 deaths bringing the country’s toll to 11,408, Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on state television.
Wearing masks becomes mandatory from Sunday in covered public places, Rouhani said on state television after tougher curbs were imposed in cities and towns in five provinces where the outbreak is rising after an easing of lockdowns from mid-April.
2020-07-04 16:36:48
Spain's northeastern Catalonia region on Saturday locked down an area with around 200,000 residents near the town of Lerida following a surge in cases of the new coronavirus.
The move came as the summer holiday started in Spain and the country began re-admitting foreign visitors from 12 countries outside the European union.
It had already opened its frontiers to people from the EU's visa-free Schengen zone and Britain on June 21.
"We have decided to confine the del Segria zone following data confirming a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections," Catalonia's regional president Quim Torra told reporters, adding that no one would be allowed to enter or leave the area.
Regional health minister Alba Verges said gatherings of more than 10 people and visits to retirement homes would be banned.
2020-07-04 15:12:43
The following SOPs have been issued by the Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department to prevent and control the spread of coronavirus and other communicable diseases.
- Cattle market should be established at designated points, 2-5 KM away from city limits
- Management to ensure controlled entry to the cattle market
- Only two people per vehicle/car will be allowed
- Elderly people and children may not be allowed to enter the market
- Ensure appropriately distanced queue management at each entry point
- Customers will not be allowed to mix up with animals inside barraas
- Cattle markets should provide hand-hygiene facilities (hand wash with soap or alcohol-based hand sanitizer) at entry point and multiple places within the market areas
- No person will be allowed to enter the market without wearing a face covering either for sale/purchase of animals or staff involved in market management
- The market premises should have functional toilets and handwashing facility with essentially required supplies including soap, tissues and paper towels
- Gathering of more than 5 persons at one place within market premises should not be allowed
2020-07-04 14:59:59
Local authorities are digging mass graves at cemeteries across Bolivia to receive a new wave of victims from COVID-19, unnerving Bolivians as the outbreak rips across the Andean nation.
Bolivia has registered 35,500 cases of the virus and 1,200 deaths. Though the tally is low in comparison with neighbors Peru, Chile and Brazil, new cases have spiked in recent weeks, overwhelming the country's fragile health care system in some areas.
The predicament has alarmed local residents, who worry the mass graves could trigger new infections in the neighborhoods surrounding cemeteries.
2020-07-04 14:43:22
Coronavirus has been mostly noted for its extreme and fatal cases, but some people who experienced mild forms of the disease are reporting unusual lingering effects.
Read about the most common coronavirus complaints.
2020-07-04 14:29:15
Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar has said that the government is constantly increasing its medical capabilities to meet the challenge of coronavirus pandemic, reported Radio Pakistan.
The minister remarks came during his visit to newly constructed Isolation Center and Infectious Diseases Hospital along with Chairman National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Lt. General Muhammad Afzal in Islamabad.
Umar said the 250-bed Isolation Center and Infectious Diseases Hospital has been built only in 45 days in Islamabad with China's support.
2020-07-04 14:03:11
India recorded its highest singe-day spike of coronavirus cases on Saturday, with over 22,000 new cases and 442 deaths, as infections rose in the western and southern parts of the country.
The western state of Maharashtra, home to the densely packed financial capital Mumbai, has the country’s highest total, recording 6,364 fresh cases of the virus on Saturday and 198 deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
India has the third-most confirmed cases in the world, exceeding 640,000 on Saturday, according to health ministry data. It follows the United States, Brazil and Russia.
2020-07-04 13:40:44
Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Shibli Faraz has said the number of coronavirus cases in the country have declined due to the smart lockdown strategy implemented to stem the spread of the virus.
He also thanked the public for adhering to the government’s call of following SOPs.
The smart lockdown strategy is being adopted by many countries in the world, Faraz said while addressing a ceremony in Islamabad. He also appreciated the critical role of doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff who were looking after coronavirus patients in hospitals and isolation centres across the country.
2020-07-04 13:08:28
Global coronavirus cases exceeded 11 million on Friday, marking another milestone in the spread of the disease that has killed more than half a million people in seven months.
The number of cases is more than double the figure for severe influenza illnesses recorded annually, according to the World Health Organisation.
The United States reported more than 55,400 new COVID-19 cases, a new daily global record as infections rose in a majority of states. Almost a quarter of the known global deaths have occurred in the United States - nearly 129,000.
Latin America, where Brazil has 1.5 million cases, makes up 23% of the global total of people infected. India has become the new epicentre in Asia, rising to 625,000 cases.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-04 12:17:08
The European Commission has given conditional approval for the use of antiviral remdesivir in severe COVID-19 patients following an accelerated review process, making it the region’s first authorised therapy to treat the virus.
“We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to secure efficient treatments or vaccine against the coronavirus,” said Stella Kyriakides, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, in a statement.
Remdesivir is in high demand after the intravenously-administered medicine helped to shorten hospital recovery times in a clinical trial.
2020-07-04 11:04:29
Confirmed coronavirus cases in Brazil topped 1.5 million after the country registered 42,223 additional coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours.
Brazil has the second-worst outbreak in the world behind the United States with the country recording1,290 deaths in the last 24 hours to take the countrywide toll to 63,174.
2020-07-04 10:36:27
Saudi Arabia passed the grim milestone of 200,000 confirmed novel coronavirus cases, the health ministry said.
The Gulf's worst-hit country has now 201,801 confirmed infections including 4,193 new cases on Friday alone, and 1,802 deaths.
Saudi Arabia has seen an uptick in both confirmed infections and deaths from the COVID-19 illness since easing movement restrictions in late May.
It has yet to restore international air links.
2020-07-04 10:16:50
Pakistan recorded 3,387 new cases in the country over the last 24 hours taking the nationwide tally to 225,283.
According to the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC), 22,094 tests were carried out in the last 24 hours.
Sindh leads the tally of confirmed cases in the country with 90,721 cases with Punjab coming in second with 80,297. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 27,506 cases have been recorded, 10,717 in Balochistan, 13,292 in Islamabad, 1,536 in Gilgit Baltistan and 1,214 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The country also recorded 68 deaths in the last 24 hours to take the tally to 4,619.
The NCOC added 125,094 patients have so far recovered from the virus in the country.
2020-07-04 09:42:48
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the coronavirus pandemic is affecting peace and security worldwide.
Addressing a virtual meeting of the Security Council on Friday, Guterres said tensions were rising as a result of the severe socioeconomic fallout of the pandemic.
He noted that protection of health care workers and humanitarian volunteers, helping the virus affectees, is our collective responsibility.
He urged the UNSC to play its part in protecting the millions of people in the conflict zones worldwide.
2020-07-04 09:16:12
United States recorded 57,683 COVID-19 cases in 24 hours Friday, a tally by Johns Hopkins University showed, the third consecutive day with record numbers of new infections.
The university also recorded a further 728 fatalities, bringing the total US death toll to 129,405.
The new record case count came as infections surge in southern and western states, and as the United States— the hardest-hit country in the world in the coronavirus pandemic— heads into the July Fourth holiday weekend.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-03 23:59:22
BAKU: As the virus situation is deteriorating in Azerbaijan, the oil-rich Caucasus nation of some 10 million people, its government on Friday deployed troops to help police ensure a tight coronavirus lockdown in the capital Baku and several major cities where infections are on the rise.
"Army units are taking part in patrols which oversee the implementation of a special quarantine regime," defence ministry spokesman Vagif Dargyahly told AFP.
On June 21, Azerbaijan reinstated in Baku and several other major cities a coronavirus lockdown to contain the spread of the disease as infections surged weeks after the country eased restrictions.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-03 23:55:22
The Lahore district authority said that in light of reduced coronavirus infections, restrictions in seven areas would be lifted.
The areas include Model Town, Garden Town, Gulberg, Defence, Faisal Town, and some areas in Gulshan-e-Ravi, the administration said.
2020-07-03 23:50:19
The British government said on Friday that recreational cricket which has been suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic will be allowed to resume from July 11.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would set out a timetable next week for when amateur cricket can return as well as the reopening of indoor gyms and swimming pools which were closed due to the coronavirus lockdown.
"We're delighted the UK Government has given the green light for recreational cricket in England to return from Saturday 11 July," the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) said on Twitter.
2020-07-03 23:42:28
A Czech film festival disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic unveiled a scaled-down programme of movies on Friday with an opening ceremony in an empty auditorium and a star-free red carpet.
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, central and eastern Europe’s leading movie extravaganza, announced in April it was cancelling its main events as the novel coronavirus shuttered cinemas and mass gatherings.
Restrictions have since eased, allowing the festival’s president, actor Jiri Bartoska, to unveil a list of 16 foreign and domestic films on Friday.
“Each year at this moment, we present the Crystal Globe (the festival’s award) and this year it belongs to you, cinema managers and spectators,” Bartoska said in the speech that was recorded to be screened at the cinemas before each film.
“This year, (the festival) goes to you, next year you come to us,” he added.
Among this year’s films are South Africa’s “Moffie” which tells the tale of an army conscript attracted to a fellow soldier, and French/German production “Proxima”, about an astronaut preparing for her mission while caring for her young daughter.
Organisers say the full festival, that was founded in 1946, will return in 2021.
2020-07-03 23:33:36
Pakistan has decided to re-open four border points with Iran from Sunday, Radio Pakistan reported.
Crossings at Gabd, Mand, Katagar, and Chedgi will be opened in the light of the decision taken by the National Command and Operation Center, a notification issued by the Ministry of Interior said.
The borders will remain open seven days a week from morning to evening only for trade.
2020-07-03 23:25:26
The number of deaths in France from the new coronavirus has risen by 18 over the last day to 29,893, the country’s health department said.
The number of people in intensive care units fell by 13 to 560, continuing a weeks-long downtrend.
2020-07-03 23:12:57
Global coronavirus cases exceeded 11 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, marking another milestone in the spread of the disease that has killed more than half a million people in seven months.
The number of cases is more than double the figure for severe influenza illnesses recorded annually, according to the World Health Organization.
Many hard-hit countries are easing lockdowns put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus while making extensive alterations to work and social life that could last for a year or more until a vaccine is available.
Some countries are experiencing a resurgence in infections, leading authorities to partially reinstate lockdowns, in what experts say could be a recurring pattern into 2021.
The United States reported more than 55,400 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, a new daily global record as infections rose in a majority of states. Several US governors halted plans to reopen their state economies in the face of a surge in cases.
Almost a quarter of the known global deaths have occurred in the United States - nearly 129,000.
2020-07-03 23:00:39
Brazil was set to pass 1.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases, as the virus continues to ravage Latin America’s largest country even as cities reopen bars, restaurants and gyms sparking fears infections will keep rising.
“A tragedy foretold,” David Miranda, a federal congressman for Rio, wrote on Twitter above a picture of the crowded sidewalk. He criticized the city’s mayor Marcelo Crivella.
“Crivella’s decision to throw open the doors of business will come with a high cost,” he added.
Brazil has the world’s second largest outbreak after the United States and the virus has killed over 60,000 people in the country.
2020-07-03 22:52:11
The coronavirus outbreak in Pakistan is getting progressively worse, with more than 220,000 infections and upwards of 4,500 deaths from the respiratory disease recorded on as of Friday.
A day earlier, World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that nations that failed to use every mechanism available to combat the coronavirus would struggle to beat it.
In this regard, Geo.tv has prepared helpful infographics to assist in spreading awareness about symptoms of the virus, common carriers that people should coming into contact with, and safety tips to prevent oneself from contracting the disease.
Symptoms:
Read complete storyhere.
2020-07-03 22:42:43
Liverpool have again urged their supporters to avoid mass gatherings in the city and to celebrate their Premier League triumph safely at home in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, chief executive Peter Moore said.
Liverpool’s 30-year wait for their 19th English top-flight crown ended last week when Manchester City lost at Chelsea and thousands of fans turned up at their Anfield stadium to celebrate.
Local media reported that fans launched fireworks at the Royal Liver Building, with a fire breaking out on the balcony of the landmark owned by Farhad Moshiri, the majority shareholder of the side’s local rivals Everton.
Liverpool, Merseyside police and the City Council issued a statement condemning the “wholly unacceptable” behaviour, while manager Juergen Klopp requested supporters stay at home and avoid spoiling the work done in containing the outbreak.
“We are delighted to have won this title, but as the manager has said, we will come together to celebrate properly – only when it is safe and secure to do so,” Moore said ahead of Sunday’s clash against Aston Villa.
2020-07-03 22:34:36
The central Italian region of Lazio, fringing the capital Rome, has asked its large Bangladeshi community to undergo “blanket testing” for the coronavirus following a recent increase in the number of infections.
The discovery of some recent infection clusters has authorities concerned, including among 10 Bangladeshis in the last few days, with the latest when a man returning from his South Asian homeland tested positive.
Lazio health chief Alessio D’Amato said that from Monday the region will open a testing centre dedicated to Bangladeshis and urged them to show up in large numbers. All testing will be done on a voluntary basis, the region said.
“Quarantine has to be certain for those coming from Bangladesh...We have asked the airport company and the doctors to tighten controls,” D’Amato said in a statement.
2020-07-03 22:24:53
2020-07-03 20:15:25
2020-07-03 22:16:56
British aerospace engineer Rolls-Royce said it was reviewing a range of options to strengthen its balance sheet and position itself for recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We confirm we are in the early stages of reviewing a range of potential options,” the company said in a statement in response to a Bloomberg report.
“However, no decisions have been made.”
The Bloomberg report said Rolls was examining options including raising equity and disposals, with the sale of its ITP Aero unit one disposal being studied.
2020-07-03 22:04:37
Almost 30% of genome sequencing data from samples of the COVID-19 virus collected by the World Health Organization have shown signs of mutation, but there is no evidence that it has led to more severe disease, a top WHO official said.
“I think it’s quite widespread,” Soumya Swaminathan, WHO chief scientist, told Reuters on the sidelines of a briefing held by the UN journalists’ association ACANU in Geneva.
The UN agency has so far collected 60,000 samples of the disease, she said.
2020-07-03 21:50:43
The World Health Organisation expects initial results within two weeks from clinical trials it is conducting of drugs that might be effective in treating COVID-19 patients, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news briefing.
Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies programme, said it would be unwise to predict when a COVID-19 vaccine could be ready for mass distribution. While a vaccine candidate might show its effectiveness by year’s end, the question was how soon it could be mass produced, he told the briefing.
2020-07-03 21:32:22
RIAYDH: Saudi Arabia passed the grim milestone of 200,000 confirmed novel coronavirus cases, the health ministry said Friday, weeks ahead of an annual hajj pilgrimage drastically cut back because of the pandemic.
The Gulf´s worst-hit country has now 201,801 confirmed infections including 4,193 new cases on Friday alone, and 1,802 deaths.
Over 140,000 of those infected have recovered.
Amid tight restrictions to rein in the pandemic, the kingdom has said it would only allow around 1,000 worshippers already present in the kingdom to take part in the annual hajj pilgrimage later this month.
In 2019, the rite attracted over 2.5 million Muslim pilgrims from around the world.
2020-07-03 21:27:56
CAIRO: The United Arab Emirates will allow both citizens and residents to travel abroad, the state news agency reported on Friday.
In March, the UAE suspended all inbound and outbound passenger flights and the transit of airline passengers in the UAE, allowing only cargo and emergency evacuation flights.
2020-07-03 20:48:00
KARACHI: In a meeting with Young Doctors’ Association today, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto said that the people of Pakistan cannot pardon Imran Khan for negligence during the coronavirus pandemic.
2020-07-03 20:41:00
ISLAMABAD: The National Disaster Management Authority has released details about the distribution of ventilators donated by the US.
2020-07-03 20:24:24
Visitors to England from 59 countries and territories will not have to go into quarantine from July 10, the British government said.
Countries such as the United States, Canada and Portugal were excluded from the list.
People arriving in England from a country not on the list will continue to be required to self-isolate until 14 days have passed since they left it.
2020-07-03 20:14:41
Spanish Economy Minister Nadia Calvino said that all the debt issued by the European Union to help its member states deal with the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis will eventually be paid back.
The debt will be sustainable as it will finance projects to help the EU resume the economic growth that was interrupted by the coronavirus crisis, she said in a virtual panel held by French think tank Cercle des Economistes.
“Obviously the debt will be repaid,” said Calvino, who has been proposed by Spain to head the Eurogroup, the club of 19 finance ministers of the Euro Zone countries.
“The long-term sustainability of the debt is guaranteed and we are making plans and act responsibly as Europe ever has,” she added.
European Union leaders are due to meet in Brussels on July 17-18 to negotiate a proposed COVID-19 economic stimulus package worth 750 billion euros ($840 billion) partly financed by jointly issued debt.
2020-07-03 20:02:40
People who recovered from coronavirus infections in Argentina have volunteered to donate plasma as part of a national clinical trial to test its effectiveness as a treatment for patients who are still sick with COVID-19.
“It doesn’t cost a thing and you know you can do good, that’s what’s important in all of this,” Daiana Woloszczuk, 34, said while donating plasma in the city of La Plata. “If I can help someone else have a little bit better of a time, I welcome it.”
The treatment proved crucial for patients like Barbara Piccardi, a 31-year-old administrative employee, who was hospitalized for a month with respiratory complications due to coronavirus. When she struggled to breathe on her own, her doctors opted for plasma treatment and she recovered.
“Thanks to (the donor) and her blood, I am alive here at home today,” Piccardi said.
2020-07-03 19:52:17
The European Commission said it had given conditional approval for the use of antiviral remdesivir in severe COVID-19 patients following an accelerated review process, making it the region’s first authorised therapy to treat the virus.
“We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to secure efficient treatments or vaccine against the coronavirus,” said Stella Kyriakides, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, in a statement.
2020-07-03 19:42:40
Total coronavirus cases rose to 235,429 in Iran, with 154 deaths in the past 24 hours bringing the death toll to 11,260, authorities said as the country tries to fend off new infections after easing its lockdown restrictions.
Eight out of 31 provinces are considered in a red status, meaning the epidemic has been on the rise, while seven, including the province where Tehran is located, are on alert as the virus is still a threat, Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on state TV.
State television is airing warnings such as “Coronavirus is very close” and “Let’s take the coronavirus danger seriously”.
Authorities launched a campaign on June 27 to motivate a reluctant public to use face masks. Reporters interviewing people in the streets chastise those who are not wearing them.
2020-07-03 19:30:58
2020-07-03 19:18:43
National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Lieutenant General Muhammad Afzal said the country had around 2.2 million coronavirus testing kits, Radio Pakistan reported.
Talking to PTV, he said as many as 135 laboratories were conducting tests for coronavirus across Pakistan.
2020-07-03 19:07:06
Home and Tribal Affairs Department Balochistan issued Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Eid-ul-Azha to mitigate the spread of coronavirus, Radio Pakistan reported.
All cattle markets will be setup in Quetta at Eastern and Western bypass, a statement from the home department read, adding that the entry of Children and elderly people will be prohibited.
Wearing gloves and face masks are mandatory for customer and animal sellers, while violators will face heavy fines.
Staff of Provincial Disaster Management Authority will provide protective equipment against coronavirus, the statement added.
2020-07-03 18:56:46
Islamabad recorded a drop of 4,236 active COVID-19 cases, taking the recovery rate to 67.9%, the district health office said.
2020-07-03 18:47:08
A tear slipped down the cheek of Ghanaian-German artist Zohra Opoku as she recalled how the global Black Lives Matter had kindled her pain and anger while she was stranded away from home due to coronavirus lockdowns.
After Senegal closed its borders in March, the internationally renowned visual artist had no option but to remain at a residency in Dakar, where she had been creating large textile collages to explore her self-image after a cancer diagnosis.
When the death of George Floyd in U.S. police custody sparked a global reckoning over racial injustice and oppression, the 44-year-old stitched a new piece in tribute to the movement.
‘Say Their Names’ is a white and indigo-dyed canvas onto which Opoku has sewn dozens of images of an unidentified face from ancient Egyptian art. Some are printed in red and tumble from a screenprint of Opoku’s face like teardrops.
The protests “have shaken us and awakened us and sharpened our senses about what kind of world we want to live in,” she said, standing in front of the work-in-progress in her studio at the Black Rock Senegal residency.
2020-07-03 18:32:56
Doctors and nurses have won praise for their efforts to contain Moscow’s coronavirus crisis, but a monument unveiled on Friday celebrates different frontline workers: delivery men and women.
Designed by artist Alexei Garikovich, it is around three metres tall and features the form of a standing man hollowed out from a thick sheet of rusting metal. Its inscription reads: “Dedicated to those who made self-isolation possible.”
“The monument makes me proud of course,” said 27-year-old courier Sergei Gorekov, who works for the Azbuka Vkusa supermarket chain.
“I have never in my life seen or heard of the opening of a monument to couriers. It’s quite cool.”
Commissioned by five retailers - Ozon, Perekrestok.ru, Azbuka Vkusa, Dodo Pizza and Delivery Club - the statue honours the more than 60,000 couriers who worked during lockdown as demand for delivery services skyrocketed.
2020-07-03 18:22:32
Japan will not reintroduce a state of emergency to tackle the novel coronavirus, a government spokesman said, as cases in Tokyo rose to a two-month high driven by the spread of the virus in the capital’s night spots.
Tokyo reported 124 new cases on Friday, up from 107 the day before, partly due to increased testing among nightlife workers in the Shinjuku and Ikebukuro districts.
Of all new infections confirmed in Tokyo in the week through Wednesday, 44% were traced to establishments where “food and drinks are provided along with company”, chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said — an oblique reference to spots such as “host bars” where male hosts are paid to flirt with female patrons over drinks.
“We will prevent the spread of infection while maintaining daily life,” said Governor Yuriko Koike, Tokyo’s first female governor who is expected to win a second term in an election on Sunday after a campaign dominated by the pandemic.
2020-07-03 18:10:47
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has tested positive for coronavirus and has gone into self-isolation.
The foreign minister, in a tweet, said: “This afternoon I felt a slight fever and immediately quarantined myself at home. I have now tested positive for Covid 19.”
“By the grace of Allah, I feel strong and energetic. I will continue to carry on my duties from home. Please keep me in your prayers,” he added.
2020-07-03 18:00:22
German scientists began a nationwide study to gain a better overview of the actual prevalence of the new coronavirus in the country’s population and test how well measures to prevent its spread are working.
The study by the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) will start by testing around 3,000 blood samples from residents in the southern German town of Reutlingen for antibodies created when immune system fights the coronavirus.
Scientists will conduct five different antibody tests on each sample. The study will take place over a period of one year, with additional blood samples being collected and tested again in selected districts across Germany four and eight months after the first survey.
Antibody studies, also known as seroprevalence research, are considered critical to understanding where an outbreak is spreading and can help guide decisions on restrictions needed to contain it.
2020-07-03 17:53:32
Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar said that Pakistan's COVID-19 cases tally can remain under 400,000 if health guidelines and SOPs are followed.
The federal minister, in a statement, said that the COVID-19 death rate is also declining in the country and since the past few days, only 5% people tested positive for the virus.
Attributing the drop in statistics to the masses following SOPs and preventive measures such as the smart lockdown, Umar said that in the mid of June, the federal capital had been reporting around 700 cases daily.
“In Islamabad, the administration, police and staff did a marvelous job,” he said, adding that measure will also be undertaken in Karachi to improve the situation.
“More work can be done in Sindh and a consultation will be held over this in the evening,” said Asad Umar, lamenting that the situation in Sindh and Karachi did not seem to be improving.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-03 17:47:51
Thousands of jeepneys, flamboyantly decorated jeeps that serve as cheap public transport across the Philippines, were back on the streets of Manila on Friday, bringing relief to companies and commuters who have struggled with coronavirus curbs.
Dubbed “the king of the road”, an estimated 55,000 of these large, multi-coloured trucks, used to crawl through Manila’s gridlocked roads on a typical day before being forced to a halt 15 weeks ago when the government imposed a coronavirus lockdown.
Just 6,000 were back in business on Friday, operating at half capacity under strict social distancing rules. In pre-pandemic times, jeepneys routinely carried up to 15 passengers who sat knee-to-knee on twin benches in the windowless vehicles, choked by exhaust fumes.
“I’m very happy we are now back on the road. This is our only source of income,” said driver Celo Cabangon, whose truck is decorated with Japanese and Philippine flags, Bible verses and the logo of U.S. sci-fi film “Transformers”.
2020-07-03 17:08:01
Serbia’s authorities declared a state of emergency in Belgrade, reimposing some restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19 after a surge of infections in the capital.
Residents of the city will be required to wear masks in indoor public spaces or on public transport, opening hours of clubs and cafes will be shortened, and gatherings will be limited to 100 people indoors or 500 outdoors.
The state of emergency comes into effect immediately, city hall said in a statement on Friday. President Alexandar Vucic announced the measures on television overnight.
Local authorities in central and western Serbia have already declared emergencies in several other municipalities where a rise in COVID-19 cases had threatened to disrupt the functioning of the health system.
2020-07-03 16:59:48
German Chancellor Angela Merkel made her first public appearance wearing a mask after dismissing accusations of hypocrisy earlier this week for not wearing one.
Merkel entered the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, wearing a black mask marked with EU2020.de, a website dedicated to Germany’s six-month presidency of the European Union which started on July 1.
Merkel, whose government has made wearing a mask compulsory in some public places, was asked by a journalist at a news conference on Monday why she had never been seen wearing a mask in public.
The chancellor, who is known to keep a close eye on opinion polls, responded that she did not need to wear a mask when she was observing social distancing rules, but did so when she could not, for example during private shopping trips when she was not in the public eye.
“But I won’t tell you where I go shopping,” she said with a smile.
2020-07-03 16:49:55
The EU has authorized the use ofremdesivir to treat coronavirus as cases and death toll mount.
Here's howremdesivir attacks a virus.
2020-07-03 16:39:48
Leaders of an isolated indigenous Yanomami community in Brazil have complained that a military mission to protect them from the coronavirus brought greater risk of infection to their people through contact with outsiders including journalists.
Federal prosecutors said they were investigating the visit for ignoring the wishes of Yanomami communities to remain isolated from society, violating rules of social distancing and distributing chloroquine to indigenous people.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, soldiers brought medical supplies by helicopter to outposts on the border with Venezuela and assembled Yanomami families to be tested for the novel coronavirus, an outreach effort recorded by a contingent of journalists.
“We don’t want to be used as government propaganda,” said Parana Yanomami. “We don’t want outsiders coming here to take photos of our children. The visit took us by surprise.”
Roberto Yanomami, head of a community at Surucucu, said the government organized the trip without consulting tribal leaders.
“We are worried strangers came here and left the COVID-19. The Yanomami people were called into the garrison with no explanation,” he said in a video message, his face painted black with dye from the fruit of the genipapo tree.
2020-07-03 16:19:41
Thailand’s main international airport unveiled rapid coronavirus tests on Friday for some overseas arrivals after a three-month ban on foreign visitors was partially lifted this month.
All foreigners, except those with work permits, have been barred since March, but after more than five weeks with no recorded community transmission of the virus, Thailand is allowing in some groups of foreigners.
Business travellers, diplomats and government guests staying for less than 14 days are considered “fast track travellers” who will be swab tested for the disease at Suvarnabhumi airport to make ensure they are infection-free before entry.
“The test itself takes around one hour and a half,” said Suwich Thammapalo, an official of Thailand’s disease control department, adding that its use could be expanded in future for other arrivals and tourists.
The airport test, costing 3,000 baht ($96) each, is one requirement for fast-track entry without spending 14 days in quarantine, and is required of other foreigners recently allowed in, ranging from those with resident status or family in the country, as well as international students.
2020-07-03 17:37:06
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told a meeting of the politburo of the ruling Workers Party the North had stopped the novel coronavirus from making inroads in the country, state news agency KCNA said.
“We have thoroughly prevented the inroad of the malignant virus and maintained a stable anti-epidemic situation despite the worldwide health crisis, which is a shining success achieved,” Kim Jong Un said in a statement carried by KCNA.
He warned against self-complacency or relaxation in the anti-epidemic effort and urged North Koreans to maintain “maximum alert”, KCNA said in a statement.
2020-07-03 16:09:52
On a holiday weekend that would typically draw crowds to watch fireworks, march in parades and wave the red, white and blue, many Americans kicked off Independence Day exactly where they have been for months: at home.
The holiday marking the country’s 244 years of independence comes four days into a month when at least eight states have seen record daily increases in coronavirus cases, leading several governors to toughen social distancing measures and urge people to celebrate from home.
“COVID-19 does not take the summer off. Does not take the weekend off. And will not take 4th of July off,” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on Twitter on Thursday.
Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey, where vacationers were expected to flock to the Jersey Shore over the holiday, raised the legal limit on crowd sizes for outdoor gatherings to 500 people on Friday but asked people to wear face masks and “use common sense.”
2020-07-03 16:37:00
The United States broke a new record on Friday after an estimated 55,000 contracted coronavirus in a single day, as various states across the country report COVID-19 infections.
A surge in coronavirus cases over the past week has put President Donald Trump’s handling of the crisis under the microscope and led several governors to halt plans to reopen their states after strict lockdowns.
The daily U.S. tally stood at 55,274 late Thursday, topping the previous single-day record of 54,771 set by Brazil on June 19.
Coronavirus cases are rising in 37 out of 50 U.S. states including Florida, which confirmed more than 10,000 new cases on Thursday. That marked the state’s largest daily spike so far and a level that exceeded single-day tallies from any European country at the height of the outbreak there.
Read more
2020-07-03 15:59:51
COVID-19 has been mostly noted for its extreme and fatal cases, but some people who experienced mild forms of the disease are reporting unusual lingering effects.
2020-07-03 16:14:00
Lawyers for three of Europe's biggest airlines said the British government's quarantine rules for travellers were irrational and disproportionate at the opening of a High Court challenge to the policy in London on Friday.
The legal action by British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair proceeded despite the government saying the policy would be ended for English holidaymakers to countries such as France and Spain, as the full list of countries impacted by the change had not been published.
The government introduced a blanket rule that all travellers arriving from abroad must self-isolate for 14 days on June 8, arguing it was a crucial step to avoid a second wave of COVID-19.
The airlines, which grounded planes due to the pandemic, criticised the quarantine policy, saying it dealt a catastrophic blow to the industry's hopes of recovery in the summer, and that they had not been consulted on the move. They are seeking a judicial review of the rules.
2020-07-03 15:48:50
When South Africa began easing its coronavirus lockdown in May, it allowed religious worshippers to gather in groups of up to 50, but maintained a ban on people assembling to drink alcohol.
That’s a problem for the “Gabola” church — the name means ‘drinking’ in the local Tswana language — for whom a tipple is an integral part of their religious worship.
Founded just two years ago, the church tried to hold its usual meetings in local bars, called shebeens, to praise God while downing whisky, but they soon got arrested, its leader and self-styled ‘pope’ Tsietsi Makiti, 55, told Reuters.
“They can arrest us until Jesus comes back,” said Makiti, wearing a bishop’s mitre with a miniature bottle of spirits hanging off it.
But he added they had been moving services from place to place to avoid a run-in with the authorities.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-03 15:38:00
The Sindh Government has told the federation that it does not support the idea of setting up cattle markets for Eid-ul-Azha in the province, said provincial Information Minister Nasir Shah on Friday.
Shah said that people who wished to sacrifice animals should contact religious scholars or local mosques, who can, in turn, perform the service for them.
The minister also shared that the provincial government has made arrangements for picking up the animal’s carcasses across the province.
Karachi Commissioner Iftikhar Shallwani has already approved arrangements of collective sacrifice of sacrificial animals during Eid ul Azha with the assistance of non-profit organisations.
2020-07-03 17:30:01
China’s services sector expanded at the fastest pace in over a decade in June as the easing of coronavirus-related lockdown measures revived consumer demand, a private survey showed, though companies continued to shed jobs.
The Caixin/Markit services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose to 58.4, the highest reading since April 2010, from May’s 55.0, pulling further away from the trough hit in February as the coronavirus lockdown paralysed the economy.
The 50-mark separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis.
The rebound suggests China’s overall recovery is becoming more balanced and broader based as life slowly returns to normal in one of the world’s biggest consumer markets, though analysts believe it will take months for activity to return to pre-crisis levels.
“This (latest survey) suggests the services sector’s recovery is gaining traction,” said analysts at Nomura, which recently raises its forecast for China’s second-quarter GDP growth to 2.6% year-on-year from 1.2%.
2020-07-03 17:22:07
The French government called on Air France to avoid mandatory layoffs as the airline prepared to announce some 7,500 job cuts to cope with a collapse in travel due to the coronavirus pandemic.
At least half of the cuts will likely entail voluntary departures and retirement plans, sources familiar with the matter said this week, while 1,000 jobs are likely to be cut at Air France’s “HOP!” airline.
“A successful labour reorganisation is one where there are no forced departures,” junior economy minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told Sud Radio on Friday.
2020-07-03 15:21:00
Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar said on Friday that Pakistan's COVID-19 cases tally can remain under 400,000 if health guidelines and SOPs are followed.
The federal minister, in a statement, said that the COVID-19 death rate is also declining in the country and since the past few days, only 5% people tested positive for the virus.
Attributing the drop in statistics to the masses following SOPs and preventive measures such as the smart lockdown, Umar said that in the mid of June, the federal capital had been reporting around 700 cases daily.
“In Islamabad, the administration, police and staff did a marvelous job,” he said, adding that measure will also be undertaken in Karachi to improve the situation.
Read more
2020-07-03 17:19:05
The US has sent 100 ventilators to Pakistan to help the country tackle coronavirus more effectively
2020-07-03 15:00:00
Certain areas of Karachi's South District will undergo a lockdown from today (Friday) till July 16, as the government makes use of the smart lockdown strategy to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the city and the province.
According to a notification issued, the areas identified for the lockdown include Clifton, Defense, Lyari, Kharadar and Garden.
2020-07-03 14:43:00
JERUSALEM: Two Israeli defence contractors will partner with Abu Dhabi-based technology company Group 42 to develop technologies to help fight the new coronavirus, the companies said.
Last month, a senior United Arab Emirates (UAE) official said the countries could possibly cooperate in the fight against COVID-19 and on technology.
State-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), which has civilian as well as defence operations, said on Friday the agreement was reached in a video call with Group 42, which deals in artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
The partnership focuses on artificial intelligence, sensors and lasers, IAI said in a statement.
"COVID-19 does not distinguish between continents, peoples, and religions," said Yoav Turgeman, CEO of IAI subsidiary Elta, calling it "the first step in what may become future joint work by the two countries".
Israel's state-owned Rafael, which has been developing technologies to combat the pandemic, will also partner with Group 42, a company spokesman said.
2020-07-03 14:22:00
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel made her first public appearance wearing a mask on Friday after dismissing accusations of hypocrisy earlier this week for not wearing one.
Merkel entered the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, wearing a black mask marked with EU2020.de, a website dedicated to Germany's six-month presidency of the European Union which started on July 1.
Merkel, whose government has made wearing a mask compulsory in some public places, was asked by a journalist at a news conference on Monday why she had never been seen wearing a mask in public.
The chancellor, who is known to keep a close eye on opinion polls, responded that she did not need to wear a mask when she was observing social distancing rules, but did so when she could not, for example during private shopping trips when she was not in the public eye.
"But I won't tell you where I go shopping," she said with a smile.
Merkel has been lauded for her response to the coronavirus crisis and her approval ratings have surged.
2020-07-03 14:14:00
BRUSSELS: The European Commission said on Friday it had given conditional approval for the use of COVID-19 antiviral remdesivir following an accelerated review process.
The EU executive said the drug, produced by Gilead Sciences Inc, was the first medicine authorised in the European Union for treating COVID-19 following a "rolling review" begun by the European Medicines Agency at the end of April.
The agency reviews data as they become available on a rolling basis, while development is still ongoing.
The Commission said on Wednesday it was in negotiations with Gilead to obtain doses of remdesivir for the 27 European Union countries.
However, that may prove difficult after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it had secured all of Gilead's projected production for July and 90% of that for August and September.
2020-07-03 13:50:47
The Executive Director of National Institute of Health Major General Aamer Ikram 'acknowledged' the efforts of the team in the ongoing pandemic.
Maj Gen Ikram appreciated the team who were actively involved in testing for COVID-19.
2020-07-03 12:53:31
LONDON: Passengers arriving into England from the United States will not be exempted from quarantine rules, Britain’s transport minister Grant Shapps said on Friday.
Asked whether the United States would be on a ‘red-list’ of countries to which a 14-day quarantine period will apply, Shapps said: “I’m afraid it will be.”
“The U.S. from a very early stage banned flights from the UK and from Europe so there isn’t a reciprocal arrangement in place,” he told the BBC.
2020-07-03 11:58:16
LONDON: Quarantine rules for people arriving in England from around 50 countries will be lifted, transport minister Grant Shapps said on Friday.
“There will be a list of 50 plus countries and if you add in the overseas territories, 60 something or other that we will publish later today,” he told Sky News.
Under the existing rules, travellers must self-isolate for 14 days on entering the country.
2020-07-03 11:37:43
the ruling Party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf claimed on Friday that curve of the coronavirus was flattening in the country.
The PTI thanked the people for wearing masks and called them "heroes".
2020-07-03 11:02:58
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Minister Taimur Jhagra shared that the province has converted a 58-bed dedicated ward into a coronavirus facility in Pehsawar.
The minister said the upgrade was part of the Khyber Pakhtunkhw's plan to add over 1,000 beds for coronavirus patients in the province in July and August.
2020-07-03 10:52:17
The Sindh government has decided to put five towns in Karachi’s District West under a smart lockdown under the second phase from 12am today.
The UC that fall under those towns includes Orangi Town’s UC 11 and 12, Sites’ UC 4 Metroville, Baldia Town’s UC 5, Gadap Town’s US 5 and Kemari’s UC 3.
2020-07-03 09:59:29
TOKYO: Japan has no need to reintroduce a state of emergency to tackle the novel coronavirus, its top government spokesman said on Friday, as cases in Tokyo rose to a two-month high.
The new cases are mostly among people in their 20s and 30s, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters, with the number of serious cases declining.
New daily cases in the capital have exceeded 50 over the last week, with Tokyo reporting more than 120 on Friday, up from 107 the day before, the Nikkei newspaper reported, as the virus spreads among nightlife workers.
The state of emergency was lifted on May 25.
The pandemic is dominating Sunday’s gubernatorial election campaign, with the incumbent, Yuriko Koike, looking set to win easily.
The state of emergency gave governors of Japan’s 47 prefectures stronger legal authority to urge people to stay home and businesses to close, but there were no fines or arrests for non-compliance.
2020-07-03 09:38:06
Chair of The National Command and Operations Centre Asad Umar lauded the Islamabad administration for decreasing the number of positive cases being reported in the federal capital.
"Islamabad new corona cases were more than 700/day in mid June. Yesterday 113 only. Positivity down to 5% yesterday and in single digits for last few days consistently," tweeted the minister.
2020-07-03 09:32:25
MEXICO CITY: Mexico posted a record daily tally of coronavirus infections on Thursday, as 6,741 cases carried the overall figure to 238,511, according to the health ministry.
The new figure pushed Mexico past Iran to 10th place among nations with the largest number of cases, a Reuters tally showed.
Mexico also recorded 679 more deaths, for a toll of 29,189 since the pandemic reached the country in late February.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said authorities had begun examining records for causes of death linked to COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.
The official death toll could climb once such cases were identified, he told a news conference.
Lopez-Gatell said he stood by recent comments to the Washington Post about deaths in Mexico City, which has been hit hard by the pandemic.
He had told the newspaper that actual deaths in the capital could outnumber those reported by a factor of three.
The government has often said the real number of infected people is probably significantly higher than the tally of confirmed cases.
2020-07-03 00:07:44
Punjab reported 1,216 new coronavirus infections, 35 deaths, bumping the overall cases in the province to 78,956 and death toll to 1,819.
2020-07-02 23:51:59
Sweden, under fire internationally for its handling of the coronavirus, said Thursday it would audit its ability to secure crucial resources during a crisis after a report found fault with its preparedness.
The Scandinavian country's approach to COVID-19, softer than the rest of Europe, has sparked rows with the World Health Organisation and US President Donald Trump, and put it at odds with its Nordic neighbours.
The mission to analyse the country's ability to secure resources was given to the government funded Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), which on Wednesday had published a report detailing shortcomings in Sweden's ability to respond to the crisis.
2020-07-02 23:46:45
European aircraft builder Airbus said that it could save up to 3,500 jobs in Germany and France if government help is forthcoming, out of 15,000 layoffs planned worldwide over the coronavirus' impact.
"We could preserve up to 500 jobs if the German government supported us via its programme to develop hydrogen drive for planes. Prolonging shorter hours schemes to 24 months could save 1,500 more," chief executive Guillaume Faury told news weekly Der Spiegel, adding that "talks are already underway on this."
Likewise, 1,500 posts could also be saved in France, he said.
Germany and France have complained in recent days at around 5,000 layoffs each set to hit their countries, with Berlin urging fair distribution of the pain while Paris blasted the cuts as "excessive".
2020-07-02 23:39:56
The number of deaths in France from the new coronavirus has risen by 14 from the previous day to 29,875, the country's health department said.
The number of people in hospital fell by 188 to 8,148 and the number of people in intensive care units fell by nine to 573, with both numbers continuing weeks-long downtrends.
2020-07-02 23:30:36
Balochistan recorded 55 new infections, bumping the overall cases to 10,666, the provincial health department's daily COVID-19 report showed.
The province recorded no new deaths, while it saw 309 recoveries.
2020-07-02 23:13:45
Authorities have announced to impose smart lockdown in Peshawar's Shami road area in light of increasing COVID-19 cases, a notification said.
The lockdown will be imposed from tomorrow evening at 4pm after which the entry and exit points of the area will be sealed, the notification said, adding that grocery and medical stores and other shops of necessities will remain open.
2020-07-02 23:10:27
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 2,679,230 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 54,357 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 725 to 128,024.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, on July 1 compared with its previous report a day earlier.
2020-07-02 23:00:04
Global coronavirus infections have hit record highs as the United States and Brazil battle the world's deadliest outbreaks while new clusters around the planet test fragile gains in containing the disease.
The pandemic is accelerating with more than half of the world's infections over the past half year recorded in June alone, according to the World Heath Organization.
And the past week has seen new highs with cases topping "160,000 on every single day," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday.
Touching almost every country on earth, COVID-19 has infected at least 10.7 million people and claimed some 516,000 lives as it upends ordinary and economic life in unprecedented ways.
In the worst-hit United States new infections soared past 50,000 for the first time on Wednesday in a new grim milestone.
2020-07-02 22:51:28
2020-07-02 22:36:19
There is ‘very little risk’ that pets can infect their owners with COVID-19, the chief scientist of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
Soumya Swaminathan, WHO chief scientist, told a Geneva news conference that felines, ferrets and “even tigers” have been infected with the disease.
“There is very little risk from domestic animals because there was some concern about domestic animals becoming a source of infection,” she said.
2020-07-02 22:25:30
Commissioner Karachi Iftikhar Shalwani said the lockdown imposed in several areas on June 18 will end today.
Talking to Geo News, the commissioner said that he has asked the health department for a health advisory for devising a future plan.
2020-07-02 21:51:39
Rio de Janeiro's bars and restaurants have reopened after more than three months of coronavirus lockdown, despite criticism by health specialists in Brazil, one of the world's worst-hit nations.
As part of a phased return to normality, bars, restaurants and cafes are authorized to reopen to 50% capacity, with a distance of two metres between tables and priority given to open-air dining and drinking.
Rio's gyms, beauty and tattoo parlours may also open on a staggered basis, to avoid crowding.
The city, rimmed with beaches and mountains that normally draw tourists from around the world, registered 68 new deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. The number has fluctuated in recent weeks after peaking on June 3 with 227 deaths.
Rio de Janeiro state, the second hardest hit Brazilian region after Sao Paulo, has already surpassed 10,000 deaths, more than 60% of them in Rio municipality, and more than 115,000 infections.
Brazil on Wednesday surpassed 60,000 deaths and 1.44 million infections, although specialists believe the actual number of cases may be much higher due to the lack of diagnostic tests.
2020-07-02 21:48:20
US democratic leader Hillary Clinton has highlighted the challenges faced by working parents, while sharing a report by New York Times.
"In the COVID-19 economy, you're allowed only a kid or a job," she wrote, quoting the report.
"The pandemic is making it clearer than ever: we need to make child care more accessible and safe for every working parent."
2020-07-02 21:33:02
Future oil product demand growth will never return to pre-coronavirus levels, Citi Research said, adding that oil prices were likely to fluctuate between $45 and $60 a barrel in the long term.
“Not only will the world have lost 2+ years of demand growth, but the elasticity of oil product demand to global GDP will take a step-level change lower,” the bank wrote in a note published on Wednesday.
Jet fuel demand is unlikely to reach 2019 levels before 2023 as changing work habits, including telecommuting, and environmental regulations to limit carbon and other emissions will reduce demand for both jet fuel and gasoline.
Oil markets are likely to remain well supplied in the medium term, with production adequate at $45 and likely to be oversupplied at $50 per barrel, analysts at Citi said.
Any new equilibrium price would be at lower levels than what the sector has averaged over the past few years, they added.
“We believe the $100 per barrel view has far more fantasy than reality at its heart and that even a $70 world would be short-lived,” Citi said, adding that price stability will be elusive and impossible.
2020-07-02 21:20:32
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poles should not be afraid to vote in the second round of a presidential election due on July 12 because the novel coronavirus has become a disease “like any other”.
His nationalist ruling party’s presidential candidate, the incumbent Andrzej Duda, faces a neck-and-neck re-election bid against centrist Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, following a first round of voting last Sunday.
Poland has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic relatively well, with fewer than 1,500 deaths so far out of a total population of some 38 million, though it continues to report new cases in the hundreds each day.
“This is now a disease that we could say is like any other, we are only waiting for a vaccine,” state news agency PAP quoted Morawiecki as saying.
2020-07-02 21:05:01
Advisor to Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Information Ajmal Wazir said the government is taking effective measures to tackle coronavirus, reported Radio Pakistan.
Addressing a presser, he said in smart lockdown was imposed in 214 selected areas while 89 areas have been cleared from lockdown.
2020-07-02 20:54:15
Sindh government has established a new 50-bed hospital for coronavirus patients in Karachi which will start operation from Friday, reported Radio Pakistan.
Provincial Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho, in a statement, said that the hospital was established in a short duration with the facilities of High-Dependency Units (HDU) and six-bed Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
2020-07-02 20:47:46
The gap between the US unemployment rates for Blacks and whites widened further in June, to its largest in five years, underscoring the uneven nature of the nascent recovery from the historic job losses triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
Jobless rates for both groups fell in June, but the rate for whites came down at a much faster rate. The white unemployment rate fell 2.3 percentage points to 10.1% from 12.4%, while the rate for Blacks dropped 1.4 points to 15.4% from 16.8%.
At 5.3 percentage points, the gap is now the widest since May 2015 and exposes an important economic component of racial inequality at a pivotal moment in U.S. race relations. In recent weeks, the country has witnessed protests over police brutality against African Americans, particularly Black men.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-02 20:32:36
Former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gillani has recovered from the coronavirus, his daughter Fiza Batool Gillani has said.
"My father Yousuf Raza Gillani has recovered from coronavirus," she said, adding that his test had come back negative.
She thanked all those who had prayed for her father's recovery.
2020-07-02 19:57:10
Florida shattered records when it reported over 10,000 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase in the state since the pandemic started, according to a Reuters tally.
Outbreaks in Texas, California, Florida and Arizona have helped the United States break records and send cases rising at rates not seen since April.
In June, Florida infections rose by 168% or over 95,000 new cases. The percent of tests coming back positive has skyrocketed to 15% from 4% at the end of May.
Florida, with 21 million residents, has reported more new daily coronavirus cases than any European country had at the height of their outbreaks.
2020-07-02 19:47:28
Oil production in Brazil fell 6.5% in May from the same month a year before, as the novel coronavirus rips through offshore and onshore oilfields, hurting production, national oil regulator ANP said.
In May, the nation produced 3.485 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), 2.765 million barrels of which was oil. That was up 1.3% from same month last year, but fell significantly from the previous month “due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” ANP said.
Sixty offshore platforms saw production stalled at one point. Among the platforms that saw production hit, the ANP said, were P-76, P-74 and P-67, all of which are owned by state-run Petrobras, according to the regulator. Production at Mangaratiba and Cidade de Angra dos Reis, both massive ships used in the oil production and transportation process, known as FPSOs, was also hit.
2020-07-02 19:38:18
The father of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has flown to Greece, despite current advice for British nationals to avoid all but essential international travel.
Greek government officials confirmed that author Stanley Johnson had arrived, likely via Bulgaria, in the northern region of Pelion, where he has a holiday home, but said there was nothing untoward in his arrival.
Photos on Stanley Johnson’s Instagram account showed him wearing a mask in what appeared to be an airport. Two videos on the same account showed an aircraft coming in to land. “Arriving in Athens this evening!,” the caption said.
Stanley Johnson was quoted on Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper website as saying he was in Pelion “on essential business trying to COVID-proof my property in view of the upcoming letting season”.
2020-07-02 19:29:57
US President Donald Trump at a press briefing celebrated a government report showing the country gained 4.8 million jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to 11.1% last month, when states began allowing businesses to reopen from strict shutdowns aimed at containing the coronavirus pandemic.
“Today’s announcement proves that our economy is roaring back,” Trump said, rattling off different sectors that saw job gains according to the monthly report. “These are historic numbers.”
Thursday’s report, Trump said, “suggests that workers are confident about finding a new job.” He added, though, that the White House and Congress continue to negotiate on another round of stimulus, frequently called “Phase 4,” to help the economy withstand a pandemic now in its fourth month.
2020-07-02 19:18:07
Russia’s sovereign wealth fund said it will step up the production of the anti-viral drug Avifavir, an anti-influenza medicine which the Russian government has granted preliminary approval for treatment of COVID-19 patients.
The Russian health ministry gave its approval for the drug’s use under a special accelerated process in May. Its Russian backers say it has shown a benefit in COVID-19 patients in early research.
The first 100,000 treatment courses were delivered last month to 35 Russian regions, as well as to neighbouring Belarus, said the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) which has promoted the drug.
RDIF said it was now set to produce more than 100,000 courses in July and that a joint venture with pharmaceutical firm ChemRar Group would allow it to increase production threefold to meet growing demand both domestically and internationally.
Kirill Dmitriev, the head of RDIF, said Russia was ready to help other nations fight the virus and that more than 50 countries had expressed their interest in the drug.
2020-07-02 19:09:42
Oman’s health minister said that the sultanate had witnessed a “scary” surge in COVID-19 cases that required boosting hospital capacity, especially for intensive care units.
The country reported 1,361 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday with three deaths in the last 24 hours, to take its total count to 42,555 cases with 188 deaths.
“In the last six weeks there has been a radical change which is very disturbing and scary,” minister Ahmed bin al-Saeedi told a news briefing. He blamed individuals who did not wear masks or practice social distancing and said some employees were going into offices when they had been in contact with infected people, instead of self isolating.
2020-07-02 18:59:19
Canada’s exports rose in May, bouncing back from historic declines in April, as auto industry production resumed and on higher crude prices, though imports fell on supply challenges tied to the gradual reopening of countries from COVID-19 closures.
Total exports rose 6.7% to C$34.6 billion ($25.5 billion) in May, its largest jump since January 2014, and imports declined 3.9% in May to C$35.3 billion, Statscan said.
Exports of energy products rose 14.5% in May, mainly on higher exports of crude oil, while motor vehicle and parts exports began to ramp up, gaining C$822 million.
“Despite this monthly increase, exports of motor vehicles and parts were down by almost 80% compared with May 2019,” StatsCan said in a release.
2020-07-02 18:48:32
The US economy created jobs at a record clip in June as more restaurants and bars resumed operations, further evidence that the COVID-19 recession was probably over, though a surge in cases of the coronavirus threatens the fledgling recovery.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 4.8 million jobs in June, the Labor Department’s closely watched monthly employment showed on Thursday. That was the most since the government started keeping records in 1939. Payrolls rebounded 2.699 million in May.
The job gains added to a stream of data, including consumer spending, showing a sharp rebound in activity. But the reopening of businesses after being shuttered in mid-March has unleashed a wave of coronavirus infections in large parts of the country, including the populous California, Florida and Texas.
2020-07-02 18:37:00
Industrial production in Brazil rose 7% in May, official figures showed, the second biggest monthly increase on record as activity started to pick up again following two months of stricter lockdown to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
While optimists will see the data as proof the worst of the economic crisis is over and a rebound underway, only a small part of output lost in March and April has been recovered and the figures were burnished by a record collapse the month before.
Industrial production rose 7.0% in May from April, the biggest monthly increase since June 2018, and second biggest since statistic agency IBGE’s series began in 2002.
Production was down 21.9% on the year.
The median estimates in a Reuters poll of economists projected a monthly rise of 6.7% and an annual decline of 23.1%.
Production of consumer durable goods rose 92.5% from the previous month and capital goods rose 28.7%, IBGE said.
2020-07-02 18:28:04
Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry rejected the Sindh government's decision to extend the lockdown and demanded that the decision be revoked.
"Businesses should be allowed to operate at full capacity," the notification said, adding that the administration should ensure implementation of SOPs.
The chamber said that if the lockdown persists, several businesses will shut down permanently. "Business closures will increase chaos, unemployment, and poverty."
2020-07-02 18:18:26
The World Health Organisation (WHO) does not think there are manifold undetected coronavirus infections in Africa with people dying unreported, the regional director of the organisation said.
“We think that there is a certain underestimation of cases,” Matshidiso Moeti told a news conference, adding that the WHO was working with countries to improve their surveillance.
2020-07-02 18:08:17
Sweden’s number of confirmed COVID-19 crossed the 70,000 mark, while deaths rose by 41 to 5,411, health agency statistics showed.
Sweden recorded 947 new cases to put the total at 70,639. Expanded testing has seen daily new cases soar over the past month, eclipsing rates elsewhere in the European Union, but deaths and hospitalisations have tumbled from peaks in April.
2020-07-02 17:59:39
Spain will approve a new package of measures worth around 50 billion euros ($56.41 billion) aimed at boosting companies’ investment capacity and solvency to help revive the country’s coronavirus-battered economy, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told private news channel La Sexta.
“The aid is linked to (boosting) solvency and investment,” Sanchez said during the interview with La Sexta.
2020-07-02 17:50:10
Britain will be easing the quarantine measures for air travellers, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday, adding that more details of plan will be released this week.
“As we set out earlier this week ... we will be easing health measures at the border by allowing passengers arriving from specific countries and territories to be exempted from self-isolation requirements,” the spokesman told reporters, adding that the details would come this week.
The government said on Friday it would ditch a 14-day quarantine period for people arriving from countries it deems to be lower risk for COVID-19, but has as yet not listed the countries that would include.
2020-07-02 17:41:20
As coronavirus continues to wreak havoc in the country, slum dwellers seem to be helpless against the threat of the COVID-19 as they battle the epidemic without resources nor the knowledge on how to protect themselves to fight the pandemic.
Azeem Alphonse, who lives in slum area located in F-7 sector, said the medical experts advise the people to wear face masks and use hand sanitizers but how can the dwellers who live in such kind of conditions afford this ‘luxury’.
“The rate of single face mask is Rs30 and I have a wife and three children, which means I need Rs150 to buy these masks for my family. We don’t have even enough water to frequently wash our hands with soap as being advised by the medical experts,” he said.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-02 17:31:51
Africa countries have lost almost $55 billion in travel and tourism revenues in three months due to the coronavirus pandemic, the African Union commissioner for infrastructure and energy said.
Amani Abou-Zeid told a news conference that due to the prolonged lockdown and border closures to curb the spread of the virus, the air industry will be greatly impacted.
“Some airlines in the continent will not make it post-COVID-19,” she said.
2020-07-02 17:21:23
Kazakhstan's former president has recovered from the novel coronavirus, his spokesman said, as the Central Asian country tightens virus restrictions to combat a second wave of infections.
Strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev, who turns 80 on Monday, served as president for nearly three decades before handing the reins over to hand-picked successor Kassym-Jomart Tokayev last year.
He retains several powerful posts and his health is a national conversation topic due to the impact his death could have on the vast, oil-producing republic of more than 18 million people.
2020-07-02 17:08:37
Thailand said it would prohibit online sales of alcohol in a clampdown on underage drinking after a rise in sales during the coronavirus outbreak.
The Southeast Asian country scrapped a three-week ban on the sale of alcohol in shops in May when it lifted other restrictions following progress in containing the coronavirus.
The legal drinking age is 20 and the sale of alcohol is prohibited in certain areas like schools and parks. Thailand already limits the hours that stores can sell alcohol.
“Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the sale of beverages online has increased and there were promotions that did not regulate age and location, making it difficult to enforce existing laws,” Deputy Minister of Public Health Satit Pitutacha said in a statement.
2020-07-02 16:59:46
Sindh reported 2,430 coronavirus infections and 31 deaths, bumping the overall cases to 89,225 and death toll to 1,437, the provincial chief Murad Ali Shah said.
“The recovery rate in the province stands at 56%,” Shah added.
2020-07-02 16:47:16
Russia has extended a moratorium on international flights until August 1, the RBC business daily reported.
Russia, which has so far recorded more than 660,000 cases of the novel coronavirus, in March grounded all international flights, except for those repatriating Russians and those transporting foreign citizens home.
Last month it announced a partial reopening of its borders, saying it would allow people who needed to work, study, get medical treatment or look after relatives to travel abroad.
2020-07-02 16:37:34
Germany will keep reviewing travel advice for Turkey, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told his Turkish counterpart, saying any decisions were coordinated with the EU and based on reliable data on infections and the health situation.
Turkey is disappointed that the EU has excluded it, along with the United States and others, from a list of countries recommended for non-essential travel and has called on it to correct its “mistake”.
Speaking to reporters after talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Berlin, Maas said reviews of the situation took place every two weeks.
“Further steps will follow,” said Maas, adding that family visits were excluded from the travel warning. This is crucial for the large Turkish community but Germany is also an important source of tourism for Turkey.
2020-07-02 16:28:15
Chairman Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman said disinfectant should be sprayed in cattle markets to stem the virus.
"Collective sacrifice should be given priority [...] cattle markets should be set up far from residential areas," he said, adding: "Last year's permit to collect animal hides will be valid this year as well."
2020-07-02 16:19:48
Tokyo confirmed 107 new coronavirus infections, its highest daily tally in two months, but Japan’s chief cabinet secretary said there was no need to reintroduce a state of emergency.
Tokyo’s daily count last rose above 100 on May 2. On Wednesday, it confirmed 67 new cases.
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said about 70% of cases on Thursday were among people in their 20s and 30s.
“It’s really unpleasant that it is increasing somewhat. I’d like to ask all Tokyo residents and everyone at businesses for their cooperation to prevent that,” she said.
2020-07-02 15:55:16
2020-07-02 15:44:00
Prague celebrated the end of the coronavirus lockdown with a 500-meter long dinner party.
Residents stretched through the Czech capital's streets and over its famous Charles Bridge after the government lifted restrictions on large gatherings earlier this week.
2020-07-02 15:19:39
Saudi Arabia extended for an additional period several government initiatives to support the private sector and investors in mitigating the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, state news agency SPA reported on Thursday, citing a decision by King Salman.
The kingdom had introduced in March measures such as exemptions and postponements of some government fees and taxes for a period of three months.
It is now looking to extend some support measures for an unspecified period of time, according to the state news agency.
2020-07-02 14:56:41
Turkish designers are now creating masks to go with the dresses as the country allows weddings ceremonies again after a months-long ban due to coronavirus.
2020-07-02 14:22:00
Russia reported 6,760 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Thursday, pushing its nationwide tally to 661,165.
The authorities said 147 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 9,683.
2020-07-02 13:49:45
A strain of COVID-19 that has infected more than 300 people in Beijing since early June could have originated in South or Southeast Asia, according to a study by Harvard University researchers.
The outbreak in Beijing has raised concerns about China’s vulnerability to a “second wave” of infections. The virus found in Beijing cases is an imported strain of COVID-19, according to the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
“As the most recent cases in these branches are almost exclusively from South(east) Asia, this could suggest that the new cases in Beijing were re-introduced by transmissions from South(east) Asia,” they wrote.
The outbreak traced to Beijing’s huge Xinfadi wholesale market on June 11 had infected 329 people by the end of Wednesday.
2020-07-02 13:26:05
SAPM on Health Services Dr Zafar Mirza has announced the health ministry, NCOC and Yaran Watan have launched a webinar and tele-training series for healthcare workers treating coronavirus patients.
“Series for healthcare workers enhancing knowledge, skills and capabilities keeping pace with the current standards of practice and care for COVID-19 patient,” Mirza tweeted.
2020-07-02 12:59:45
SAPM on National Security Moeed Yusaf has said among the developing nation, Pakistan has shown ‘more responsibility than any other country’ in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
“Coronavirus as impacted the whole world, Pakistan is no different,” Yousaf said while addressing the media on Thursday.
Rejecting reports of Pakistan “exporting the virus to other countries”, Yousaf said, “We are trying our best to make sure no one infected with the virus leaves the country. We are keeping a close eye on the incoming and out-bound passengers.”
He also urged the public to act responsibly and not travel if they have symptoms of the virus.
2020-07-02 12:36:28
With over 60,000 coronavirus deaths, Brazil is the second most pandemic affected country in the world.
The country in recent days has reported a surge in infections in Southern and Midwestern areas of the country.
Its cities of Belem and Macapa at the mouth of the Amazon River have emerged as major coronavirus hotspots in April and May and has since then spread deep into surrounding rural areas.
According to Al Jazeera, the isolated settlements are built on stilts along the river with most of the households survive on fishing and harvesting local fruits.
Social distancing is nearly impossible in wooden shacks built close to each other. Many resident lack phones and it can take a day or more to reach health clinics.
Photos: Reuters
2020-07-02 12:15:23
A look at the latest coronavirus numbers from around the world.
2020-07-02 11:44:26
The British government will effectively ditch its air bridge plans and simply end the quarantine rules for those arriving from 75 countries so that people can go on holiday, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The newspaper said the UK would shortly lift a ban on non-essential travel to nearly all EU destinations, the British territories including Bermuda and Gibraltar, and Turkey, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.
2020-07-02 11:31:43
Two sub-sectors of Islamabad’s I-8 and I-10 sectors will be unsealed today, after the areas were sealed on June 18 due to an uptick in the number of coronavirus cases being reported from there.
According to a notification issued by the local administration, I-8/3, I-8/4, I-10/1 and I-10/2 will be unsealed today at 7pm.
2020-07-02 11:15:38
New Zealand's health minister, David Clark, resigned on Thursday, following recent slip-ups in the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and personal mistakes.
"It has become increasingly clear to me that my continuation in the role is distracting for the government's overall response to COVID-19 and the global pandemic," he said in a news conference in parliament.
2020-07-02 11:00:18
Trials in humans of a potential coronavirus vaccine by German biotech firm BioNTech and US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has shown potential.
The drug is one of 17 being tested on humans in a frantic global race to find a vaccine the world is counting on to end a pandemic that has infected 10.5 million people and killed more than half a million so far.
BioNTech said testing of two dosages of its BNT162b1 drug on 24 healthy volunteers showed that after 28 days they had developed higher levels of COVID-19 antibodies than typically seen in infected people.
It said the higher of the two doses — both administered via two injections within three weeks of one another — was followed by a short fever in three out of four participants after the second shot.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-02 10:34:04
India’s coronavirus infections surpassed 600,000 on Thursday, with 17,834 deaths, officials and the health ministry said.
An easing phase called “Unlock 2” was announced on Monday, allowing more economic activities to resume even as some densely populated containment zones stay under lockdown.
2020-07-02 10:17:19
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Pakistan increased by 4,339 to 217,809, data from the National Command and Control (NCOC) showed on Thursday.
The country also reported 78 deaths, bring the tally to 4,473.
The NCOC added 104,694 people have recovered from the virus so far in the country.
2020-07-02 09:49:22
World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that countries which fail to use every mechanism available to combat the coronavirus will struggle to beat it.
“Some countries ... have taken a fragmented approach. These countries face a long, hard road ahead,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva, without singling out any nations.
Tedros said local flare-ups were inevitable as some nations began lifting lockdown restrictions. “But countries that have the systems in place to apply a comprehensive approach should be able to contain these flare-ups locally and avoid reintroducing widespread restrictions,” he said.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-02 09:28:03
Coronavirus cases in US rose by over 48,000 on Wednesday, the biggest daily increase since the pandemic started, according to a Reuters tally.
Arizona, California, Florida and Texas have led the increases and were among 14 states that have reported a more than doubling of case numbers during June.
While it accounts for 4% of the world's population, the United States is responsible for around 25% of all reported COVID-19 cases and deaths.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-02 09:13:17
More than 10.7 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 515,141 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-07-01 23:59:43
2020-07-01 23:50:00
UEFA says it has no Plan B for this season’s Europa League which is due to finish with an eight-team mini-tournament in Germany in August.
During a video conference, UEFA and the German Football Federation (DFB) reaffirmed their commitment to staging the event in Germany, European soccer’s ruling body said in a statement. The Europa League was suspended in March due to the novel coronavirus.
“Both parties stressed their strong belief that all measures will be taken to ensure that the matches will be hosted in a safe and secure manner,” it said.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin added: “As with the UEFA Champions League Final Eight in Portugal, there is no need for a Plan B for this tournament in Germany.”
The quarter-finals, semi-finals and final will be played as a straight knockout tournament in Cologne, Duisburg, Duesseldorf and Gelsenkirchen, from Aug. 10-21, with the final in Cologne.
2020-07-01 23:40:16
The number of deaths in France from the new coronavirus rose by 18 from the previous day to stand at 29,861, an increase in line with the last week’s daily average but new cases of the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus rose sharply.
French health authorities said confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose by 918 to 165,719, after an increase of 541 on Tuesday.
In a statement, they said “a catch-up of missing data” had contributed to the sharper increase.
The figure of 918 is almost three times lower than April’s daily average of 2,582, when the pandemic was at its peak, but higher than last week’s average of 622, as well as June’s of 435 and May’s of 715.
France has been gradually easing its lockdown since May 11, with almost all businesses now open again.
2020-07-01 23:30:43
A potential coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac will be tested in Brazil by 12 research centres in 6 Brazilian states, the governor of Sao Paulo state, Joao Doria, has said, adding the trials still need to be approved by local health vigilance agency Anvisa.
The study — first announced on June 11 — is led by Instituto Butantan, a research center funded by the state of Sao Paulo. The centre’s agreement with Sinovac includes not only trials but also the transference of technology to produce the coronavirus vaccine locally.
“The 12 research centers that will carry out the trials for the coronavirus vaccine have already been chosen here in Brazil,” Doria said in a press conference.
Besides Sao Paulo, the tests with a total of 9,000 volunteers will also be conducted in Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and Parana, he added.
For Dimas Covas, director at Instituto Butantan, Sinovac’s potential vaccine is one of the most promising studies to fight COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and results of clinical trials are expected later this year.
Besides Sinovac, Brazil is also testing a potential vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca with researchers at Oxford University, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) says is the world’s leading candidate and most advanced in terms of development.
2020-07-01 23:00:00
Islamabad authorities will lift restrictions from sub-sectors of I-8 and I-10 after the completion of a 14-day quarantine period, the deputy commissioner said.
"From 771 cases per day we have brought down the positive cases to 137 today," he said, adding that the smart lockdown policy had shown "massive results".
2020-07-01 22:51:00
The global coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, the World Health Organization said, pointing out that June saw more than half of all cases reported since the start of the pandemic.
"For the past week, the number of the new cases has exceeded 160,000 on every single day," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing.
"60% of all cases so far have been reported just in the past month," he said.
2020-07-01 22:41:50
2020-07-01 22:39:48
The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for a halt to conflicts to facilitate the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, after more than three months of painstaking negotiations, diplomats said.
The resolution, drafted by France and Tunisia, calls for "an immediate cessation of hostilities in all situations" on the Security Council's agenda.
It is the Security Council's first statement on the pandemic and its first real action since the outbreak started.
Tunisia's ambassador to the UN, Kais Kabtani, hailed it as a "historic achievement" but experts questioned whether the text would have any impact and say the paralysis undermined the Council's credibility.
Repeatedly blocked by China and the United States, which opposed a reference in the text to the World Health Organization (WHO), the resolution aims to support an appeal in March by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a global ceasefire.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-01 22:22:33
2020-07-01 22:17:42
Balochistan reported 132 coronavirus infections, taking the overall cases to 10,608 in the province, the province's health department said.
2020-07-01 21:56:04
Anti-vaccine protesters took to the streets in Johannesburg on Wednesday to voice their concern over Africa’s first human trials for a potential coronavirus vaccine.
About 50 people held protests at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, saying they did not want Africans to be used as guinea pigs, reflecting concerns among some on the continent over testing drugs on people who do not understand the risks.
“I’m not happy at all! I mean this feels like the 1980s all over again when the AIDS pandemic just broke out in South Africa,” said 29-year-old graphic designer Tebogo Legoale.
Some of the placards carried by demonstrators read: “We are not guinea pigs.”
Twenty-nine-year-old community activist Walter Mashilo said the vaccine should be tested first on members of parliament and ministers’ children, not on poor people.
“We are clear, comrades, we don’t want this vaccine (trial),” he said, addressing the crowd.
2020-07-01 21:47:48
Nations who fail to use all mechanisms available to combat the still-raging coronavirus will struggle to beat it, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.
“Some countries ... have taken a fragmented approach. These countries face a long, hard road ahead,” Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva.
WHO emergencies expert Mike Ryan told the same briefing that the U.N. body planned to send two experts from its headquarters to join its country team in China to establish the scope for a mission looking into the origins of the coronavirus.
2020-07-01 21:39:04
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 340 coronavirus infections and 22 deaths, taking the overall cases to 26,938 and death toll to 973, the provincial health department said.
2020-07-01 21:28:06
Advisor to the Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Information, Ajmal Wazir said the province was enhancing the capacity of hospitals amid coronavirus.
According to Radio Pakistan, he said the COVID-19 testing capacity will be enhanced to 10,000 in the next few weeks.
2020-07-01 21:19:18
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo expanded coronavirus testing criteria to include all New Yorkers.
“We are now opening testing to all New Yorkers,” he told reporters. “We have that much capacity.”
New York City had already expanded testing criteria to include all city residents, encouraging everyone there to get tested.
2020-07-01 21:10:47
Authorities will lock down more than 300,000 people in suburbs north of Melbourne for a month from late on Wednesday to contain the risk of infection after two weeks of double-digit rises in new coronavirus cases in Australia’s second most populous state.
From midnight, more than 30 suburbs in Australia’s second-biggest city will return to stage three restrictions, the third-strictest level in curbs to control the pandemic. That means residents will be confined to home except for grocery shopping, health appointments, work or caregiving, and exercise.
The restrictions will be accompanied by a testing blitz that authorities hope will extend to half the population of the area affected, and for which borders will be patrolled, authorities said. The measures come as curbs ease across the rest of the state of Victoria, with restaurants, gyms and cinemas reopening in recent weeks.
2020-07-01 20:58:09
Punjab Healthcare Commission spokesperson Dr Amir said that the province had set the rates of COVID-19 diagnostic tests at Rs 6,000.
The government official said that in case a private lab charges more than the set amount, its license will be revoked.
2020-07-01 20:48:33
Major automakers posted lower US monthly or quarterly new vehicle sales on Wednesday due in large part to weak fleet orders, but said consumer demand remained robust despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“This quarter demonstrated the resilience of the US consumer,” said Jeff Kommor, head of US sales at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCA), as the automaker reported a 39% slump in sales for the second quarter. “Retail sales have been rebounding since April as the reopening of the economy, steady gas prices, and access to low interest loans spur people to buy.”
US auto production was shut down for two months in the spring as part of efforts to thwart the spread of the novel coronavirus. That has left automakers scrambling to ramp up production again to boost low dealer inventories.
“GM entered the quarter with very lean inventories and our dealers did a great job meeting customer demand, especially for pickups,” Kurt McNeil, US vice president for sales at General Motors Co. “Now, we are refilling the pipeline by quickly and safely returning production to pre-pandemic levels.”
2020-07-01 20:34:45
Microsoft announced a new global skills initiative aimed at bringing more digital skills to 25 million people worldwide by the end of the year.
The announcement comes in response to the global economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Expanded access to digital skills is an important step in accelerating economic recovery, especially for the people hardest hit by job losses.
2020-07-01 20:25:37
Public Health England is playing a key role in Britain’s response to the coronavirus crisis, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, responding to criticism of the body for slowness in tackling the pandemic.
But he also pointed to new structures formed since the crisis began, such as a test and trace system and the Joint Biosecurity Centre, which brings together data analysis and epidemiological expertise to try to combat outbreaks.
2020-07-01 20:18:16
Britain should consider increasing its unemployment benefits to help get people into the kind of work that is likely to be in demand after the coronavirus lockdown, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund said.
Gita Gopinath told lawmakers in Britain’s parliament on Wednesday that the first priority for governments was to scale back gradually their support programmes for workers affected by the COVID-19 crisis, including state job retention schemes.
Then, as governments seek to get people back to work, the focus should be on reallocating resources in the labour market, or moving people into jobs where demand will be strong, which would initially increase reliance on unemployment support.
“In case of the UK, you could make a case for temporarily increasing the support under that because the UK has one of the lower replacement rates among advanced economies in terms of unemployment insurance,” Gopinath said.
Britain’s job retention scheme currently covers more than 9 million jobs - equivalent to around one in three private sector employees - and it is due to expire at the end of October.
2020-07-01 20:10:20
The number of Americans who died from COVID-19 in March through May was likely significantly higher than the official US count due in part to state-level reporting discrepancies, according to a study.
The overall number of US deaths for any cause tallied by the National Center for Health Statistics during March, April and May was 781,000, or 122,300 more than the historical average for the period, according to the study funded by the National Institutes of Health and private foundations published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The number of March through May deaths officially listed as due to COVID-19 was 95,235, or 28% less than that excess number. A Reuters tally for the period that includes “probable” COVID-19 deaths, was higher at 103,649.
Media reports have suggested that many early nursing home deaths or those attributed to pneumonia rather than COVID-19 may have contributed to an undercount.
“Determining the cause of death on a death certificate is not an exact science,” said Daniel Weinberger, the study’s lead author from the Yale School of Public Health.
2020-07-01 20:00:15
United Airlines is adding nearly 25,000 domestic and international flights in August, tripling the number it flew in June, while standing ready to shift plans if recent spikes in COVID-19 cases hurt demand, executives said.
Air travel demand, which rose steadily in May and June from pandemic-linked lows in April, “has flattened out over the past week or so,” Ankit Gupta, United’s vice president of Domestic Network Planning, told journalists.
United expects the ebbs and flows of air traffic to continue over the next month, but has based its August schedule on demand in the market.
That takes into account travel restrictions, including a European Union ban on travel by Americans, said Patrick Quayle, who oversees United’s international network planning.
Chicago-based United is adding 300 daily flights from its U.S. hubs in August, including doubling the number of flights from the New York area compared to July, mainly to beach and outdoor destinations where people can maintain a social distance to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.
2020-07-01 19:51:05
Doctors treating coronavirus patients in Sierra Leone will go on strike within 24 hours after the government failed to pay promised allowances, their union said.
The Sierra Leone Medical and Dental Association said in a statement the strike would continue until the allowances are paid in full, without specifying how much the doctors are owed.
Doctors treating patients for conditions other than COVID-19 will continue to show up to work, it said.
The union also complained that a memorandum of understanding between the government and doctors working in COVID-19 isolation and treatment centres expired on Tuesday and has not been renewed.
2020-07-01 19:40:50
The United Kingdom’s death toll from confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus rose 176 to 43,906 from 43,730 the day before, government figures showed.
Including suspected cases, the toll is approaching 55,000, according to a Reuters tally of official data sources.
2020-07-01 19:33:18
Democrats in the US Senate, impatient with the pace of Republicans’ consideration of additional aid related to the coronavirus pandemic, proposed long-term extensions to a temporary unemployment insurance program.
The $600-per-week payments to laid-off workers, which began at the end of March and are set to expire on July 31, would be extended until jobless rates in individual states fell below 11%.
On June 5 the US unemployment rate stood at 13.3%.
Under the Democrats’ legislation, these federally backed benefits would fall by $100 for every percentage-point decrease in a state’s unemployment rate, until joblessness falls below 6%.
2020-07-01 19:22:03
Child labour has increased in top grower Ivory Coast’s cocoa sector during its coronavirus lockdown, according to a report released by an industry-backed foundation.
The percentage of children engaged in labour between mid-March and mid-May rose to 19.4% from 16% in the same period in recent years, according to a survey of over 1,400 households conducted by the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI).
The report said it was too early to attribute the increase entirely to the lockdown, but that child labour tends to rise when children have no access to school and during economic downturns. The inability of adult workers to move around the country due to lockdowns may also have been a factor, it said.
“These findings underline the vulnerability of cocoa-growing households in West Africa and show how quickly progress in addressing child labour can potentially be reversed,” the ICI report said.
The ICI is supported by the chocolate and cocoa industries and civil society. Its report provides the first comprehensive look at the pandemic’s impact on child labour in the cocoa sector of the world’s top producer of the crop.
2020-07-01 19:13:49
The Swiss government extended to 18 months from 12 the time it will compensate companies for putting staff on short working hours amid the coronavirus pandemic, it said.
It also said it anticipates a budget deficit of around 1 billion Swiss francs ($1.05 billion) next year, and said it would decide at year’s end how to pay back billions of debt it has accumulated to provide relief for struggling business. It assumed it would not have to raise taxes to repay the debt in the medium term.
The government last month phased out most restrictive measures as cases of the new coronavirus waned, declaring the country better equipped to handle any fresh flare-ups.
2020-07-01 19:00:11
The Swiss government will impose a quarantine requirement for individuals returning to the country from regions at high risk for the coronavirus, ministers said, as it tries to combat a rising number of cases in the pandemic after phasing out many restrictive measures last month.
The Federal Office of Public Health will maintain and update a list of high-risk countries from which travellers returning to Switzerland will be subject to self-isolation, Health Minister Alain Berset told a news conference, providing Sweden as an example of a country which might currently fall on the list.
The government also said it would impose a mask-wearing requirement for individuals travelling on public transport from Monday, with Berset saying the country had thus far been out of step with its neighbours in not imposing such a requirement.
2020-07-01 18:47:10
Virgin Atlantic is "close" to securing a deal to recapitalise the struggling British airline as the coronavirus pandemic slashes demand for air travel, a source told AFP.
The carrier, part owned by tycoon Richard Branson, is making "very good progress" in talks with private investors and is "close" to agreement, the source said.
Media reported that Virgin Atlantic is trying to secure a rescue deal worth up to £1.0 billion ($1.2 billion, 1.1 billion euros) to ensure its survival.
The news comes two months after Virgin Atlantic announced plans to axe more than 3,000 jobs, or one third of its staff, as COVID-19 continues to ground a large number of passenger jets.
2020-07-01 18:35:03
The Sindh Environmental Protection Agency has issued guidelines for handling and disposal of the waste generated by hospital facilities dealing with COVID-19 patients, a statement from the agency said.
"Every hospital owner, occupier, the operator shall be responsible for the management of hospital waste/handling of waste from COVID-19 patients generated by it till its final disposal," the statement read.
According to the newly issued guidelines: “The generator of waste (i.e hospital/facilities) need to have administrative rules and engineering controls, environmental hygiene, correct work practices and appropriate use of PPE to prevent infections.”
The incinerator used to incinerate the waste generated from hospitals treating COVID-19 patients must be a double chamber, preferably plasma gasification (however this may be too expensive to operate), its primary chamber temperature should be greater than 800 degrees and that of secondary chamber greater than 1000 degree.
2020-07-01 18:29:33
The Kazakh government has proposed starting the Central Asian nation’s second lockdown from July 5 and maintaining it for at least two weeks, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Wednesday, after a sharp rise in new cases.
Tokayev said on Twitter a special commission would review the plan on July 2 and then lay out its details.
Tokayev ordered his cabinet this week to urgently tighten the restrictions after the number of COVID-19 cases surged more than sevenfold following the lifting of the first lockdown in mid-May.
2020-07-01 18:22:36
Oil prices rose on a string of positive manufacturing data and a drawdown in US crude inventories, both indicating an economic recovery, however, fears of a surging coronavirus infections capped the gains.
Brent crude LCOc1 was up 13 cents, or 0.3%, at $41.40 a barrel, and US crude was up 14 cents, or 0.4%, at $39.41 a barrel. Both contracts rose $1 earlier in the session.
US crude and gasoline stocks fell more than expected last week, while distillate inventories rose, data released by the American Petroleum Institute (API) late on Tuesday showed.
“The market’s main concern is demand and how COVID-19 affects it, so any hint that demand is recovering is welcomed with a price boost,” said Rystad Energy analyst Louise Dickson.
2020-07-01 18:15:13
Global tourism revenues are expected to fall by up to $3.3 trillion due to COVID-19 restrictions, with the United States standing to lose the most, according to a UN study published.
The ‘COVID-19 and Tourism’ report released by The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is based on three scenarios for the industry, with lockdown measures lasting 4 months, 8 months and 12 months.
In those scenarios, revenues would fall $1.17 trillion, $2.22 trillion and $3.3 trillion respectively or between 1.5-4.2 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).
The report did not say which scenario was most likely, although an UNCTAD official said the middle scenario “could be a realistic one”.
“International tourism has been almost totally suspended, and domestic tourism curtailed by lockdown conditions imposed in many countries,” the report said.
2020-07-01 18:06:24
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has imposed a ban on giving protocol to the VIPs at airports due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the CAA, the new guidelines will also be applicable on domestic chartered flights, and passengers and staff of private planes.
The instructions have been issued at a time when international and domestic flight operations have been resumed throughout the country.
Under the new rules, apart from the passengers, no one else will be allowed to proceed further than the parking area. The CAA has tasked airport managers to ensure social distancing is followed.
“Gloves, masks and protective suits will be mandatory,” stated the guideline, adding that planes will be disinfected just before the boarding process begins.
Read complete story here.
2020-07-01 18:00:46
Brazil’s government will restrict the entrance of foreigners to the country for 30 days due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, it said in a decree late in its official gazette.
Foreigners with permanent residence in Brazil or working authorization will be exempted from the decree, along with foreigners with Brazilian spouses or children. Passengers in transit to other countries are also exempted, as long as they do not leave the airports.
The decree also exempts Venezuelan citizens arriving at the land border and allows foreigners involved in cargo transport.
2020-07-01 17:52:34
Islamabad registered 137 new infections in the last 24 hours, while the highest cases were reported inSihala town.
Meanwhile, 77 male patients were detected and 60 female patients.
2020-07-01 17:42:33
Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry said that two coronavirus testing kits were sent to the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan for approval, among which one claims that it can provide results within 45 minutes.
“The testing kit, if approved, will available to individuals at their homes,” he said, adding: “The quality of the material produced in Pakistan is superior then the imported ones.”
"All our indigenous are of international standards, while those which were imported had quality issues," he said.
"Pakistan is exporting COVID-19 equipment worth $100 million, and after these ventilators, our exports will increase," he added.
2020-07-01 17:33:15
No live fireworks, no star-studded concert on Parliament Hill, and no crowds of tourists: Canada’s official birthday celebrations on Wednesday for the first time ever will be completely online.
Ottawa is usually home to the country’s largest Canada Day party, with tens of thousands of foreign and domestic tourists descending on the capital to celebrate with live music and family fun, capped off with a dazzling fireworks show.
But in-person festivities have been canceled amid COVID-19 restrictions, with organizers instead offering an online show featuring Canadian pop stars including Alanis Morissette and Avril Lavigne, along with other artists.
The night will end with Canadians holding their mobile devices to the sky to watch a virtual fireworks show.
“Canada Day won’t look like previous Canada Days, but there are fun ways to get out and celebrate,” said Jantine Van Kregten, director of communications for Tourism Ottawa.
2020-07-01 17:20:12
Portugal’s active workforce diminished by 3.1% in May from April to 4.91 million as fewer Portuguese sought jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the number of those employed shrank, official data showed.
The National Statistics Institute (INE) said in its flash estimate that the jobless rate in May dropped to 5.5% from April’s 6.3% due to the lower overall workforce.
The employed population shrank to 4.65 million people from just over 5 million in April and almost 5.2 million a year earlier.
The INE said that the number of inactive people who did not actively seek work and inactive people who sought work, but were not immediately available to start working, had increased significantly due to the economic fallout from the pandemic and the subsequent furlough schemes for companies.
2020-07-01 17:12:39
Americans’ anxieties over the spread of the novel coronavirus have risen to the highest level in more than a month, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, as the number of cases surged across the country, pushing the death toll to more than 127,000 people.
The June 29-30 public opinion poll found that 81% of American adults said they are “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the pandemic, the most since a similar poll conducted May 11-12.
When asked about the “most important factor” determining their vote, 27% of respondents said it was the candidate’s plan to help the nation recover from the coronavirus, compared with 21% who said it was the candidate’s plan to create jobs and boost the economy.
The poll found that 40% of Americans approve of the way Trump has responded to the coronavirus, while 56% disapproved. And 41% of adults thought Biden would be better at directing the country’s response to the virus, while 34% said Trump would be better.
2020-07-01 17:02:40
The Sindh government has extended the 'smart lockdown' till July 15 as the cases surge in the province, the provincial home department said.
People have been advised to avoid coming out of houses unnecessarily as strict restrictions will be imposed from from 7:00pm-06:00am.
Meanwhile, it is mandatory to wear face masks for at public places, the notification read.
The following shall remain closed:
2020-07-01 16:55:50
US stock index futures fell as a record single-day spike in coronavirus cases in the country heightened fears of another lockdown and threatened to derail a nascent economic recovery.
After notching up its biggest three-month gains since 1998 in the previous session, the benchmark S&P 500 looked set to begin the third quarter on a glum note as COVID-19 cases rose by more than 47,000 on Tuesday, with California, Texas and Arizona emerging as new epicenters.
A warning from the government’s top infectious disease expert that the number could soon double also took the shine off data showing a slump in global manufacturing was easing as economies reopened from sweeping lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.
2020-07-01 16:46:38
Sindh reported 2,139 coronavirus infections and 29 death in the last 24 hours, bumping the overall cases to 86,795 and death toll to 1,406, the province's chief minister Murad Ali Shah said.
The province has 36,803 active cases, while the recovered tally stands at 48,527.
CM Shah said that 8,201 samples were tested against which 2,139 new cases of coronavirus were detected that constituted 28 %detection rate, one of the highest rates so far.
2020-07-01 16:37:53
Macy’s Inc reported a staggering $3.58 billion loss for the coronavirus-hit quarter as store shutdowns resulted in the department store chain recording a $3 billion impairment charge.
The global health crisis has forced brick-and-mortar retailers to tap credit lines, lay off employees and suspend dividends and buybacks in a bid to stay afloat.
Macy’s, which also owns Bloomingdale’s, said net sales for the first quarter ended May 2, nearly halved to $3.02 billion.
“While our stores are re-opened, we expect that the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to impact the country for the remainder of the year,” Chief Executive Officer Jeff Gennette said in a statement.
2020-07-01 16:29:27
New US COVID-19 cases rose by more than 47,000 according to a Reuters tally, the biggest one-day spike since the start of the pandemic, as the government’s top infectious disease expert warned that number could soon double.
California, Texas and Arizona have emerged as new U.S. epicenters of the pandemic, reporting record increases in COVID-19 cases.
“Clearly we are not in total control right now,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a U.S. Senate committee. “I am very concerned because it could get very bad.”
COVID-19 cases more than doubled in June in at least 10 states, including Texas and Florida, a Reuters tally showed. In parts of Texas and Arizona, hospital intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients are in short supply.
2020-07-01 16:01:07
Thai schools reopened on Wednesday for the first time since mid-March, with precautions in place to guard against the coronavirus, ranging from temperature checks to installing makeshift cubicles for social distancing in classrooms.
In the classroom, the school has turned cardboard ballot boxes used in elections into partitions to ensure social distancing between desks.
The coronavirus has killed 58 people in Thailand out of 3,173 infections, though the country has not recorded a case of local transmission for 37 days.
2020-07-01 15:17:56
Eight areas designated as coronavirus “hotspots” by the Punjab government have been sealed, a notification issued by DC Rawalpindi said.
“There has been an increase in the number of coronavirus cases in Punjab as well as in Pakistan which poses a serious and imminent threat to public health and public order. Hence, it is mandatory to take all possible safety measures for prevention and control of pandemic disease,” the notification said.
The areas have been sealed under section 144 of “The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898” as an immediate preventive to ensure public safety, conserve lives and maintain peace.
2020-07-01 15:02:54
Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr Anthony Fauci says the US could reach 100,000 new coronavirus cases per day if the country does not get a handle on the pandemic. “We need to do something about that and we need to do it very quickly," said Fauci.
"I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 [cases] a day if this does not turn around and so I am very concerned," he added.
According to The Hill, the US is now recording 40,000 new cases per day, surpassing previous records set in April. There are now more than 2.6 million confirmed cases in the US, including 126,000 deaths.
2020-07-01 14:51:00
European aircraft maker Airbus says it is planning to cut around 15,000 jobs worldwide, 11% of its total workforce, in response to the "gravest crisis" the industry has ever seen caused by the coronavirus.
Read the full story here.
2020-07-01 14:29:21
Spain and Portugal's prime ministers on Wednesday officially reopened their joint border to all travellers after a three-month closure to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
In the presence of Spain's King Felipe and Portugal's President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and his Portuguese counterpart Antonio Costa, solemnly opened the border. All other travel restrictions within the European Union were lifted last week.
"Our shared prosperity and common destiny within the European project depend on this border being open," Costa tweeted earlier on Wednesday. "The pandemic offered us a new vision of the past we do not want to come back to a continent with closed borders."
2020-07-01 13:49:15
Face masks can help stop the spread of the coronavirus. However, for the mask to work against the virus, it has to be worn properly.
Watch the video below to see how to wear a face mask properly.
2020-07-01 13:25:27
Google will delay the reopening of its US offices by around two months because of a surge in the number of coronavirus cases in some states.
All of Google's US offices will now remain closed at least until September 7, Google spokeswoman Katherine Williams told Reuters.
Google said in late May it would reopen buildings in more cities at roughly 10% of their capacity beginning July 6 and scale it up to 30% in September, if conditions permitted.
Williams confirmed a Bloomberg report that cited an internal memo to employees sent by a Google executive.
"For all of you that are working from home, please continue to do so unless you are told otherwise by your manager," Chris Rackow, Google's vice president of global security, said in the memo.
2020-07-01 13:06:00
Australian authorities will lockdown around 300,000 people in suburbs north of Melbourne for a month from late on Wednesday to contain the risk of infection after two weeks of double-digit rises in new coronavirus cases in the second most populous state.
Australia has fared better than many countries in the pandemic, with around 7,830 cases and 104 deaths, but the recent surge has stoked fears of a second wave of COVID-19, echoing concerns expressed in other countries.
From midnight, more than 30 suburbs in Australia's second-biggest city will return to stage three restrictions, the third-strictest level in curbs to control the pandemic. That means residents will be confined to home except for grocery shopping, health appointments, work or caregiving, and exercise.
The restrictions will be accompanied by a testing blitz that authorities hope will extend to half the population of the area affected, and for which borders will be patrolled, authorities said.
2020-07-01 12:34:13
More than 10.48 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 509,980 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-07-01 12:03:58
Germany reported 466 new cases to take the nationwide tally to 194,725, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by 12 to 8,985, the tally showed.
2020-07-01 11:56:22
The United States has the highest number of deaths from the novel coronavirus, accounting for 25% of the deaths, despite representing just 4% of the world's population, a CNN report has found.
More than 125,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the US, and more than 2.5 million Americans have been infected.
According to John Hopkins University, an average of 1,039 deaths has been recorded in the US per day. The number shot up from the end of May when an average of fewer than 900 people died every day from the virus in US.
2020-07-01 11:41:38
Pilgrims are starting to return to the temples of Haridwar with visitors flocking to from far and wide for a dip in the holy waters of the Ganges.
Pilgrims stopped coming in late March after India imposed the world's biggest lockdown in the country to stem the spread of coronavirus.
2020-07-01 10:08:47
Pakistan reported 4,133 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours to take the nationwide tally to 213,486.
Sindh leads the tally with 84,656 confirmed cases followed by Punjab with 76,262 cases. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has reported 26,598 cases, Balochistan 10,476, Islamabad 12,912, Gilgit Baltistan 1,489 and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 1,093 new cases.
The country also reported 91 more deaths during the last 24 hours brining the countrywide toll to 4,395.
According to the National Control and Command Centre, 22,418 corona tests have been carried out in the country in the last 24 hours while 100,802 patients have so far recovered from the virus.
2020-07-01 09:33:00
Confirmed cases in Brazil topped 1.4 million on Tuesday as the country registered 33,846 cases in the last 24 hours.
The country also recorded 1,280 additional COVID-19 deaths bringing the country's confirmed death toll to 59,594.
2020-07-01 09:05:10
The United States recorded 1,199 fatalities from the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, as the country’s death toll began to climb again, the Johns Hopkins University tally showed Tuesday.
The country has suffered 127,322 deaths overall, according to the Baltimore-based institution.
The US also registered 42,528 new cases of coronavirus over the past 24 hours.
2020-07-01 00:34:42
Gilgit-Baltistan reported 18 new infections and two deaths from the novel coronavirus, bumping the overall cases to 1,489 and death toll to 26.
2020-07-01 00:02:56
The Punjab healthcare department has reported 35 more deaths from the coronavirus, taking the provincial death toll to 1,762.
A rise in the number of cases was also reported, taking the total in the province to 76,262.
2020-06-30 23:25:23
A Scottish biotechnology firm has said it will start clinical trials on a possible T cell treatment for COVID-19, aimed at reducing the need for intensive care among hospitalised patients.
T cells are white blood cells that form a key part of the immune system, along with antibodies, and scientists are hopeful they could play a role in tackling the novel coronavirus pandemic.
TC BioPharm (TCB) said it would conduct the trial at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, using gamma-delta T cells in a technique it has previously used on cancer patients.
“Harnessing the immune system to effectively and safely kill virus-infected cells is an extremely attractive strategy,” said Nik Hirani of the University of Edinburgh, the chief investigator for the trial.
The organisers of the trial said that data showed severely affected COVID-19 patients might have a deficiency of T cells.
TCB will manufacture banks of T cells, which can be donated by healthy volunteers, that it is then hoped can be used to treat patients as they develop severe COVID-19 symptoms.
2020-06-30 23:18:50
The world has passed half a million coronavirus deaths, according to a tally by Reuters.
The majority fatalities occurred in the US (126,125) and Brazil (58,310).
2020-06-30 23:00:09
Airbus unveiled plans to shed around 15,000 jobs including 900 already earmarked in Germany, saying its future was at stake after the coronavirus pandemic rocked the air travel industry.
Europe’s biggest aerospace group said it would cut some 5,000 posts in France, 5,100 in Germany, 900 in Spain, 1,700 in the UK and 1,300 elsewhere for a core total of 14,000.
Additionally, the company has already agreed to cut 900 jobs at its Premium AEROTEC unit in Germany.
The move is subject to talks with unions which immediately renewed pledges to oppose compulsory redundancies. Airbus has refused to rule them out as it seeks voluntary departures.
2020-06-30 22:52:41
Italy will raise its 2020 budget deficit to around 11.6% of gross domestic product from the current 10.4% goal, a senior government official told Reuters, as Rome readies new measures to soften the impact of the coronavirus crisis.
A new spending package of 20 billion euros ($22.41 billion) will be approved in July, the source said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The Treasury declined to comment.
The government began the year with a deficit target of 2.2%, after the 1.6% recorded in 2019 which was the lowest in 12 years.
Those plans have been upended by the virus outbreak which has pushed the euro zone’s third largest economy into a deep recession, with most forecasters expending gross domestic product to contract by at least 9%.
2020-06-30 22:47:58
2020-06-30 22:37:41
2020-06-30 22:32:23
Balochistan registered 50 more coronavirus infections and two deaths, the provincial health department's said.
The overall cases in the province has risen to 10,476 while the death toll stands at 121.
2020-06-30 22:27:39
Tokyo said it will move away from numerical targets to contain COVID-19 and rely more on the advice of a committee of experts, to try to control the novel coronavirus and avoid another economic slowdown.
The metropolis, with a population of 14 million, has sought to keep new cases below 20 a day since Japan lifted a state of emergency on May 25, but has had five straight days of more than 50 new cases as of Tuesday, when 54 infections were reported.
Tokyo is two weeks into a final phase of loosening coronavirus restrictions and officials have repeatedly said they see no need to declare a new state of emergency.
They also say the medical system can handle current cases and that increased testing partly explains the rising infections.
“It’s an extremely different situation from what it was at the end of March when patients were increasing rapidly, but we still must be watchful,” Governor Yuriko Koike told a news conference, where she announced the new measures would start on Wednesday.
2020-06-30 22:15:40
Balochistan extended the lockdown till July 15 "in view of escalating coronavirus cases, a notification from the province's home department said.
"There shall be a complete ban on gathering of ten or more than ten persons, sit-in and processions/rallies at public places," it read, adding: "There shall also be a complete ban on gatherings of all kinds of social, religious, or any other purpose at any place, public or private."
The notification said that all educational institutions, including, schools, colleges, technical and vocational centres shall remain closed till July 15, 2020.
2020-06-30 22:00:11
The US Food and Drug Administration released guidance on its conditions for approving a vaccine for the coronavirus, saying a vaccine has to prevent or decrease disease severity in at least 50% of people who are vaccinated.
More than 100 vaccines are being tested worldwide against the virus, which has claimed over 126,100 lives in the country, according to a Reuters tally.
The Trump administration in May announced a program called “Operation Warp Speed” to speed up the development of COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines, as the country has none approved for the respiratory illness.
"While the FDA is committed to expediting this work, we will not cut corners in our decisions," the agency said in a statement here on Tuesday.
Vaccine developers have also been asked to provide data to support use of their vaccines during pregnancy and to show safety and effectiveness in children, the agency said.
2020-06-30 21:51:57
People arriving in New York from an additional eight states must quarantine themselves for 14 days amid the coronavirus pandemic, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered on Tuesday.
The eight additional states are California, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Tennessee, all of which are contending with growing caseloads, Cuomo said in a statement.
The order, first issued last week, was already in place for Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Texas.
All the affected states have “growing community spread,” Cuomo said in a statement, which the state’s Health Department has defined as 10 or more people testing positive per 100,000 residents.
2020-06-30 21:47:14
Dubai’s real gross domestic product shrank by 3.5% year-on-year in the first quarter, the government’s media office said in a statement.
Citing data from the emirate’s statistics centre, it said key sectors of Dubai’s economy such as real estate and finance had kept momentum despite the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy.
2020-06-30 21:39:23
Italy’s Copan Group, one of the main manufacturers of swabs globally, has been approached by suitors and would be willing to accept any new investor prepared to support its expansion into new products or markets, its CEO and chairman said on Tuesday.
Earlier this year, the family-owned company had to step up production to respond to a boom in demand for swabs triggered by the coronavirus outbreak. Until now, however, it has managed to fund its own growth.
“I never close the door ... I always ask (a suitor) what he can offer me,” Stefania Triva said, adding the group had recently been approached by prospective investors.
Speaking at a digital event, Triva said that the company did not need a pure financial partner, but an ally who could also bring know-how.
“If (a new investor) contributes not only financially but also with scientific knowledge I would be interested ... because it is the opportunity to enter a new business line or a new market that attracts me,” she said.
2020-06-30 21:29:25
Roughly half of UK’s employers are planning to reduce office space and stagger return to work as Britain eases restrictions following a three-month COVID-19 lockdown, according to a survey by recruiter Robert Walters .
Remote working will become more prevalent in a post-COVID world, the survey showed, as companies assess cost savings as well as health risks to staff.
Around 44% of employers are considering cutting down physical office space and 49% are planning to spread out employees’ return to work, according to the survey which polled 2,200 companies.
Last week, Britain’s financial services minister said some banks would cut office space in London’s financial district as they “reset” their operations.
Several companies across the world have extended work from home options for their staff, with US social media giant Facebook saying last month it will permanently embrace remote work even after lockdowns ease.
“It can be daunting for companies who have been going through a difficult period to consider spending money on their physical workspace, technical infrastructure or general operations,” said Robert Walters Director Lucy Bisset.
Three quarters of British employers admitted that their senior team have not been equipped to manage teams remotely, and will need new training to adapt, the survey added.
It also found that 87% of employees would like more opportunities to work from home post-return and 21% stated that they would like to work from home permanently.
2020-06-30 21:20:58
The United States cannot count on the availability of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, the government’s top infectious diseases expert said on Tuesday, and he urged Americans to work together to fight the virus that is surging across large parts of the country.
California, Texas and many other states have reported record increases in new cases of the sometimes deadly illness caused by the novel coronavirus, leading to a sobering reassessment of U.S. efforts to contain the pandemic.
“It’s extremely important to have safe and effective vaccines available for everyone in this country,” Dr Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a US Senate committee.
Fauci, however, added that “there is no guarantee ... we’ll have a safe and effective vaccine,” and he urged Americans to come together to contain the virus.
2020-06-30 21:12:13
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa registered 483 new coronavirus infections and 16 deaths, bumping the overall cases to 26,598 and death toll to 951.
2020-06-30 21:03:21
Coronavirus cases more than doubled in at least 10 US states, including Florida and Texas in the month of June, a Reuters analysis on Tuesday showed.
Arizona recorded the biggest jump in cases for the month at 294%, followed by South Carolina and Arkansas. Cases also more than doubled in Alabama, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Utah.
Nationally cases rose by at least 43% and deaths increased by 20%. Several states have yet to report cases on Tuesday.
While much of the world appears over the worst of the pandemic, the United States and a few other countries are still seeing huge daily spikes.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-30 20:55:33
The coronavirus lockdown persuaded retired speech therapist Anne-Marie Arnaud a better future could be had, one with emptier skies, fresher air and quieter streets rid of diesel-belching cars.
And so the pensioner from Lyon switched her vote in last Sunday’s municipal election, among the first worldwide to be held after countries began emerging from lockdown, in favour of the Green party.
The results, which saw the Greens take control of or become an alliance partner in no fewer than 11 city halls, may point to a broader shift in voting patterns as governments, companies, and citizens adjust to the COVID-19 era.
“I realised how clean the air was, how nice it was to walk in a city, and be awoken by birdsong rather than car horns,” Arnaud, 64, said. “I told myself there was good in this crisis and that we had to rethink our city in a different way.”
Read complete story here.
2020-06-30 20:44:16
A study of coronavirus infections that covered almost everyone in the quarantined north Italian town of Vò found that 40% of cases showed no symptoms — suggesting that asymptomatic cases are important in the spread of the pandemic.
The study, led by a scientist at Italy’s Padua University and Imperial College London, also produced evidence that mass testing combined with case isolation and community lockdowns can stop local outbreaks swiftly.
“Despite ‘silent’ and widespread transmission, the disease can be controlled,” said Andrea Crisanti, a professor at Padua and Imperial who co-led the work. “Testing of all citizens, whether or not they have symptoms, provides a way to ... prevent outbreaks getting out of hand.”
Crisanti has become something of a celebrity in Italy for advocating widespread testing well before it became official World Health Organization guidance.
A analysis of the results, published in the journal Nature on Monday, showed that at the start of quarantine, 2.6% of Vo’s population - or 73 people - were positive. After two weeks, only 29 people were positive.
2020-06-30 20:36:38
The state of Bavaria approved plans for universal testing for COVID-19, prompting debate elsewhere in Germany about whether to follow suit or stick with the current targeted approach to prevent a possible second wave of infections.
Germany has successfully managed to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control with far fewer deaths than most other large European nations despite relatively softer lockdown measures that allowed some social and economic life to continue.
But an outbreak this month at an abattoir in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia affecting more than 1,500 workers has forced a lockdown for 600,000 people and raised fears that Germany remains vulnerable despite its early success.
Under current rules, free tests are available for people who have symptoms such as fever and Germany’s 16 states carry out frequent tests among high-risk groups in, for example, retirement homes, hospitals and daycare centres.
“Corona is still breathing down our necks,” Bavarian Premier Markus Soeder told a news conference, saying the planned universal testing would be “faster, for free and for everybody”.
2020-06-30 20:28:05
Britons should clap for capitalists and financiers, as well as the health workers who have helped the country through the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
In the depths of lockdown, people confined to their homes used to appear on their doorsteps and balconies every Thursday evening in an enthusiastic round of clapping for National Health Service (NHS) workers.
On Tuesday, as he set out his vision to repair Britain’s economy in a speech, Johnson said the country must build its way out of the crisis and announced fast-tracked infrastructure spending and streamlined planning laws.
Bankers and capitalists would deserve praise for their role in that recovery, he said.
“Of course we clap for NHS, but under this government we also applaud those who make our NHS possible: our innovators, our wealth creators, our capitalists, our financiers,” he said.
2020-06-30 20:20:13
Colombia’s central bank board is expected to once again lower its benchmark interest rate at its meeting, in a bid to bolster the economy ahead of a likely recession.
A poll by Reuters analysts said the seven-member board would back a rate cut for the fourth consecutive month, but that policymakers will probably moderate reductions as borrowing costs come close to zero.
Twelve of 20 analysts surveyed estimated the majority of the board will vote to reduce the rate by 25 basis points to 2.50%, while the remaining eight analysts predicted a cut of 50 points to 2.25%.
The bank cut the rate by half a percentage point at its meetings in March, April and May, taking borrowing costs to historic lows, but at last month’s meeting two board members voted for a lesser cut of 25 basis points.
The bank has taken repeated liquidity measures as the twin crises of low oil prices and a coronavirus lockdown batter the economy.
“Economic activity had a very strong hit and inflation has been falling in a significant way, which creates a perfect scenario to lower interest rates,” said Camilo Perez, head of economic investigation at Banco de Bogota.
Perez expects a cut of 50 basis points.
2020-06-30 20:12:49
An experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc showed promise and was found to be safe in an early-stage human trial, the company said.
The vaccine, one of the 17 being tested in humans and part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” program, induced “immune responses” in healthy volunteers, Inovio said.
Immune responses in the study were measured by the vaccine’s ability to generate binding antibodies, or virus-neutralizing antibodies, and T-cell responses - considered the two most important metrics for a successful vaccine.
Based on preliminary data, the drug developer said 34 of the 36 volunteers, all aged between 18 and 50 years, showed overall immunological response rates and most of the 10 patients with side-effects experienced only redness at the site of the shot.
The company said it planned to begin a mid-to-early stage study in summer.
“We believe this preliminary data is likely to raise more questions on the competitive immunogenicity front and limits our ability to get more-constructive on Inovio’s shares based on this limited disclosure alone,” said Stifel analyst Stephen Wiley.
2020-06-30 20:05:37
Saudi Arabia’s central bank governor said the International Monetary Fund’s economic contraction forecast for Saudi Arabia was “more pessimistic” than Saudi Arabia’s own forecasts.
The IMF has estimated the Saudi economy will contract by 6.8% this year.
Saudi Arabia’s non-oil economy is expected to bounce back quickly as coronavirus restrictions are lifted, Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) Governor Ahmed al-Kholifey said, without providing a number.
He was speaking at a virtual economic forum.
2020-06-30 19:54:38
Canada’s real GDP is likely to grow 3% in May, bouncing back from a record decline in April, Statistics Canada said in a flash estimate, as businesses across the country began to reopen following coronavirus-linked shutdowns.
Growth in April plunged by 11.6% from March, a record month-on-month decline, although the fall was less than the 13% predicted by analysts. Statistics Canada revised March’s decline to 7.5% from 7.2%.
All 20 industrial sectors of the Canadian economy were down in April, StatsCanada said, as most non-essential businesses remained shut to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The goods-producing sector posted a 17.0% decrease, led by sharp declines in manufacturing and construction, with the service sector down 9.7% on sharp plunges in the hospitality, retail and transportation sectors, the StatsCan data showed.
Air transportation was the hardest hit, falling 93.7%.
“April was a ‘mense horribilis’ for the Canadian economy, and the only thing good about it was that in all likelihood it marked the bottom of this short but extremely deep recession,” Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at CIBC Capital Markets, said in a note.
2020-06-30 19:39:41
When musician Zoraiz Riaz set up a Facebook group to help coordinate convalescent plasma donations for people fighting COVID-19 in Pakistan, he expected perhaps a few hundred responses.
Within a month, however, the "Corona Recovered Warriors" group had more than 320,000 members, needing a team of 33 volunteers to manage posts from families of patients across Pakistan seeking advice.
"Around 85% are looking for plasma," Riaz, 27, told Reuters from his home in the eastern Pakistani metropolis of Lahore, one of the hardest-hit cities in the South Asian nation, which has recorded nearly 210,000 infections and over 4,300 deaths from the virus.
"The rest are looking for different medical supplies, oxygen, ventilators, injections for drugs, or leads on hospitals that have availability," Riaz added.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-30 19:22:24
The areas put under smart lockdown have seen a dip in coronavirus infections, a notification from the deputy commissioner said as restrictions from two areas were lifted.
"People should strictly abide by safety measures [...] Action will be taken against those in violation of the announced SOPs," the notification added.
2020-06-30 19:15:20
Former Vice President Joe Biden will launch a fresh attack on President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as the Democratic presidential candidate works to build on his lead in national polls ahead of the November 3 election.
Biden is set to speak in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, in an effort to put what an aide called Trump’s “historic mismanagement” of the crisis in the spotlight as the number of confirmed cases rises in many states.
“Biden will walk through the timeline of Trump’s inaction and failures, and highlight the common-sense actions that Trump refused to take to get the virus under control,” said an aide who previewed his speech and who spoke on condition of anonymity.
2020-06-30 19:06:06
For a month, starting mid-May, the emergency room at the state-run Services Hospital in Lahore was overflowing with critically ill patients.
“We were reporting 25 deaths every day,” Dr Muhammad Aqeel, who works in the COVID-19 ward of the hospital told Geo.tv. “These were confirmed cases of coronavirus, as well as those we suspected, had been infected before their demise.”
Overworked doctors in stretched to capacity hospitals were running short on beds and ventilators in the intensive care units. But then unexpectedly, last week the number of sick began falling, as did fatalities, offering healthcare workers a glimmer of hope.
A few days earlier, on June 15, the Punjab government identified several hotspots of the deadly disease in the most-impacted cities and restricted movements in these areas.
But for Dr Aqeel, the sharp decline in cases was not due to the sealing of residential areas, which was too recent a measure to show results. “The spike in cases that we witnessed last month was due to the massive spread of the virus during Eid holidays [in May].”
Read complete story here.
2020-06-30 18:55:55
China and Pakistan held the first video conference on Joint Response and Cooperation Mechanism on COVID-19, a statement from the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan said.
Senior officials from both neighboring countries' ministry of foreign affairs and relevant ministries were present during the meeting.
"A good way to address issues of interest to both sides under this particular situation," the statement said.
2020-06-30 18:48:03
Chile’s unemployment rate hit 11.2% between March and May, the government said, laying bare the devastating impact of lockdown measures to reduce the spread of the new coronavirus on the South American nation’s economy.
People working in the commerce, accommodation, food services and construction sectors were the worst impacted, the national statistics agency (INE) said, while self-employed people were the worst hit across the board in Chile, once among Latin America´s most stable economies.
2020-06-30 18:42:02
Governor Sindh Imran Ismail inaugurated Al-Khidmat's newly set up coronavirus testing lab in Karachi.
Members from the Jamaat-e-Islami, including JI Karachi's amir Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman, were present.
"Getting tested for COVID-19 isn't easy for a common man [...] Al-Khidmat is an honest welfare organisation," he said.
2020-06-30 18:38:09
All the members of Pakistan's national team squad in England have tested negative for Covid-19 following a round of testing conducted by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) as well.
The 20-man partial squad, which had cleared back-to-back tests in Pakistan and only then given the permission to leave for Manchester, has now cleared a third test.
A dozen team officials, including bowling coach Waqar Younis who joined the team from Australia, have also returned negative results.
The tests were conducted soon after the touring party's arrival on Monday.
2020-06-30 18:31:06
Brazil’s national debt and public-sector deficit surged to record highs in May, figures showed, reflecting the squeeze on the country’s finances from the second full month of social isolation and quarantine to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
The deterioration in the public accounts back up Treasury Secretary Mansueto Almeida’s comments on Monday that debt will likely exceed 95% of gross domestic product this year and the primary budget deficit is on course to top 11% of GDP.
With tax revenues at a 15-year low and emergency spending soaring, the Economy Ministry is expected to announce new debt and deficit forecasts later on Tuesday.
According to the central bank, Brazil’s gross debt rose to a record 81.9% of GDP in May, higher than the 81.3% forecast in a Reuters poll of economists, while net debt rose to 55.0% of GDP, also higher than expected.
The overall public sector posted a record primary budget deficit excluding interest payments of 131.4 billion reais ($24 billion) in May, the central bank said, less than the 135 billion reais deficit forecast in a Reuters poll.
As a share of GDP over the 12 months to May, the primary deficit widened to 3.9% from 2.26% in the 12 months to April, the widest deficit since the data series began in 2002, according to central bank figures.
2020-06-30 18:23:28
2020-06-30 18:17:04
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that the province was not in favour of setting up cattle markets ahead of Eid-ul-Azha.
“We have informed the federal government in the regard, but are yet to receive a reply from them,” he said.
2020-06-30 18:10:04
2020-06-30 17:59:21
Islamabad's coronavirus recovery rate reached 61.48% after 132 patients recovered from the pandemic, the district health office said.
Meanwhile, the capital's active cases have dropped down to 4,291 and the mortality rate stands at 0.01%.
2020-06-30 17:51:59
2020-06-30 17:48:17
Spain will only open its borders with Morocco if there is a reciprocal agreement to let people from Spain enter the North African country, Spanish government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero told a press conference.
Morocco is part of a group of 15 countries to be included on a list of safe travel destinations that the European Union will unveil later on Tuesday.
2020-06-30 17:39:55
The United Nations pushed governments at a virtual conference for nearly $10 billion in aid for Syria, where nine years of war has displaced millions in a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by soaring food prices and the coronavirus crisis.
“Syrian men, women and children have experienced injury, displacement, destruction, terror ... on a massive scale,” said UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen.
“The danger of COVID-19 remains acute.”
“We must do more to end the suffering of the Syrian people. First and foremost, we need a political solution to the crisis,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borell told the conference.
2020-06-30 17:29:58
India’s prime minister on Tuesday warned citizens against flouting rules to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, as he extended a vast social security scheme until November.
“Ever since (easing of restrictions) started in the country, negligence in personal and social behaviour has been increasing,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a televised address, adding citizens were ignoring guidelines on social distancing and hand washing.
2020-06-30 17:22:55
Sindh reported 2,655 coronavirus infections and 34 deaths, bumping the overall cases to 84,656 and death toll to 1,377.
Meanwhile, after 1,208 patients recovered from the virus, the recovery tally reached 46,824.
2020-06-30 17:17:43
Air France wants to cut more than 7,500 job positions between now and 2022, reported BFM TV and Agence France Presse, citing trade union sources.
Air France is preparing voluntary layoffs in response to the coronavirus crisis, Chief Executive Ben Smith told Reuters on May 7, as he announced a 20% cut to structural capacity — which potentially affects some 9,000 of its 45,000 jobs.
2020-06-30 17:10:25
Secretary Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department, Captain (retd) Muhammad Usman Younis said that educational institutions, marriage halls, restaurants, parks, and cinema halls will remain shut as Punjab extended its imposed “smart-lockdown” till July 15, 2020.
“Social and religious gatherings will not be allowed and their will also be a ban on sporting activities,” he said, adding: “All businesses will remain open Monday-Friday from 9am-7pm.”
“Medical stores, puncture shops, flour mills, agricultural workshops will be allowed to be operate 24 hours,” he said.
2020-06-30 16:58:22
Thailand is expected to see at most 8 million foreign tourists this year, down 80% from a year earlier, as the coronavirus pandemic curbs global travel, a tourism body said.
The sector is expected to recover in 2021, Chairat Triratanajaraspon, president of the Tourism Council of Thailand, an industry group, told reporters.
“The opening only accounts for 5% of inbound travel and the rest are tourists. In the third quarter, if there are no new measures, it will be zero,” said the tourism council’s vice president, Wichit Prakobkosol.
2020-06-30 16:49:07
Several Indian cities prepared to extend their lockdowns to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, as daily cases in the country remained close to 20,000.
India reported 18,522 new cases over the previous 24 hours, according to federal health data released on Tuesday, down slightly from Sunday’s record of 19,906.
More than 16,000 people have died in India - a low figure when compared with countries with similar numbers of cases - though experts fear its hospitals will be unable to cope with a steep rise in cases.
India on Wednesday enters what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called “Unlock 2.0”, with many curbs on movement relaxed, though schools, cinemas, gyms and bars will remain shut.
But some states have imposed their own lockdowns in cities where there have been significant outbreaks.
2020-06-30 16:40:16
Thailand extended an emergency decree until the end of July in a bid to avoid the risk of a second wave of the coronavirus, an official said, as the country was poised to reopen bars and allow some foreigners into the country.
The cabinet approved the extension of the emergency decree because the global pandemic was still ongoing, Narumon Pinyosinwat, a spokeswoman for the Thai government told a briefing.
With the government set to ease more restrictions on Wednesday, it was necessary for the government to continue using the decree to control travel and reduce the risk of a second wave, she said.
The emergency decree gives the government a range of additional powers including to deploy officials to investigate venues, bring in curfews, restrict gatherings and control travel.
2020-06-30 16:33:24
Royal Dutch Shell said it would write off assets worth up to $22 billion after the coronavirus crisis knocked oil and gas demand and weakened the energy price outlook.
The impairments follow the Anglo-Dutch company’s decision to shift from fossil fuel and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, as laid out by CEO Ben van Beurden in April.
Shell, the world’s largest fuel retailer, said it expected a 40% drop in sales in the second quarter from a year earlier to about 4 million barrels per day (bpd), although that is more than its earlier prediction of a drop to 3.5 million bpd.
In its update before second-quarter results on July 30, Shell said upstream oil and gas production was expected to average 2.35 million bpd in the three months to June, down from 2.71 million bpd in the first quarter.
2020-06-30 16:24:18
A global trial designed to test whether the anti-malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can prevent infection with COVID-19 is to restart after being approved by British regulators.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) took its decision on what is known as the COPCOV trial after hydroxychloroquine was found in another British trial to have no benefit as a treatment for patients already infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
The COPCOV study was paused pending review after the treatment trial results.
It is a randomised, placebo-controlled trial that is aiming to enrol 40,000 healthcare workers and other at-risk staff around the world, and is being led by the Oxford University’s Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) in the Thai capital, Bangkok.
2020-06-30 16:14:46
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced he was taking a “hard pause” on when movie theaters in the city can reopen, citing an increase in coronavirus cases.
Los Angeles County is the biggest movie theater market in the United States.
“We have hit a hard pause on opening any more businesses such as movie theaters, bowling alleys, playgrounds, concert halls, theme parks or other entertainment venues,” Garcetti said at a news briefing.
He did not give a date for when movie theaters in Los Angeles might be given the green light to reopen.
The theater business has been devastated by the coronavirus shutdowns that began in mid-March, laying off tens of thousands of employees and borrowing funds to stay afloat.
On Monday AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc (AMC.N), the nation’s biggest movie theater chain, said it had delayed the reopening of its venues in the United States by two weeks to July 30.
Garcetti said the rise in coronavirus cases in Los Angeles in the last few days meant that it was “time for a collective course correction.”
2020-06-30 15:20:02
CHENNAI/GUWAHATI: Several Indian cities prepared to extend their lockdowns to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, as daily cases in the country remained close to 20,000.
India reported 18,522 new cases over the previous 24 hours, according to federal health data released on Tuesday, down slightly from Sunday’s record of 19,906.
With more than 550,000 total infections, India lags only the United States, Brazil and Russia in total cases.
More than 16,000 people have died in India — a low figure when compared with countries with similar numbers of cases — though experts fear its hospitals will be unable to cope with a steep rise in cases.
India on Wednesday enters what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called “Unlock 2.0”, with many curbs on movement relaxed, though schools, cinemas, gyms and bars will remain shut.
But some states have imposed their own lockdowns in cities where there have been significant outbreaks.
2020-06-30 14:27:17
For a month, starting mid-May, the emergency room at the state-run Services Hospital in Lahore was overflowing with critically ill patients.
“We were reporting 25 deaths every day,” Dr Muhammad Aqeel, who works in the COVID-19 ward of the hospital told Geo.tv. “These were confirmed cases of coronavirus, as well as those we suspected, had been infected before their demise.”
Overworked doctors in stretched to capacity hospitals were running short on beds and ventilators in the intensive care units. But then unexpectedly, last week the number of sick began falling, as did fatalities, offering healthcare workers a glimmer of hope.
A few days earlier, on June 15, the Punjab government identified several hotspots of the deadly disease in the most-impacted cities and restricted movements in these areas.
But for Dr Aqeel, the sharp decline in cases was not due to the sealing of residential areas, which was too recent a measure to show results. “The spike in cases that we witnessed last month was due to the massive spread of the virus during Eid holidays [in May].”
Read more here.
2020-06-30 14:02:24
LONDON: The United Kingdom’s suspected COVID-19 death toll has hit 54,852, according to a Reuters tally of official data sources that underline the country’s status as one of the worst hit in the world.
The Reuters tally comprises fatalities where COVID-19 was mentioned on death certificates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland up to June 19, and up to June 21 in Scotland. It also includes more recent hospital deaths.
Unlike the lower death toll published daily by the government, the death certificate figures include suspected cases.
2020-06-30 12:48:29
TASHKENT: Uzbekistan has imposed an overnight curfew in some parts of the country, including the capital Tashkent, as it seeks to curb a fresh rise in COVID-19 infections following the gradual lifting of a two-month lockdown.
The Central Asian nation had been cautiously lifting a nationwide lockdown that had been in place in April and May. However, after a decline in COVID-19 cases between mid-April and mid-May, it has once again seen a steady rise.
The new restrictions will see residents of “red” and “yellow” areas deemed at higher risk barred from leaving their homes between 11 pm and 7 am except for medical emergencies, the government said on Tuesday.
Large shopping malls and markets will also be closed on weekends across the country.
Uzbekistan has divided its territory into green, yellow and red zones depending on the rate of fresh COVID-19 cases in those areas. Tashkent is mostly yellow, with some red neighbourhoods which have been cordoned off.
The country of 34 million people has confirmed 8,298 COVID-19 cases, with 24 deaths.
2020-06-30 11:53:42
LONDON: Britain will introduce legal changes shortly to enforce a lockdown imposed on the English city of Leicester where there has been a flare up of the novel coronavirus, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Tuesday.
The ancient city of Leicester in central England is the first area of the United Kingdom to face a targetted local coronavirus lockdown after the British government began easing the nationwide lockdown earlier this month.
“We will be bringing forward a legal change very shortly, in the next couple of days, because some of the measures that we’ve unfortunately had to take in Leicester will require a legal underpinning,” Hancock told Sky.
Asked if some aspects of the lockdown would be enforced by the police, he said: “Yes, in some cases.”
Leicester accounted for 10% of all positive cases in the country in the past week, the government said on Monday.
“In the very significant testing that we’ve brought into Leicester... We have seen a number of positive cases in the under 18s and that’s why we took the decision with a heavy heart to close schools in Leicester,” Hancock said.
2020-06-30 11:15:43
SYDNEY: The Australian state of Victoria introduced the country’s first lockdown measures specifically targeted at local suburban areas after a spike in coronavirus cases in Melbourne, the nation’s second largest city.
The new curbs come even as two other Australian states looked to ease domestic border restrictions with other parts of the country where the virus has largely been contained.
From midnight the following day, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said people in 10 affected postcodes around Melbourne must stay home unless they are travelling for work, school, exercise or food for a period of four weeks.
Cafes and restaurants would need to revert to takeaway only, just weeks after they returned to seated diners.
“If we don’t take these steps now we will finish up in a situation (where rather) than locking down 10 postcodes, we will be locking down every postcode,” Andrews told reporters.
The northern state of Queensland said it would reopen its border to the rest of the country from July 10 while keeping out arrivals from Victoria.
South Australia meanwhile cancelled a scheduled reopening of its border to some states, also citing the increase in Victoria cases, but said it would soon allow people in from states with fewer new infections.
2020-06-30 10:15:25
Pakistan recorded 2,846 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, taking the nation-wide toll to 209,307.
So far Punjab has recorded 75,501 cases, Sindh 81,985, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 26,115 infections, Balochistan 10,426, Islamabad 12,775 cases, Gilgit-Baltistan 1,470 cases and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 1,065 infections.
The country also recorded 118 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the nationwide death toll to 4,304.
2020-06-30 09:32:57
India is deploying thousands of beds made of cardboard to makeshift medical facilities as it struggles to deal with the surging number of coronavirus cases.
According to AFP, the low-cost beds are chemically coated to make them waterproof and can hold a 300-kilogramme (660-pound) load.
2020-06-30 09:27:04
More than 10.3 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 504,269 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-06-29 23:50:30
Mosques and place of worships will be reopened across the country starting July 1, a spokesperson for National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority said on Monday.
2020-06-29 23:49:19
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Punjab surged past 75,000 after 723 new infections were reported today.
2020-06-29 23:41:26
The organizers of the Geneva International Motor Show said on Monday that they would not organize the event in 2021.
The organizers said a majority of exhibitors surveyed said they would probably not participate in a 2021 event and that they would prefer to have it held in 2022.
"The automotive sector is currently going through a difficult phase, and exhibitors need time to recover from the effects of the pandemic," said the committee and council of the Foundation Salon International de l'Automobile.
2020-06-29 23:24:53
Brazil’s Sao Paulo state expects this week to receive federal regulator approval to trial a potential coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac, governor Joao Doria said on Monday.
The trial would be carried out by the Instituto Butantan, a research center funded by the state of Sao Paulo. Doria said in a news conference that 9,000 volunteers have already been registered to test the vaccine, known as CoronaVac.
The announcement comes as Brazil’s federal government announced over the weekend that it had signed an agreement to produce another potential vaccine, developed by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca with researchers at Oxford University.
With the world’s worst outbreak outside the United States, Brazil has become a key front in the global race for a vaccine, as vaccine clinical trials are likely to yield results faster in places where the virus is widespread.
As of Sunday, Brazil had over 1.3 million coronavirus cases and 57,000 deaths.
2020-06-29 23:00:51
Brazil still faces a “big challenge” in fighting the new coronavirus, a top World Health Organisation (WHO) official said, urging federal and state authorities there to work together more closely.
“There is no question. Brazil is still facing a big challenge,” Mike Ryan, head of the WHO emergencies programme, told a virtual briefing. He described the situation in the Americas generally as “difficult”.
Asked by a journalist to react to US President Donald Trump’s use of the term “kung flu” or other references to the virus as being Chinese, Ryan urged the use of an “international discourse that is based on mutual respect”.
“Many people around the world have used unfortunate language in this response”,” he said. “We try to focus on the way ahead, try to focus on what we need to do.”
2020-06-29 22:51:16
Gilgit-Baltistan reported 28 new infections from the novel coronavirus, bumping the overall cases to 1,470.
The recovered patients from the novel virus have reached 1,117, while the death toll remains unchanged.
2020-06-29 22:41:16
Direct flights from Britain and Sweden to Greece will not be allowed until July 15, Greek authorities said, adding that they would use EU guidelines to determine which countries were considered at high risk of spreading the novel coronavirus.
Greece reopened its main airports in Athens and Thessaloniki to more international flights on June 15, and will reopen all others on July 1.
While flights from most European destinations will be permitted from that date, those from the UK and Sweden will not.
“The whole process of opening up is dynamic, and there will be a continuous review of the situation,” said Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who chaired a meeting with health, civil protection and tourism officials.
2020-06-29 22:35:00
Thailand will allow pubs and bars to re-open on Wednesday and plans to let in some foreign travellers after recording five weeks without any community transmission of the coronavirus, a government official said.
Pubs, bars and karaoke venues will be able to operate until midnight as long as they follow safety guidelines such as ensuring two metre (6.6 ft) spaces between tables.
“Alcohol consumption could reduce discipline so there will be close monitoring before customers enter venues,” Taweesin Wisanuyothin, a spokesman for the government’s Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration, told a briefing.
Foreigners with work permits, residency and families in Thailand will also be able to enter the country, but will be subject to a 14-day quarantine.
2020-06-29 22:28:38
The COVID-19 pandemic is not even close to being over, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing on Monday.
Tedros noted that, six months after China first alerted the WHO to a novel respiratory infection, the grim milestones of 10 million confirmed infections and 500,000 deaths had been reached.
“Most people remain susceptible, the virus still has a lot of room to move,” he said.
“We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is that this is not even close to being over. Although many countries have made some progress globally, the pandemic is actually speeding up.”
2020-06-29 22:19:26
The number of people who died from coronavirus infection in France rose by 35 to 29,813 over the last three days, health authorities announced Monday and hospitalisations for the disease have followed their long-running downward trend.
For the first time since the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, no daily figures were given over the weekend by the authorities, who said that would now be the new procedure.
2020-06-29 22:09:32
Balochistan recorded three deaths and 71 new infections, bumping the overall cases to 10,426 and death toll to 119.
2020-06-29 22:01:53
The World Health Organization sees tremendous work towards finding a safe and effective vaccine to prevent COVID-19, but there are no guarantee of success, the head of its emergencies programme, Mike Ryan, said.
2020-06-29 21:50:44
Turkey will extend a wage support system for one month to continue offsetting fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and related lockdowns, President Tayyip Erdogan said.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting, Erdogan said cash aid to low-income families would also be extended for a month. He said 18 billion lira ($2.6 billion) had been disbursed so far under the two programmes.
The so-called short labour pay - which partially covers wages of formally-employed workers whose hours are cut - will extend into July. It came into effect in March shortly after the first COVID-19 case was identified in Turkey.
Some officials in tourism and other sectors had said the system should be extended by another three months.
2020-06-29 21:44:04
Republican lawmakers are making a public push for face coverings, splitting with mask-averse US President Donald Trump on the issue, as COVID-19 cases surge in some Republican-leaning states.
The top Republican in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, said on Monday every American has a responsibility to follow recommendations to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“They should wear a mask,” McCarthy told CNBC after his home state of California began to roll back efforts to reopen the economy. “If you cannot social distance, you need to be wearing a mask and you need to be respectful to one another.”
Republican Senator Rick Scott of South Carolina, where cases are spiking, posted a similar message on Twitter.
“I am encouraging everyone to WEAR YOUR MASKS!” he said.
2020-06-29 21:36:03
The spike in coronavirus cases in the United States and elsewhere shows Canadians must remain vigilant as the economy gradually reopens, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
Trudeau also told a daily briefing that fewer people were being admitted to hospital in Canada and the overall death toll was increasing at a smaller rate than before, although some hot spots remained.
2020-06-29 21:20:26
Broadway theaters will remain closed through January 3, 2021, industry group the Broadway League said, extending their coronavirus shutdown for another four months.
The theaters, which went dark in mid-March, had previously set a tentative reopening date of September 6.
2020-06-29 21:10:45
Nigeria will allow travel between states outside curfew hours from July 1, an official from the presidential task force on the new coronavirus said on Monday.
Interstate movement has been restricted to essential services for several weeks. A national daily curfew is in place from 10pm to 4am local time.
2020-06-29 21:03:14
The Punjab Corona Experts Advisory Group (CEAG) Chairman Dr Mahmood Shaukat reiterated that summer heat has nothing to do with the elimination of novel coronavirus and the people should refrain from following unauthentic home remedies for the treatment of the disease.
"Do not link the declining trend of cases with heat [or the summer season]", Shaukat stressed, adding that the people are now suffering from diarrhoea due to the excessive and unnecessary use of Sana Makki, which was previously rumoured as an effective cure for coronavirus.
Urging the masses to take adequate steps to contain COVID-19, he said that the virus could spread to smaller cities if SOPs are ignored.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-29 20:52:36
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 13 deaths and 337 new coronavirus infections, bumping overall cases to 26,115 and death toll to 935.
Meanwhile, the number of recovered patients from the novel virus stand at 12,626.
2020-06-29 20:44:10
Irish pubs unlock their doors and begin pouring pints, ending a 15-week dry spell forced by the nation's coronavirus lockdown.
Pubs serving food as well as restaurants and hotels are permitted to open as the republic enters the penultimate stage of its plan to lift stay-at-home restrictions.
All domestic travel restrictions were also lifted, as churches, hairdressers, cinemas and museums opened and mass gatherings of 50 indoors or 200 outdoors were permitted.
But anyone hoping to experience a heaving Irish pub will be disappointed.
Social distancing measures mean drinkers will have to stay seated, with a maximum stay of 105 minutes.
2020-06-29 20:40:16
Iran reported 162 more deaths from the novel coronavirus, the highest single-day toll since the country's outbreak began in February.
"This increase in numbers is in fact a reflection of our overall performance, both in terms of reopening and in compliance with health protocols," health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said at a news conference.
The previous record daily toll of 158 deaths was reported by health authorities in early April.
Official figures have shown an upward trajectory in new confirmed cases since early May, when Iran hit a near two-month low in daily recorded infections.
2020-06-29 20:33:41
Jurgen Klopp has urged Liverpool fans to celebrate "in a safe way" during the coronavirus crisis after chaotic scenes marred the club's Premier League title celebrations.
Thousands of Liverpool fans gathered at the Pier Head for a second night of celebrations on Friday after the club became champions of England for the first time in 30 years.
Police said officers were subject to violent confrontations and had glasses and bottles thrown at them as the celebrations continued in the city centre into the early hours.
Klopp, in an open letter to fans in the Liverpool Echo, said he "did not love" the scenes that took place at Pier Head.
"I am a human being and your passion is also my passion, but right now the most important thing is that we do not have these kind of public gatherings," wrote Klopp.
2020-06-29 20:25:29
Smartwings Group, which includes flagship carrier Czech Airlines, could cut up to 600 jobs by February 2021 because of the coronavirus crisis, it said.
The carrier, which has about 2,500 employees and operates a fleet of 50 planes on mainly European routes, has been in talks with the Czech government over state aid.
The government agreed on Monday that transport and travel companies may be eligible for a state loan guarantee programme.
Smartwings, controlled by founder Jiri Simane and Chinese state investment company CITIC, said the first 29 dismissals had been discussed with unions on Monday.
2020-06-29 20:19:40
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has decided not to take any disciplinary action against veteran all-rounder Mohammad Hafeez, after the latter opted to undertake a coronavirus test at a private lab in Lahore.
Hafeez, who had tested positive for the virus during phase one of the medical tests conducted for the tour of England, had tested negative after opting for a second opinion, privately.
2020-06-29 20:07:15
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Sania Nishtar said the payments to the deserving persons under Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme would continue after June 30, 2020.
In a tweet, Dr Nishtar said the payment process under the programme would continue till disbursement of financial assistance to the 16,163,000 lockdown affected peoples as per the set target.
2020-06-29 19:59:19
The death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom rose by 25 to 43,575, health officials said.
2020-06-29 19:51:26
Coronavirus misinformation spread by Russian and Chinese journalists is finding a bigger audience on social media in France and Germany than content from the European nations' own premier news outlets, according to new research.
Whether it is distorted coverage or outright conspiracy theories, articles written in French and German by foreign state media are resonating widely on Facebook and Twitter, often with their origins unclear, the Oxford Internet Institute said in a report.
The institute, which is part of Oxford University, looked at content generated by leading media outlets from Russia and China, as well as from Iran and Turkey — all of which are state-controlled or closely aligned to regimes in power.
Its report comes as the US government imposes new restrictions on Chinese state media, and builds on previous research by the institute that laid bare the penetration of such foreign outlets in English-language markets.
2020-06-29 19:34:23
Kenya has lost 80 billion shillings ($752 million) so far in tourism revenue, about half of last year’s total, due to the coronavirus crisis, its tourism minister said.
The sector is one of the leading sources of foreign exchange, earning 163.56 billion shillings ($1.54 billion) last year, which had been expected to grow 1% in 2020.
Tourism Minister Najib Balala said things would get worse before they can improve. “The second half is almost as good as zero. So we have a major problem,” he told reporters after launching his ministry’s study on COVID-19’s impact.
The estimated losses include cancelled bookings for the high season months of July-October, said Mohammed Hersi, the chairman of the Kenya Tourism Federation, a private sector lobby.
“The entire tourism sector is out of business. There are major job losses,” Balala said. “We are on our knees.”
Resorts will be required to observe strict social distancing and hygiene measures to curb the spread of the virus once they reopen, Balala said, without giving any timelines.
2020-06-29 19:25:10
Amazon.com said it would spend $500 million on one-time bonuses to its front-line employees and partners working through the coronavirus crisis.
Employees and partners who have been with the e-commerce company through June will receive bonuses ranging from $150 to $3,000, the company said in a blog post.
The world’s largest online retailer, which delivers about 10 billion items a year, has been facing intense scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers and unions over whether it is doing enough to protect staff from the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-06-29 19:17:41
The western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) said that as a precaution it would extend by one week a lockdown in one of two districts affected by an outbreak of the coronavirus at a slaughterhouse.
NRW premier Armin Laschet said restrictions keeping bars, museums, galleries, cinemas, sports halls, gyms and swimming pools shut would remain in place in the district of Guetersloh for now even though the outbreak was under control.
A lockdown in the neighbouring district of Warendorf will be lifted on Tuesday because the number of positive tests there was lower than in Guetersloh.
Some 600,000 people in both municipalities were forced back into lockdown on June 23 after more than 1,500 workers at a meat processing plant tested positive for COVID-19, as well as some of their family members and 24 people with no ties to the plant.
“We see that the situation is improving day by day but as a precaution we will wait for more tests to be carried out and then decide if we can lift it,” Laschet told a news conference.
2020-06-29 18:57:11
Medical device maker Danaher Corp said its COVID-19 blood test for detecting if a person had ever been infected with the new coronavirus received emergency use clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration.
The company’s unit Beckman Coulter said it had shipped the antibody tests to nearly 400 US hospitals and laboratories, and has ramped up production to deliver more than 30 million tests a month.
Antibody tests, which can indicate a certain degree of immunity in those who have had the virus, are seen crucial in safely reopening economies after weeks of lockdowns.
High demand for the test has led to the entry of several fraudulent kits, prompting the FDA to tighten its rules over the tests.
Danaher said its antibody test has a specificity rate of 99.6% and 100% sensitivity, suggesting very few chances of false positives and no false negatives.
2020-06-29 18:38:12
Canadian farmers planted slightly more wheat overall in 2020 than in 2019, but the coronavirus outbreak will pose “unique challenges” in the production and distribution of crops, Statistics Canada said.
Farmers planted 25.0 million acres of wheat, up 1.5% from 2019, thanks in part to a 16.2% boost in durum wheat, which Statscan linked to favorable prices.
Dry conditions early in seeding aided planting progress, with the exception of much of Alberta and north-western Saskatchewan, which received more rain than usual.
The survey was conducted from May 14 to June 11, polling around 24,500 farms. Statscan said the coronavirus pandemic had not interfered with the collection of data.
Canola plantings slipped 0.8% to 20.8 million acres as farmers shifted away from oilseeds, potentially because of high global supplies. “While seeding progress during this reference period may not have been directly impacted by COVID-19, farmers have and continue to face their own set of unique challenges in the regular production and distribution of their crops due to the pandemic,” Statscan said in a commentary.
2020-06-29 18:30:03
Frankfurt airport opened a walk-in testing centre where passengers can pay to take a coronavirus test and get their results within hours, in a bid to reassure anxious travellers as the summer holidays kick off.
Passengers will be notified of the result via a "secure digital platform" and the information can be connected to a boarding pass for those flying to countries requiring a negative test before entering, German biotech Centogene said in a statement.
The first COVID-19 test centre at a German airport will help avoid quarantines and "serves as a blueprint to opening international borders", said Centogene, which launched the project with airline giant Lufthansa and Frankfurt airport operator Fraport.
A standard test costs 59 euros ($66), with results expected within six to eight hours.
For 139 euros, passengers can opt for a fast-track test that will gave an answer in two to three hours.
The walk-in hub can handle 300 tests per hour.
2020-06-29 18:23:22
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered his government to prepare a package of coronavirus restrictions similar to the hard lockdown that the Central Asian nation imposed in March-May after a recent sharp rise in infections.
Tokayev gave his cabinet two days to draft the new measures and also ordered officials to boost the number of available hospital beds by 50% within a month and prepare for a long-term pandemic.
Several major cities in the oil-rich nation bordering China and Russia have reported that their hospitals are full, prompting the conversion of facilities such as sports arenas into temporary hospitals.
Kazakhs have also formed long queues at testing centres - some of which ran out of supplies - and drug stores where demand has surged for common anti-fever medicines such as paracetamol.
2020-06-29 18:14:07
Bahrain’s government said it would pay 50% of salaries for private company workers in sectors that were hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, state news agency BNA reported.
The new payments would start in July, BNA said, adding that the government would extend its assistance to Bahraini citizens by also paying electricity and water bills.
Bahrain had said it was spending $570 million on paying salaries to all 100,000 of its citizens employed in the private sector from April to June to help soften the economic blow from the coronavirus outbreak.
2020-06-29 18:04:05
Abu Dhabi will allow people to enter the emirate if they have tested negative for COVID-19 infection within the previous 48 hours, the local government media office said.
Abu Dhabi, the largest and wealthiest member of the United Arab Emirates federation, has had a ban on people entering since June 2. It eased some restrictions a week ago to allow movement between its cities for all residents.
2020-06-29 17:55:12
British health minister Matt Hancock will meet leaders from Leicester in central England, where officials fear a growing number of coronavirus cases could prompt a local lockdown, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday.
“The health secretary is meeting with local leaders from Leicester to discuss the situation this afternoon,” the spokesman said, adding the meeting would take place at 1.30 p.m.
Johnson has said the key to preventing a second wave of the novel coronavirus is for the government to pursue local lockdowns, targeting new outbreaks to contain any spread.
2020-06-29 17:47:59
How I long to hug my sister. To receive that gentle touch that soothes something within.
The kisses that I received on the forehead from my father each time we met feel so precious now. I close my eyes to relive these moments and that strange, twisting anxiety I always feel is soothed. The cuddles with my nephews are a memory from before.
I often wonder if having all of that within my reach, and then making a choice every day not to receive it, is somehow impacting me in ways that I have not yet fully discerned.
According to Attachment theory and research, healthy human relationships and physical human connections are as essential for survival as food and safety. Many of you might know of that famous study at a camp in World War II where infants died from a lack of touch.
Even if I did not believe in that study, I know how much I crave those warm embraces right now. How sick I am of meeting my loved ones from behind a mask or at a 6ft distance. My system is love deprived and overloaded with fear.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-29 17:40:16
Oil prices rose today, supported by improving economic data though a spike in new coronavirus infections around the world capped the gains as some countries were forced to reimpose partial lockdowns.
Brent crude LCOc1 rose 15 cents, or 0.4%, to $41.17 a barrel by 1145 GMT and U.S. crude CLc1 was up 26 cents, or 0.7%, at $38.75. Both contracts had fallen almost $1 earlier in the session.
Crude prices found some support as profits at China’s industrial firms rose for the first time in six months in May, suggesting the country’s economic recovery is gaining traction.
The recovery of economic sentiment in the euro zone also intensified in June after a modest pick-up in May, with improvements across all sectors and a much more buoyant sense of future business, European Commission data showed.
2020-06-29 17:30:18
India reported close to 20,000 fresh novel coronavirus cases for the second day running, as the financial hub of Mumbai extended its lockdown by a month.
There were 19,459 new cases reported in the previous 24 hours, according to data from India’s federal Health Ministry released on Monday. That is down slightly from Sunday’s record of 19,906, but still sign cases in the country are yet to subside.
But experts fear its hospitals will be unable to cope with a steep rise in cases.
The western state of Maharashtra, which has reported the highest number of coronavirus cases in the country, extended its lockdown by another month until end of July, as new cases rose in key cities such as Mumbai, Pune and Aurangabad.
Mumbai witnessed massive traffic jams on key roads connecting suburbs to the southern business district on Monday as authorities erected roadblocks to police new travel restrictions.
2020-06-29 17:22:35
China reported 12 new confirmed COVID-19 cases as of end of June 28, down from 17 reported a day earlier as the country’s capital tries to curb a new wave of infections that emerged from a wholesale market in mid-June.
The National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement that five of the new COVID-19 cases were so-called imported infections involving travellers from overseas, compared with three such cases reported a day earlier. The seven local infections were all in the capital city of Beijing.
Beijing had tested about a third of its population as of noon Sunday as part of the city government’s efforts to ensure the outbreak that emerged from the Xinfadi market did not spiral out of control.
A total of 311 people in the city, which has a population of more than 20 million, have tested positive for the virus since the first case linked to the market was reported on June 11.
2020-06-29 17:16:40
Tokyo recorded 58 new cases of coronavirus infection, marking the fourth straight day that infections had exceeded 50, broadcaster TV Asahi reported.
The Japanese capital had reported 60 cases the previous day, which was the highest daily tally since early May.
2020-06-29 17:10:57
Gilead Sciences has priced its COVID-19 drug candidate remdesivir at $390 per vial for the United States and governments of other developed countries, it said, setting the price of a five-day course at $2,340 per patient.
The price for US private insurance companies will be $520 per vial, the drugmaker said, which equates to a total of $3,120 per patient.
Gilead has entered into an agreement with the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) whereby the department and states will manage allocation to hospitals until September end.
After this period, once supplies are less constrained, HHS will stop managing the allocation, the company said.
Remdesivir’s price has been a topic of intense debate since the US Food and Drug Administration approved its emergency use COVID-19 patients in May.
2020-06-29 17:03:53
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said the province had recorded 74 deaths and 1,539 infections, taking the overall cases to 81,955 and death toll to 1,343.
Meanwhile, the province has seen 45,616 recoveries from the infection, CM Shah said.
2020-06-29 16:58:26
Bankrupt LATAM Airlines and Avianca Holdings are dramatically retrenching their once grand ambitions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, reducing competition in Latin America as they mull once-unthinkable cooperation with rivals.
Since May, LATAM has exited Argentina, partnered with rival Azul SA in Brazil and cut back domestic operations in Chile, while Avianca has departed Peru.
LATAM is now open to a deeper alliance with Azul, even as the two airlines usually control a combined 60% of Brazil’s domestic market.
The scaling back could reshape air travel in Latin America, weakening competition regionally and driving up ticket prices while also helping some carriers survive. The moves show how the industry is already shrinking through attrition, as airlines are too cash-strapped to consider buying the competition.
“More than consolidation, many airlines will disappear,” said Eliseo Llamazares, an aviation consultant at KPMG.
2020-06-29 16:52:14
Qatar aims to further ease coronavirus curbs from July 1, allowing the limited reopening of restaurants, beaches and parks, as infections have passed their peak and the rate was subsiding, authorities said.
The nation of about 2.8 million people has the second highest tally of infections among the six Gulf Arab states, after its much larger neighbour,
In a statement late on Sunday, the Supreme Committee for Crisis Management said restaurants will reopen at limited capacity from July 1, as would public beaches and parks.
Public and private gatherings of a maximum of five people will be allowed, while employees in the public and private sector can work from the office at 50% capacity, it added.
This month, the government allowed “essential flights” out of Doha, a partial reopening of malls and of some mosques.
Qatar has also announced that from August 1, it will permit flights from low-risk countries to resume, malls to operate at full capacity and other markets at limited capacity.
2020-06-29 16:43:36
Chief Minister of Punjab Usman Buzdar said the province was witnessing a decline in the coronavirus cases.
"Safety equipment should be provided to doctors, nurses, and paramedics," he said while chairing a high-level meeting.
Buzdar instructed provincial health minister Yasmin Rashid to have the OPDs functional in 10 days. "Patients are facing hurdles due to non-functioning of OPDs."
2020-06-29 16:40:15
Balochistan government spokesperson Liaquat Shahwani said the province has seen a 10% decline in coronavirus infections.
"If people cooperate then cases in Balochistan will see a further dip in the month of July," he said.
Talking about the province's healthcare facilities, Shahwani said: "The province has less ventilators," adding: "I urge National Disaster and Management Authority to provide us with more ventilators."
2020-06-29 16:32:26
A shortage of test kits has undermined South Africa’s early response to the coronavirus crisis, but a local biotechnology firm is stepping up to try plug the shortfall in testing capacity.
The kits will produce results within two hours, down from the three to four hours taken by the imported kits currently available in the market, CapeBio Chief Executive Daniel Ndima said.
“We are not here to say that we will replace imports. But at least we can reduce the backlog meaningfully,” said Ndima, a 33-year old scientist and co-founder of the company.
2020-06-29 16:26:14
China’s military has received the greenlight to use a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by its research unit and CanSino Biologics after clinical trials proved it was safe and showed some efficacy, the company said.
The Ad5-nCoV is one of China’s eight vaccine candidates approved for human trials at home and abroad for the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus. The shot also won approval for human testing in Canada.
China’s Central Military Commission approved the use of the vaccine by the military on June 25 for a period of one year, CanSino said in a filing. The vaccine candidate was developed jointly by CanSino and a research institute at the Academy of Military Science (AMS).
“The Ad5-nCoV is currently limited to military use only and its use cannot be expanded to a broader vaccination range without the approval of the Logistics Support Department,” CanSino said, referring to the Central Military Commission department which approved the military use of the vaccine.
2020-06-29 16:14:58
Australia’s second most populous state said it is considering reimposing social distancing restrictions after the country reported its biggest one-day rise in new coronavirus infections in more than two months.
Propelled by Victoria state reporting 75 cases, Australia recorded 85 new COVID-19 infections in the past 24 hours, its biggest daily outbreak since April 11.
Australia has fared better than many countries in the coronavirus pandemic, with around 7,800 cases and 104 deaths, but the recent surge has stoked fears of a second wave after several weeks of fewer than 20 new cases a day.
The resurgence in Australia comes as total infections hit 10 million cases worldwide and the global death toll from the virus tops half a million people.
“Changing the law is something we have to consider because we have to do whatever is required to turn this around,” Brett Sutton told reporters in Melbourne, referring to questions about enforcing localised lockdowns.
2020-06-29 15:50:48
United Nations says that the coronavirus is more than just a health crisis which would require a global approach driven by compassion and solidarity.
“Coronavirus is an economic crisis, a humanitarian crisis, a security crisis, and a human rights crisis. Coming out of this crisis will require a whole-of-society, whole-of-government and whole-of-the-world approach driven by compassion and solidarity,” it said.
2020-06-29 15:45:09
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Dr Sania Nishtar says the government has successfully completed the target of disbursement of Ehsaas Emergency Cash among 12 million beneficiaries.
She added that the government has set a new target of over 16 million beneficiaries.
“Over Rs145 billion has been distributed among more than 12 million labourers,” Dr Nishtar added.
2020-06-29 15:23:31
Russia reported 6,719 new cases of the novel coronavirus, the lowest one-day reported increase since April 29, pushing its nationwide tally to 641,156 on Monday.
The national coronavirus taskforce said 93 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 9,166.
2020-06-29 14:26:50
Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the coronavirus crisis had been a disaster for the United Kingdom and while the government would look at what went wrong it was not the right time to have an inquiry into missteps.
"This has been a disaster," Johnson told Times Radio. "Let's not mince our words, I mean this has been an absolute nightmare for the country and the country has gone through a profound shock."
"I totally understand that and we will. I happen to think that the moment is not right now, ... when everybody is flat out, I don't think the moment is right now for consecrating a huge amount of official time to all of that.”
2020-06-29 13:25:51
More than 10 million have been infected with the coronavirus while more than 500,000 people have been killed due to the virus, according to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University.
The United States, Brazil and Russia have emerged as the countries with the highest number of confirmed cases, while the US and Brazil have recorded the highest number of deaths from the coronavirus.
2020-06-29 11:46:56
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 262 to 193,761, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The reported death toll rose by four to 8,961, the tally showed.
2020-06-29 11:07:48
Beijing reported seven new COVID-19 cases, down from 14 a day earlier as the Chinese capital seeks to contain an outbreak.
The city also reported one new asymptomatic case, a patient who has the coronavirus but is not exhibiting symptoms, compared with three such cases a day earlier.
2020-06-29 10:11:37
A poll conducted by Yougov poll shows that only 6% of the British public want things to go back to how they were before the coronavirus crisis, according to a new poll, reported Sky News.
According to the poll, 28% of participants said they wanted to see moderate changes and only 6% of people wanted no changes to be made at all.
The poll further indicated that 31% of the public wants to see big changes in how the British economy is run coming out of the coronavirus crisis.
2020-06-29 09:49:26
Pakistan recorded 3,557 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, taking the nation-wide toll to 206,512.
So far Punjab has recorded 74,778 cases, Sindh 80,446, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 25,778 infection, Balochistan 10,376, Islamabad 12,643 cases, Gilgit-Baltistan 1,442 cases and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 1,049 infections.
The country also recorded 40 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the nationwide death toll to 4,167.
2020-06-29 09:32:16
More than half a million people have been killed by the novel coronavirus, nearly two thirds of them in the United States and Europe, official data showed on Monday.
The official death toll for the disease now stands at 500,390 deaths from 10,099,576 cases recorded worldwide. The United States has suffered the highest death toll (125,747), followed by Brazil (57,622) and the United Kingdom (43,550).
Read the full story here.
2020-06-28 23:55:06
The Gilgit-Baltistan health department has reported 19 new infections, taking the total in the region to 1,442.
2020-06-28 21:52:06
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has notified 398 more cases, taking the total to 25,778.
Eight more deaths have also been reported, taking the death toll to 922 in the province.
2020-06-28 21:23:54
The Balochistan health department has notified two more deaths and 115 new cases.
The death toll in the province has now risen to 116 and the number of cases to 10,376.
2020-06-28 20:56:10
Dr Faisal Sultan, the prime minister's focal person on coronavirus, in an interview has explained the difference between a lockdown and the government's "smart lockdown" strategy.
He has shared how a targeted strategy is better suited for a country like Pakistan and how it allows it to focus its resources where they are needed the most.
2020-06-28 18:44:34
Deputy Commissioner of Islamabad Hamza Shafqat believes that the policy of locking down certain sectors was bearing, saying that it is "surely flattening the curve".
The DC also shared that after completion of 14 days lockdown, Islamabad's Sector I-8/3, I-8/4, I-10/1 and I-10/2 will also be opened.
"The policy of locking down sectors may not eradicate the diseases completely but it surely is flattening the curve. Brought down the daily cases count from 771 to 189 today," said the DC.
2020-06-28 18:05:18
SHANGHAI: Beijing has ramped up coronavirus testing efforts and has tested about a third of the Chinese capital’s population so far, a city official said on Sunday, as authorities seek to control an outbreak stemming from a wholesale market in mid-June.
As of Sunday noon, Beijing had collected 8.29 million patient samples for testing and completed 7.69 million tests, Zhang Qiang, an official from Beijing’s municipal committee, told a press conference.
“This means we have already tested all the people that need to be tested. We are also rolling out large scale screening to key regions and key populations (of the city) and improve our capability of testing,” said Zhang, adding that Beijing was also receiving medical support from other provinces.
Beijing reported its first case from the outbreak at Xinfadi market on June 11 and 311 people in the city of over 20 million have tested positive for the virus since then.
According to Zhang, the testing is being done in batches and includes workers from the market and residents in surrounding neighbourhoods. Students, front-line medical staff, and workers in the transportation, banking, supermarkets, express deliveries and beauty salon industries will also be tested.
Zhang added that Beijing’s daily testing capacity has increased to 458,000 per day.
China on Sunday reported 17 new coronavirus cases, of which 14 were from Beijing.
2020-06-28 17:01:14
BARCELONA: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wore a mask and avoided shaking hands with supporters at a political rally on Sunday as the coronavirus pandemic prompted changes to campaigning ahead of regional elections.
Polls in the Basque Country and Galicia on July 12 will be the first since Spain went into lockdown in March. Restrictions were eased on June 21, and Spaniards have been adapting to social distancing and precautionary measures in everyday life.
“The enemy of Spain is the virus,” Socialist Sanchez told a reduced group of about 100 party faithful — all wearing masks and sitting the recommended 1.5 metres apart — at a venue in San Sebastian on the country’s northern coast.
The building had been cleaned ahead of the rally, sources from his party told Reuters.
To avoid crowding at polling stations, voters in the elections will be able to vote by post or at post offices.
Spain is among countries worst-hit by the pandemic, with more than 28,000 deaths officially reported and a much higher than average infection rate of six per 10,000 people.
2020-06-28 16:52:06
Sindh became the first province to report over 80,000 coronavirus cases after new cases were reported by the province on Sunday.
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah, in a series of tweets, said that within past 24 hours, 38 patients lost their lives to the coronavirus, taking the death toll to 1,269.
Shah said that 9,244 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours out of which 2,179 new cases of corona were detected.
The province-wide tally of cases reached 80,446 today, adding that 1,079 recoveries were observed from the past day.
2020-06-28 15:20:29
PRAGUE: The daily number of new coronavirus cases in the Czech Republic jumped to 260, the highest since April 8, mainly due to surge in an eastern mining region, the Health Ministry said on Sunday.
That latest daily increase is nearly triple the 93 new cases recorded on Thursday. In total, the country of 10.7 million has confirmed 11,298 cases of the COVID-19 illness, with 347 deaths as of the end of Saturday.
Almost half of the new cases, 122, were identified in the Karvina region in the east of the country, where a hotspot has appeared among miners, Health Minister Adam Vojtech said.
“We are conducting rather massive testing in the most-affected region, Karvina, it is mainly about (mining company) OKD,” Vojtech said in a live debate on Prima television.
“It is not a question of a blanket rise across the whole country, it is still about local hotbeds.”
While restrictions in most of the country have been lifted in recent weeks, Karvina will see a tightening now, including lowering the number of people allowed at gatherings to 100, Vojtech said.
2020-06-28 14:58:10
DUBAI: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday that his country is experiencing its toughest year because of US sanctions coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The coronavirus crisis has exacerbated economic problems that worsened after US President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018 from Iran’s nuclear deal with major powers and reimposed sanctions. On Monday, Iran’s rial currency fell to its lowest ever level against the US dollar.
“It’s been the most difficult year due to the enemy’s economic pressure and the pandemic,” Rouhani said in a televised speech.
“The economic pressure that began in 2018 has increased ... and today it is the toughest pressure on our dear country.”
Iran has seen a sharp increase in coronavirus infections and deaths since restrictions to stem the spread of the pandemic were gradually lifted from mid-April. The death toll has recently topped 100 a day for the first time in two months.
More than 220,000 cases have been confirmed, and over 10,000 deaths.
2020-06-28 14:45:59
The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf said it will launch a coronavirus awareness campaign on social media tonight to "save lives".
"Big motivation for the campaign is to save lives by spreading awareness and encourage people to follow SOPs," tweeted the party and told the supporters that the hastag for the campaign will be shared tonight at 7pm.
2020-06-28 14:24:27
DIG operations for Islamabad tweeted a notification on Sunday stating that the federal capital's Sectors G-9/2,3 will be de sealed from June 29 onwards.
According to the tweet, Section 144 will remain in place in de-sealed areas.
2020-06-28 14:12:27
LONDON: The first minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, said on Sunday he was concerned about the messaging deployed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government on coronavirus, warning that the crisis was not over yet.
2020-06-28 13:43:07
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan credited his team for being among the first to enforce smart lockdowns across the country, hoping that with proper implementation of the measure, Pakistan will "see off the worst of this crisis".
The prime minister took to Twitter where he shared a Bloomberg article titled "Smart Lockdowns" are the future in Europe, stating that his team was amongst the first to enforce the measure.
"My team was amongst the first to enforce smart lockdowns. I am proud of it for helping me continue to navigate our country through the Covid19 crisis. InshaAllah, from now onwards if we follow SOPs we will see off the worst of this crisis," he tweeted.
Read more here.
2020-06-28 13:09:00
Chinese companies are taking the front seat in helping Pakistan fight the coronavirus pandemic.
"Beijing Lenocean Talent International Industry Corporation presents epidemic prevention materials to local hospitals in the fight against COVID-19," said the embassy in the tweet.
However, the mission did not specify in which part of the country the Chinese corporation had donated the goods.
2020-06-28 12:20:36
Mainland China reported 17 new coronavirus cases, mostly in the Chinese capital of Beijing on Sunday as the country tries to stem a second wave of the virus.
The National Health Commission said 17 new infections were confirmed on Saturday, down from 21 a day earlier.
In Beijing, 14 new confirmed cases were reported, down from 17 a day earlier.
Since June 11 when Beijing reported its first case in the current outbreak, stemming from a sprawling wholesale food centre in the southwest of the capital, 311 people in the city of more than 20 million have contracted the virus.
2020-06-28 12:02:45
2020-06-28 11:25:02
The first batch of locally manufactured ventilators will be delivered to NDMA this week, Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry announced on Sunday.
“Congratulations to NRTC as their next three designs are also in the final stages after which we will be among the few countries in the world that make complex medical machines. All of these machines are in accordance with EU Standards,” Chaudhry tweeted.
2020-06-28 11:03:15
Brazil recorded 38,693 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours and 1,109 additional deaths, the Health Ministry said on Saturday.
The nation has now registered 1,313,667 total confirmed cases of the virus and 57,070 deaths.
2020-06-28 10:35:19
Pakistan recorded 4,072 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours and 83 additional deaths, the National Command and Control Centre said on Sunday.
The country has recorded 202,955 cases of the virus and 4,118 deaths.
2020-06-28 10:02:41
Global coronavirus cases topped 10 million on Sunday marking a major milestone in the spread of the respiratory disease that has so far killed almost half a million people in seven months..
North America, Latin America and Europe each account for around 25% of cases, while Asia and the Middle East have around 11% and 9% respectively, according to the Reuters tally, which uses government reports.
There have been more than 497,000 fatalities linked to the disease so far, roughly the same as the number of influenza deaths reported annually.
Read the full story here
2020-06-28 09:23:47
Confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany by 256 to 193,499, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.
The reported death toll rose by three to 8,957.
2020-06-28 09:01:06
The United States has surpassed 2.5 million coronavirus cases, a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University showed on Saturday.
US deaths now exceed 125,000, approximately one-fourth the world total of over 495,000.
Florida on Saturday reported a record 9,585 cases in 24 hours as infections there spike. The state's rapid reopening saw young adults flocking to beaches, boardwalks and bars.
Florida is among the more than half of US states, particularly in the South and West, seeing spikes in COVID-19 cases — a dramatic setback to efforts to reopen and salvage badly battered economies.
2020-06-27 23:24:45
Britain’s death toll from confirmed cases of the new coronavirus has risen to 43,514, an increase of 100 from a day earlier, government figures show.
2020-06-27 23:22:54
The Punjab primary healthcare department has reported a rise in the number of infections by 1,322, taking the total number in the province to 74,202.
It also reported 17 more deaths from the virus, bringing the grim total to 1,673.
2020-06-27 22:59:28
Pakistan became the 12th country in the world on Saturday where the coronavirus infections have surged past 200,000, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.
So far 4,098 fatalities have been recorded from the virus.
The country crossed the grim landmark as the infection rate multiplied manifold over the past few weeks after the government eased lockdown restrictions last month, allowing big markets and shopping plazas to open.
The Pakistan Medical Association and other health organisations had warned the government against lifting restrictions and advised the authorities to reimpose complete lockdown in order to stem the spread of the virus.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-27 22:52:34
Britain will ditch a 14-day quarantine period for people arriving from countries it deems to be lower risk for COVID-19 , the government said.
Official travel advice against all but essential travel outside Britain will also be eased for some countries and regions.
An expert panel will put nations into three categories: green, amber and red. Passengers arriving from green and amber countries will no longer have to quarantine themselves for 14 days after their arrival.
“Our new risk-assessment system will enable us to carefully open a number of safe travel routes around the world,” a government spokeswoman said. “But we will not hesitate to put on the brakes if any risks re-emerge.”
The rules for red-category countries will not change.
2020-06-27 22:44:10
The Deputy Commissioner Islamabad, in a bid to reduce the stress on the healthcare facilities amid coronavirus, distributed free oxygen cylinders.
"Delivered oxygen support to 46 patients free of cost.This has reduced load on hospitals,saved patients from any infection from outside and is helping us reduce artificial inflation of oxygen cylinders," he said.
2020-06-27 22:36:05
A growing number of COVID-19 infections among people under 35 years of age is a “worrying trend,” Ireland’s chief medical officer Tony Holohan said as the country reported the highest number of new infections for two weeks.
Ireland has reported sharp drops in the number of infections in the past month to low and stable levels, allowing the government to accelerate the reopening of the economy, with almost all businesses allowed to open next week.
Holohan, who has cited anecdotal evidence in recent days of young people socialising in large numbers, said 10 of the 23 cases were in adults under the age of 35 and eight were between 35 and 54.
“This is now a real concern and a worrying trend at a time when many people are reconnecting with friends and loved ones and may be gathering in larger groups,” Holohan said.
2020-06-27 22:25:32
A global fundraising meeting raised 6.15 billion euros ($6.9 billion) from the United States, the European Commission and numerous countries to fight COVID-19, with many participants stressing that an eventual vaccine should be available to anyone who needs it.
The pledging summit, part of a joint initiative by the EU executive and advocacy group Global Citizen, also included a globally televised and streamed fundraising concert featuring Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Shakira, Chloe X Halle, Usher and others.
The Commission together with the European Investment Bank pledged 4.9 billion euros ($5.50 billion), the United States $545 million, Germany 383 million euros, Canada C$300 million ($219 million)and Qatar $10 million. Forty governments took part in the summit.
The money will be used for COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines, and also to support the world’s poorest and most marginalised communities.
2020-06-27 22:12:34
Spain is to uphold a ban on cruise liners from docking at its ports to stop the spread of COVID-19, according to a ministerial order.
Cruise liners carrying thousands of passengers regularly stop off at ports in the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Barcelona and Malaga, but were prohibited when Spain went into lockdown on March 14.
With their crowds of often elderly passengers, cruise ships have been especially vulnerable to outbreaks of the virus and have been barred from disembarking in several countries.
The retention of the ban was described as a “proportionate, objective and non-discriminatory measure that is in line with the objective set by the WHO Emergency Committee to stop the spread of the virus”, the order said, referring to the World Health Organization.
Cruise liners form part of Spain’s tourist sector which contributes 12% of GDP. In 2019 10 million cruise line passengers visited Spain.
2020-06-27 22:07:07
Balochistan recorded 145 new infections, bumping the overall cases to 10,261, provincial health department said.
Meanwhile, one more death was reported, taking the provincial death toll to 114.
2020-06-27 20:32:21
The Gilgit-Baltistan health department has notified five new cases, taking the region's total to 1,423.
One more death was also reported, taking the total death toll of the region to 24.
2020-06-27 20:23:20
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has reported 437 new cases, taking the province's total to 25,380.
It has also reported 24 more deaths, bringing the provincial death toll to 914.
2020-06-27 19:53:43
BISSAU: Guinea Bissau was warned to prepare for a possible increase in coronavirus cases by the head of its response commission, as a team of Cuban health workers arrived to help the nation tackle the pandemic.
The West African nation of over 1.8 million people has seen its infection rate rise in recent weeks to 1,614 confirmed cases, with 22 deaths. Almost all cases (94%) have been recorded in the capital Bissau.
Former health minister Magda Nely Robalo, who was appointed to take charge of the response, urged people to continue preventive measures as she welcomed the 23 Cuban doctors and health workers who came at the request of the Bissau government.
Robalo said Guinea Bissau was facing major challenges due to the weakness of its health system. An increase in cases could overwhelm the system, she said.
Over 170 of Bissau’s 2,000 health workers have contracted coronavirus, according to the World Health Organisation, while health authorities have raised the alarm over a lack of oxygen to treat patients.
2020-06-27 19:37:57
TEHRAN: Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned that the country's economic problems would worsen if the novel coronavirus spreads unchecked.
The Islamic republic has struggled to curb the COVID-19 outbreak since it reported its first cases in the Shiite holy city of Qom in February.
It shut down non-essential businesses, closed schools and cancelled public events in March, but the government gradually lifted restrictions from April to try to reopen the country's sanctions-hit economy.
"It is correct to say that something must be done to prevent economic problems caused by the coronavirus," said Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"But in the case of negligence and significant spread of the disease, economic problems will increase, too," he said in a meeting with judiciary officials, according to his official website.
2020-06-27 19:29:56
Scientists are only starting to grasp the vast array of health problems caused by the novel coronavirus, some of which may have lingering effects on patients and health systems for years to come, according to doctors and infectious disease experts.
Besides the respiratory issues that leave patients gasping for breath, the virus that causes COVID-19 attacks many organ systems, in some cases causing catastrophic damage.
“We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs. We didn’t appreciate that in the beginning,” said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.
In addition to respiratory distress, patients with COVID-19 can experience blood clotting disorders that can lead to strokes, and extreme inflammation that attacks multiple organ systems. The virus can also cause neurological complications that range from headache, dizziness and loss of taste or smell to seizures and confusion.
2020-06-27 19:04:48
The National Command and Operations Centre held an important session today, discussing the smart lockdown imposed in several areas and the observance of preventive measures by the public.
According to an official statement released after the meeting, it was mentioned that Sindh conducted lowest number of tests while Punjab also followed the trend with a downward trajectory.
On June 21, 30,520 tests were conducted while on June 26, the number dropped to 21,033, as per the statement.
In the session, provincial chief secretaries and health secretary participated via video link.
The Sindh health secretary said that due to a few administrative issues, testing rate had dropped in the province, assuring that it will be brought on track within next two or three days.
The secretary said that the demand for tests has dropped as people are preferring to go into isolation.
2020-06-27 18:17:07
Liverpool have condemned the behaviour of fans who gathered in Liverpool city centre for a second night on Friday to celebrate their team’s Premier League title win and urged them to stay at home due to fears of a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Local media reported that fans launched fireworks at the Royal Liver Building, with a fire breaking out on the balcony of the landmark owned by Farhad Moshiri, the majority shareholder of the side’s local rivals Everton.
Liverpool’s 30-year wait for their 19th English top-flight title ended on Thursday after second-placed Manchester City were beaten by Chelsea.
2020-06-27 17:25:12
Ten players have been dropped from Pakistan´s cricket team for its England tour after they tested positive for the coronavirus for a second time, officials said Saturday.
The 18-strong squad is due to leave Sunday and Pakistan Cricket Board chief executive Wasim Khan said the left out players could rejoin if they later test negative for the disease.
2020-06-27 17:23:20
According to a notification from the Power Division, the areas under smart lockdown are exempt from loadshedding.
The notification said that the direction has been passed onto the electricity distributing companies and even the areas with heavy line losses will be exempt from power outages.
The statement claimed that the current government has amplified the power distribution capacity by 26,000 megawatts, adding that the earlier capacity stood at 18,000 MW.
2020-06-27 17:18:05
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 494,337 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT on Saturday.
At least 9,823,840 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 4,882,900 are now considered recovered.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organiaation (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 125,039 deaths from 2,467,837 cases. At least 670,809 people have been declared recovered.
2020-06-27 16:45:23
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that within past 24 hours, 38 patients lost their lives to the coronavirus, taking the death toll to 1,243.
Shah said that 11901 tests, the highest in Pakistan, were conducted, out of which 1,949 new cases of corona were detected.
The province-wide tally of cases reached 78,267 today, while 55.5% or 43,444 patients have recovered so far he said.
Shah said that 1,452 recoveries were observed from the past day.
2020-06-27 16:01:13
The Czech Republic recorded 168 new cases of the coronavirus on Friday, authorities said, the highest daily rise in cases since early April just as the country is starting the two-month summer holiday season.
It was also the fourth day of the last 10 showing a daily increase of more than 100. Over the past week, the eastern region of Karvina has been by far the most affected by the rise in cases, according to the Health Ministry website.
2020-06-27 15:33:29
Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho said that the coronavirus cases across the province have not reduced and remain on an upward trajectory.
In a video statement, she said that 22% of all the tests turn out to be positive, lamenting that the needful measures were not done to contain the virus.
“The kind of lockdown in place does not seem to be effective,” she said, adding that the cattle markets can amplify the threat of virus spread.
The minister said that very few people are following preventive measures against COVID-19.
2020-06-27 14:33:52
Mainland China reported on Saturday the highest number of new coronavirus cases in four days, driven by a COVID-19 resurgence in the Chinese capital of Beijing.
The National Health Commission reported 21 new confirmed infections in mainland China on Friday, up from 13 a day earlier and the highest since Monday.
In Beijing, 17 new confirmed cases were reported, up from 11 a day earlier and the most since June 20.
Since June 11 when Beijing reported its first case in the current outbreak, stemming from a sprawling wholesale food centre in the southwest of the capital, 297 people in the city of more than 20 million have contracted the virus.
2020-06-27 14:02:45
The Department of Livestock in Peshawar wrote instructions in a letter to the administration officials for setting up cattle markets ahead of Eid-ul-Azha.
The official letter stated that two markets in rural areas and four cattle markets in urban areas will be allowed.
It is the administration’s prerogative to increase the size of the cattle markets, said the letter, adding that the vehicles entering the market should be disinfected.
There will be a complete record regarding the supply of animals and the SOPs regarding the market should be displayed on banners.
2020-06-27 13:43:27
Sindh Department of Education has decided to select teachers for online classes, according to an official notification today.
The notification said that the school directors should recruit eight Information Technology experts from every district.
The school directors were asked to submit details until June 28 in this regard, said the notification, adding that the chosen teachers will teach students online at government schools.
The teachers will be trained every day for two to three hours, stated the notification.
2020-06-27 13:35:22
Australia’s state of Victoria recorded 41 new confirmed cases of coronavirus on Saturday, double the daily rate seen a week ago, struggling to gain control over the pandemic while the rest of the country continues easing social distancing restrictions.
Victoria, the country’s second-most-populated state, has now seen 11 straight days of double digit new cases, most linked to known outbreaks in Melbourne’s suburbs, health officials said. Victoria has 204 of Australia’s total of about 270 active cases.
One of the new cases was a returned traveller. Australia requires all locals who return to quarantine in hotels for two weeks. But about 30% of people in Victoria have declined a COVID-19 test before leaving quarantine, health officials said.
2020-06-27 12:36:07
The Pakistan cricket team is spending its fourth day at the bio-secure hotel in order to remain safe from the COVID-19 threat.
The players are busy in indoor activities during their stay. Test team captain Azhar Ali and test opener Shan Masood enjoyed a round of playstation games.
Meanwhile, cricketers Babar Azam and Imam-ul-Haq also played a match of badminton.
2020-06-27 12:28:52
Orly airport serving the French capital Paris reopened on Friday for the first time in nearly three months after air travel collapsed during the coronavirus pandemic but flights will be a fraction of the normal rate.
A plane operated by low-cost carrier Transavia took off at 6:25 am (0425 GMT) for Porto in Portugal, marking the first commercial flight since the airport south of Paris came to a halt on March 31.
Firefighters hosed the plane with a festive "water salute" before it took to the runway.
2020-06-27 12:20:16
Chief Minister Punjab Usman Buzdar said that during every sensitive phase of the coronavirus pandemic, the opposition did point-scoring.
The CM Punjab said that the opposition parties are hopeless, adding that the services rendered by Chaudhry Pervez Elahi in the parliament are commendable.
He said that despite the difficult phase, the Punjab government presented a better version of the budget for the year 2020-21.
PTI’s coalition partner, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, said that the province is moving towards progress and the chief minister is working alongside everyone.
2020-06-27 12:11:01
Peshawar authorities have imposed smart lockdown in Hayyatabad phase four due to a higher number of cases.
According to the district administration, the shops for basic need items such as food, groceries, medicines etc will remain open.
At mosques, only five people will be allowed to pray at a time, said the administration, adding that collectively in Peshawar, 15 places have lockdown in effect.
The district administration warned that action will be taken upon violation of the lockdown.
2020-06-27 11:27:14
India reported 18,552 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours to take the nationwide tally to 509,446.
The country has also reported over 15,000 deaths from the virus.
2020-06-27 10:37:40
Spanish virologists have found traces of the novel coronavirus in a sample of Barcelona waste water collected in March 2019, nine months before the COVID-19 disease was identified in China, the University of Barcelona said on Friday.
The discovery of virus genome presence so early in Spain, if confirmed, would imply the disease may have appeared much earlier than the scientific community thought.
The University of Barcelona team, who had been testing waste water since mid-April this year to identify potential new outbreaks, decided to also run tests on older samples.
They first found the virus was present in Barcelona on Jan. 15, 2020, 41 days before the first case was officially reported there.
2020-06-27 10:34:53
The Pakistan Cricket Board will make a decision regarding the upcoming visit of Pakistan cricket team to England today, days after around 10 players tested positive for the coronavirus, sources said.
According to sources, the board will announce the squad today and the players and management staff will be allowed to go only after they test negative for COVID-19.
Sources said that around 10 cricketers and one management member will not go to England due to the infection.
The virus test results of 18 cricketers and 11 management members will be received today, sources added.
2020-06-27 10:27:51
India reported over 17,000 new coronavirus cases over the last 24 hours, pushing the country’s total above 500,000, federal health ministry data showed on Saturday, with infections surging in major cities including the capital New Delhi.
India has the world’s fourth-biggest outbreak of the virus that causes COVID-19, below only the United States, Brazil and Russia in confirmed infections, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections are expected to continue rising steadily in India. Experts advising the federal government say the authorities should now prioritise reducing mortality over containing the spread of the virus.
2020-06-27 10:25:11
Minister for Broadcasting and Information Shibli Faraz said that the coronavirus pandemic has affected the economies around the world.
He said that as compared to the other countries in the region, Pakistan has made a minimal hike in the prices of petroleum products.
Faraz continued that due to the change in prices of these products globally, the government had to review the petrol prices.
“Our first priority is to give relief to the public, and we will continue to make efforts for providing people relief,” he added.
2020-06-27 10:04:20
France reported more than 1,500 new confirmed novel coronavirus cases on Friday, a spike unseen since May 30, while the number of additional fatalities linked to the virus rose by the highest amount in three days.
French health authorities said in a statement the total of newly confirmed infections rose by 1,588, way above both the daily average of 498 seen over the last seven days and the 430 daily average since the beginning of June.
The number of people who died from the disease increased by 26 to 29,778, compared to 21 on Thursday and 11 on Wednesday and an average of 19 over the past seven days.
2020-06-27 09:33:01
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 198,883 on Saturday after the country reported new cases of coronavirus.
According to the National command and Operation, 3,138 people tested positive for the virus during the last 24 hours.
As of now Azad Jammu and Kashmir has reported 1,003 cases, Balochistan 10,116, Gilgit Baltistan 1,417, Islamabad 12,206, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 24,943, Punjab 72,880 and Sindh 76318.
The country also reported 74 more deaths, taking the nation-wide death toll to 4,035.
2020-06-27 09:17:40
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 687 to 193,243, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday.
The reported death toll rose by six to 8,954, the tally showed.
2020-06-27 08:42:25
Mexico’s health ministry reported on Friday 5,441 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 719 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 208,392 cases and 25,779 deaths.
The government has said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
2020-06-26 23:56:00
Punjab's primary healthcare department has reported a rise in the number of cases by 1,193, taking the provincial tally to 72,880.
It also reported 27 more deaths, taking the total deaths in the province to 1,656.
2020-06-26 22:54:29
US Democratic party leader Hillary Clinton has shared evidence of "structural racism" in healthcare amid the global coronavirus crisis, saying that it leads to "devastating disproportionate effects in emergencies".
According to the results of a survey conducted by Washington Post, 31% black Americans know someone who have died of the virus, compared to 17% Hispanic Americans and only 9% of white Americans.
2020-06-26 22:20:43
The Gilgit-Baltistan health department has notified 19 more cases, bringing the total number past 1,400 to 1,417.
On a positive note, the number of recoveries crossed the 1,000 mark to hit 1,027.
2020-06-26 22:07:13
The Balochistan health department has reported 170 new cases, taking the total number of infections in the province to 10,116.
Four more deaths were also reported, bringing the grim total to 113, and the country's total past 4,000 to 4,004.
2020-06-26 21:32:27
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo criticised states that reopened their economies before getting the novel coronavirus under control, saying there was “undeniable, irrefutable evidence” those states made a mistake.
Cuomo told a briefing that states that followed guidance from the White House are now seeing a spike in cases, arguing that New York was able to get the virus under control by taking a scientific, rather than a political, approach.
“What’s going on in this country is now frightening and revealing at the same time,” Cuomo said. “I say it is time to wake up, America, and look at the undeniable facts.”
Cuomo said the seven-day average of the percentage of positive tests in New York was at 1.3 percent, a big improvement from an earlier peak in the state of 50 percent and the lowest rate in the United States.
2020-06-26 21:31:14
United Airlines said it would resume service to China, with two flights a week between San Francisco and Shanghai beginning July 8.
The US carrier said it would also restart flights to Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong.
2020-06-26 21:25:38
LOS ANGELES: When the 60-person Arena Cinelounge in Los Angeles opens again for the first time in months, more than a dozen seats will be filled by cardboard cutouts of James Dean, Charlie Chaplin, and other Hollywood icons.
The seating arrangement, designed to encourage social distancing among the 15 real-life patrons who will be allowed into each screening, is one of the new safety measures theaters are putting in place to reduce the chance of coronavirus spread.
“We’re going above and beyond to make sure that everything is spotless and that audiences feel comfortable and safe being with us for two to three hours,” owner Christian Meoli said.
While about 780 indoor cinemas have reopened around the country, officials in Los Angeles County, the largest moviegoing market in the United States, have not yet given a green light, voicing concern about a rise in coronavirus cases. New York City, the country’s No. 2 movie market, also has not set a date for cinema reopenings.
2020-06-26 21:16:04
Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the closure of all bars that get 51 percent of their gross receipts from alcohol, except for take-out, and the curbing of other business activity due to surging cases of the novel coronavirus in the state.
“As I said from the start, if the positivity rate rose above 10%, the State of Texas would take further action to mitigate the spread of COVID-19,” Abbott said in a press release, explaining an executive order. “At this time, it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars.”
2020-06-26 21:04:26
GENEVA: AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine is probably the world’s leading candidate and most advanced in terms of development, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) chief scientist said.
“Certainly in terms of how advanced they are, the stage at which they are, they are I think probably the leading candidate,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told a news conference.
“So it’s possible they will have results quite early.”
2020-06-26 20:58:37
2020-06-26 20:43:25
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by phone, Athens and Ankara said — rare such contact for two neighbours at odds over a range of issues.
Mitsotakis and Erdogan addressed ways of handling the effects of the coronavirus outbreak, the reopening of borders and the re-establishment of tourist flows, a statement from Mitsotakis’s office said.
“Mr Mitsotakis and Mr Erdogan agreed to keep the bilateral channels of communication open,” it said, a line re-iterated in the statement from the Turkish presidency.
Erdogan’s office also said the two discussed tourism, security, as well as cooperation on economic issues and the fight against COVID-19.
A Greek source with knowledge of the matter said: “The two leaders didn’t discuss high policy matters, but they did agree that tension is relatively high and that channels of communication must be restored.
2020-06-26 20:37:52
Islamabad's coronavirus recovery rate has reached 54%, according to the district health office, after 360 patients recovered.
With this, 6,534 of the total 11,981 positive patients in Islamabad, have recovered.
2020-06-26 20:09:16
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's recorded 640 new coronacvirus infections and 11 deaths, bumping overall cases to 24,943 and death toll to 890, the provincial health department said.
Meanwhile, the recoveries from the virus have reached 11,804.
2020-06-26 19:38:35
American Airlines said that it will no longer restrict the number of seats sold on flights beginning July 1, in an effort to come back from the impact of the coronavirus.
The announcement comes before a meeting between the chief executives of major US airlines, including American, and senior US officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, at the White House to discuss several virus-related travel issues.
US airlines are bleeding cash as travel suffers in the pandemic and have warned that capping the seats they sell on each flight to allow for more space between passengers is not something they can do forever.
American was previously limiting its seating capacity at 85% on each flight, or roughly 50% of the main cabin middle seats.
2020-06-26 19:00:41
The United Arab Emirates' coronavirus infections have reached 46,973, while deaths have soared to 310.
Meanwhile, the country country has seen 35,469 recoveries from the virus.
2020-06-26 18:23:05
BRUSSELS: Just before the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, Belgian pop singer Dana Rexx was hopeful of breaking through with her first single release in April and a tour of Asia planned.
Instead she found herself working an office job to make ends meet.
The coronavirus has put millions of artists around the world out of work and caused huge financial loss, particularly as some, like Rexx, are not eligible for emergency state help for the self-employed because of a lack of formal contracts.
“Four months ago we were negotiating a tour in Asia and the release of my debut album,” Rexx, which is a stage name, told Reuters.
“I will definitely be sending emails to promoters and bookers to let them know I am available,” she said.
2020-06-26 18:08:05
GENEVA: The World Health Organisation-led coalition fighting the coronavirus needs $31.3 billion over the next 12 months to develop and roll out tests, treatments and vaccines, it said.
The WHO initiative aims to scale up delivery of 500 million tests and 245 million courses of treatments to low- and middle-income countries by mid-2021, it said in a statement.
It also aims to scale up delivery of 2 billion vaccine doses, including 1 billion to be bought by low- and middle-income countries, by the end of 2021.
2020-06-26 17:50:29
Vaxart Inc said it would test its potential COVID-19 vaccine on monkeys in a study organised by the Trump Administration’s vaccine-acceleration program called “Operation Warp Speed”.
Shares of the US vaccine developer jumped 63% before the opening bell.
The company said the study would be funded by “Operation Warp Speed”, which aims to provide safe and effective vaccines by January 2021.
Vaxart said the vaccine is an oral tablet and is easier to store and administer than injectable ones.
Executives and other experts have suggested that clinical trials to guarantee a vaccine is safe and effective could take a minimum of 12 to 18 months.
2020-06-26 17:34:14
2020-06-26 17:19:16
BUENOS AIRES: Argentine doctors and health officials are predicting that coronavirus cases will peak in coming weeks as the southern hemisphere winter sets in, straining hospital intensive care units after confirmed cases accelerated past 50,000.
“We estimate that the number of infected people will keep rising for the next 20 days or so,” said Juan Ciruzzi, executive director at the Eurnekian hospital in Buenos Aires, adding that this was in part due to loosened quarantine rules.
“People are moving about more and we do not have the tools to fight it.”
“People understand that we are going to have to live with the virus and many of us are going to catch it,” he said.
2020-06-26 17:05:21
CHICAGO: Scientists are only starting to grasp the vast array of health problems caused by the novel coronavirus, some of which may have lingering effects on patients and health systems for years to come, according to doctors and infectious disease experts.
Besides the respiratory issues that leave patients gasping for breath, the virus that causes COVID-19 attacks many organ systems, in some cases causing catastrophic damage.
“We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs. We didn’t appreciate that in the beginning,” said Dr Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.
In addition to respiratory distress, patients with COVID-19 can experience blood clotting disorders that can lead to strokes, and extreme inflammation that attacks multiple organ systems. The virus can also cause neurological complications that range from headache, dizziness and loss of taste or smell to seizures and confusion.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-26 16:47:59
BEIJING: Beijing has partially lifted a weeks-long lockdown imposed in the Chinese capital to head off a feared second wave of coronavirus infections after three million samples were taken in two weeks, officials said.
Dozens of residential compounds across the city were shut down, with authorities rolling out a mass testing campaign to root out any remaining cases.
A vast majority of them are linked to the sprawling Xinfadi market in the city's south that supplies about 80% of Beijing's fresh produce and meat.
The lockdown was eased on Tuesday for seven apartment blocks after residents tested negative for the virus, officials said at a Friday briefing. The remaining blocks are still in lockdown.
Eleven new virus cases across Beijing were announced on Friday, bringing the total number of infections in the capital since the June 11 outbreak to 280.
Food market workers and visitors, nearby residents, restaurant workers and delivery couriers have been the prime targets of mass testing so far as fears began to mount over the hygiene of Beijing's food supply.
2020-06-26 16:24:16
As South America’s winter sets in, health officials and doctors are beefing up inoculation programs to head off a potential spike in seasonal flu that could overwhelm hospitals already straining under the coronavirus pandemic.
Coupled with regional lockdowns, the inoculation drive has so far helped keep rates of seasonal respiratory disease low, even as cases of COVID-19 rise, according to doctors and recent government data.
Health workers and officials in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, said efforts to curb seasonal flu were key to supporting regional hospitals, with Latin America now on the front lines of the global battle against COVID-19.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), highlighting the importance of the issue, has said a surge in seasonal flu cases threatens to make a bad situation worse for overstretched healthcare systems.
“We know that in many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the epidemiological curve is still rising sharply,” the PAHO said in written comments to Reuters. “This means that more people will be sick tomorrow than yesterday.”
2020-06-26 16:18:11
BELGRADE: A month after it declared itself coronavirus-free, Montenegro reintroduced restrictions, including a ban on sports events and outdoor political rallies, to try to contain an increase in new cases.
Montenegro, a tiny Adriatic nation of just 620,000 people and heavily reliant on tourism, had declared itself coronavirus-free, but has reported about 100 new cases in the past 10 days, bringing the total to 424, with nine deaths.
Its national body tasked with combating COVID-19 said it had banned religious gatherings outside places of worship, though indoor church services are still allowed.
“Funerals will be performed exclusively within family circles,” it added.
2020-06-26 16:12:14
TOKYO: As face coverings become the norm amid the coronavirus pandemic, Japanese startup Donut Robotics has developed an internet-connected “smart mask” that can transmit messages and translate from Japanese into eight other languages.
The white plastic “c-mask” fits over standard face masks and connects via Bluetooth to a smartphone and tablet application that can transcribe speech into text messages, make calls, or amplify the mask wearer’s voice.
“We worked hard for years to develop a robot and we have used that technology to create a product that responds to how the coronavirus has reshaped society,” said Taisuke Ono, the chief executive of Donut Robotics.
Donut Robotics’ first 5,000 c-masks will be shipped to buyers in Japan starting in September, with Ono looking to sell in China, the United States and Europe too. There has been strong interest, he said.
At about $40 per mask, Donut Robotics is aiming at a mass market that did not exist until a few months ago. One aim, he said, is to generate revenue from subscriber services offered via an app that users will download.
2020-06-26 16:00:40
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 196,895 on Friday after Sindh reported 1,150 new infections during the last 24 hours.
The country's death toll also climbed to 3,989 with 27 new deaths reported over the last 24 hours by the province.
With the latest figures Sindh's tally of positive cases stands at 76,318 and death toll stands at 1,205.
2020-06-26 14:24:22
LONDON: British police officers were attacked while attempting to disperse an illegal party overnight in west London, the second such incident in two days.
As Britain eases strict coronavirus lockdown rules, police have had to deal with a number of illegal parties and raves across the country.
“We know that having months of restrictions people have been frustrated and people will want to come together in gatherings but these illegal raves are obviously unacceptable,” Environment Secretary George Eustice told Sky News.
“Attacks on the police that we saw earlier this week are also unacceptable,” he said.
On Wednesday night, 22 officers were hurt and a number of patrol cars were vandalised when trouble broke out at an unauthorised music event in Brixton, south London.
Extra numbers were deployed onto the streets on Thursday night but officers came under attack once again in the Notting Hill area of west London, the scene of a number of unlicensed music events that took place in the capital.
“Objects were thrown at officers,” police said on Twitter. “Such behaviour and any violent acts will not be tolerated.”
Britain’s Home Secretary (interior minister) Priti Patel had described the scenes on Wednesday night as “vile” while a spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the violence against the police appalling.
On Thursday, authorities in Bournemouth, a popular beach town in southern England, declared a “major incident” over what they called the irresponsible behaviour of crowds who had ignored public health guidance on coronavirus and badly overstretched local services.
The declaration came after visitors arrived in very large numbers in a spell of hot weather, resulting in gridlock on the roads, anti-social behaviour and alcohol-fuelled fights.
2020-06-26 14:12:20
The National Disaster Management Authority announced on Friday that its has completed delivery of the ninth tranche of PPEs to provinces.
"After Sindh, KP and Balochistan PPEs for Punjab, GB & AJK also handed over in last 24 hours," said the NDMA in a tweet.
2020-06-26 13:35:18
MOSCOW: Russia on Friday reported 6,800 new coronavirus cases, the first daily rise below 7,000 since late April, taking its nationwide tally to 620,794.
The country’s coronavirus response centre said 176 people had died of the virus in the last 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 8,781.
2020-06-26 12:56:18
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf lawmaker Arsalan Taj announced on Friday that he had tested positive for the virus
"I dogded COVID-19 four times earlier but it caught me this time.I have tested COVID-19 positive yesterday," said Taj in a tweet. He added that he did have symptoms for the virus since the "last few days".
The MPA from Sindh asked the people to pray for him, adding that he hasgone into isolation himself.
2020-06-26 12:23:02
LONDON: Britain is working on an a plan to relax its quarantine for international travellers with some countries where there is a lower risk of contracting the novel coronavirus, Environment Secretary George Eustice said on Friday.
“I know that Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, is giving this a lot of consideration so that the quarantine provisions that we have got in place can perhaps start to be relaxed with certain countries where the risk is low,” he told BBC TV.
“I don’t know exactly when further information will be announced but I know that it is something the government is working on,” he said. “I know it is being considered.”
2020-06-26 11:39:54
SYDNEY: Australia will continue easing social distancing restrictions despite an outbreak of coronavirus in one state, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday.
The country’s second-most-populated state, Victoria has seen 10 straight days of double digit new cases. It has about 200 of the country’s total of 270 active cases.
Although authorities are scrambling to contain the virus, including embarking on a massive testing regime and calling in military support, Morrison said states and territories on Friday had agreed to remove more social distancing curbs.
“All states are committed to continue on with the various plans that they have and they’re making,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra.
Australia has pledged to remove the bulk of the country’s social distancing restrictions by the end of July, although each state and territory are determining their own pace.
Australia’s international borders will remain closed, but the country’s chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, said Canberra would strengthen requirements on people returning from overseas.
Australia requires all locals who return to quarantine in hotels for two weeks. But about 30% of people in Victoria have declined a COVID-19 test before leaving quarantine, the state’s deputy chief medical officer said.
“We are going to start testing people on entry to quarantine and testing people before they leave quarantine,” Murphy told reporters in Canberra.
Despite assurances from Morrison that Australia’s coronavirus curve is “flat”, Australia’s largest supermarket chain, Woolworths, on Friday introduced restrictions on toilet paper and kitchen towels across the country.
“We’re taking preventative action now to get ahead of any excessive buying,” said Claire Peters, managing director of Woolworths’ supermarkets division.
In March, Australia’s major grocers put strict limits on such purchases as shoppers stripped shelves amid fears of a coronavirus lockdown.
Morrison has struck a bullish tone on reopening the economy as Australia heads into its first recession in nearly 30 years, insisting the country’s health system can cope with a rise in new cases.
Morrison on Thursday unveiled a A$250 million ($170 million)recovery package of grants and loans for the arts sector and said he would discuss the reopening of venues at Friday’s meeting.
Australia has recorded a total of around 7,500 infections, including 104 deaths, well below many other nations.
2020-06-26 10:43:05
SYDNEY: Australia will stick with plans to further ease coronavirus curbs, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, despite a spike in infections in the second most populous state of Victoria.
“There will be outbreaks and what matters is that we continue to build our capability to deal with those outbreaks,” Morrison told a media briefing in Canberra, the capital.
Australia deployed ambulances and mobile test centres in a testing blitz across the southeastern state after a renewed outbreak of the respiratory disease there. On Friday, the state reported its tenth straight day of new cases in double digits.
2020-06-26 10:10:06
HOUSTON: Texas on Thursday halted steps to reopen its economy after a sharp rise in coronavirus cases, as the United States hits some of its highest infection rates since the start of the pandemic.
Twenty-nine states are now experiencing new surges, with more than 37,667 new cases recorded Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — a level approaching a new record — with 692 new deaths reported.
In a likely sign of the situation´s seriousness, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the White House coronavirus task force would give a press conference Friday at the Department of Health and Human Services, the first of its kind in almost two months.
Texas was among the most aggressive states in reopening in early June after months of lockdown, its leadership confident it had escaped the worst of the pandemic that has claimed almost 122,000 lives in the US, by far the highest number in the world.
"The State of Texas will pause any further phases to open Texas as the state responds to the recent increase in positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations," Governor Greg Abbott´s office announced in a statement.
"The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses. This temporary pause will help our state corral the spread," Abbott said, asking residents to wear masks and respect social distancing guidelines.
The Texas Department of State Health Services reported a new record of 5,596 new coronavirus cases Thursday, a major jump from just 10 days ago, when the state had only 1,254 new cases in a day.
There were 47 new coronavirus deaths in the state Thursday, still lower than some days in April and May.
2020-06-26 09:36:00
MEXICO CITY: Mexico’s healthy ministry on Thursday reported 6,104 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 736 deaths, bringing the nation’s total known infections to 202,951 and 25,060 deaths.
The government has said the real number of infections is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
2020-06-26 09:26:31
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 195,442 on Friday after the country reported 2,775 new infections during the last 24 hours.
As of now, Sindh has reported 75,168, Punjab 71,987 cases, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 24,303 cases, Balochistan 9,946 cases, Islamabad 11,981 cases, Gilgit-Baltistan 1,398 cases and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 962 cases.
The country's death toll also climbed to 3,962 with 59 new deaths reported over the last 24 hours.
Pakistan has also conducted 21,041 tests during the last 24 hours, with 84,168 people having recovered so far in the country.
2020-06-26 09:18:51
RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil recorded 39,483 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours as well as 1,141 deaths, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.
Brazil has registered more than 1.2 million cases since the pandemic began, while cumulative deaths total 54,971, according to the ministry.
2020-06-26 08:46:54
BEIJING: China’s health authority on Friday reported 13 new coronavirus cases in the mainland for June 25, down from 19 a day earlier.
Of the new infections, 11 were in Beijing, the National Health Commission said in a statement, down from 13 a day earlier.
As of June 25, mainland China had a total of 83,462 confirmed coronavirus cases.
2020-06-26 08:40:59
Qantas Airways Ltd successfully completed a discounted A$1.36 billion ($940 million) share placement to institutional investors on Friday, before its shares dropped to a one-month low as they resumed trading.
The institutional placement was part of a sweeping three-year cost-savings plan announced by Qantas on Thursday to cope with the coronavirus crisis, which includes axing at least 20% of its workforce and putting more planes into storage.
Australia’s biggest airline reported strong demand for the placement of 372.7 million new shares at a price of A$3.65 each, a near 13% discount to the stock’s close on Wednesday.
“The fact that there was significant demand for this offer shows clear support for our recovery plan and confidence in the fundamentals of this business,” Chief Executive Alan Joyce said.
Qantas also plans to raise up to another A$500 million through a share purchase plan.
Qantas shares, which were suspended on Thursday for the fully underwritten placement, fell as much as 9.5% to A$3.79, the lowest level since May 25, when they resumed trading on Friday. By midmorning they were trading at A$3.83.
Jefferies’ analysts said the capital raising and cost restructure would leave the carrier well-positioned for when the pandemic subsides.
“The ability to reduce debt is also a positive,” Anthony Moulder and Amit Kanwatia wrote in a note.
Morgan Stanley analysts said the plan would “provide an added buffer against any demand volatility through the recovery phase” in the short to medium term.
Citi cautioned, however, that the longer-term outlook remained “considerably uncertain and extremely difficult to forecast” and that Qantas’ recovery would likely be volatile.
2020-06-26 01:06:23
2020-06-25 22:07:06
2020-06-25 22:59:25
2020-06-25 21:36:50
2020-06-25 21:26:32
The Federal University of Sao Paulo (Unifesp) is in talks to test a potential coronavirus vaccine developed by Italian researchers, the dean of the Brazilian university has told Reuters.
With the world’s worst outbreak outside the United States, Brazil has become a key front in the global race for a vaccine, as vaccine clinical trials are likely to yield results faster in places where the virus is widespread.
“We are already in advanced discussions with Italy’s Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute,” Unifesp President Soraya Smaili said in an interview on Wednesday. “We expect to bring it here, the accord is already moving forward and we’ll be able to do a lot of studies with this vaccine.”
The Italian researchers want to conduct midstage trials and final Phase III studies involving thousands of subjects in Brazil, Smaili said.
The Lazzaro Spallanzani institute did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There have been more than 53,000 virus-related fatalities in Brazil.
2020-06-25 21:11:49
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, in his daily briefing on the coronavirus situation in the province, has said that in the last 24 hours, 1,098 new infections were reported. With the rise in cases, the province breached the grim milestone of 75,000 to hit 75,168.
He said 17 new deaths were also reported, taking the total number of deaths to 1,178.
2020-06-25 21:01:46
- 148 Pakistanis lost their lives battling COVID-19 during last 24 hours
- 81,307 people have recovered so far across Pakistan
- There is no patient on vent in AJK & GB
- 571 vents occupied across Pakistan out of 1,542 vents allocated for COVID-19
- Total active cases in Pakistan are 107,760 (4,044 on 24 June)
- A total of 192,970 cases detected so far (AJK 930, Balochistan 9,817, GB 1,365, ICT 11,710, KP 23,887, Punjab 71,191, and Sindh 74,070)
- 3,903 deaths:
Sindh: 1,161
Punjab: 1,602
KP: 869
ICT: 115
Balochistan: 108
GB: 23
AJK: 25
- 1,171,976 tests conducted (21,835 tests conducted during last 24 hours)
- 769 hospitals with COVID-19 facilities with 5,895 patients admitted across the country
2020-06-25 20:44:45
MUMBAI: India’s richest state has banned a “spurious” coronavirus treatment manufactured by a company founded by popular yoga guru, which he says has a 100% record in curing patients.
Baba Ramdev, co-founder of Patanjali and a household name in India, launched Coronil to much fanfare on Tuesday, but hit a roadblock when New Delhi and some state governments expressed scepticism.
The western state of Maharashtra banned the drug.
“Maharashtra won’t allow the sale of spurious medicine,” state minister Anil Deshmukh tweeted on Thursday, adding authorities would probe whether any clinical trials had been run.
Deshmukh could not be reached for a comment. Patanjali did not immediately respond to an email from Reuters seeking comment.
Hours after its launch, India’s federal government asked Patanjali to provide details about Coronil, trials and sample size and asked the company to stop advertising the product until it had been approved.
Ramdev, who is seen as a supporter of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said at the launch that the medicine consisted of ancient Ayurvedic ingredients that boost immunity and had a 100% cure rate.
India reported a record increase of nearly 17,000 coronavirus infections on Thursday, taking the total to 473,105 with 14,894 deaths.
Maharashtra, home to India’s financial hub of Mumbai, has been the hardest hit by the pandemic, accounting for more than 25% of cases.
The state reported some 3,890 new infections on Thursday, taking its tally up to 142,900 cases. It has recorded 6,739 deaths.
2020-06-25 20:42:05
NEW YORK: Global equity benchmarks have edged lower as investors gauge the potential economic impact of a surge in US coronavirus cases, while perceived safe haven assets including US Treasuries and the dollar have risen.
Concerns about lingering economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic helped bolster the dollar and government bonds.
The dollar index rose 0.203%, with the euro down 0.34% to $1.1212. Benchmark 10-year notes last rose 7/32 in price to yield 0.661%, from 0.684% late on Wednesday.
Gold hovered around $1,757 an ounce [GOL/].
U.S. crude recently fell 0.11% to $37.97 per barrel and Brent was at $40.22, down 0.22% on the day.
2020-06-25 20:19:19
PARIS: Sanofi is considering cutting hundreds of jobs and will discuss potential steps with staff representatives over the coming days, four sources said, the latest move by the French drugmaker’s chief executive Paul Hudson to cut costs.
Management will meet staff representatives on Friday and Monday next week to outline a restructuring plan, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. They declined to be identified as the plan is still confidential.
Officials with Sanofi had no immediate comment.
The reorganisation could involve several European countries and possibly others outside the region, as well as all the divisions of Sanofi except the vaccines and rare diseases unit Genzyme, the sources said.
“The COVID-19 (pandemic) had slowed the announcement, but (the measures) are part of the CEO roadmap,” one of the sources said.
2020-06-25 20:11:01
Delta Air Lines expects to add about 1,000 flights in August but the US carrier is unlikely to add “many more” flights for the remainder of the year, Chief Executive Ed Bastian said in an internal memo on Thursday.
“While it’s encouraging to see flights returning, we expect our overall demand this summer to be only 25 percent of last summer’s revenue, and we likely remain at least two years away from a return to normal,” Bastian said.
2020-06-25 20:03:44
2020-06-25 19:57:42
Recently released from coronavirus lockdown, Europeans have taken to public parks as temperatures soared on the second day of an early summer heat wave that experts fear will lead to new infections as some people flout social distancing rules.
The European Meteorological Service issued a warning of extreme temperatures from the south to the usually cooler north of the continent - with "dangerous" heat forecast for parts of Spain where the mercury could climb as high as 38C.
Seven other countries risked less extreme but "potentially dangerous" warm weather: Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden, it said.
2020-06-25 19:47:55
Authorities in Islamabad have announced to seal Ghouri Town Phase IV-A and V-A, w.e.f from 26. June 2020, 07:00pm.
"The exemptions to this order include essential services and supplies like pharmacy and medicine shops, groceries stores and bakeries, patients for medical aid/medical consultation, rationing, drinking water supplies and emergency etc," a statement from the capital's administration read.
2020-06-25 19:42:35
Information Minister Shibli Faraz after visiting area's put under smart lockdown in the capital said that the strategy had led to a decrease in coronavirus infections.
"Every possible facility is being provided to the people of these area," he said, adding: "We can defeat this diseases by following safety guidelines."
"Safety measures in hotspot areas are being strictly enforced [...] re-testing in smart lockdown areas has shown that the infections have decreased."
2020-06-25 19:36:54
Developing a COVID-19 vaccine in record time will be tough. Producing enough to end the pandemic will be the biggest medical manufacturing feat in history.
That work is underway.
From deploying experts amid global travel restrictions to managing extreme storage conditions, and even inventing new kinds of vials and syringes for billions of doses, the path is strewn with formidable hurdles, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen vaccine developers and their backers.
Any hitch in an untested supply chain - which could stretch from Pune in India to England’s Oxford and Baltimore in the United States - could torpedo or delay the complex process.
Col. Nelson Michael, director of the U.S. Army’s Center for Infectious Disease Research who is working on the government’s “Warp Speed” project to deliver a vaccine at scale by January, said companies usually have years to figure this stuff out.
“Now, they have weeks.”
Much of the world’s attention is focused on the scientific race to develop a vaccine. But behind the scenes, experts are facing a stark reality: we may simply not have enough capacity to make, package and distribute billions of doses all at once.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-25 19:31:41
DUBAI: The number of novel coronavirus cases in the six Gulf Arab states has doubled in a month to more than 400,000, as the region’s two biggest economies this week fully lifted curfews imposed to combat the infection.
Authorities across the energy-producing region had reported a total of 410,300 infections with 2,395 deaths, according to a Reuters tally. It passed the 200,000 mark on May 27.
UAE announced late on Wednesday the lifting of a nightly curfew in place since mid-March as the daily number of infections fell from a peak of some 900 in late May to average between 300-400 in recent weeks.
Neighbouring Saudi Arabia, which has the highest regional count at more than 170,600 infections and more than 1,400 deaths as of Thursday, ended its three-month curfew on Sunday.
Kuwait’s cabinet agreed to ease the country’s curfew by one hour, to run from 8:00 pm to 5:00 am from Tuesday. Qatar, Oman and Bahrain did not impose curfews.
2020-06-25 19:26:54
OSLO: Norway will lift travel restrictions to and from European countries that respect certain criteria regarding their COVID-19 situation from July 15, public broadcaster NRK and daily Dagens Naeringsliv reported.
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg is due to hold a news conference about “the coronavirus situation and travelling”.
The Nordic country, which is not a member of the European Union but belongs to the passport-free Schengen travel zone, has some of the strictest travel restrictions in Europe.
Most non-residents, including tourists, are currently not allowed into the country. There are exceptions for those who work in sectors deemed crucial, such as agriculture or oil, and those who can prove a family link with Norway. They must undergo a 10-day quarantine.
2020-06-25 19:20:41
Prime Minister Imran Khan made a rare appearance in a session of the National Assembly and defended his government's coronavirus response after it came under criticism from opposition for being "confused".
"We bore a lot of criticism in the beginning to impose a stricter lockdown. There was a lot of pressure on me. From my own people. From my own cabinet to impose something like India," said the premier.
"It is being said again that there was confusion. Mr Speaker, if there was any government in the world that wasn't confused it was ours. Since day one," he added.
PM Imran challenged the opposition to point out a single contradiction in his statements since Pakistan imposed the lockdown on March 13.
"I have always held that if you have Singapore's population, an income of $50,000 per capita, if you have natural social distancing, then the best thing is to impose a curfew.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-25 19:14:21
Over 5,000 doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers have been infected by the deadly coronavirus to date, reveals official data.
According to the daily tally of the ministry of national health services, regulation and coordination, in Islamabad, a total of 5,164 healthcare providers have been sickened by the virus across Pakistan, as of June 24.
Majority of the infected medics have been reported from Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, totaling 1,694.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-25 19:11:32
NUR-SULTAN: Kazakhstan’s health minister resigned, saying COVID-19 complications prevented him from leading efforts against the coronavirus outbreak as its surges once more.
Yelzhan Birtanov, who had held the post since early 2017 and caught the virus himself in mid-June, wrote on social media that he had developed pneumonia which required additional treatment.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the former Soviet republic has nearly tripled this month to 32,000, with 136 deaths.
Kazakhstan, which ended a nationwide lockdown last month, has now again locked down several towns and introduced new measures such as closing shopping malls, markets and parks on weekends due to the rises in new cases. Hospitals are being filled to capacity.
A video posted online by the local government of the western Mangistau province showed patients laying on the floors of several rooms and a corridor. The province’s chief sanitary doctor locked down the oil industry town of Zhanaozen and several nearby villages.
2020-06-25 19:06:37
2020-06-25 18:57:36
WASHINGTON: Spikes in novel US coronavirus cases will likely trigger closures in some places but not a nationwide shutdown, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said, as a number of states recorded a record rise in infections.
“There will be some shutdowns individually ... in individual places and certain stores. We are keeping a very close eye on this,” Kudlow said in an interview on Fox Business Network.
“We’re going to have hot spots. No question,” he later told reporters at the White House. “We just have to live with that.”
Surging coronavirus infections in parts of the United States spared the brunt of the initial outbreak have unnerved investors, with US stock futures slipping further following Wall Street’s worst day in two weeks.
2020-06-25 18:50:54
Wall Street main indexes opened lower following their worst day in two weeks, as investors were unnerved by an alarming rise in new coronavirus cases and an elevated weekly jobless claims number.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 80.72 points, or 0.32%, at the open to 25,365.22. The S&P 500 opened lower by 3.73 points, or 0.12%, at 3,046.60. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 9.81 points, or 0.10%, to 9,899.36 at the opening bell.
2020-06-25 18:46:20
2020-06-25 18:41:17
ISTANBUL: Turkey’s central bank unexpectedly halted a nearly year-long easing cycle by keeping its key interest rate unchanged at 8.25% and citing upward pressure on inflation through the coronavirus pandemic.
The Turkish lira, which has fallen 13% this year, initially jumped when the bank didn’t trim rates by 25 basis points as expected. With inflation running at 11.4%, Turkey’s real interest rate is already well into negative territory.
Analysts have also raised concerns over the central bank’s depleted FX reserves and only partial success in gaining access to foreign currency swaps, even as the lira hit a record low last month.
Fallout from the pandemic brought Turkey’s economy to a near stand-still in the second quarter. It also “led to some increase in the trends of core inflation indicators,” the bank said, adding the “economic recovery has started as of May.”
2020-06-25 18:35:43
NEW YORK: Philippines Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said his country needs to prepare in case the economic crisis brought by the coronavirus pandemic extends for much longer.
“You need to keep your powder dry... you need to have enough reserves for a second wave, for a third wave,” said Dominguez during a webinar hosted by Bloomberg.
2020-06-25 18:28:11
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has slashed the policy rate once again by another 100 basis points to bring it to 7%, it announced in a statement on Twitter, following a meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee under Governor Dr Reza Baqir.
"This decision reflected the MPC’s view that the inflation outlook has improved further, while the domestic economic slowdown continues and downside risks to growth have increased," the central bank said on Twitter, announcing the fifth rate cut in three months since the coronavirus pandemic hit Pakistan.
2020-06-25 18:19:01
SYDNEY: Australia’s second most populous state deployed ambulances and mobile test centres in a coronavirus testing blitz as the country recorded the biggest daily rise in cases in two months.
Victoria state said 33 people tested positive for coronavirus in the past 24 hours, marking nine days of double digit new cases in the state. It has around 200 current cases out of a country total of 270.
Desperate to contain the outbreak, Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said authorities are beginning a testing blitz across the 10 most effected suburbs.
“We have ambulances and other vans that will literally be at the end of people’s streets,” Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.
“We will see these (case) numbers go up in coming days.”
2020-06-25 18:09:09
The European healthcare regulator has recommended the conditional approval of Gilead Sciences Inc’s antiviral treatment, remdesivir, for use in COVID-19 patients, making it the first treatment to be on track to be green-lit in the continent.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Thursday its human medicines committee (CHMP) recommended the drug's use in adults and adolescents from 12 years of age with pneumonia who require oxygen support.
The price of the drug in the region is not yet known. In the United States, it could be priced up to $5,080 per course, while Indian generic drugmakers will sell the treatment between 5,000 rupees to 6,000 rupees ($66.13-$79.35).
2020-06-25 18:00:25
JOHANNESBURG: Oxford University rolled out Africa’s first human trials for a potential vaccine against the new coronavirus in South Africa, as cases continue to rise and concerns grow over potential access to life-saving treatments.
The trial, conducted with local partner University of the Witwatersrand, will consist of 2,000 volunteers from 18 to 65 years of age, including some HIV positive patients, who will be monitored for 12 months after vaccination to asses how well the vaccine guards against COVID-19.
“Once 60% of the population, especially the adult population, becomes immune, we expect that effective reproductive rate to go under 1, which basically means the virus will still be around, it will still circulate, but its chain of transmission has been interrupted,” said Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at Wits University and leader of the trial.
2020-06-25 17:53:40
Shares of Walt Disney Co dropped 2.4% after the media company delayed the reopening of theme parks and resort hotels in California, following a surge in fresh COVID-19 cases in the state.
The reopening of Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park that was earlier scheduled for July 17 will be delayed until Disneyland receives an approval from state officials, the company said.
Disney had also come under fire earlier as unions representing 17,000 workers at its Disneyland Resort in California expressed concerns to the state’s governor about not being convinced that the theme park will be safe enough to reopen by the company’s target date.
2020-06-25 17:46:58
NEW DELHI: Authorities in New Delhi worked to convert a spiritual centre into a huge quarantine facility as novel coronavirus cases in the Indian capital overtook the financial hub Mumbai for the first time.
“Most of the cases detected now are directly a function of increased testing. Going forward, this should help in the early isolation of those who are infected,” said Giridhara R Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India.
Delhi now has 70,390 coronavirus cases, with more than 40,000 detected in the last two weeks.
2020-06-25 17:39:30
GENEVA/BERLIN: France and Germany expressed political and financial backing for the World Health Organization in its fight against the coronavirus, with Berlin saying it would give a record half billion euros in funding and equipment this year.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the agency, criticised by the United States for being slow off the mark in tackling the pandemic, was getting the support it needed and that the talks had been “very productive”.
“We are getting today all the support we need, politically and financially. Both Germany and France are long-standing friends of WHO and global health,” Tedros told a news conference at WHO headquarters.
The United States is the biggest overall donor to the Geneva-based WHO, contributing more than $400 million in 2019, roughly 15% of its budget.
“Isolated national answers to international problems are doomed to fail,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said.
He announced additional donations of funds and medical equipment to WHO that would bring Germany’s total support to 500 million euros ($561 million) this year, the “highest amount ever”, as it assumes the EU presidency.
“We need a strong, efficient, transparent and accountable WHO today more than ever,” Spahn said.
2020-06-25 17:30:28
2020-06-25 17:22:20
PARIS:The Eiffel Tower welcomed its first visitors for three months - but with elevators still off-limits, they faced a long climb to sample its breathtaking views.
Paris’s most famous landmark re-opened under strict hygiene and safety controls.
All wearing face masks as directed on a hot and sunny day, tourists queued up for security checks at the entrance, where hand gel dispensers have been installed, before setting off up the 674 steps to the tower’s second floor.
“It’s great because I never was on the Eiffel Tower and it’s our last day here,” said Anni Koehler, from Germany, while buying tickets. “So we hoped that we can do it and it fits perfectly,”
The top section of the 324-meter high (1,062-foot) tower remains closed, and its elevators will not come back into service for visitors until next month, with a one-way traffic system in operation on the staircases.
2020-06-25 17:10:03
MADRID: Spain’s coronavirus-battered economy may have shrunk close to 20% in the second quarter from the previous quarter, in what would be the sharpest such decline on record, the Bank of Spain said.
“The fall in Spanish GDP looks to have accelerated significantly in the second quarter to a range whose midpoint would be a decline of around 20% quarter-on-quarter,” it said as part of its quarterly economic report.
2020-06-25 17:07:42
Moderna Inc said it has partnered with contract drugmaker Catalent Inc to produce 100 million doses of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine starting in the third quarter of 2020.
Under the deal, Catalent would also provide packaging and labeling, storage and distribution services to support Moderna's late-stage clinical trial for the vaccine.
2020-06-25 15:31:20
2020-06-25 14:15:16
Chair of the National Command Operation Centre (NCOC) Asad Umar shared that the government has fulfilled its promise of providing 189 oxygenated beds to the federal capital.
According to details, after the addition of 117 beds, PIMS total oxygenated beds has increased to 192. While the addition of 13 beds in Poly Clinic has put its total tally at 27.
Meanwhile, 59 beds have been added in CDA’s tally with the total rising to 87.
The statement also said that 20 additional ventilators have been given to PIMS hospital and 21 more vents have been given to CDA Hospital.
2020-06-25 14:06:46
PARIS: The Eiffel Tower on Thursday welcomed back visitors after the coronavirus outbreak forced the Paris landmark into its longest period out of action since World War Two.
Strict hygiene and safety measures have been put in place for the re-opening.
Visitors can access the 324 meters high (1,062 feet) tower only via staircases until early July, with elevators off-limits for the time being because of safety considerations.
In addition, visitors are not allowed to go any higher than the second floor of the tower, and anyone over the age of 11 is required to wear a face covering.
Managers say they hope to get operations fully back to normal later in the summer.
2020-06-25 13:57:57
Mayor Karachi Waseem Akhtar has requested the Sindh government to improve the conditions of hospitals.
The mayor, while talking to the media, urged philanthropist to contribute in the corona situation with open heart. He also saluted the doctors and paramedical staff for their service.
“It is requested that NDMA improve the conditions of ICUs,” said Akhtar.
2020-06-25 13:07:24
MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday confirmed 7,113 new cases of the novel coronavirus, pushing its tally to 613,994.
Officials said 92 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 8,605.
2020-06-25 12:36:03
KABUL: Zaker Hussain Zaheri was a cook in Afghanistan’s capital who lost his job in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now, he digs trenches to capture rainwater and snowmelt on a mountain on the outskirts of Kabul, as the city grapples with both a water and health crisis.
Lockdown measures to curb the spread of the disease have taken their toll on Afghanistan’s economy, so the government is employing more than 40,000 jobless workers to rehabilitate groundwater supplies for its fast-growing capital.
“This is a tough job, but I have to do it to earn enough for food, and I have pride that I take part in the reconstruction of my country, this is good for the future of our country,” Zaheri, 28, said.
Planned to run for at least a year with twelve billion Afghanis ($155 million) in funding, the Kabul water project is paying labourers at least 300 afghanis ($3.90) per day to dig close to 150,000 trenches, as well as 17 small dams and spillways, on the outskirts of the mountainous Afghan capital.
Kabul’s groundwater supplies — its primary source of drinking water — have been over-exploited, putting the city of up to seven million people at risk of severe shortages, experts say.
Afghanistan has joined a growing global trend of countries, including neighbouring Pakistan, turning to “green stimulus” projects to address two urgent challenges at once: keeping the economy running through the pandemic and tackling the effects of climate change.
After work, Zaheri drinks tea and eats bread at home with his seven children. His eldest daughter Laila, 10, said she appreciated her father taking risks in going to out work on a mountain in the middle of a pandemic.
“The rich people don’t go out, and they stay at their homes at this juncture, but my father goes out and works for us,” she said.
2020-06-25 12:32:29
Prime Minister Imran Khan has thanked the youth for "stepping up" joining his tiger force formed to help the government in its fight against coronavirus.
According to a PM Office tweet, the PM, while addressing the volunteers, thanked the youth for stepping up and assisting the administration in the hour of need.
"He emphasised on spreading awareness among the masses and said that we can pass the peak in a better way if we all act responsibly," said the PM Office.
2020-06-25 12:06:17
Federal Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar says his ministry in a meeting withmajor oxygen producers decided to supply or redirect oxygen to health care facilities on a first priority basis.
"Three additional oxygen plants in the private sector will also be coming in production within next 2 weeks," said the minister in a tweet
2020-06-25 11:57:26
2020-06-25 11:39:19
HANOI: Despite successfully containing its COVID-19 outbreak, Vietnam has no plans to open up to international tourists yet over fears that doing so could lead to a second wave of infections, the Southeast Asian country’s prime minister said on Wednesday.
Thanks to an aggressive, targeted testing programme and a centralised quarantine system, Vietnam has contained infections numbers to a relatively low 352 cases, most of whom have recovered. There have been no reported deaths.
“There is no story of rushing to open the doors,” Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said in a statement posted to the government website on Wednesday.
“Vietnam is not yet ready to welcome back international tourists. Foreign experts, high level workers and investors into Vietnam are welcomed but will be closely monitored.”
Highly skilled foreign experts such as engineers have been allowed to enter Vietnam on special flights and quarantine at hotels in a bid to keep the economy afloat throughout the global pandemic. Phuc said the frequency of such flights should be increased.
For over two months, Vietnam has reported no community transmission of the coronavirus. In early June, Vietnam said it was planning to resume flights to some virus-free countries that had registered no cases of coronavirus for 30 days or more.
Other Southeast Asian countries with slowing infections are considering travel bubble arrangements in the months ahead, such as Malaysia and Thailand, to include countries such as China, South Korea and Japan.
Thailand has been 31 days without a domestic transmission and will allow entry of some short-term business travellers and medical tourists from next month.
2020-06-25 11:18:43
Railways Minister Shaikh Rashid recovered from the coronavirus after his test reports came out as negative.
Rashid, who was being treated at the Military Hospital in Rawalpindi, has been discharged from the facility following a negative test result.
2020-06-25 10:44:11
Adviser to KP CM on Information Ajmal Wazir shared that 235 areas of the province have been placed under a smart lockdown.
Wazir, told Geo Pakistan, that the areas that have been placed under lockdown are those where there was a surge in cases.
2020-06-25 10:18:16
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 192,970 on Thursday after the country reported 4,044 new infections during the last 24 hours.
As of now, Sindh has reported 74,070, Punjab 71,191 cases, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 23,887 cases, Balochistan 9,817 cases, Islamabad 11,710 cases, Gilgit-Baltistan 1,365 cases and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 930 cases.
The country's death toll also climbed to 3,903 with 148 new deaths reported over the last 24 hours.
Pakistan has also conducted 21,835 tests during the last 24 hours, with 81,307 people having recovered so far in the country.
2020-06-25 09:57:49
SYDNEY: Australia’s second most populous state deployed ambulances and mobile test centres in a coronavirus testing blitz as the country recorded the biggest daily rise in cases in two months.
Victoria state said 33 people tested positive for coronavirus in the past 24 hours, marking nine days of double digit new cases in the state. It has around 200 current cases out of a country total of 270.
Desperate to contain the outbreak, Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said authorities are beginning a testing blitz across the 10 most effected suburbs.
“We have ambulances and other vans that will literally be at the end of people’s streets,” Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.
“We will see these (case) numbers go up in coming days.”
Andrews said about 100,000 tests will be conducted over the next 10 days.
Victoria’s efforts to contain the virus will be supplemented by about 1,000 Australian military personnel who are expected to arrive on Friday, Minister for Defence Linda Reynolds said.
The bulk of the troops will assist with the mandatory 14-day quarantine of anyone who arrives in Australia, though Reynolds said about 150 personnel will also help the state’s testing programme.
The surge in new cases comes just weeks after Australia began easing social distancing restrictions, and authorities believe the increase in new cases stemmed from family get-togethers attended by people with mild symptoms.
Alarmed by the rise in new infections, thousands of people have flocked to testing centres, while Australia’s two biggest retail chains, Woolworths Group and Coles, have imposed fresh limits on how much customers can buy for specific goods amid a spate of panic buying.
Australia’s death toll from COVID-19 was on Thursday revised up after tests showed an 85-year-old man who died in April had contracted the virus.
Australia now has recorded 104 deaths from just over 7,500 infections.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia has safeguards in place to prevent the virus growing beyond the control of authorities, as he insisted states and territories must continue to reopen large swathes of the economy.
“We’ve gotta live alongside COVID. It’s not going anywhere,” Morrison told reporters in Sydney. “We’ve gotta keep forging ahead.”
Australia has committed to removing the bulk of social distancing restrictions by the end of July, but each state will determine when and how easing takes place.
Regular domestic travel is expected to begin within weeks, while sporting stadiums will from July 1 allow up to 10,000 fans to attend.
Australia’s international borders remain closed.
The reopening of Australia’s states and territories has stirred hopes its economy can avoid a prolonged trough, though it is on course for its first recession in nearly 30 years.
The International Monetary Fund on Thursday revised its estimate for Australia’s economic contraction to down 4.5%. It previously saw Australia’s economy shrinking 6.7%.
The IMF, however, cautioned that Australia’s A$250 billion ($171.6 billion) stimulus package, including subsidising the wages of 3.5 million people, will need to be carefully withdrawn.
Morrison has said the wage subsidy scheme will end in September, though other targeted stimulus packages could be added, such as a A$250 million package for Australia’s arts sector announced on Thursday.
2020-06-25 00:24:06
2020-06-25 00:07:49
2020-06-24 22:34:08
2020-06-24 22:22:22
2020-06-24 22:08:56
2020-06-24 21:47:09
DUBLIN: Ireland is set to become the latest European country to launch a voluntary phone-tracking app next week to alert users if someone they have been in contact with develops COVID-19, the head of its health service operator said.
Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) announced plans to roll out the phone app in late March, just as the country went into lockdown, and initially expected it to be launched within 10 days.
HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid told a news conference on Wednesday that it has been approved by Ireland’s data protection agency and was awaiting final sign-off by the government.
2020-06-24 21:34:40
Balochistan permitted to allow the Gadani ship-breaking yard to resume operations on conditional permission of fully implementing standard operating produce (SOPs).
According to a handout, the yard restarted after the special instructions of Chief Minister Balochistan Jam Kamal Khan.
The world's third-largest ship-breaking industry has been made conditional on the implementation of the SOPs.
2020-06-24 21:28:32
GENEVA: Britain’s coronavirus testing programme could help to give a picture of how the virus spread of the virus in the country, Mike Ryan, head of the World Health Organization (WHO) emergencies programme, said.
“Testing in the UK has increased, the surveillance system is capable of understanding where the UK is,” he told a news briefing, adding that many countries including Britain had “fought hard” and were making a “steady” exit from lockdown.
“The UK is taking a stepwise approach, the UK is listening to the science,” Ryan said.
2020-06-24 21:21:51
The Punjab government announced it is sealing off seven more areas in Lahore to stem the spread of the COVID-19, as cases of the virus continue to surge across Pakistan.
The areas which will be sealed off from midnight include Gulshan-e-Ravi, Faisal Town, Gulberg, Model Town, DHA, and Garden Town. These areas will be closed completely from midnight.
Addressing a press conference in Lahore, Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid said that the main reason to seal the aforementioned areas is to halt the surging number of coronavirus cases in the province since the standard operating procedures (SOPs) were being violated in these respective areas.
"Hopefully, if SOPs are implemented in a week, there will be a clear reduction in coronavirus cases," she maintained, adding that the government is trying its level best to ensure economic activities took place and at the same time, ensure all possible measures were being taken to for the safety of citizens.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-24 21:15:23
The United States has recorded the second-largest increase in coronavirus cases since the health crisis began, with a rise of 35,588 new infections on Tuesday as a dozen states see infections surge, according to a Reuters tally.
While the United States appeared to have curbed the outbreak in May, leading many states to lift restrictions on social and economic activity, the virus is moving into rural areas and other places that it had not initially penetrated deeply. The surge in cases on Tuesday was the highest since a record of 36,426 new infections on April 24.
2020-06-24 21:02:51
NEW YORK: The governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut announced that visitors from states with high coronavirus infection rates must self-quarantine for 14 days on arrival.
Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters.
“This is a smart thing to do,” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said via video at a joint news conference in New York City. “We have taken our people, the three of us from these three states, through hell and back, and the last thing we need to do right now is subject our folks to another round.”
2020-06-24 20:54:50
Singer-turned-politician Abrar-ul-Haq, who was diagnosed with coronavirus on May 31, has fully recovered and tested negative for the virus.
The 51-year-old singer turned to Twitter and shared the good news with the fans. He also said that he has joined office after quarantine.
He tweeted, “Alhamdulliah i have been tested Corona negative and today is my 1st day in the office after quarantine.”
2020-06-24 20:53:11
2020-06-24 20:52:35
GENEVA: World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom told a news briefing that he expected the number of novel coronavirus cases around the world, now at about 9.3 million, to reach 10 million next week.
2020-06-24 20:02:43
SARAJEVO: Croatia will reintroduce a mandatory 14-day quarantine for visitors from Bosnia, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia following a rise in new coronavirus cases over the past week, the head of the civil protection headquarters said.
Under the temporary measure due to come into effect on Thursday, visitors - including Croatian passport holders - arriving from the four Balkan countries will have to self-isolate for two weeks, said Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic.
Those in transit will not be obliged to go into quarantine, and neither will visitors from 10 European Union states to which Croatia opened its borders on June 1.
The authorities also made the wearing of face masks on public transport obligatory from Thursday.
2020-06-24 19:50:19
2020-06-24 19:50:05
DUBAI: Saudi Arabia’s economy will shrink by 6.8% this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said, a sharper decline than the 2.3% contraction estimated in April, as low oil prices and the coronavirus pandemic hit the kingdom hard.
In an update of its April World Economic Outlook forecast, the IMF said it now expects a deeper global recession in 2020 and a slower recovery in 2021, as the coronavirus crisis intensifies in many emerging and developing countries.
In Saudi Arabia, virus containment measures have crippled nascent sectors of the non-oil economy such as tourism and entertainment and lower oil prices have slashed state revenues.
“The disruptions due to the pandemic, as well as significantly lower disposable income for oil exporters after the dramatic fuel price decline, imply sharp recessions,” said the IMF in reference to several oil producing countries.
It projected Saudi Arabia’s gross domestic product (GDP) to shrink by 6.8% this year but to bounce back to a 3.1% growth in 2021.
2020-06-24 19:41:27
OSLO: "I believe I'll never see her alive again": Bettina Wintermark worries that her adopted country Norway's pandemic travel ban means she won't be able to make one last visit to her dying mother in France.
The Scandinavian country, which was quick to bring the new coronavirus under control, has ignored calls to lift, or at least ease, its travel restrictions, making it probably the most closed nation in Europe today.
Most non-residents are still not allowed to enter the country, and while foreign trips are not forbidden for Norwegians, the 10-day quarantine requirement upon return to Norway — in place until at least August 20 — makes travel abroad prohibitive.
As a result, Norwegians will not be able to soak up the sun on the beaches of the Mediterranean this summer — even Prime Minister Erna Solberg has cancelled her planned holiday in Spain.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-24 19:33:32
NEW YORK: The dollar gained on Wednesday as a rise in coronavirus cases in the United States weighed on optimism about a quick economic recovery, and as the US weighed tariffs on European products.
“The positive market mood during yesterday’s North American session on economic rebound optimism stalled overnight as concern may be building in overseas markets over rising COVID-19 case counts in the US,” analysts at Scotiabank said in a report.
The coronavirus pandemic is causing wider and deeper damage to economic activity than first thought, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday, prompting the institution to slash its 2020 global output forecasts further.
Concerns about increased tariffs also weighed on risk sentiment and boosted demand for the greenback.
US is weighing its tariffs on European products and is considering changing rates for various products as part of the trading partners’ aircraft dispute.
2020-06-24 19:24:07
BERLIN: A record rise in the Ifo institute’s survey of German business sentiment in June shows “the first silver linings on the horizon” for Europe’s largest economy, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said.
“We will do everything so there can be a change of trend from the last quarter of 2020,” Altmaier told a news conference.
Ifo earlier said German business morale posted its strongest rise in June since records began and that Europe’s largest economy should return to growth in the third quarter after the coronavirus pandemic hammered output in the spring.
2020-06-24 19:17:53
AstraZeneca has signed its tenth supply-and-manufacturing deal for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine with a Scotland-backed firm as the British drugmaker ramps up efforts for wider trials of the potential treatment.
Symbiosis Pharmaceutical said on Wednesday it agreed to make and supply an unspecified number of units of the vaccine, AZD1222, for AstraZeneca to use in clinical trials. The companies did not provide any financial terms of the deal.
AstraZeneca Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot last month warned that the company was running out of time to effectively test the vaccine as the number of cases decline in Europe.
2020-06-24 19:09:12
JERUSALEM: Israeli and Palestinian authorities have brought back some coronavirus restrictions after the number of new cases jumped in what officials fear could herald a “second wave” of infections.
Israel’s cabinet approved legislation to resume the use of Shin Bet counter-terrorism surveillance technology to track infections, a practice that had been halted on June 9 amid objections by privacy watchdogs, officials said.
A partial lockdown went into effect in a town in central Israel and several neighborhoods in the city of Tiberias where infection rates were particularly high.
The Palestinian Authority put the West Bank city of Hebron and announced that this Friday’s public prayers would be suspended, though mosques would otherwise remain open in line with health precautions.
2020-06-24 19:01:15
TAIPEI: Taiwan has put more than 100 people under quarantine while it investigates its first possible local case of coronavirus infection in more than two months, a Japanese woman who tested positive last week, the government said.
Taiwan’s early and effective response has kept the pandemic at bay, with just 446 infections and seven deaths, the majority of cases being imported and having already recovered.
More than 100 people who had contact with her in Taiwan have been placed under quarantine, it added.
Health Minister Chen Shih-chung told reporters in Taipei authorities were awaiting further details before formally classifying the case, but that it could have been acquired while she was in Taiwan and he could not rule out local transmission.
“Taiwan has already seen 73 days with no local cases, but we must still raise our vigilance,” he added.
2020-06-24 18:56:21
JOHANNESBURG: Sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product is expected to shrink by 3.2% this year due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Monetary Fund said, more than a previous estimated contraction of 1.6%.
In its World Economic Outlook update, the IMF projected that GDP in South Africa, the continent’s most advanced economy, would shrink by 8% in 2020, a bigger contraction than the 5.8% forecast in April.
For Africa’s top oil exporter Nigeria, the IMF also projected a significant economic contraction, with GDP seen falling 5.4% this year after an earlier forecast for a 3.4% contraction.
Nigeria faces economic distress not only from the coronavirus outbreak but also from a sharp fall in crude prices.
Nigeria’s government has said it expects its economy to contract by 3.4% this year. However, last month Nigeria’s finance minister said the economy could shrink by as much as 8.9% in 2020 in a worst-case scenario.
2020-06-24 18:47:32
BRUSSELS: Belgium will further ease coronavirus lockdown restrictions on July 1, allowing swimming pools, theme parks and party venues to reopen, Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes said, although social distancing measures will remain.
Belgians will be allowed to go to the cinema or theatre again while respecting social distancing rules, and up to 200 people will be allowed to attend indoor events such as religious services, she said.
Up to 400 people will be allowed to attend gatherings outside, including demonstrations, but are not supposed to move around while doing so.
Belgians will be able to meet as many as 15 friends a week - an increase from 10 currently. Social distancing and hygiene measures must be clearly respected. Wearing a mask in public is recommended and may become mandatory if necessary.
“We are still not safe from a rebound of the epidemic,” Wilmes told a news conference after a meeting of the country’s national security council.
2020-06-24 18:38:10
2020-06-24 18:30:24
WASHINGTON: The coronavirus pandemic is causing wider and deeper damage to economic activity than first thought, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday, prompting the institution to slash its 2020 global output forecasts further.
The IMF said it now expects global output to shrink by 4.9%, compared with a 3.0% contraction predicted in April, when it used data available as widespread business lockdowns were just getting into full swing.
A recovery in 2021 also will be weaker, with global growth forecast at 5.4% for the year compared to 5.8% in the April forecast. The Fund said, however, that a major new outbreak in 2021 could shrink the year’s growth to a barely perceptible 0.5%.
“Thus, there is a broad-based aggregate demand shock, compounding near-term supply disruptions due to lockdowns,” the IMF said in an update of its World Economic Outlook forecast.
2020-06-24 18:23:08
Allama Iqbal Teaching Hospital has established a new ICU ward with 200 beds, the facility's Medical Superintendent Dr Javed Munir said.
"One portion of the ICU, comprising of 50 beds, has been completed," he said, adding: "The capacity can be enhanced as the situation develops."
2020-06-24 18:15:40
The new coronavirus outbreak that has infected 256 people in Beijing since early June is "under control", officials in the Chinese capital said Wednesday, but fears still remain over the risk of community transmission.
Authorities have raced to contain the outbreak linked to the largest wholesale food market in Beijing after the first case was announced on June 11, leading to a partial lockdown of the city.
"The Beijing epidemic directly linked to Xinfadi (market) is basically under control, but at the same time we have discovered household and workplace cluster infections and cases of community transmission," said Beijing municipal government spokesman Xu Hejian at a briefing.
2020-06-24 18:06:55
Iran’s death toll from COVID-19 has risen to nearly 10,000 with 133 new fatalities in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said, extending a reversal from a steady fall in daily numbers as the country has relaxed its lockdown.
There were 2,531 new coronavirus infections reported in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of cases to 212,501, along with 9,996 deaths in all, the ministry said.
The daily death toll has regularly topped 100 in the past week for the first time in two months, mirroring a sharp rise in new infections since restrictions on movement began to be lifted in mid-April.
Senior officials have regularly warned that restrictions will be reimposed if health regulations such as social distancing to stem the surge in infections are not observed.
2020-06-24 17:59:33
COLOMBO: Bangladesh have formally called off their Test series in Sri Lanka because of the coronavirus pandemic, officials in Colombo.
The Bangladesh team was due to play three Tests in late July, but the tour was in doubt because of the worrying spread of COVID-19 across South Asia.
The Sri Lankan cricket board said Bangladesh had pulled out due to “the lack of preparation for its players, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
2020-06-24 17:50:08
WASHINGTON: The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved $236 million in grants and credits to support Pakistan’s efforts to enhance learning and healthcare, and address COVID-19 threats to human capital accumulation, a statement from the WB read.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Human Capital Investment Project ($200 million) and Balochistan Human Capital Investment Project ($36 million) will improve public services in education and health, which are the building blocks for human capital accumulation.
"The projects aim to increase the productive capacity of the workforce to bolster future economic growth in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa," it read.
“Education and healthcare are at the heart of Pakistan’s vision for inclusive growth to enable its people to reach their greatest potential,” said Illango Patchamuthu, World Bank Country Director for Pakistan.
“Human capital is about investing early in children and families. The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to roll back human capital accumulation in Pakistan and decisive actions are needed now to reduce losses through targeted interventions supported by the two projects.”
2020-06-24 17:43:27
2020-06-24 17:35:50
LONDON: Up to 20,000 jobs could go at Britain’s airports, an industry group warned, calling on the government to do more to help an aviation industry that was shut down by the COVID pandemic and is now struggling to restart due to quarantine rules.
The Airport Operators Association (AOA), which represents more than 50 airports, said future passenger numbers at UK airports were expected to be significantly lower, and analysis of its members suggested up to 20,000 jobs were at risk.
Up to 110,000 jobs could be lost in industries supported by airports, AOA warned. Later on Wednesday, airport ground services and cargo handling company Swissport said it could cut up to 4,556 jobs in the UK and Ireland.
“These jobs figures clearly show that a key component of the UK’s infrastructure is on its knees, with no relief to the current crisis expected,” said AOA chief executive Karen Dee.
2020-06-24 17:27:19
India reported 16,000 new coronavirus cases, its highest daily increase since the outbreak began, and the government called in the army to manage new treatment centres with thousands of additional hospital beds in New Delhi.
At more than 456,000 confirmed coronavirus cases so far, India is the fourth worst-hit country in the world, behind the United States, Brazil and Russia, according to a Reuters tally.
Cases are expected to keep rising as state governments ease restrictions in place since lockdown was first imposed in late March.
New Delhi, the sprawling capital of more than 20 million people, also recorded its highest single-day increase on Wednesday, with more than 3,900 cases.
Local government data showed that of the roughly 13,400 beds allocated to Covid-19 patients in the city, around 6,200 were occupied.
The federal home ministry said the city would have around 20,000 additional beds available by next week at temporary facilities run by army doctors and nurses.
These include a 10,000-bed facility hosted at a religious centre and railway coaches turned into wards.
“Armed Forces personnel have been detailed for providing medical care and attention to Covid-19 patients housed in the Railway coaches in Delhi,” Home Minister Amit Shah said.India calls in army to run facilities in Delhi as virus cases surge
India reported 16,000 new coronavirus cases, its highest daily increase since the outbreak began, and the government called in the army to manage new treatment centres with thousands of additional hospital beds in New Delhi.
At more than 456,000 confirmed coronavirus cases so far, India is the fourth worst-hit country in the world, behind the United States, Brazil and Russia, according to a Reuters tally.
Cases are expected to keep rising as state governments ease restrictions in place since lockdown was first imposed in late March.
New Delhi, the sprawling capital of more than 20 million people, also recorded its highest single-day increase on Wednesday, with more than 3,900 cases.
Local government data showed that of the roughly 13,400 beds allocated to Covid-19 patients in the city, around 6,200 were occupied.
The federal home ministry said the city would have around 20,000 additional beds available by next week at temporary facilities run by army doctors and nurses.
These include a 10,000-bed facility hosted at a religious centre and railway coaches turned into wards.
“Armed Forces personnel have been detailed for providing medical care and attention to Covid-19 patients housed in the Railway coaches in Delhi,” Home Minister Amit Shah said.
2020-06-24 17:21:03
Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that the province recorded 1,414 cases and 37 more deaths taking the infections toll to 74,070 and deaths to 1,161.
According to a statement issued CM House, 7,400 tests were conducted which detected 1,414 cases constituting 19.2% the detection rate.
2020-06-24 17:08:49
LONDON (Reuters) - Millions of women and children in poor countries are at risk because the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting health services they rely on, from neonatal and maternity care to immunisations and contraception, a World Bank global health expert has warned.
Monique Vledder, head of secretariat at the bank’s Global Financing Facility (GFF), told Reuters in an interview the agency was gravely worried about the numbers of children missing vaccinations, women giving birth without medical help and interrupted supplies of life-saving medicines like antibiotics.
“We’re very concerned about what’s happening - particularly in sub-Saharan Africa,” Vledder said as she unveiled the results of a GFF survey, one of the first seeking to assess the impact of COVID-19 on women’s and children’s health.
“Many of the countries we work in are fragile and so, by definition, already have very challenging situations when it comes to health service delivery. This is making things worse.”
“We are seeing declining vaccination rates among children. We’re seeing women accessing services less for ante- or post-natal care. We’re seeing a decline in babies being born in health facilities. And we’re also seeing a slide in outpatient services - for treatments for diarrhoea, malaria, fever, pneumonia for example,” Vledder said.
2020-06-24 16:58:14
SYDNEY: Australia reported its first COVID-19 death in more than a month, as concerns about a second wave of infections saw thousands of people queue, sometimes for hours, to be tested for the virus.
A man in his eighties died in Victoria state, where 20 new cases were reported overnight, Victoria Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton told reporters in Melbourne.
Australia has so far escaped a high number of casualties from the new coronavirus, with just over 7,500 infections and 103 deaths, aided by strict lockdown measures and social distancing rules.
Fears of a second wave stem from an upswing in new cases in Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state, where authorities are trying to contain outbreaks in half a dozen Melbourne suburbs.
State Premier Daniel Andrews has asked for military personnel to help operate pop-up test centres and enforce a 14-day quarantine requirement for anyone coming from overseas, a spokeswoman said.
After enforcing lockdown restrictions earlier in its coronavirus outbreak compared to most other countries, Australia began to ease those curbs last month to revive its economy as infection rates has slowed significantly.
2020-06-24 16:45:28
Punjab government spokesperson Musarrat Cheema said the province aims to increase its testing capacity to 25,000 as the coronavirus cases surged in the country.
"Test or lockdown are not the solutions, while implementing on the SOPs, maintaining social distancing, and following safety measures is the solution," she said, while speakig in Geo News' programme "Geo Pakistan".
2020-06-24 16:39:09
Sindh Health Minister Azra Fazal Pechuho said that the province could not ramp up its testing capacity more than its current capacity.
Speaking in Geo News' programme "Geo Pakistan", Pechuho said: "Several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, have increased their testing capacity, but we cannot do the same — conduct 100,000 tests per day — due to financial constraints."
"It will really cost us, beyond what we can afford," she said, adding: "In real terms, the amount of tests that we can do is 15,000-20,000."
2020-06-24 16:31:28
BEIJING: China’s human resources ministry said it would extend the exemption on social insurance fees for firms hit by the COVID-19 pandemic until the end of this year.
In February, the ministry said companies that have been affected by the new coronavirus could apply for fee exemptions of no longer than six months.
2020-06-24 16:16:01
LONDON: British transport minister Grant Shapps said he would say more on June 29 about possible air bridges with other countries to enable travel during the coronavirus crisis, adding that conversations were ongoing.
Britons hoping to go on holiday and airlines are putting pressure on the government to drop a quarantine on those returning to Britain or to form air bridges, where two countries agree to allow travel without such measures.
“We’ll say more about this on June 29 which is when the current three-week period expires,” Shapps told a committee of lawmakers, saying he would look to what the level of infection was in other countries and their testing regimes when considering forming air bridges.
He said air bridges, or travel corridors, were a “massive” priority for the government.
2020-06-24 15:31:12
LONDON: Up to 20,000 jobs could go at Britain’s airports, an industry group warned, calling on the government to do more to help an aviation industry that was shut down by the COVID pandemic and is now struggling to restart due to quarantine rules.
The Airport Operators Association (AOA), which represents more than 50 airports, said future passenger numbers at UK airports were expected to be significantly lower, and analysis of its members suggested up to 20,000 jobs were at risk.
The government should scrap its quarantine regime, provide relief from business rates, extend a job retention scheme, directly fund the sector regulator and suspend air passenger taxes to help save jobs, the AOA said.
“These jobs figures clearly show that a key component of the UK’s infrastructure is on its knees, with no relief to the current crisis expected,” said AOA chief executive Karen Dee.
“Government needs to recognise the immense crisis facing the country’s airport communities and take action to support UK aviation and protect livelihoods.”
UK-based airlines British Airways (ICAG.L), Virgin Atlantic and easyJet (EZJ.L) have already announced close to 20,000 job losses between them. The country’s biggest airport Heathrow has also started a voluntary redundancy scheme.
Britain has a 14-day quarantine policy in place for arrivals into the country from abroad, which airlines, airports and the hospitality sector have said is deterring international travel at a time when they had been hoping for it to recover.
The rule is due to be reviewed on June 29, three weeks after it was introduced and could be replaced by “air bridges”, which would allow restriction-free travel between countries with low infection rates.
2020-06-24 14:57:05
NEW DELHI: India reported 16,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, its highest daily increase since the outbreak began, and the government called in the army to manage new treatment centres with thousands of additional hospital beds in New Delhi.
At more than 456,000 confirmed coronavirus cases so far, India is the fourth worst hit country in the world, behind the United States, Brazil and Russia, according to a Reuters tally.
Cases are expected to keep rising as state governments ease restrictions in place since lockdown was first imposed in late March.
New Delhi, the sprawling capital of more than 20 million people, also recorded its highest single-day increase on Wednesday, with more than 3,900 cases. Local government data showed that of the roughly 13,400 beds allocated to COVID-19 patients in the city, around 6,200 were occupied.
The federal home ministry said the city would have around 20,000 additional beds available by next week at temporary facilities run by army doctors and nurses.
These include a 10,000 bed facility hosted at a religious centre and railway coaches turned into wards.
“Armed Forces personnel have been detailed for providing medical care and attention to COVID-19 patients housed in the Railway coaches in Delhi,” Home Minister Amit Shah said.
The city government estimates it will have 550,000 COVID-19 cases by the end of July, and will require 150,000 beds by then.
Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said that a new federal government order to take every positive patient to an assessment centre as opposed to evaluating them at home was stretching already limited resources.
“Our ambulance system, our medical system is under pressure now. Today, we are having to take patients in buses,” Sisodia said, adding that he had written to the federal home ministry. “This (rule) is creating chaos in New Delhi.”
2020-06-24 14:14:04
2020-06-24 14:04:32
SOFIA: Bulgaria will extend a state of emergency declared in response to the coronavirus outbreak until July 15 after another jump in new registered cases, Health Minister Kiril Ananiev said on Wednesday.
Bulgaria began to relax restrictions to stop the spread of the virus earlier this month, but last week it reported 606 new COVID-19 cases, its highest weekly rise since the epidemic.
Some 130 new cases were reported on Wednesday, bringing the total to date to 4,114, with 208 deaths. The latest jump prompted Ananiev’s decision to reimpose the mask requirement at all indoor public venues, including trains and buses.
“We have an increase of the intensity of the epidemic and an increase of coronavirus spread,” Ananiev told a government meeting.
He said the average daily number of people infected with coronavirus from June 10 to June 24 jumped more than three times (from 26 to 84 cases in a single day) compared with the previous two-week period.
Ananiev said the Black Sea state would not impose new measures or bring back tougher restrictions, but would step up controls on social distancing, obligatory face masks indoors and will keep travel bans for most countries outside the EU.
Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said during the meeting that unless social distancing among fans at soccer matches improved, he would order games to be played behind closed doors.
2020-06-24 11:44:02
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) shared on Wednesday that the distribution of the ninth tranche of protective equipment for the doctors for the provinces is underway.
According to the spokesperson, the equipment has been delivered to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. He added that Balochistan has been given 91,000 and LP has been given 130,000 different kinds of face masks.
Balochistan has also given 7,000 and KP 10,000 protective suits, along with 25,000 surgical gowns to each province.
2020-06-24 11:18:04
LONDON: Top medics have warned British political parties that local flare-ups of the novel coronavirus are likely and a second wave is a real risk.
“While the future shape of the pandemic in the UK is hard to predict, the available evidence indicates that local flare-ups are increasingly likely and a second wave a real risk,” the medics said.
Those who signed the open letter in the British Medical Journal included Derek Alderson, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians and Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.
“Many elements of the infrastructure needed to contain the virus are beginning to be put in place, but substantial challenges remain, they said.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday that pubs, restaurants and hotels could reopen in England early next month, easing the coronavirus lockdown that has all but shut the economy.
2020-06-24 11:07:48
TOKYO: Tokyo will record “quite a large number” of new coronavirus cases on Wednesday after a cluster of infections was discovered at an office, Governor Yuriko Koike said.
“Clusters in the workplace have become a big problem lately,” Koike told reporters, adding that test results from the same unnamed company were expected to add to the seven infections found there previously.
In addition, more than 10 positive results are expected from group testing in Shinjuku, Koike said, referring to an area of the Japanese capital known for its night life.
2020-06-24 10:16:38
SYDNEY: Australia’s second most populous state on Wednesday said a man in his 80s died overnight from the coronavirus, the country’s first death from the virus in more than a month, as concerns about a second wave of infections saw thousands queue for COVID-19 tests and supermarkets impose new restrictions.
Victoria state reported 20 overnight cases, Victoria Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton told reporters in Melbourne, taking the state tally to nearly 1,900 after recording 17 on Tuesday and 16 the day before.
“When we get additional cases, there will be a risk of people dying or be at risk of further cases being hospitalised and going to intensive care,” Sutton told reporters in Sydney.
“That’s why we need to get on top of numbers.”
The upswing in new cases in Victoria has sparked fears of a second wave, with 241 cases in the state so far identified as community transmission, an increase of eight from Tuesday.
Authorities in Victoria, which has become the virus hotspot in Australia, have been trying to contain the spread of the virus in half a dozen suburbs in the largest city of Melbourne hit by a spike in cases.
Authorities believe the surge in new cases has been caused by family get-togethers attended by people with mild symptoms.
The state on the weekend extended its state of emergency for another month and reimposed restrictions on gatherings after seeing a sharp rise in daily infections.
The uptick in new infections has seen thousands of people seek COVID-19 tests. With elevated demand, police shut one drive-by clinic 20 minutes after it opened as it quickly became overwhelmed.
Those testing facilities able to stay open have reported wait times of up to four hours, though authorities said anyone who wants a test will be accommodated.
The concern has also seen people rush to supermarkets in Victoria, with Australia’s biggest supermarket chain Woolworths Group imposing fresh limits on specific goods in the state.
Shoppers in the state will be limited to two items of products including toilet paper, hand sanitiser, flour, sugar, pasta, long-life milk, eggs and rice.
“While we have healthy stock levels to draw on, we’re taking this precautionary step to help prevent excessive buying and support appropriate social distancing in our Victorian stores,” said Claire Peters, managing director of Woolworths’ supermarkets division.
In March, Australia’s major grocers put strict limits on purchases of toilet paper as shoppers stripped shelves in a rush of panic buying spurred by fears over a coronavirus lockdown.
Despite the spike in cases in Victoria, the neighbouring state of New South Wales (NSW) said it would not introduce a hard border closure between the states.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, however, urged people in the state to avoid travelling to its southern neighbour.
After enforcing restrictions early in the coronavirus outbreak compared to most other countries, Australia began to ease its lockdown last month to revive its economy after a significant slowdown in infection rates.
Australia has so far escaped a high number of casualties from the new coronavirus, with just over 7,500 infections and 103 deaths, aided by strict lockdown measures and social distancing rules.
2020-06-24 10:08:44
2020-06-24 09:55:44
MEXICO CITY: Latin America’s death toll from the coronavirus pandemic surpassed 100,000 on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, with few signs of the outbreak easing in a region marked by crowded cities and high poverty levels.
Latin America has seen an alarming spike in cases and deaths even as the tide of infection recedes in Europe and parts of Asia. The number of infections, at 2.2 million, has doubled in less than a month.
Brazil — Latin America’s largest and most populous nation — this week became only the second country to reach the 50,000 deaths milestone, after the United States. Mexico on Tuesday registered a fresh one-day record for confirmed infections.
The true scale of the coronavirus damage to Latin America is likely to be much deeper, experts say, as countries across the region have failed to implement rigorous testing programmes. Many officials concede the death toll is likely far higher.
Hugo Lopez-Gatell, Mexico’s deputy health minister and the country’s coronavirus tsar, on Tuesday signaled that his nation is in for a long battle against coronavirus.
“We must learn to live with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and permanently incorporate hygiene and prevention practices into the new reality,” said Lopez-Gatell, urging the Mexican society to adapt its response to the threat.
On top of creaking healthcare systems in many countries across the region, Latin America’s battle against the virus has been hamstrung by widespread poverty and many workers living a hand-to-mouth existence in the informal sector that has hindered quarantine efforts.
The leaders of regional heavyweights Brazil and Mexico have also been chastised for not taking the virus seriously enough and for pushing for a reopening of their economies before the virus has been tamed.
A Brazilian judge on Tuesday ordered President Jair Bolsonaro to wear a mask in public after the right-wing populist attended political rallies without one in the middle of the world’s second-worst coronavirus outbreak.
Brazil registered an additional 1,374 deaths on Tuesday from the virus and 39,436 new cases, pushing the death toll from the novel coronavirus to 52,000 people in Latin America’s biggest economy. More than 1.1 million have been infected.
Mexico, the worst hit-nation in the region after Brazil in terms of overall figures, on Tuesday registered 6,288 new infections and 793 additional deaths. That brought the totals for the country to 191,410 cases and 23,377 deaths.
The virus also appears to be on the rise in Central America, where Guatemala on Tuesday recorded more than 700 new infections for the first time. An additional 35 deaths were registered in Guatemala, taking it deaths total to 582.
2020-06-24 09:50:45
Confirmed cases in Pakistan surge past 188,000, death toll climbs to 3,755.
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 188,926 on Wednesday after the country reported 3,892 new infections during the last 24 hours.
As of now, Sindh has reported 72,656, Punjab 69,536 cases, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 23,388 cases, Balochistan 9,634 cases, Islamabad 11,483 cases, Gilgit-Baltistan 1,337 cases and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 892 cases.
The country's death toll also climbed to 3,755 with 60 deaths reported over the last 24 hours.
Pakistan has also conducted 23,380 tests during the last 24 hours, with 77,754 people having recovered so far in the country.
2020-06-24 09:15:56
The National Command and Operations Centre declared on Wednesday that Azad Jammu Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan have no coronavirus patient on a vent in the region.
According to the latest data, 549 vents have been occupied across Pakistan out of 1,539 vents allocated for the COVID-19 pandemice.
The statement said 1,895 additional ventilators for COVID-19 are in pipe line and will be added to critical healthcare capacity by end of July. It added that 200 oxygen cylinder have been dispatched to GB for any emergency as a "contingency plan basing on distances/transportation involved".
2020-06-24 09:04:23
TOKYO (Reuters) - As nations race to develop treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, Japan has become a victim of its own success as slowing new infections has led to a shortage of patients to enroll in clinical trials.
Clinical trials are underway for more than a dozen potential vaccines, including at least six in China, but Japan’s first human trials are expected to start next month.
In development of treatments, Russia and India approved Fujifilm Holdings Corp’s Avigan as a COVID-19 therapy, but Japan, whose Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has touted the drug’s potential and hoped to approve it in May, won’t see a decision until at least July.
“Due to the decreasing number of coronavirus infections, we believe it will take some time before clinical research is completed,” said Tetsuya Nakamura, who is running a trial of Avigan at Gunma University Hospital in central Japan.
“It’s a pity that Avigan has been approved overseas but not in Japan.”
Japan has fared better than most developed nations in tackling the disease that has killed more than 470,000 worldwide. While the epidemic drove Japan’s medical system to the brink of collapse in recent months, serious cases now number about 60 nationwide.
Some 54 COVID-19 related clinical trials have been launched in Japan, but most are still in the patient recruitment phase, according to trials’ tracking data.
Interest in Avigan, known generically as favipiravir, soared in March after a Chinese official said it appeared to help patients recover from COVID-19. It is now the subject of at least 25 clinical trials around the world.
The regulatory delay on Avigan is partly due to the fact that the studies should have been carried out in multiple countries at once, said Dr. Nakamura. But such studies are “enormously expensive.”
Fujifilm said it is working to complete the clinical trials “as soon as possible.”
Japanese biotech firm Healios KK said in April it intended to add COVID-19 patients to its experimental lung therapy trial but has not enlisted any as yet.
“We were careful to size the cohort in light of the low number of patients in Japan, and so are only seeking to enroll around five patients,” CFO Richard Kincaid said.
With a dearth of domestic patients, Japan may have to rely more on overseas data and results to aid in regulatory approvals. That practice is common “if the quality of data is considered to be good enough,” according to health ministry official Yasuyuki Sahara.
Sahara did not comment on the Russia or Indian approvals of Avigan and whether data from those nations could be used in Japan. The Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency, Japan’s primary drug regulator, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
2020-06-24 08:57:41
Pakistan's total positive cases rose to 188,639 on Wednesday after Punjab in the last 24 hours reported 1,228 new cases in the province.
According to PDMA Punjab, the new cases take Punjab's positive cases to 69,536. The authority also reported that 21 more lives were also lost to the virus.
2020-06-24 08:29:09
BERLIN: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 587 to 191,449, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday.
The reported death toll rose by 19 to 8,914, the tally showed.
2020-06-23 23:09:10
2020-06-23 22:58:15
2020-06-23 23:53:16
LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was keen to enjoy a visit to the pub and urged people to go out and enjoy their new freedom to socialise next month, but cautioned that they would still need to act responsibly.
On Tuesday, Johnson said pubs, restaurants and hotels could reopen in England from July 4, easing the coronavirus lockdown that has all but shut the economy since the middle of March.
“Frankly I can’t wait to go to a pub or a restaurant, even if it may not be wholly compatible with the new diet that I’m on,” Johnson said at a news conference.
“I think people need to go out and I think they need to enjoy themselves, and rediscover things that they haven’t been able to do for a long time.”
2020-06-23 22:28:49
A Texas children’s hospital is admitting adult coronavirus patients due to a spike in serious COVID-19 cases in the Houston area.
“We know COVID-19 has not gone away. We implore you to take responsible actions – practice appropriate social distancing, wear a mask or face covering anytime you leave your home,” the Texas Children’s Hospital said in a statement, without specifying how many coronavirus patients they admitted.
Texas reported over 5,000 new infections on Monday, a single-day record for the state. It has also seen COVID-19 hospitalizations hit record highs for 11 days in a row.
2020-06-23 22:00:33
NEW YORK: Four top US public health officials and members of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force said that he has not asked them to slow down testing for the virus.
Testifying before the House Energy & Commerce Committee, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, and the Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Brett Giroir all said that the president had not asked them to slow down the testing.
Fauci also said the US was currently seeing a disturbing surge of infections in several states like Texas, Florida and Arizona. He said one reason infections were rising in those states was an increase in community spread.
2020-06-23 21:53:17
Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan said that facilities of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) are being provided in all public hospitals, Radio Pakistanreported.
Presiding over a high-level meeting of health authorities and state administration in Muzaffarabad, he said that coronavirus testing capacity is also being enhanced in the territory.
The premier said that the government is determined to provide all possible facilities to the medical community and further directed the authorities concerned to ensure strict implementation of the recommended SOPs in public transport, markets, hotels, and other businesses.
2020-06-23 21:49:20
BEIJING: China National Biotec Group (CNBG) has won approval to run a large-scale “Phase 3” clinical trial of its novel coronavirus vaccine candidate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the company said.
China is seeking to trial potential vaccines overseas because of a lack of new patients at home.
Over a dozen experimental vaccines are being trialled around the world. None of them has yet successfully completed a late-stage “Phase 3” test to determine efficacy in shielding healthy people from the virus, which has killed over 470,000 people around the world.
CNBG announced the move in a Weibo social media post, without naming the vaccine to be tested in the UAE.
2020-06-23 21:42:32
Meat-processing plants around the world are proving coronavirus infection hotspots, with an outbreak at a factory in Germany leading to Guetersloh becoming the first area in the country to be ordered back into lockdown.
More than 1,500 workers at the Guetersloh plant tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19, while outbreaks have also hit meat and poultry plants in Britain in recent days.
In many rural parts of the United States, meatpacking plants have been the main source of infection. On April 28, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep such factories open, warning of a potential threat to the US food supply.
The meat industry is particularly susceptible to coronavirus infections because of the nature of the work: intense physical labour, conducted indoors at close proximity to other workers.
“Their work environments - processing lines and other areas in busy plants where they have close contact with coworkers and supervisors - may contribute substantially to their potential exposures,” the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says of meatpacking workers.
In Germany, for example, many are migrants from poorer EU countries such as Bulgaria and Romania, often housed in large dormitories where the virus can spread.
“Some of these factories have on-site or nearby accommodation where there are several people in each dormitory, they may be transported on a bus to the site of work, and they will be indoors together all day,” said Michael Head, an expert in global health at England’s University of Southampton.
In the United States, by the end of May, the UFCW labour union estimated that at least 44 meatpacking workers had died of COVID-19, and that at least 30 meatpacking plants had to be temporarily shut down, impacting more than 45,000 workers and contributing to a 40% reduction in pork slaughtering capacity.
2020-06-23 21:31:02
2020-06-23 21:15:26
LONDON: The number of people in Britain who have died after being confirmed to have COVID-19 has risen to 42,927, from 42,647 the day before, health officials said.
The increase includes 171 new deaths reported as of 1600 GMT on June 22, plus 109 deaths that occurred in April, May and June which had been reclassified as caused by COVID-19.
2020-06-23 21:04:29
2020-06-23 20:54:27
PARIS: French drugmaker Sanofi has agreed a potential $2 billion vaccines deal with Translate Bio, expanding their collaboration in development of an inoculation against COVID-19 and sending the US biotech company’s shares soaring.
The deal strengthens Sanofi’s credentials in a market engaged in a frantic race to find a safe and effective vaccine against the coronavirus disease that has killed more than 472,000 worldwide.
The companies said they would expand their partnership to develop a wide range of mRNA vaccines. The mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) technology, an area of Translate Bio expertise, instructs human cells to make specific proteins that produce an immune response to a disease.
Translate Bio’s Nasdaq-listed shares jumped 66% on the news before receding slightly to stand at $22.91, up 41% on the day and 190% this year. Shares in Sanofi were flat at 93 euros.
2020-06-23 20:47:56
BRASILIA: Brazil is likely to sign a contract this week to produce a trial vaccine against the novel coronavirus developed by Oxford University, the country’s interim health minister.
Human clinical trials in Brazil for the potential vaccine started this weekend with 3,000 people.
2020-06-23 20:41:16
BERLIN: The western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia put two municipalities back into lockdown until June 30 after an outbreak of the new coronavirus at a meatpacking plant.
State governor Armin Laschet, who had previously led calls for Germany to ease its lockdown restrictions, said bars, museums, galleries, cinemas, sports halls, gyms and swimming pools in Guetersloh and Warendorf would be closed, and picnics and barbecues prohibited.
“We will lift the measure as soon as possible, when we have certainty about the safety of the infection,” Laschet told a news conference. “It is a preventative measure.”
Guetersloh, home to some 100,000 people, and the neighbouring town of Warendorf, became the first areas in Germany to fall back under lockdown measures that had been gradually lifted since the end of April.
2020-06-23 20:35:24
2020-06-23 20:28:49
ROME: Alitalia had 232 million euros ($263 million) in its coffers on May 31, Italian industry minister Stefano Patuanelli said, as the government prepares to take over an airline that has burned through cash in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The nationalisation of the loss-making business comes after 11 troubled years of private management and three failed restructuring attempts.
The government injected 400 million euros into Alitalia at the beginning of this year, after granting a bridge loan of 900 million euros in 2017, which was not paid back.
“As of May 31 the company had 232 million euros in liquidity ... revenue between January and May amounted to 505 million,” Patuanelli told a parliamentary hearing.
2020-06-23 20:23:58
Oman’s ruler Haitham bin Tariq al-Said announced an emergency interest-free loan programme for businesses most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, especially small and medium sized firms, state television reported.
2020-06-23 20:15:57
2020-06-23 20:08:20
BANGKOK: When Thai travel consultancy Local Alike saw its revenue drop to zero due to the coronavirus outbreak, it started selling products from villages through social media.
The business has generated 2.6 million baht ($84,000) for locals in 20 communities selling products from snacks to rice.
“It exceeded our expectations,” said Somsak Boonkam, founder and chief executive of Bangkok-based Local Alike, which promotes sustainable tourism in 200 villages.
“From now on, we would like to serve as an e-commerce platform for communities.”
Thailand’s social enterprises have been hit hard by the coronavirus, which has infected more than 3,100 people and killed more than 50 since January.
2020-06-23 19:59:29
BANGKOK: Thai schools are holding rehearsals to prepare students for classes in the coronavirus era, giving lessons in hygiene and social distancing to children as young as three ahead of next week’s return.
Schools across Thailand have been modifying classrooms, dining halls and play areas to prepare for a phased return of students, in another step towards normalcy as the country nears one month without a domestic transmission.
Bangkok’s Wichutit School has since last week been putting students through a day of drills in hand-washing, playground etiquette and forming orderly lines one metre apart.
On Tuesday, the school of more than 1,600 students invited children age 3 and 4 to put on masks and face shields for mock lessons in classrooms with barriers installed on desks.
“This is going to be something new for the kids and they’re excited. They’ve been cooperative because parents also practise the same new normal at home,” said the school’s director, Pornnicha Chatapun.
2020-06-23 19:41:52
RAWALPINDI: Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Tuesday lauded Beijing's assistance to Pakistan for tackling the coronavirus, during a meeting with a delegation of the Chinese Army, the military's media wing said.
The Inter-Services Public Relations, in a statement, said: "A ten-member People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Medical Team led by Chief of ICU Department, PLA General Hospital, Maj Gen Doctor Zhou Feihu, called on Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa."
Read complete story here.
2020-06-23 19:35:01
Governor Sindh distributed coronavirus safety gear in Larkana, Sukkur, Dadu and other districts of the province.
The gear included over 9,000protective clothes, hand sanitisers and 4,500 masks.
2020-06-23 19:17:29
Germany will use its upcoming presidency of the European Union to steer the bloc towards a climate-friendly economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the country’s environment minister said.
“We always have to keep the big picture in mind. Europe wants to become the first greenhouse gas-neutral continent by 2050. This is the most crucial thing that we can do for future generations,” Svenja Schulze said ahead of a meeting of EU environment ministers.
Schulze called the Commission proposal a “good basis” for the EU’s economic recovery, which she said must be “socially fair and ecologically sound”.
2020-06-23 19:06:23
LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a further easing of coronavirus restrictions in England from July 4, as part of plans to kickstart hospitality, culture and tourism.
Pubs and restaurants will be allowed to reopen, as will hotels, bed and breakfasts, self-catering accommodation and campsites, alongside cinemas, museums and galleries.
Two separate households will also be allowed to meet up indoors for the first time since March.
"Today we can say that our long national hibernation is beginning to come to an end," he told parliament, calling the lifting of restrictions a return to a "sense of normality".
2020-06-23 18:58:34
2020-06-23 18:51:53
2020-06-23 18:30:12
WARSAW: Twelve Polish coal mines, which the government said earlier in June would halt production to stop the rapid spread of coronavirus infections among miners, have continued maintenance works for safety reasons.
Poland’s State Assets Minister Jacek Sasin said on June 8 output would be stopped for three weeks at two mines owned by state-run JSW and in 10 operated by PGG.
But industry sources and the mining companies representatives said that care and maintenance works continued at the 12 mines.
A source familiar with the situation said the 10 PGG mines are operating at 30-50% of normal operations, depending on the mine. If they were fully closed for three weeks, PGG’s output would fall by 1.3-1.5 million tonnes, sources said.
2020-06-23 18:20:04
Seven more cricketers have tested positive for the deadly coronavirus, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chief Executive Wasim Khan said, a day after three players of the national team had contracted the respiratory illness.
"Players who have tested positive are: Fakhar Zaman, Imran Khan, Kashif Bhatti, Mohammad Hafeez, Mohammad Hasnain, Mohammad Rizwan, and Wahab Riaz," the PCB CEO said in a video conference.
The PCB had earlier announced Monday that leg-spinner Shadab Khan, fast bowler Haris Rauf, and teenage batter Haider Ali had tested positive for COVID-19 despite showing no symptoms and would go into self-isolation.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-23 17:53:07
CAIRO: Egypt will from Saturday lift a night-time curfew that had been imposed since March 25 to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, the prime minister’s media adviser said.
The prime minister said earlier on Tuesday that Egypt would reopen restaurants, cafes, and places of worship from the end of the week but would keep some restrictions in place to limit crowding, as new coronavirus cases continue to climb.
2020-06-23 17:44:24
LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled a significant easing of England’s coronavirus lockdown, saying it had been allowed by a decline in the number of new infections and the belief that currently there is no risk of a second peak.
“The number of new infections is now declining by between two and four percent every day,” he told parliament.
“This pandemic has inflicted permanent scars and we mourn everyone we have lost ... While we remain vigilant, we do not believe there is currently a risk of a second peak of infections that might overwhelm the NHS (National Health Service).”
2020-06-23 17:20:53
BELGRADE: Tennis world number one Novak Djokovic said he has tested positive for coronavirus, joining a slew of other infected players who took part in an exhibition tennis tournament in the Balkans.
"Novak Djokovic tested positive for a virus COVID-19," read a statement from his staff. "He is not showing any symptoms," it added.
2020-06-23 17:11:52
BENGALURU: Indian drugmaker Cipla Ltd will price its generic version of Gilead Sciences Inc’s antiviral drug remdesivir for use in COVID-19 patients at less than 5,000 rupees ($66), the company said.
Reuters exclusively reported that the company was planning to price its version at between 5,000 to 6,000 takas ($59 to $71) per vial.
Remdesivir, intravenously administered in hospitals, is the first treatment to show improvement in COVID-19 trials. It has been approved for emergency use in severely-ill patients in the United States, India and South Korea, and has received full approval in Japan.
Cipla, in an e-mailed statement, did not provide details on when the treatment, called Cipremi, will be available.
2020-06-23 17:05:13
SEOUL: Around 4,000 recovered COVID-19 patients from a religious group at the centre of South Korea’s largest outbreak will donate plasma for research, an official said, a day after local officials filed a lawsuit against the church.
At least 5,213 of the country’s total 12,484 cases have been linked to the church outbreak, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
Church founder Lee Man-hee had internally advised recovered members to donate their plasma, which is badly needed for coronavirus research, Shincheonji media coordinator Kim Young-eun told Reuters on Tuesday.
Many of recovered church members wanted to donate to express thanks to the government and medical staff, she said.
2020-06-23 16:58:13
BRUSSELS: European Union leaders will meet in Brussels on July 17-18 to haggle over a proposed COVID-19 economic stimulus and their next joint budget, a spokesman said, the first such in-person talks in months due to health and travel restrictions.
“The physical meeting will start on the 17th at 10am,” the spokesman for the EU’s Brussels headquarters, Barend Leyts, said.
The 27 national leaders failed to narrow their differences on the package in talks via video call last week.
2020-06-23 16:51:53
ZURICH: Siemens and US software developer Salesforce will work together on products to help companies’ employees get back to work while following rules to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, the firms said.
The project will link Salesforce’s Work.com platform with products from Siemens Comfy and Enlighted, part of the German company’s Smart Infrastructure businesses, to give employees data on their mobile phones when they return.
Solutions will include “boarding passes’ for building and elevator entry, and a safe occupancy management system which will send warnings when room occupancy limits are reached.
Many companies are slowly allowing staff to return to work, albeit on staggered or voluntary basis, although some like Swiss bank UBS have said they plan to increase employees working from home permanently.
“The safe return of people to the workplace is a global challenge, and it’s vital that companies protect their employees to build trust and confidence,” said Roland Busch, Deputy CEO and member of the Siemens managing board.
2020-06-23 16:45:21
BERLIN: The German economy will shrink by 6.5% this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the government’s council of economic advisors said on Tuesday, adding that the slump will be prolonged if the number of new infections jumps.
The bleak outlook came after the premier of Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, put the Guetersloh region back into lockdown until June 30 following a coronavirus outbreak at a meatpacking plant there.
“The coronavirus pandemic is expected to cause the largest slump of the German economy since the founding of the Federal Republic. But we expect the recovery to start in the summer,” council head Lars Feld said.
Adjusted for calendar effects, the German economy is seen shrinking by 6.9% this year. The council said it expects a slow recovery in the second half of the year, with gross domestic product (GDP) forecast to grow by 4.9% next year.
“This means GDP probably won’t get back to its pre-pandemic level until 2022 at the earliest,” the council said in a statement, adding that the government’s stimulus measures were likely to support the recovery.
2020-06-23 16:34:09
The University of Karachi on Tuesday directed all the affiliated colleges and institutes — running under the semester system programs of the varsity — to continue their courses online till July 15, 2020.
The university, in a statement, said: "The assessment policy for online teaching will be communicated in due course of time."
Meanwhile, as per the decisions of the recently held Academic Council meeting and the instructions of the KU Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Khalid Mahmood Iraqi, the chairpersons of the concerned colleges and institutions are directed to remain in contact with the varsity’s administration for a decision about the final semester examination.
2020-06-23 16:04:07
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 186,598 on Tuesday after Sindh recorded new cases.
According to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, 1,564 new cases were recorded in the province in the last 24 hours, taking the provincial tally to 72,656.
He added, the province had also recorded 21 more deaths to take the toll in the province to 1,124.
2020-06-23 15:51:41
French drugmaker Sanofi has said it expects to get approval for the potential COVID-19 vaccine it is developing with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline by the first half of next year, faster than previously anticipated.
“We are being guided by our dialogue with regulatory authorities,” Sanofi research chief John Reed told reporters, when asked about the accelerated time frame.
There are currently no vaccines to prevent the coronavirus that has infected more than 9 million people and killed over 469,000 globally, and only a couple of medicines that have demonstrated benefit in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in clinical trials.
Read the full story here.
2020-06-23 15:23:08
Saudi Arabia's Hajj minister said on Tuesday that the number of pilgrims attending haj this year would be limited to around 1,000 local citizens and residents, to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.
Pilgrims coming from overseas will be barred this year and the ministry will apply a strict health criteria to choose pilgrims who may attend, including excluding those above 65 years old, Mohammed Benten said at a news conference.
2020-06-23 15:02:02
China has approved a coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products’ unit to begin human testing, the company said in a filing on Tuesday.
The potential vaccine, co-developed by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical and the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has received a certificate from the National Medical Products Administration to launch clinical trials.
Chinese researchers and companies are testing six experimental shots in humans, and more than a dozen vaccines are in different stages of clinical trials globally against the virus that has killed over 470,000 people.
However, none of the them have passed large-scale, late-stage phase 3 clinical trials, a necessary step before entering the consumer market.
2020-06-23 14:41:40
Pakistani actor Rubina Asharf has recovered from the coronavirus, the actor’s husband Tarir Mirza said on Tuesday.
Mirza added, the actor’s coronavirus test had come back as negative.
Pakistani actress Rubina Ashraf, who contracted novel coronavirus on June 3, has been shifted to ICU after her health deteriorated.
The actor had been shifted to an ICU earlier this month after she had said was facing breathing issues due to coronavirus.
2020-06-23 14:40:53
Russia on Tuesday reported 7,425 new cases of the novel coronavirus, pushing its nationwide case total to 599,705, the world's third highest tally.
The country's coronavirus crisis response centre said 153 people had died in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 8,359.
2020-06-23 13:36:17
Barcelona’s opera house reopened its doors to perform its first concert since the coronavirus lockdown to an audience of plants.
2020-06-23 13:26:05
China reported 22 new coronavirus cases for June 22, 13 of which were in the capital Beijing, the National Health Commission said on Tuesday.
This compared with 18 confirmed cases a day earlier, 9 of which were in Beijing. Authorities are restricting movement of people in the capital and stepping up other measures to prevent the virus from spreading following a series of local infections.
2020-06-23 13:17:17
Balochistan has reported a daily decline in the number of COVID-19 cases for the third time, according to the provincial health department.
"About 112 cases of COVID-19 cases were reported in the province yesterday, 147 cases were reported 2 days ago and 166 cases of coronavirus surfaced three days ago," the Balochistan health department highlighted.
The total number of coronavirus cases has reached 9,587, whereas, 3,670 people have recovered in the province so far.
Read the full story here.
2020-06-23 12:08:59
2020-06-23 11:40:26
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Mushtaq Ghani tested positive for the coronavirus for a second time, the provincial assembly speaker said on Tuesday.
“I had myself tested after two weeks again and the test came back as positive again," Ghani said, adding he had quarantined himself at home for the last 10 days.
He added he does not have any symptoms of the virus.
Ghani had previously tested positive for the virus on June 14.
2020-06-23 11:20:11
Black Americans enrolled in Medicare were around four times as likely as their white counterparts to be hospitalised for COVID-19, US government data showed, highlighting significant racial disparities in health outcomes during the pandemic.
“The disparities in the data reflect longstanding challenges facing minority communities and low income older adults,” said Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which released the data.
Black Americans had a hospitalisation rate 465 per 100,000 Black Medicare beneficiaries. For other groups measured by CMS, the rates of per capita hospitalisations were 258 for Hispanics, 187 for Asians and 123 for whites.
2020-06-23 10:59:41
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 185,034 on Tuesday after the country reported 3,946 new infections during the last 24 hours.
As of now, Punjab has reported 68,308 cases, Sindh 71,092, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 22,633 cases, Balochistan 9,587 cases, Islamabad 11,219 cases, Gilgit-Baltistan 1,326 cases and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 869 cases.
The country death toll also climbed to 3,695 with 105 deaths reported over the last 24 hours.
Pakistan has also conducted 24,599 tests during the last 24 hours, with 73,471 people having recovered so far in the country.
2020-06-23 10:28:38
Pakistan recorded more than 9,532 violations of health guidelines/instructions in the last 24 hours, the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) said.
According to the NCOC more than 874 markets/shops, one industry units was sealed and 1,409 transporters were fined.
Details of health guidelines violations across Pakistan:
ICT
Violations – 49
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 27; Industries – 0; Transport – 10
AJK
Violations – 585
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 67; Industry – 0; Transport – 155
Balochistan
Violations – 818
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 121; Transport – 294
GB
Violations – 156
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 34; Transport – 20
KP
Violations – 4,479
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 213; Transport – 105
Punjab
Violations – 2,445
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 387; Industries – 1; Transport – 820
Sindh
Violations – 1,000
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops –25 ; Industries - 0 Transport – 5
2020-06-23 10:09:03
Gilead Sciences has said it expects supply of its potential COVID-19 drug remdesivir to exceed two million courses by year-end, more than double its previous target of 1 million.
The company also said it planned to start trials of an easier-to-use inhaled version of the antiviral drug, currently administered only intravenously, by August.
Remdesivir is at the forefront in the fight against the virus after the drug helped shorten hospital recovery times in a clinical trial. But producing and supplying billions of doses remain major concerns as the fast-spreading respiratory illness overwhelms healthcare systems around the world.
"We will continue to collaborate globally to ensure sufficient worldwide supply," Gilead Chief Executive Officer Daniel O'Day said in a statement.
Gilead had previously said it expected to produce one million courses of remdesivir by 2020.
The company also announced plans for a "next wave of clinical trials", including studies in pregnant women.
2020-06-23 09:44:41
New York City has begun Phase Two of reopening which allows people to eat outdoors at restaurants and barbershops and salons able to open at 50% capacity
Read the full story here.
2020-06-23 09:24:00
Brazil recorded 21,432 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours as well as 654 new deaths resulting from the disease, the country's health ministry said on Monday.
Brazil has registered 1.1 million cases since the pandemic began, while cumulative deaths reached 51,271, according to the ministry
2020-06-23 09:10:11
The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in the US could surpass 150,000, President Donald Trump said Monday.
"It could get up to 150," Trump said in an interview with the cable television channel Spectrum News. "It could go beyond that.
"But we would have lost two million to four million lives (without mitigation)," he said.
A study published by the Imperial College of London in mid-March warned of a possible 2.2 million deaths in the United States if no efforts had been taken to mitigate the spread of the highly-contagious virus.
The US death toll from COVID-19 has topped 120,000, according to a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
"We’ve done a good job and now we’re bringing the country back," Trump said.
The president was also asked about holding more campaign rallies at a time when the virus was still spreading in several southern and western states.
"We’re always worried about safety," he said. "We want to get rid of this thing."
2020-06-23 00:16:41
2020-06-22 23:19:47
2020-06-22 23:15:38
PARIS: French luxury label Christian Dior said it would press ahead with a calendar of fashion shows for this year starting in July with an Italian catwalk display - but without the celebrated front-row audience of A-listers.
The coronavirus crisis has accelerated a rethink among high-end brands of how collections are presented, with some opting out of costly events and restricting the number of clothing ranges they produce.
Dior, one of the LVMH conglomerate’s biggest labels, said it was maintaining its calendar of industry fashion weeks that brings buyers and bloggers to Paris, and would produce other collections in between.
It will premiere a mid-season “cruise” range in the Italian city of Lecce on July 22 with a streamed live show, Chief Executive Pietro Beccari said, after a presentation planned for May was postponed.
2020-06-22 23:09:05
2020-06-22 23:03:11
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan: Kyrgyzstan reported a significant rise in coronavirus cases on Monday, less than a month after the Central Asian nation's government lifted restrictions in key cities.
The country is one of several ex-Soviet nations that have seen a rise in cases in recent days, including neighbouring Kazakhstan.
Kyrgyzstans government reported a daily record of 205 new cases on Monday.
The total number of coronavirus cases has reached 3,356 in Kyrgyzstan, of whom 2,021 patients have recovered, while 40 have died — up from 16 at the beginning of the month.
First Deputy Prime Minister Almazbek Baatyrbekov said Monday that the premises of a former US military base that has already been used to quarantine arrivals in the country could be used to house coronavirus patients as numbers increase.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-22 22:48:01
2020-06-22 22:39:34
TORONTO: Toronto, Canada’s biggest city and its financial capital, will allow businesses to reopen starting Friday, as it joins other regions in the province of Ontario in ending a three-month pandemic lockdown, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said.
Restaurants in Toronto, along with Peel Health Region which encapsulates the city’s densely populated suburbs, will be able to open their patios, Ford said. Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, started gradually reopening its economy this month, but Toronto was left out of the initial list.
Canadian provinces imposed lockdowns in March to contain the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed 8,430 people in Canada and infected 101,337, according to latest government data.
The only health region still in phase one of three reopening phases is Windsor-Essex, where an outbreak is hitting migrant workers on farms.
2020-06-22 22:36:40
Sindh is testing more people as compared to other provinces resulting in more reported infections, provincial education minister Saeed Ghani said.
Speaking in Geo News' programme "Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Sath", he said: "Smart lockdown has been criticised by several people, even Cheif Minister Sindh, in the NCOC meeting stated that the smart lockdown would not yield results."
Talking about whether the actual cases could be more than the reported infections, he said: "Yes, there is a chance that the real numbers might be more than the registered ones as several people refrain from getting themselves tested for the virus."
2020-06-22 22:29:50
Information Minister Shibli Faraz said that a prolonged lockdown was not sustainable for Pakistan as the country's economy could not bear it.
of the restaurants that have closed due to the lockdown do not have the capacity to reopen [...] A complete lockdown will have severe effects on the economy," he said while speaking in Geo News' programme "Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Sath".
"If we would have prolonged the lockdown our economy would have collapsed. The opposition did not recommend an alternative plan," Faraz said.
The information minister said that according to the country's capacity, the government had ramped up its efforts to control the virus.
"There can come a time when there won't be space for people in hospitals, till that time people should at least follow SOPs," he added.
2020-06-22 22:23:44
PARIS: Social distancing and face masks were largely forgotten as thousands of French people danced and partied well into Monday in the first big blow out since the coronavirus lockdown.
The annual midsummer Festival of Music usually brings millions of people out onto the streets across the country for impromptu concerts in cafes and on street corners that go on long into the night.
And despite emergency measures which ban gatherings of more than 10 people, thousands thronged the trendy Canal Saint Martin and the Marais districts of Paris late Sunday to dance and sing along to bands and DJs.
Not even heavy showers could dampen spirits, with few beyond those serving spicey merguez sausages from street stalls bothering to wear masks.
"The Festival of Music is important, it's a national event," 28-year-old reveller Violette told AFP as she boogied to a band in northern Paris.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-22 22:18:34
WASHINGTON: US home sales dropped to their lowest level in more than 9-1/2 years in May, strengthening expectations for a sharp contraction in housing market activity in the second quarter following disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report from the National Association of Realtors on Monday also showed the smallest annual home price increase in more than eight years. The slump in existing home sales reflected closings on contracts signed in March and April, when nearly the whole country was under lockdowns to slow the spread of the respiratory illness.
With applications for home loans surging to an 11-year high in recent weeks amid record low mortgage rates, May was probably the nadir for the existing housing market. Data last week showed a sharp rebound in building permits in May. But nearly 20 million people are unemployed and housing supply remains tight.
“Home sales may bounce with pent-up demand following the shutdown of the economy starting in March, but the massive scale of job losses and cautious consumers rebuilding their savings may limit sales,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York. “There is still a long road to recovery for the broader economy.”
2020-06-22 22:02:35
2020-06-22 21:44:16
GENEVA: Many countries that have been successful in tackling the novel coronavirus are seeing an increase in cases due to religious events and other vulnerable settings like expatriate gatherings, the World Health Organization’s Maria Van Kerkhove said.
“Any opportunity that the virus has to take hold, it will. It is really important that countries are in a position to rapidly detect these cases,” she told an online briefing.
The WHO’s Mike Ryan said that there seemed to be new clusters in South Korea linked to clubs, shelters and amusement parks and that waste water findings in northern Italy showed there was a chance the virus was circulating there before anyone had realised.
2020-06-22 21:35:24
2020-06-22 21:24:18
Haider Ali, Haris Rauf, and Shadab Khan have tested positive for coronavirus, the Pakistan Cricket Board confirmed.
The PCB, in a statement, said: "The players had shown no symptoms until they were tested in Rawalpindi on Sunday ahead of the Pakistan men’s national cricket team’s tour to England."
The PCB medical panel is in contact with the three who have been advised to immediately go into self-isolation.
Imad Wasim and Usman Shinwari, also screened in Rawalpindi, have tested negative and, as such, will travel to Lahore on 24 June.
"The other players and team officials, barring Cliffe Deacon, Shoaib Malik and Waqar Younis, underwent tests at their respective centres in Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar on Monday," the statement read.
2020-06-22 21:15:28
GENEVA: The World Health Organisation will issue further guidance on air travel in coming days as countries open up from their coronavirus lockdowns, the WHO’s Mike Ryan said.
“It’s not an easy dilemma... There is no zero-risk,” he told an online briefing.
2020-06-22 20:56:32
National Command and Operations Centre situational brief was held with Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar in the chair, a statement said.
The forum undertook a comprehensive stock on targeted lockdown by provincial chief secretaries, need assessment of oxygen, epidemic curve data, and update on Resource Management System (RMS) and Pak Nigheban App.
Speaking on the occasion, Asad Umar said targeted lockdown aimed to isolate maximum COVID-19 infected cases instead of merely restricting a huge number of population.
Umer also observed that there was a positive difference seen in the urban areas with maximum compliance of wearing masks in public places.
The forum was briefed that as many as 549 lockdowns were imposed across the country.
2020-06-22 20:48:30
KYIV: Ukraine’s president said he would compensate a cafe that was fined for serving him and his entourage during the coronavirus lockdown.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and some officials were photographed drinking coffee at the L’umore cafe in the western city of Khmelnytsky during a visit on June 3, at a time when cafes were barred from serving customers inside.
A picture released by the president’s own office to publicise the trip showed them grouped around a table, none of them wearing masks.
The photo was criticised on social media and, last week, a court in Khmelnytsky fined the cafe 17,000 hryvnia ($638) for breaking government controls imposed in March to curb the spread of COVID-19.
2020-06-22 20:40:06
Gilead Sciences Inc expects supply of its potential COVID-19 drug remdesivir to exceed two million courses by year-end, the company said on Monday, more than double its previous target of 1 million.
"We will continue to collaborate globally to ensure sufficient worldwide supply," Gilead Chief Executive Officer Daniel O'Day said in a statement.
Gilead’s expectations of two million courses suggests sales of between $2 billion and $3 billion between 2020 and 2021 at a price of $1,000 to $2,000 per course, according to Jefferies analyst Michael Yee.
2020-06-22 20:31:50
ISTANBUL/ANTALYA: Turkey’s Mediterranean coasts and historic attractions face a critical week as the government presses to open borders and salvage at least part of a tourist season already battered by the coronavirus pandemic.
With beaches largely empty and many hotels deciding whether to open, Tourism Minister Mehmet Ersoy told Reuters he hoped the world’s sixth-largest destination could attract up to half of last year’s 45 million arrivals.
But much depends on talks to begin flights from Russia, Germany and Britain - also hard hit by the virus - which should reach some conclusions by early next week, he said.
The stakes are high for Turkey, where a rebound this month in COVID-19 cases has raised concerns in a country where tourism accounts for up to 12% of the economy. Foreign arrivals fell by two thirds in the first five months of the year.
To convince foreigners and their governments that travel is safe, Ankara launched a “healthy tourism” programme including health and hygiene checks, and more than 600 hotels have applied for certification. It is lobbying some 70 countries with a focus on the European Union.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-22 20:23:36
BEIJING: Levels of an antibody found in recovered COVID-19 patients fell sharply in 2-3 months after infection for both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients, according to a Chinese study, raising questions about the length of any immunity against the novel coronavirus.
The research, published in Nature Medicine on June 18, highlights the risks of using COVID-19 ‘immunity passports’ and supports the prolonged use of public health interventions such as social distancing and isolating high-risk groups, researchers said.
The research, which studied 37 symptomatic patients and 37 asymptomatic patients, found that of those who tested positive for the presence of the IgG antibody, one of the main types of antibodies induced after infection, over 90% showed sharp declines in 2-3 months.
The median percentage decrease was more than 70% for both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients.
For neutralising serum antibodies, the median percentage of decrease for symptomatic individuals was 11.7%, while for asymptomatic individuals it was 8.3%.
2020-06-22 20:14:44
LONDON: A weekly coronavirus testing regime using a “no-swab” saliva test is being trialled in southern England and could result in a simpler and quicker way to detect outbreaks of the virus, the British government said.
“Saliva testing could potentially make it even easier for people to take coronavirus tests at home, without having to use swabs,” said Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
“This trial will also help us learn if routine, at-home testing could pick up cases of the virus earlier.”
The tests do not use the standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, which experts say can miss cases because of errors in collecting samples from the back of the throat using a long nasopharyngeal swab.
Instead a different technique, called RT-Lamp, is used in the trial’s saliva test, which the government said had already be shown to be highly promising.
2020-06-22 20:06:28
NEW YORK: After more than 100 days of lockdown, New York City residents on Monday celebrated their progress in curbing the coronavirus pandemic by getting their first haircuts in months, shopping at long-closed stores, and dining at outdoor cafes.
New York City is the last region in the state to move into Phase 2 of reopening with restaurants and bars offering outdoor service and many shops reopening. Barber shops and hair salons welcomed customers for the first time since mid-March.
Playgrounds were also due to reopen on Monday in the most populous US city. At the same time, a dozen states in the South and Southwest reported record increases in new coronavirus cases - and often record increases in hospitalizations as well, a metric not affected by more testing.
The number of new cases rose by a record last week in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, together home to about a third of the US population. Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming also experienced record spikes in cases.
2020-06-22 20:01:21
The novel coronavirus has spread rapidly in Pakistan in recent weeks, and the government has been racing to enhance testing and treatment capacities to cope with the rising number of cases.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's official tally of confirmed cases has crossed the 180,000 mark and continues to grow, but many doctors and experts believe the actual number of sick persons may be much higher and has not been truly captured yet due to limited testing.
Additionally, because most cases tend to be asymptomatic — that is, people who are sick may never know they are sick and therefore never report their illness — it adds to the difficulty of keeping track of the true number of infections at any given point in time.
Click here to calculate coronavirus cases in Pakistan.
2020-06-22 19:52:33
Global cases of the novel coronavirus surpassed 9 million on Monday, as Brazil and India grappled with a surge in infections, and the United States, China and other hard-hit countries reported new outbreaks, according to a Reuters tally.
The first case was reported in China in early January and it took until mid-May to reach 4.5 million cases. It has taken just five weeks to double to 9 million cases, the tally shows.
The United States leads the world with the highest number of infections, at about 2.2 million or 25% of all reported cases.
The tally shows the disease is spreading fastest in Latin America, which now accounts for 23% of all cases.
Brazil has the second most cases behind the United States, and India is on track to overtake Russia as the third most affected country by cases.
The number of global infections continues to rise at a rate of around 1%-2% a day since the beginning of June, even as many countries are taking steps to ease lockdown measures.
2020-06-22 19:39:29
2020-06-22 19:26:42
LONDON: The number of people confirmed to have COVID-19 who have died has risen by 15 to 42,647, the lowest daily toll since mid-March, health officials said.
Britain’s daily tally of deaths peaked in April, when the toll exceeded 1,000 on nine days.
The recorded number of COVID-19 deaths usually dips on Sunday and Monday due to delays in reporting fatalities during the weekend.
2020-06-22 19:23:49
2020-06-22 19:22:55
BRUSSELS: Euro zone consumer confidence jumped more than expected in June, a flash estimate from the European Commission showed, as governments gradually eased lockdown restrictions imposed in March against the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Commission’s flash consumer confidence indicator for the 19 countries sharing the euro improved by 4.1 points to -14.7 in June. Economists polled by Reuters had expected an improvement to -15.0 in June.
2020-06-22 19:11:30
Walt Disney Co will reopen its Disneyland Paris theme park in phases from July 15, days after it plans to open its parks in the United States, the company said.
It expects to reopen Disneyland Park, Walt Disney Studios Park, Disney's Newport Bay Club hotel and Disney Village, according here to Natacha Rafalski, president of Disneyland Paris.
The company had closed its theme parks around the world in January as the coronavirus started spreading globally, leading to sweeping lockdowns and travel restrictions.
2020-06-22 19:04:34
Croatia’s Borna Coric became the second player from Novak Djokovic’s Adria Tour exhibition tournament to test positive for COVID-19, raising serious concerns for tennis governing bodies in their bid to restart the sport after a lengthy shutdown.
The professional circuit was halted in early March as nations closed borders and imposed lockdowns to contain the spread of the virus.
Last week the men’s ATP and the WTA, which runs women’s events, issued revised calendars for the resumption of the circuit from August while organisers of the US Open said the Grand Slam will be staged without fans as scheduled from August 31 to September 13 in New York.
Coric, ranked No 33 in the world, revealed on Twitter that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
“I want to make sure anyone who has been in contact with me during the last few days get tested,” the 23-year-old said. “I am really sorry for any harm I might have caused. I’m feeling well and don’t have any symptoms.”
2020-06-22 18:52:35
Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mehmood chaired a meeting to mull over the reopening of educational institutions under SOPs.
2020-06-22 18:46:24
WELLINGTON: New Zealand extended a ban on cruise ships arriving in the country and tightened measures for visitors to exit quarantine, after reporting more coronavirus cases linked to overseas travel.
“We are extending the current cruise ship ban which was due to expire on the 30th of June,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a news conference.
Cargo vessels will still be allowed to load and unload, fishing vessels to unload and resupply, and vessels can come to New Zealand to undertake repairs and refitting, Ardern said, although some quarantine rules would be tightened.
Ardern further tightened border measures on Monday, saying people in quarantine may need to do multiple virus tests, and they must test negative for coronavirus before leaving the facilities.
“For a person to meet the low-risk indicator by day 14 to leave isolation or quarantine, they are expressly required to submit to a test and that test must be negative,” Ardern said at the news conference.
2020-06-22 18:42:00
2020-06-22 18:32:59
LONDON: International music and film stars will headline a globally televised and streamed fundraising concert on Saturday to help fight COVID-19 as part of a joint initiative by the advocacy group Global Citizen and the European Commission.
The initiative, called “Global Goal: Unite For Our Future,” is aiming to raise billions of dollars in private and public donations to help lessen the impact of the pandemic on marginalised communities.
Speaking at an online panel ahead of the event, pop star Miley Cyrus said the pandemic was hitting the world’s poor and marginalised people the hardest. She urged donors committing funds for tests, treatments and vaccines to ensure they are developed in ways that everyone everywhere has access to them.
Hosted by actor Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, the virtual concert will feature Cyrus, Chloe x Halle, Christine and the Queens, Coldplay and Shakira and others, and include actors Charlize Theron and Hugh Jackman as well as retired soccer star David Beckham.
“We need our world leaders to commit the billions of dollars needed to develop and equitably deliver testing, treatments and vaccines,” said Hugh Evans, Global Citizen’s chief executive.
2020-06-22 18:27:00
2020-06-22 18:10:02
NEW DELHI: India reported a record number of new coronavirus cases and a death toll of more than 400 people in the past 24 hours as foreign embassies warned their citizens in the country that hospitals might not have beds for them.
The 15,000 new cases brought India’s total to more than 425,000, behind only the United States, Brazil and Russia, according to data from the federal health ministry.
Nearly 14,000 people have now died from the disease caused by the virus since the first case in India in January.
The death toll in India remains low when compared to countries with similar numbers of cases but public health experts fear its hospitals will be unable to cope with a rise in cases.
2020-06-22 17:58:44
RIYADH: People in Saudi Arabia ventured out on Sunday night for the first time in three months to celebrate the end of a nationwide coronavirus curfew, dining out, cruising on motorcycles and walking pets after the daytime heat subsided.
The kingdom introduced stringent measures in March to halt the spread of the new coronavirus, including 24-hour curfews in most towns and cities, with most people only allowed out for essential shopping or urgent medical reasons.
“As soon as we heard that the curfew is over, we immediately contacted the guys to go out,” said Hesham Mahros, among a group of Harley-Davidson motorcycle riders returning to their city centre haunt in the capital Riyadh.
“Life is back once again, it’s a different feeling.”
Some restaurants put on musical performances to mark the occasion.
“We were so happy, from the bottom of our hearts... We sang with our customers and we had fun and celebrated the return of normal life in Riyadh and hopefully for the whole world soon, God willing,” said Ahmad Moaead, a waiter at Alkofeah restaurant.
2020-06-22 17:48:22
SARABUR: Thai scientists administered a second dose of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine to monkeys, looking for another positive response to enable clinical trials in humans as early as October.
The Thai vaccine is one of at least 100 being worked on globally.
Thirteen monkeys were immunised on Monday and the next two weeks will be critical in determining whether researchers can proceed with further tests.
“We’re going to analyse the immune response once again. If the immune response is very, very high, then this is a good one,” said Kiat Ruxrungtham, lead researcher of the COVID-19 vaccine development programme at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
2020-06-22 16:35:15
Prime Minister Imran Khan defended his decision not to impose a complete COVID-19 lockdown once again, saying that Pakistan's circumstances were different from Wuhan city and Europe.
Speaking about the havoc that the coronavirus has wreaked on Pakistan's economy, the prime minister said that he had not been in favour of imposing a lockdown as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had done.
The prime minister spoke about the damage that had been done to the economies of developed countries like Italy and the United States when they had to impose a complete lockdown, saying that long cues of people could be seen in America asking for food and charity.
"So it had to happen in our country [too]," he said. "And if provinces would have asked me I would never have allowed such a lockdown. Because when you are about to impose a lockdown, you should think about the effects your decisions will have on the masses," he added.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-22 17:36:29
SEOUL: Health authorities in South Korea said for the first time it is in the midst of a “second wave” of novel coronavirus infections around Seoul, driven by small but persistent outbreaks stemming from a holiday in May.
KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong said it had become clear that a holiday weekend in early May marked the beginning of a new wave of infections focused in the densely populated greater Seoul area, which had previously seen few cases.
“In the metropolitan area, we believe that the first wave was from March to April as well as February to March,” Jeong said at a regular briefing. “Then we see that the second wave which was triggered by the May holiday has been going on.”
“We originally predicted that the second wave would emerge in fall or winter,” Jeong said. “Our forecast turned out to be wrong. As long as people have close contact with others, we believe that infections will continue.”
2020-06-22 17:29:38
Pakistan has decided to open the third border terminal at Ghulam Khan for bilateral trade and to allow transit trade and import from Afghanistan through Torkham and Chaman border terminals as well.
“This arrangement on trade will be in operation for 6 days a week. Saturdays will be reserved for pedestrian movement on these border crossing terminals. These steps are being taken after implementing all necessary protocols related to COVID-19 pandemic,” the Foreign Office said in a press release.
The decision was made keeping in view of both countries’ desire to further increase mutual trade, strong fraternal ties and upon the renewed Afghan Government’s request, the press release added.
2020-06-22 17:25:12
LONDON: British industrial output recorded its biggest quarterly fall on record during the three months to June as COVID-19 heavily disrupted operations, and a further decline is likely in the months to come, a survey showed.
The Confederation of British Industry’s headline industrial orders measure inched up to -58 in June from May’s 38-year low of -62, but remained far below its pre-COVID level, while export orders fell by the most since records began in 1977 at -79.
The CBI’s measure of industrial output over the past three months fell to its lowest since that measure started in July 1975, sinking to -57 from -54.
“The COVID-19 crisis has been hugely challenging for the manufacturing sector, and these figures reflect the tough circumstances faced by firms across the country,” said Tom Crotty, group director of chemicals producer INEOS and chair of the CBI’s manufacturing council.
2020-06-22 17:18:09
2020-06-22 17:13:08
ROME: Italy is preparing a new spending package worth 15-20 billion euros to help its battered economy through the coronavirus crisis, which will push its budget deficit beyond 11% of national output, a government source told Reuters.
The new package, which must be approved by parliament, will involve additional borrowing and drive Italy’s public debt towards 157% of national output from the 155.7% currently targeted, the source added.
“We need to boost funds to supplement the income of workers temporarily laid off and support local authorities whose tax revenues were hit by the lockdown,” said the source, citing some of the uses the new borrowing would be put to.
2020-06-22 17:08:28
LONDON: Oil prices fell as concern grew that a record rise in global coronavirus infections could stall recovery in fuel demand, outweighing tighter supplies from major producers.
Brent crude LCOc1 was down 24 cents, or 0.6%, at $41.95 a barrel by 1141 GMT. The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude contract for August CLc2, which became the day’s more active contract, fell 25 cents, or 0.6%, to $39.58.
“Infections are rising in key markets around the world and there are valid concerns that the world is in for a prolonged period of dealing with its consequences,” said Rystad Energy’s head of oil markets Bjornar Tonhaugen.
After weeks of rising, prices of physical oil have begun to ease as the rally succumbs to the reality of poor refinery margins and brimming inventories, traders and analysts say.
Both Brent and U.S. contracts rose about 9% last week, supported by a recovery in fuel demand as nations resume economic activity after easing lockdowns.
2020-06-22 16:03:58
Sindh on Monday reported 1,464 new cases of the coronavirus taking the provincial tally to 71,092.
According to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, the province also reported 14 new deaths in the last 24 hours to take the death toll from the virus to 1,103.
Confirmed cases in the country now stand at 182,552.
2020-06-22 15:26:48
The global coronavirus pandemic has been exacerbated by polititicisation, the World Health Organisation's director general said on Monday.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was speaking at a virtual health forum organised by the World Government Summit, an event organised by Dubai.
2020-06-22 15:05:27
2020-06-22 14:39:05
At least seven phases of Islamabad's Ghauri Town were sealed on Monday after new cases emerged, Geo News reported quoting district administration sources.
According to sources, the areas will be under watch for nine days.
Sources added the decision to lockdown the areas in Ghauri Town was taken after there were was a sudden spike in cases.
I-8, I-9 and G-9 are already under a “smart lockdown”.
2020-06-22 14:26:34
Health authorities in South Korea have said they are in the midst of a "second wave" of novel coronavirus infections focused around its densely populated capital, stemming from a holiday in May.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) had previously said South Korea's first wave had never really ended.
But on Monday, KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong said it had become clear that a holiday weekend in early May marked the beginning of a new wave of infections focused in the greater Seoul area, which had previously seen few cases.
“In the metropolitan area, we believe that the first wave was from March to April as well as February to March," Jeong said at a regular briefing. "Then we see that the second wave which was triggered by the May holiday has been going on.”
At the end of February, South Korea reported a peak of more than 900 cases in a
"We originally predicted that the second wave would emerge in fall or winter," Jeong said. "Our forecast turned out to be wrong. As long as people have close contact with others, we believe that infections will continue."
2020-06-22 13:42:04
Russia on Monday reported 7,600 new cases of the coronavirus, pushing its nationwide case total to 592,280, the world's third largest tally.
The coronavirus taskforce response said 95 people had died in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 8,206.
2020-06-22 13:19:57
Thailand hopes to ease some coronavirus restrictions on foreigners entering the country after going for 28 days without recording any domestic transmissions, a senior official said on Monday.
"The first three groups will be able to return to Thailand and stay in 14-day state quarantine," said the spokesman for the government's Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration, Taweesin Wisanuyothin.
Medical tourists will also be allowed back for treatment in hospital, he said.
Thailand, which has banned international commercial flights up to the end of June, has recorded 3,151 cases and 58 deaths related to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
2020-06-22 13:10:07
Europe is preparing to create a reservist “army” of medical professionals ready to be deployed wherever needed to work in wards with seriously ill patients.
European countries have been giving medics crash courses in how to deal with COVID-19 patients, and are now looking at ways to retrain staff to avoid shortages of key workers if there is a second wave of the novel coronavirus.
“We need a healthcare army,” said Maurizio Cecconi, president-elect of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), which brings together medics from around the world who work in wards with extremely ill patients.
2020-06-22 12:31:20
2020-06-22 12:16:44
Abu Dhabi has eased restrictions to allow movement between its cities for all residents starting on Tuesday but extended restrictions on entry into the emirate by non-residents, its media office said on Monday.
Abu Dhabi, the largest and wealthiest member of the United Arab Emirates federation, extended a ban on entering the emirate without a permit for another week, the media office said in a tweet, while allowing residents to exit the emirate freely.
2020-06-22 11:59:47
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 537 to 190,359, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
The reported death toll rose by 3 to 8,885, the tally showed.
2020-06-22 11:42:43
Beijing has reported nine new cases of the coronavirus in the city for June 21, down from 22 a day earlier.
The resurgence has been linked to a wholesale food centre in the southwest of Beijing. So far, 236 people in the city have been infected in the outbreak.
2020-06-22 11:17:56
Pakistan has allowed transit trade and import from Afghanistan from Chaman and Torkham border terminals besides opening of Ghulam Khan terminal for bilateral trade from today, reported Radio Pakistan.
According to the Foreign Office, this arrangement will be in operation six days a week to further increase trade
Saturdays will be reserved for pedestrian movement on these border crossing terminals, the Foreign Office added.
2020-06-22 10:56:45
In the last 24 hours, Pakistan conducted 28,855 coronavirus tests, increasing its testing capacity to 71,780.
2020-06-22 10:43:37
The World Health Organisation reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 183,020 in a 24-hour period.
The biggest increase was from North and South America with over 116,000 new cases, according to a daily report. Total global cases are over 8.7 million with more than 461,000 deaths, according to the WHO.
The previous record for new cases was 181,232 on June 18.
2020-06-22 10:23:36
The National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) has reported more than 6,862 health violations during the last 24 hours in the country.
According to the NCOC, more than 880 markets/shops and six industries were sealed while 1,229 transporters were fined.
Details of health guidelines violations across Pakistan:
Islamabad Capital Territory
Violations – 33
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 23; Industries – 2; Transport – 9
Aad Jammu and Kashmir
Violations – 370
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 9; Industry – 0; Transport – 186
Balochistan
Violations – 684
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 71; Transport – 287
Gilgit Baltistan
Violations – 178
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 93; Transport – 11
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Violations – 3648
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 209; Transport – 113
Punjab
Violations – 1949
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 475; Industries – 4; Transport – 623
2020-06-22 10:13:20
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 181,088 in Pakistan on Monday after new cases were detected in the country.
According to the National Command and Control Centre, 250 new cases were reported in Islamabad and 32 new cases were reported in the country over the last 24 hours.
The country also reported four news deaths, three in Islamabad and one death from the coronavirus in AJK.
2020-06-22 10:02:20
Brazil officially passed 50,000 coronavirus deaths on Sunday, with more than 1 million total cases, the Health Ministry said.
Brazil, the world's number 2 coronavirus hot spot after the United States, now has a total of 1,085,038 confirmed cases and 50,617 deaths, up from 49,976 on Saturday, the ministry said.
2020-06-21 23:50:28
2020-06-21 22:55:45
2020-06-21 22:29:56
2020-06-21 21:34:49
The drastic reduction in pollution during coronavirus lockdowns around the world should lead to greater concern for the environment as restrictions are lifted, Pope Francis has said.
At his Sunday address in St. Peter’s Square, Francis said the pandemic made many people reflect on their relationship with the environment. The square reopened to the public a month ago and Italy’s last travel restrictions were lifted on June 3.
“The lockdown has reduced pollution and revealed once more the beauty of so many places free from traffic and noise. Now, with the resumption of activities, we should all be more responsible for looking after our common home,” he said, using his term for the Earth.
Air and water pollution levels plummeted in many places.
In Venice, the usually dark waters of the city’s canals were so clean because of reduced boat traffic that fish could be seen for the first time in many years.
Dolphins swam closer to ports, racoons emerged in New York’s Central Park and mountain goats roamed streets in Wales.
In some cities, such as Milan, pollution reduction spurred officials to plan more pedestrian islands and cycling paths.
The Roman Catholic Church is currently marking the fifth anniversary of Francis’ landmark encyclical “Laudato Si” (Praised Be) on the need to protect nature.
2020-06-21 21:31:58
2020-06-21 20:43:05
PepsiCo China has said that operations at one of its food processing plants in Beijing have been suspended after at least one employee tested positive for the coronavirus, in the latest outbreak of COVID-19 virus in the capital.
Production at the factory in the Daxing district was halted as soon as the first coronavirus case was confirmed on June 15, PepsiCo China director of corporate affairs, Fan Zhimin, told a news conference, without saying how many cases were detected.
A senior official for the Beijing disease control authority, Pang Xinghuo, told the same news conference that eight people at the Daxing plant had tested positive.
Lay’s, which is owned by PepsiCo, said in a post on its micro-blog that the affected food-processing plant produced a small quantity of its potato chips. It said the chance of any virus surviving during food processing was very low.
Beijing reported its first case in the latest COVID-19 outbreak in the city on June 11. The resurgence, in which 227 people have been infected, has been linked to Beijing’s Xinfadi wholesale food centre near Daxing district.
2020-06-21 19:23:59
2020-06-21 19:15:52
US President Donald Trump returned Saturday to one of his favorite spots — a campaign rally stage — defying the pandemic and attacking Democratic rivals at an event with crowds far smaller than promised.
Gathering his political faithful for a much-hyped rally in Oklahoma, his first in three months, the Republican president sought to reinvigorate his flagging campaign in the face of a crushing health and economic crisis as well as protests against racial injustice that have swept the nation in recent weeks.
Trump all but claimed victory over the pandemic that has killed some 120,000 Americans — "I have done a phenomenal job with it!" he insisted — even as six members of his own Tulsa advance team tested positive for COVID-19.
The event — which the White House promised would be flooded with up to 100,000 people, but actually did not fill the 19,000-seat arena where Trump spoke — has emerged as a flashpoint in the pandemic era.
Read more here.
2020-06-21 18:58:11
Passengers wearing masks and wheeling suitcases have begun to arrive at Madrid’s main airport and French people are crossing the border to buy bargain alcohol and tobacco as Spain opens its borders to most European countries and ends a state of emergency imposed to contain COVID-19.
Spain’s borders are now open to all European Union countries except Portugal, as well as Schengen area members outside the bloc and Britain in a much-needed boost to the country’s tourism industry which accounts for more than 12% of the economy.
British tourists will be allowed in without having to quarantine, Spain said on Saturday, even though they will still be subject to 14 days isolation upon their return..
Spaniards were also allowed to move freely around the country from Sunday and many were expected to visit friends, relatives and second homes in other regions. Since March 14, people have had to remain in their own provinces.
People will still have to wear masks in public when social distancing measures cannot be observed.
2020-06-21 17:33:24
India’s drug regulator has given Hetero Labs the green light to manufacture and market its generic version of Gilead Science’s experimental COVID-19 treatment remdesivir, the Indian pharmaceutical company has said.
The drug, which will be marketed under the brand name Covifor, will likely be priced at 5,000 to 6,000 rupees ($66-$79) for a 100 milligram dose, Hetero said.
India's Cipla Ltd (CIPL.NS) has also received approval from the Drug Controller General of India (DGCI) to manufacture and market the drug, according to a report bit.ly/2AVcs0y in Indian Express.
Cipla and DGCI were not immediately available for comment.
Gilead Sciences Inc (GILD.O) signed non-exclusive licensing pacts last month with five generic drugmakers based in India and Pakistan to expand the supply of its COVID-19 treatment.
The pacts allow Jubilant Life Sciences Ltd (JULS.NS), Cipla, Hetero Labs, Mylan NV (MYL.O) and Ferozsons Laboratories Ltd FERO.PSX to make and sell the drug in 127 countries.
2020-06-21 17:30:01
2020-06-21 16:00:19
Britain will outline its plans to ease the coronavirus lockdown this week, health minister Matt Hancock said on Sunday, potentially relaxing the two-metre rule on social distancing, allowing many businesses to reopen in early July.
"We're about to see another step in the plan," Hancock told BBC TV. "This week we will announce further details of the measures we can take to relieve some of the national lockdown measures at the start of July, including on July 4."
2020-06-21 15:38:28
Australia's second most populous state, Victoria, on Sunday extended its state of emergency for four more weeks to July 19, as it battles a spike in coronavirus infections with a pick-up in community transmission.
The move came a day after the state announced it would reimpose restrictions capping visitors to households to five people and outdoor gatherings to 10, starting Monday. The limits had been relaxed to allow 20 people in households and public gatherings on June 1.
Victoria reported 19 new infections on Sunday, the fifth day of double digit-rises. The state has now had 1,836 total confirmed cases, or a quarter of the cases in Australia, since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted.
2020-06-21 15:09:17
More than 8.81 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 462,960 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-06-21 14:45:19
PTI MNA Alamgir Khan has tested positive for the virus, the activist said in a post on Twitter on Sunday.
2020-06-21 14:30:36
PIMS Executive Director Ansar Masood has tested positive for the virus, hospital officials said on Sunday.
According to the hospital, Dr Masood has quarantined himself at home.
2020-06-21 14:13:55
2020-06-21 14:07:19
The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) has given permission to 24 local manufacturers and two importers to produce remdesivir, SAPM Dr Zafar Mirza said on Sunday.
“DRAP is working to make sure there is enough medicine for coronavirus patients,” Dr Mirza said. He added DRAP has issued an import and registration letter for the emergency use of remdesivir
2020-06-21 13:42:01
Mainland China reported on Sunday 26 new confirmed coronavirus cases driven largely by the latest outbreak of COVID-19 in the Chinese capital.
Of the new infections, 22 were in Beijing, the National Health Commission said in a statement, the same as a day earlier.
The resurgence has been linked to a wholesale food centre in the southwest of Beijing. So far, 227 people in the city have been infected in the latest outbreak.
2020-06-21 12:55:12
During the last 24 hours more than 4,267 violations of health guidelines were observed across Pakistan, the NCOC said.
According to the NCOC, more than 721 markets/shops, five industrial units were sealed and 1,408 transporters were fined/ sealed.
Breakdown of health guideline violations across Pakistan:
ICT
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 23; Transport – 8
AJK
Violations – 715
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 52; Industry – 0; Transport – 323
Balochistan
Violations – 694
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 75
Gilgit Baltistan
Violations – 213
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 77
Punjab
Violations – 2036
Closed/ Sealed: Markets/ Shops – 458; Industries – 4
Sindh
Violations – 609
Closed/sealed: Markets/shops – 36; Industries - 01 Transport – 59
2020-06-21 12:07:08
2020-06-21 11:38:10
Nearly 50,000 people have died from the coronavirus in Brazil, the number 2 hotspot, with 1,022 fatalities in the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry said on Saturday.
A total of 49,976 people have officially died from COVID-19 in Brazil, according to the ministry, with a total of 1,067,579 confirmed cases.
Brazil is not the only country in Latin America to have been hit hard by the outbreak. On Saturday, the region passed 2 million cases, with 2,004,019 registered according to a Reuters tally.
2020-06-21 11:16:15
Former Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Mortaza said on Saturday he had tested positive for the new coronavirus.
"Today my result is positive. Everyone please pray for me so that I can get well soon," the 36-year-old wrote on Facebook. "I am currently taking treatment from home and complying with the necessary restrictions."
2020-06-21 10:42:37
The number of recovered patients rose to 67,892 in Pakistan and Sunday, the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) said in its latest briefing.
According to the NCIC in the last 24 hours, 28,855 tests were conducted across the country, with 105,224 active cases in the country.
Only 581 vents are occupied in the country at the moment with no patient on the vent in AJK, Balochistan and GB.
2020-06-21 10:25:28
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 176,617 after new cases were reported in Islamabad and AJK.
According to the national dashboard, 98 new cases were recorded in the federal capital while 19 new cases were detected in AJK.
The country’s death toll also jumped to 3,501 with new deaths in Islamabad and AJK.
2020-06-21 10:18:23
Saudi Arabia lifted a nationwide curfew and resumed all economic and commercial activities as of Sunday morning, state news agency SPA said.
Umra, international flights, entry to kingdom across land borders and social gatherings to more than 50 people remain will however remain suspended.
2020-06-21 10:03:48
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 687 to 189,822, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday.
The Institute also reported a death toll of 8,882. On Saturday, the figure stood at 8,883.
2020-06-21 00:47:34
2020-06-21 00:24:22
WASHINGTON: Six members of President Donald Trump’s campaign advance team have tested positive for COVID-19 ahead of a controversial rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the campaign said.
“Six members of the advance team tested positive out of hundreds of tests performed, and quarantine procedures were immediately implemented,” said Tim Murtaugh, Campaign Communications Director. “No COVID-positive staffers or anyone in immediate contact will be at today’s rally or near attendees and elected officials.
”Trump scheduled to rally with thousands of supporters in Tulsa in an effort to reinvigorate his re-election campaign. Oklahoma is one of the states that have seen a surge in confirmed COVID-19 cases.
2020-06-21 00:15:40
2020-06-20 23:50:20
Pakistan is set to open its border terminal at Ghulam Khan for bilateral trade with Afghanistan from Monday, Radio Pakistan reported.
According to a press release issued from Foreign Office, the decision was made in view of strong fraternal ties and due to renewed Afghan government's request.
The statement said this arrangement on trade will be in operation six days a week. Saturdays will be reserved for pedestrian movement on these border crossing terminals. These steps are being taken after implementing all necessary protocols related to COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-06-20 23:44:52
LONDON: The death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom has risen by 128 to 42,589, health officials said.
2020-06-20 23:31:04
2020-06-20 23:24:46
Former Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Mortaza said he had tested positive for the new coronavirus.
“Today my result is positive. Everyone please pray for me so that I can get well soon,” the 36-year-old wrote on Facebook. “I am currently taking treatment from home and complying with the necessary restrictions.”
2020-06-20 23:19:21
Iran is drawing up plans to offer discounts to some foreign airlines using its airspace, state news agency IRNA quoted a senior aviation official as saying, after a slump in flights due to the coronavirus pandemic and regional tensions.
Nasser Aghaei, director of the state-run Iran Airports and Air Navigation Company, said the discounts would go to the top eight airlines providing transit income as well as airlines boosting their flights by 20%.
However, no general cut in fees are planned, IRNA said. Iran is one of many countries to charge so-called overflight fees, which are generally used to fund services such as air traffic control, weather data and aeronautical information.
2020-06-20 23:15:55
BERLIN: The reproduction of rate of the novel coronavirus in Germany has jumped to 1.79, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for public health said, far above what is needed to contain the outbreak over the longer term.
The rate, published in RKI’s daily situation report, compares with a value 1.06 on Friday.
A reproduction rate, or ‘R’, of 1.79 means that 100 people who contracted the virus infect, on average, 179 other people. A reproduction of less than 1 is needed to gradually contain the disease.
2020-06-20 23:07:40
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 2,215,618 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 32,218 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 690 to 119,055.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on June 19 compared with its previous report released on Friday.
2020-06-20 22:46:24
Actor Yasir Nawaz and his wife Nidar Yasir have donated plasma for treatment of COVID-19 patients.
According to Dow University of Health Sciences, the duo arrived at the facility on Saturday after recovering from the coronavirus disease.
Official Twitter account of the hospital also carried a brief statement of Yasir in which the actor said "Your plasma can save two more lives, if you have recovered from COVID-19. Please donate your plasma and be a life safer.
2020-06-20 22:45:50
MADRID: Spanish foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said that Spain would open its doors to British tourists from Sunday without the need for them to spend two weeks in quarantine because of the coronavirus.
“We will allow British visitors to enter Spain just like the rest of the European Union or Schengen from 21 June freely and without the need for the quarantine,” she told BBC News.
She said Spain is still discussing with UK authorities whether they will offer the same conditions for Spanish visitors to the UK.
2020-06-20 22:41:55
FRANKFURT: More than 1,000 employees at German meat processing firm Toennies have tested positive for coronavirus, prompting local health authorities to order all 6,500 employees and their families to go into quarantine.
Speaking at a press conference, the meat company’s proprietor, Clemens Toennies, said the outbreak presented an “existential crisis” for his firm, which has suspended operations as authorities seek to control the outbreak.
“As a company we thought we had done everything right,” Toennies said, adding that his firm had struggled to collect the personal data of employees and contractors so that authorities could trace the outbreak.
“As an entrepreneur I can only apologise. We have caused this and are fully responsible for it,” Toennies said.
2020-06-20 22:33:33
2020-06-20 22:25:04
2020-06-20 22:16:48
Chairman National Disaster Management Authority Lt Gen Muhammad Afzal visited Muzaffarabad where he was apprised on the situation of coronavirus and the steps taken by the government to tackle it.
Azad Jammu and Kashmir Health Minister Dr Najeeb Naqi Khan and other senior officials were also present on the occasion.
Speaking on the occasion, Chairman NDMA said that 20 beds will be provided with oxygen supply in Combine Medical Hospital Muzaffarabad.
Lt Gen Afzal said that 60 ICU beds will be provided to three hospitals in Azad Kashmir, while 30 cardiac monitors and 8 portable X-ray machines would also be forwarded to Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
2020-06-20 21:57:49
MILAN: Italy reported 49 deaths from COVID-19, compared with 47 a day earlier, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the daily tally of new cases rose to 262 from 251 on Friday.
The country’s death toll since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 now stands at 34,610, the agency said, the world’s fourth-highest after the United States, Brazil and Britain.
The number of confirmed cases amounts to 238,275, the eighth-highest global tally. The agency said a recalculation in the regional count meant two fewer cases were reported in previous days.
2020-06-20 21:43:16
2020-06-20 21:35:25
The US National Institutes of Health said it has halted a clinical trial to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
The study found that hydroxychloroquine, which President Donald Trump has frequently touted a possible treatment, did not provide any benefit to the patients, even though it did no harm, NIH said in a statement.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organization said testing of hydroxychloroquine in its large multi-country trial of treatments for COVID-19 patients had been halted after new data and studies showed no benefit.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 on Monday.
2020-06-20 21:27:49
TAIPEI: Taiwan’s export orders edged up for a third consecutive month in May, thanks to sustained demand for telecommuting products like laptops during the coronavirus pandemic that has forced millions of people globally to work at home.
Export orders for Taiwan, seen as a bellwether of global technology demand, rose 0.4% from a year earlier to $38.9 billion, Ministry of Economic Affairs data showed on Saturday. The uptick, however, lagged a Reuters poll estimate for a 1.1% rise compared with 2.3% growth in April.
The ministry, which has repeatedly cautioned of a difficult outlook for Taiwan’s orders due to the coronavirus impact, said the May numbers were helped by “flourishing” demand for equipment from people working from home.
Looking ahead, the outlook was brighter with the pandemic abating in Europe and the United States and economic activity gradually resuming around the world, it added.
2020-06-20 21:19:08
2020-06-20 21:16:26
ISTANBUL: Turkey’s central bank suspended until year end a requirement that banks with a real annual loan growth rate above 15% must keep their adjusted rate below 15%, so they can keep credit flowing as the economy reopens from a coronavirus lockdown.
The revision would allow lenders to take advantage of separate regulatory incentives for them to meeting the borrowing needs of firms and individuals, which have risen and will likely stay high, the bank said.
2020-06-20 21:07:44
2020-06-20 20:56:13
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis held his first audience for a group of people since Italy lifted its coronavirus lockdown, granting it to health workers from the Italian region most affected by the pandemic.
“You were one of the supporting pillars of the entire country,” he told doctors and nurses from the Lombardy region gathered in the Vatican’s frescoed Clementine Hall, which had not been used for months because of the crisis.
“To those of you here and to your colleagues all across Italy go my esteem and my sincere thanks, and I know very well I am interpreting everyone’s sentiments,” he said.
He thanked the health workers, who wore masks, for being “angels,” including by lending their cell phones to dying patients so they could say their final goodbyes to their loved ones.
2020-06-20 20:48:26
PARIS: France will begin to shake off its coronavirus blues Sunday with cinemas opening on the stroke of midnight and thousands of people taking to the streets for its midsummer music festival.
The annual Festival of Music usually brings millions of people out in towns and cities across the country with a mix of large-scale events and impromptu concerts in cafes and on street corners that go on long into the night.
But this year there are few big set-piece extravaganzas beyond what French electronic music legend Jean-Michel Jarre has billed as the world's first live virtual "avatar" concert — "like in the Matrix".
2020-06-20 20:39:50
BISHKEK: Kyrgyzstan will shut down public transport in the capital Bishkek and the routes between all of its provinces every weekend, Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov said.
The move came as the number of new coronavirus cases in the Central Asian nation rose by 192 and senior officials including the capital’s mayor and a member of parliament tested positive.
“We must ensure the country’s full readiness for a worsening of the epidemiological situation,” Boronov said. “We see daily growth in new COVID-19 cases.”
All members of parliament were being tested and the parliament building closed to visitors after one MP and one staffer caught the virus, the legislature said. Bishkek mayor Aziz Surakmatov self-isolated after a positive test and was working from home, his office said.
2020-06-20 20:28:44
India reported a record jump in coronavirus infections on Saturday, a day after the government in the capital New Delhi ordered hospitals to cancel any leave and have workers return to duty immediately.
India saw an increase of 14,516 COVID-19 cases, the health ministry said, taking the total to 395,047 with 12,948 deaths.
It now has the world’s fourth highest number behind the United States, Brazil and Russia.
In a memo to all government hospitals on Friday, the Delhi government ordered all leave cancelled and said further leave would only be granted under the most compelling circumstances.
A number of countries continue to evacuate their citizens from India, amid concerns hospitals in major cities such as Delhi and Mumbai may be overwhelmed.
2020-06-20 20:17:17
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia will end a nationwide curfew and lift restrictions on businesses from Sunday morning after three months of lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus, state news agency SPA quoted a source in the interior ministry as saying.
The curfew will be lifted as of 6am local time on Sunday. Restrictions will remain, however, for religious pilgrimages, international travel and social gatherings of more than 50 people.
The kingdom introduced stringent measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus in March, including 24-hour curfews on most towns and cities.
2020-06-20 20:09:40
HONG KONG: A 78-year-old woman has died in Hong Kong from coronavirus, taking the death toll from COVID-19 in the city to five, with 1,129 cases.
Hong Kong has eased social distancing measures aimed at curbing the spread of coronavirus with the latest rules now banning gatherings of 50 people or more.
2020-06-20 20:00:24
Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab became the latest politician from the province to test positive for coronavirus.
Wahab, who had tested postive for the virus today morning, said that he had gone into self-quarantine.
2020-06-20 19:43:35
National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) was apprised by the provincial chief secretaries on standard operating procedures compliance and smart lockdown update implemented across the country.
The NCOC meeting reviewed the update of targeted smart lockdowns implemented across the country, decisions, and action points of NCC, oxygen, and cylinders import and quantity finalisation vis-a-vis disease projections and need assessment of critical medical equipment.
Speaking on the occasion, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar suggested that the provincial governments should issue a notification to private corporations and offices to avoid taking any punitive action against employees living in smart lockdown restricted areas for not attending to offices.
He also added that the efforts and measures taken to contain the pandemic outbreak would show results after 15 days where the provincial governments should make strict compliance with measures adopted.
Chief Secretary KP said around 500,000 people were restricted under the smart lockdowns, Chief Secretary Punjab said around eight main cities were under lockdown and less than a million people were restricted.
2020-06-20 19:33:51
Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin has hailed "hero" doctors who have died during the coronavirus epidemic, comparing them to battlefield medics from past wars.
Putin, who spoke ahead of next month's controversial vote that is expected to extend his hold on power until 2036, also promised awards and more bonuses for health personnel.
This week the state health watchdog said nearly 500 Russian medics who tested positive for the coronavirus had died, a huge death toll compared with other countries with large outbreaks.
During a video link-up with medics across the country, Putin expressed condolences to those who had lost their colleagues and loved ones.
"The dreadful, insidious infection has not spared your colleagues," he said, calling the fallen doctors "true heroes."
"The selfless feat of medical workers during the epidemic will go down in the history of our medicine and our country."
Putin said the medics' work was on a par with "the valiant service of doctors and nurses" during World War I and World War II.
2020-06-20 19:22:43
2020-06-20 19:11:47
ISTANBUL: President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey had lost some ground in its battle with the coronavirus pandemic but a focus on hygiene, masks and social distancing will protect people and help the economy rebound in the second half of the year.
“The numbers in recent days show that we have lost our position in the fight against the epidemic,” Erdogan said in a televised address. “But we aim to remove the pandemic from our agenda by respecting the cleaning, mask and distance rules.”
Economic recovery signals have been “quite strong” since May and “we expect great momentum from the second half of the year,” he added.
2020-06-20 19:00:31
Iran is considering making it mandatory within days to wear masks in public places and covered spaces, President Hassan Rouhani said , as the tally of confirmed coronavirus cases continued to rise above 200,000.
“Mainly for crowded and covered areas...we may make (masks) compulsory in a week, more or less. But first plenty of inexpensive masks should be made available for the people,” Rouhani said in remarks broadcast by state television.
Daily death rates for most of this week have exceeded 100 for the first time in two months, an uptick blamed by officials on the lack of social distancing and low use of face masks.
The Health Ministry announced 115 deaths in the previous 24 hours, taking the total to 9,507. There were 2,322 reported new cases bringing the total to 202,584 in what is the Middle East’s worst-affected country.
Rouhani said provinces with high-risk areas will be able to impose restrictions at a local level in the fight against the virus, but that any decisions still had to be approved by the Health Ministry and the president.
2020-06-20 18:48:33
The Sindh government issued a notification to protect the jobs of people during the ongoing lockdown, ordering employers to refrain from firing their employees.
The government, in the the notification, said: "If any worker who is working in industrial, commercial, and shop establishments, is affected and is unable to reach his/her workplace, shall not be declared as absentee but shall be considered as on duty and shall be entitled for his /her wages, accordingly."
2020-06-20 18:39:29
BEIJING: Officials in Beijing are carrying out tests to detect traces of coronavirus on all food and parcel delivery workers in an effort to rein in a new outbreak, state-backed media reported.
Officials in the Chinese capital have been expanding nucleic acid testing across the city of 20 million since a cluster of infections linked to a food wholesale market erupted just over a week ago.
A nucleic acid test involves a swab sample taken from the back of a person’s throat or respiratory tract, and the sample is then tested for the presence of the coronavirus’ genome.
Testing was initially focused on residential areas near the sprawling Xinfadi market and on people who worked or shopped there.
Officials are now targeting the tens of thousands of delivery personnel who regularly traverse the city, where fleets of motorised pedicabs and scooters ridden by couriers delivering parcels and food are a common sight.
2020-06-20 18:03:26
LONDON: British finance minister Rishi Sunak signalled that the government is poised to relax its two-metre social distancing rule for England which businesses have said in its current form would slow their recovery from the coronavirus lockdown.
A review of the two-metre rule would be concluded next week, Sunak told BBC television, adding: “Obviously that is something that will make an enormous difference, I think, to many businesses who are keen to see a change.”
“Obviously, we need to go through that review but I am very understanding of the calls for action on that.”
Sunak said he understood how the rule was affecting the ability of pubs, restaurants and other hospitality firms to reopen.
“I can’t pre-empt the findings of that review but suffice to say we have made really good progress over the past few months in tackling this virus and we all want to see our pubs and our restaurants spring back to life,” he said.
2020-06-20 17:54:36
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s oldest zoo reopened on Saturday, but to a fraction of the normal number of visitors, after being forced to close more than three months ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The 156-year-old Ragunan Zoo, located in the capital Jakarta, is home to more than 2,200 animals, including many of the country’s endangered species.
The zoo introduced precautionary measures to reopen, including a 1,000 a day limit on visitor numbers, markers to ensure social distancing, and health protocols.
“We are requiring people to use masks and not allowing pregnant women, children nine and under, or the elderly to visit,” zoo spoksperson I Ketut Widarsana told Reuters.
Visitors said they were excited about the reopening and had been worried about the zoo’s survival.
“During COVID-19, the zoo had no income from visitors, so I wanted to come support it,” Kusmana, who uses one name, told Reuters.
2020-06-20 17:36:07
2020-06-20 17:30:43
2020-06-20 17:00:00
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 459,976 people since the outbreak began in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP as of 1100 GMT.
At least 8,680,640 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 4,029,700 are considered recovered.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
The United States is the worst-hit country with 119,131 deaths from 2,222,576 cases. At least 606,715 people have been declared recovered.
After the US, the countries with the highest death tolls are Brazil with 48,954 deaths from 1,032,913 cases, Britain with 42,461 deaths from 301,815 cases, Italy with 34,561 deaths from 238,011 cases and France with 29,617 deaths from 195,953 cases.
China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 4,634 deaths and 83,352 infections (up 27) with 78,410 recoveries.
Europe overall has 192,158 deaths from 2,500,091 cases, the United States and Canada have 127,518 deaths from 2,323,141 infections, Latin America and the Caribbean 91,377 deaths from 1,959,837 cases, Asia 28,022 deaths from 980,592 cases, the Middle East 13,109 deaths from 621,260 infections, Africa 7,661 deaths from 286,822 cases, and Oceania 131 deaths from 8,846 cases.
2020-06-20 16:52:44
Europe has recorded more than 2.5 million coronavirus cases since the outbreak of the pandemic, with more than half the total accounted for by Russia, Britain, Spain and Italy, according to a tally from official sources complied by AFP as of 1030 GMT.
With some 2,500,091 cases including 192,158 deaths, Europe is the worst affected continent while Latin America now has the fastest growing outbreak.
Globally, there have been 8,680,649 cases, including 459,976 deaths.
Russia has recorded most cases in Europe, with 576,952 and 8,002 deaths, followed by Britain, 301,815 cases, 42,461 deaths; Spain, 245,575 and 28,315, and Italy, 238,011 and 34,561 fatalities.
The official figures are widely believed to comprise only a small fraction of the real number of cases and deaths.
2020-06-20 16:20:52
According to Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah, the province recorded 35 new deaths and more than 2,000 virus cases within the past 24 hours.
So far, Sindh has recorded 1,048 deaths while 2,190 new cases took tally to 67,353, said Shah.
He added that 1,387 people recovered from the disease, after which the total number of recoveries reached 34,112 in Sindh.
2020-06-20 16:09:39
Indonesia’s oldest zoo reopened on Saturday, but to a fraction of the normal number of visitors, after being forced to close more than three months ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The 156-year-old Ragunan Zoo, located in the capital Jakarta, is home to more than 2,200 animals, including many of the country’s endangered species.
The zoo introduced precautionary measures to reopen, including a 1,000 a day limit on visitor numbers, markers to ensure social distancing, and health protocols.
Indonesia reported 1,226 new coronavirus infections on Saturday, with 180 cases in the capital, bringing the country’s total number of cases to 45,029.
2020-06-20 15:27:03
A report was released by the Sindh government in which it analysed the performance of the government hospitals in the province.
According to the report, 2,020 people were admitted to 10 government hospitals, where 369 lost their lives.
Currently, there are 1,253 patients of the coronavirus are getting treatment at these hospitals, said the report.
It said that at SIUT, 359 patients have been admitted so far, out of which 88 have died.
The report further said that Ojha campus of Dow University Hospital received 266 patients, adding that 79 lost their lives from the disease.
Civil Hospital got 366 cases out of which 69 did not survive, the report added.
The recovery rate for the hospitals turned out to be 19 % while it is 32 % for private hospitals, the report observed, saying that the government hospitals’ death ratio is higher by 4%.
2020-06-20 14:29:23
Britain’s government will announce in the coming days whether it will reduce its two-meter social distancing rule for England, a minister said.
Many employers, especially in the hospitality and leisure sectors, have said the rule that people must remain two meters apart will stop them from getting back to speed as the coronavirus lockdown is lifted.
“We have committed to reviewing the two-meter to one-meter rule and we will be concluding on that shortly,” culture minister Oliver Dowden told BBC radio late on Friday.
“Within the coming days we will get the outcome.”
2020-06-20 13:44:12
Inside one of the Chinese labs racing to create a coronavirus vaccine, researchers work weekends, lab monkeys are in short supply and plans are being made for human trials abroad.
Yisheng Biopharma, a company based in the northeastern city of Shenyang, has been working non-stop since January to find the silver bullet against the disease that emerged in China late last year.
The company is still in the early stages of development. But it will take the risk of starting production of its vaccine in September, before completing clinical trials, so the shots are ready sooner for the public if the product is approved.
2020-06-20 13:27:50
Balochistan government Spokesperson Liaquat Shahwani said on Friday that five doctors have died of the coronavirus in the province, while 287 have been infected so far.
Shahwani said that 69 paramedical staff members have also been affected and 1.3 million have been rendered jobless due to the pandemic.
The spokesman said that the province has always stood by the Centre, and the government has also announced a ‘Shuhada package’ for the doctors and paramedics.
2020-06-20 12:59:34
Australia’s second most populous state announced on Saturday it will reinstate tighter restrictions on home and public gatherings after logging a double digit rise in coronavirus cases for a fourth straight day.
Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews chastised people for ignoring guidelines on social contact by engaging in behaviour such as kissing and hugging as he reimposed a limit of five people visiting households and 10 people at public gatherings.
The restrictions, which come into force on Monday and will last until July 12, reverse a relaxation of the rules at the start of this month that had allowed for home and outdoor gatherings of up to 20 people.
2020-06-20 12:26:11
Mainland China reported 27 new coronavirus cases as of the end of June 19, 22 of which were reported in the capital Beijing, China’s National Health Commission said on Saturday.
This compared with 32 confirmed cases a day earlier, 25 of which were in Beijing, where local authorities are working to contain a new outbreak at a food wholesale market.
Another seven asymptomatic COVID-19 patients, those who are infected with the coronavirus but show no symptoms, were also reported as of June 19 compared with five a day earlier. China does not count these patients as confirmed cases.
2020-06-20 11:53:16
Troubling spikes in coronavirus infection rates were reported on Friday in several US states, mainly in the South and West, a day before President Donald Trump was due to preside over an Oklahoma campaign rally that will be America’s largest indoor gathering in months.
Experts say expanded diagnostic testing accounts for some, but not all, of the growth in cases - numbering at least 2.23 million nationwide on Friday - and that the mounting volume of infections was elevating hospitalizations in some places.
“Clearly the cases are rising rapidly. It’s not just a matter of testing more,” said Dr. Murtaza Akhter, an emergency room physician at Arizona hospitals, noting the lag time between a positive test and severe illness or death. “The real concern is what is coming up for us in the next week or two.”
More than 119,000 Americans have perished from COVID-19 to date, according to Reuters’ running tally.
2020-06-20 11:34:46
Due to a rise in the coronavirus cases in Punjab, the officials have decided to ask the Centre for 10,000 to 15,000 additional oxygen cylinders for patients.
A session was held to decided action against those hoarding and selling medicines on higher prices. The session also reviewed the lockdown measures across the province.
Chief Secretary Punjab Jawad Malik said that those vehicles providing oxygen will be allowed on roads 24/7.
He said that the companies manufacturing oxygen cylinders will be exempt from loading shedding.
2020-06-20 11:13:50
Prime Minister Imran Khan said that the airspace will open partially to allow international flights from Sunday.
PM Imran said that the special step was taken for overseas Pakistanis as the government is trying to facilitate them in every way.
The prime minister said that during this time, overseas Pakistanis went through great difficulty and the government will extend them a warm welcome upon return.
2020-06-20 11:09:04
Officials in Beijing are carrying out nucleic acid tests on all food and parcel delivery personnel as they ramp up efforts to rein in an outbreak of the coronavirus in the Chinese capital, state-backed Beijing News reported on Saturday.
Officials have been expanding testing across the city of 20 million since a cluster of new infections linked to a food wholesale market erupted just over a week ago.
The outbreak, the first in Beijing in months, has now surpassed previous peak numbers in early February.
2020-06-20 11:05:06
According to National Command and Operations Centre, Pakistan recorded its highest death toll in a day by recording 153 deaths across the country.
The NCOC said that 31,681 tests were conducted on June 19, adding that the total number of cases so far is 171,666 in Pakistan.
“63,504 People recovered so far across Pakistan making it a significant count,” said the NCOC statement.
It said that a total of 549 patients are on vents, while there are none in Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.
2020-06-20 09:53:43
Coronavirus deaths in Mexico surpassed 20,000 on Friday after the health ministry reported 647 new fatalities and 5,030 new confirmed cases.
Total cases now stand at 170,485, with 20,394 fatalities, though the government has said the real number of infections is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
2020-06-20 09:02:55
Saudi Arabia plans to reopen from Sunday mosques in Makkah, the holiest city in Islam, after they were closed for three months due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, state television reported.
The kingdom has taken restrictive measures against the virus, particularly in Mecca, but the number of new coronavirus cases has notably increased in recent days.
"The mosques in the holy city will begin to reopen their doors to the faithful on Sunday after three months of closure due to the coronavirus pandemic," the state-run Al-Ekhbariya channel reported, citing a decision by the Islamic affairs ministry.
Some 1,500 holy sites are preparing to welcome visitors, the channel reported, showing footage of workers disinfecting floors and carpets.
The decision comes weeks before the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Makkah.
While the Hajj is set to be held in late July, authorities are yet to announce if it will go ahead or be cancelled.
2020-06-20 08:55:35
Brazil has passed a total of more than 1 million coronavirus cases, and nearly 50,000 deaths, according to Health Ministry data, in a new nadir for the world's second worst-hit country.
Brazil has recorded 1,032,913 confirmed cases, second only to the United States, with 1,206 new deaths reported on Friday to take the total official fatalities to 48,954, the ministry said.
2020-06-20 08:39:54
More than 8.57 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 456,209 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
2020-06-19 23:59:05
LIMA: Peru’s central bank slashed its economic outlook for the country, estimating annual contraction of 12.5% in 2020, which it said would be the copper-producing nation’s worst decline in a century due to the impact of COVID-19.
The forecast, made in the bank’s delayed quarterly report, was down from a prediction of 2.3% growth for the year made before the global health crisis.
“It is the biggest fall in the last hundred years. Truly dramatic,” central bank President Julio Velarde said at the presentation of the report.
2020-06-19 23:52:00
MILAN: Gucci has raised the price of handbags by up to 9%, joining rivals Louis Vuitton and Chanel in a bet their brands will still lure the wealthy, a Jefferies report said, as top luxury brands try to shake off the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jefferies luxury goods analyst Flavio Cereda compared prices in various countries of two Gucci handbags — the $2,290 Dionysus and the $2,980 Zumi — in May and June and found price increases for both in Italy, Britain and China of between 5% and 9%.
Analyst Cereda said in a report the price change would narrow the gap between handbag prices in Europe, which are lower than in major luxury markets such as China, where shoppers have queued at stores as they emerged from lockdown.
Still, the price in euros of the Dionysus in China was 28% higher than in Italy after the increase. The gap stood at 23% for the Zumi, Cereda’s data found.
“We are unsurprised that Gucci, another brand with strong brand heat, is following suit with opportunistic price increases in an attempt to mitigate revenue contraction,” said Cereda, who in May cut his rating on Kering to “hold” from “buy”.
2020-06-19 23:46:53
MOSCOW: Russia’s central bank slashed interest rates to the lowest level since the collapse of the Soviet Union, pledging to consider the need for even lower rates amid waning inflationary risks and a shrinking economy.
The central bank delivered a deeper-than-usual cut of 100 basis points, taking the key rate to 4.5%, in the face of the crisis sparked by the coronavirus and the related lockdowns, in line with a Reuters poll.
Governor Elvira Nabiullina said the economy may feel the impact of the monetary easing in three to six quarters, adding that the strengthening rouble provides more room for monetary easing.
“We will further assess the feasibility of extra measures to ease our monetary policy, to lower the rate,” Nabiullina said at an online media conference, presenting the rate move.
2020-06-19 23:44:35
Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd has received Indian regulatory approval to make and sell oral antiviral drug favipiravir for treating mild-to-moderate COVID-19 infections in the country, it said.
The Mumbai-based company said the approval was part of India’s accelerated approval process and the drug was meant for “restricted emergency use,” meaning patients must sign their consent before being treated by the drug.
Favipiravir is also undergoing trials in other countries to test its efficacy as a COVID-19 treatment.
Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings Corp, which makes favipiravir under the brand name Avigan, said last week its research on the drug as a potential COVID-19 treatment may drag on until July.
The approval for favipiravir in India, which Glenmark plans to sell as "FabiFlu", was granted based on "evaluation of data," the company said in a brief statement to stock exchanges.
2020-06-19 23:43:28
ZURICH: Switzerland will allow events of up to 1,000 people again from next week as cases of the new coronavirus wane, the government said, declaring their country better equipped to handle any fresh flare-ups.
“As of Monday, June 22, the measures put in place to tackle the coronavirus will for the most part be lifted. Only the ban on large-scale events will remain in place until the end of August,” the cabinet said.
New cases have dwindled to a few dozen a day, allowing Switzerland to reopen schools, shops and borders with fellow members of the Schengen passport-free travel zone as life returns to near-normal. But the economy, like many others, is in a sharp recession.
2020-06-19 23:37:12
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 2,178,710 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 23,138 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 733 to 118,365.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on June 18 compared with its previous report released on Thursday.
2020-06-19 23:34:00
Zimbabwe Health Minister Obadiah Moyo was arrested by police on Friday over allegations of corruption in government procurement of around $60 million worth of medical equipment, the Daily News newspaper reported.
Several other Zimbabwean and South African news outlets reported the arrest. Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the arrest with authorities in Harare.
2020-06-19 23:23:16
DUESSELDORF: The Germany region of North Rhine Westphalia faces the threat of a renewed coronavirus lockdown amid a spiralling outbreak at a major slaughterhouse, the region’s premier said.
“We are seeing an outbreak on a scale that we haven’t seen before,” he said. “We can still localise the outbreak, but if that changes then we will need a broad lockdown in the region.”
A lockdown, even if it was relatively localised, would be a setback to Germany’s reopening strategy: while Chancellor Angela Merkel’s central government was keen to maintain lockdown discipline for longer, pressure from regional premiers has led to most shops and bars reopening, albeit with social distancing.
Laschet, who as premier of Germany’s largest state leads a Netherlands-sized region, was one of the most vocal proponents of a swifter reopening.
“This outbreak brings with it an enormous pandemic risk,” Laschet said, adding that a crisis team had been set up to deal with the outbreak, and that federal health and defence ministers had promised to make resources available.
2020-06-19 23:19:55
Health Department of Sindh announced that it would recruit personnel for Intensive Care Units as the hospitals receive a heavy-load of patients amid coronavirus.
The decision has been made under The Sindh Epidemic Diseases Act, 2014, the department said, adding that the personnel would be hired for a period of 89 days.
2020-06-19 23:15:42
2020-06-19 23:14:21
RABAT: Morocco’s Health Ministry reported 539 new coronavirus cases, the biggest daily rise so far, most of them in a cluster north of Rabat.
There are now 9,613 confirmed cases in Morocco, with a mortality rate of 2.2% and a recovery rate of 84.5%, according to official figures.
The government this month eased some lockdown measures in regions with low infection rates, but kept in place a ban on people leaving their homes without permits in areas with more cases, including some big cities.
2020-06-19 22:58:22
GENEVA: The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, with Thursday’s 150,000 new cases the highest in a single day and nearly half of those in the Americas, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
“The world is in a new and dangerous phase,” Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva. “The virus is still spreading fast, it is still deadly, and most people are still susceptible.”
As well as the Americas, a large number of new cases were coming from South Asia and the Middle East, Tedros added.
WHO emergencies expert Mike Ryan drew attention to the situation in Brazil, where he said there had been 1,230 additional COVID-19 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
About 12% of infections in Brazil involved healthcare workers, he added, praising their bravery.
2020-06-19 22:43:46
PARIS: The number of people who died from coronavirus infection in France rose by 14 to 29,617, the lowest increase in five days.
The number of people in hospital for COVID-19 infections fell by 155 to 9,970, the first time that total is lower than the 10,000 threshold in almost three months.
2020-06-19 22:35:06
2020-06-19 22:34:26
Russia’s economy declined by 10.9% in May, year-on-year, data showed, following a sharper fall of 12% in April when the country was locked down to combat the coronavirus.
The economy ministry said the decline has slowed down in manufacturing and retail sectors.
It also said that the economic recovery was restrained by a global deal to curb oil output starting from May 1. Oil and gas condensate production last month fell by 14.5% year-on-year.
In the five four months of 2020, gross domestic product shrank by 3.7% in year-on-year terms, the ministry said.
In the whole of 2020, Russia’s economy is on track to shrink by 4.8%, the economy ministry forecasts.
2020-06-19 22:20:32
The economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic will not put at risk funding for programs created under Colombia’s peace deal with the former FARC rebels, the government said on Friday.
The country signed the accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas in late 2016, ending the group’s role in five decades of conflict which killed more than 260,000 people.
The twin ills of low oil prices and a months-long quarantine meant to stem coronavirus infections look set to cause a recession. The government says the economy will likely contract 5.5% this year.
But funding for peace programs is safe, Emilio Archila, the presidential adviser charged with overseeing implementation, told journalists.
“Will the (funding) sources destined for the implementation process be specifically affected, the answer is no,” Archila said. “The finance minister was absolutely categorical when they asked him in congress.”
2020-06-19 22:17:55
Apple Inc said it is temporarily shutting some stores again in Florida, Arizona, South Carolina, and North Carolina in the United States, as novel coronavirus cases continue to rise in the country.
Shares of the company, which said the closure would affect 11 stores in these states, were down 0.5%.
Apple had planned to reopen about 100 US stores, mostly with curbside pickup but some with walk-in service, in late May as lockdown restrictions began to ease.
In a letter to Apple customers in May, Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s retail chief, had said the company would look at data on a local basis and that re-closings were a possibility based on that data.
“These are not decisions we rush into — and a store opening in no way means that we won’t take the preventative step of closing it again should local conditions warrant,” O’Brien had said.
2020-06-19 22:13:35
Balochistan reported one more death from coronavirus and 164 new infections, bumping up the death toll to 100 and overall cases to 9,162.
2020-06-19 22:01:07
2020-06-19 21:57:59
2020-06-19 21:51:31
Authorities in Islamabad have made masks mandatory in public spaces under Section 144 for two months.
The violation of these orders has been made a legal offense.
2020-06-19 21:48:28
BEIJING: China has launched a nationwide campaign to inspect food imports after a new coronavirus outbreak emerged at a wholesale market in Beijing, with experts suggesting it shares similarities to European strains.
Authorities have been testing hundreds of thousands of people for the contagion while neighbourhoods have been locked down and schools closed to prevent a second wave of the epidemic that China had largely brought under control.
Another 25 cases were confirmed in Beijing on Friday, taking the total number of infections since last week to 183.
Chinese authorities shared the genome data of the latest outbreak with the World Health Organization and international scientific community on Thursday.
2020-06-19 21:43:02
BRUSSELS: EU leaders debated a giant post-coronavirus recovery plan as China raced to prevent a second wave that it said may have originally come from Europe.
The disease was meanwhile already present in Italy as far back as December, experts said, underscoring the difficulty of tracking and containing the pandemic.
But with the world trying to both limit the economic pain of COVID-19 even as it guards against a resurgence, top US expert Dr Anthony Fauci offered a ray of hope as he said he did not see America returning to fresh lockdown.
The disease has so far killed 450,000 people and infected 8.4 million people worldwide, as well as causing historic levels of econonmic disruption as countries and continents shut down to stop its spread.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-19 21:31:33
DUBLIN: Irish airline Aer Lingus, part of Anglo-Spanish group IAG, plans to cut up to 500 jobs as a result of groundings related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the airline announced.
“Aer Lingus has informed the (employment) Minister that headcount reductions of up to 500 employees across the business are anticipated,” it said in a statement.
Of the other airlines owned by IAG, British Airways has said it needs to axe 12,000 jobs, while Austrian-based Level Europe has said it plans to file for insolvency.
2020-06-19 20:06:13
2020-06-19 21:20:32
2020-06-19 19:39:15
GENEVA: The World Health Organisation should change guidelines that led it to oppose travel restrictions early in the coronavirus epidemic, said former WHO chief Gro Harlem Brundtland, who now chairs an independent watchdog that monitors the global body.
Brundtland, speaking to a briefing, strongly opposed the US decision to quit the WHO. But she acknowledged a need to look at the guidelines, known as the International Health Regulations, agreed by member states years earlier and which discourage restricting trade and travel during epidemics.
The guidelines “need reform and we will propose reforms because we have seen weaknesses very clearly,” Brundtland said. “In the whole process of formulating and agreeing on the International Health Regulations, many countries were adamant to try to avoid air and travel restrictions.”
She said some governments had worried that the threat of travel restrictions would cause countries not to report outbreaks.
“I think it’s right to say that China had maybe learned something from the SARS experience where they really closed down and refused to speak to the WHO and even to me as director-general when I had to enter in,” Brundtland said.
2020-06-19 19:37:31
Balochistan Private Schools Grand Alliance said that the schools in the province had suffered financially due to the lockdown.
Addressing a press conference, the alliance's leader, said that the private educational institutions have been shut down from the last "seven months".
He warned the government if their demands are not met, the assembly will be a sit-in outside the provincial assembly.
2020-06-19 19:16:41
2020-06-19 19:03:48
2020-06-19 18:46:33
The Awami National Party demanded a two-week complete lockdown in the country to stem the spread of coronavirus, calling a curfew-like lockdown the only solution to tackle the pandemic.
ANP leader Mian Iftikhar Hussain opposing the government's policy said that a "smart" and "selected" lockdown are not the solution to the pandemic.
2020-06-19 18:42:30
LONDON: Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, her grandson Prince William and his wife Kate have shown their support for businesses as they emerge from the coronavirus lockdown, with the monarch praising firms for their response “at a time of great difficulty”.
“As many organisations around the country are reopening, I send my warmest best wishes and support to business communities throughout the United Kingdom, Commonwealth and across the world,” Queen Elizabeth said in a message to the British Chambers of Commerce of which she is patron.
“At a time of great difficulty for many, it is heart-warming to see the civic response and generosity of so many businesses, small and large, to the challenges posed, whether supporting the health sector or vulnerable communities.”
To show their support, William and Kate separately visited a bakers and a garden centre in Kings Lynn in eastern England to see how they had coped.
In her first face-to-face engagement since the lockdown, Kate chatted to customers and filled up a shopping cart with plants at the garden centre, revealing that her three children had been growing tomato plants at their nearby home.
“When we do our food shopping we notice that everyone keeps their head down and it’s hard for that social interaction,” she said.
2020-06-19 18:37:07
2020-06-19 18:22:26
NEW YORK: Several US hospitals in states with fresh surges of COVID-19 cases have started treating their sickest patients with dexamethasone rather than await confirmation of preliminary results of a study by British researchers, who said the inexpensive steroid saves lives.
Traditionally, doctors wait for detailed data to be published in a peer reviewed journal - or for guidelines from medical societies - before embracing a new treatment, so they can better gauge the risks against the drug’s benefits. The urgency of the coronavirus pandemic and lack of other treatments has altered those calculations.
Dexamethasone is the first drug shown to lower the risk of death in severely ill COVID-19 patients in what researchers running the trial hailed as a “major breakthrough.”
The Oxford University researchers said in a news release that dexamethasone reduced death rates by around a third among COVID-19 patients requiring mechanical breathing assistance or oxygen. Britain’s health ministry has already approved its use in the state-run health service.
“It almost feels unethical not to use the drug,” said Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Florida’s (UF) medical school.
UF’s Gainesville hospital updated its COVID-19 treatment guidelines as of Tuesday to include using dexamethasone. It previously used the extremely cheap generic medicine sparingly for those patients.
2020-06-19 18:14:41
LONDON: The slump in British government tax revenues since the start of the coronavirus lockdown has been slightly less sharp than feared, the Office for Budget Responsibility said after the release of public finances data for May.
Tax revenues in May were 43% lower than a year earlier in cash terms, mostly due to the government’s deferral of value-added tax bills to help companies preserve cash flow.
The OBR said it would publish a revised borrowing scenario on July 14 incorporating the smaller fall in economic output and tax since its last forecast, and adding extra scenarios showing the potential budget consequences of longer-term economic damage.
2020-06-19 18:11:13
2020-06-19 18:07:23
BRUSSELS: The European Central Bank’s chief warned on Friday that the European Union’s economy was in a “dramatic fall” due to the coronavirus crisis but EU leaders made little progress towards agreeing a massive stimulus plan.
Christine Lagarde told a video-conference summit that the full effects of Europe’s worst recession since World War Two had yet to appear in the labour market and unemployment in the 19-country euro zone could jump to 10% from 7.3% now.
Her stark message came as the bloc’s 27 national leaders settled in at their computer screens to discuss kickstarting economic growth. While they avoided a bruising bust-up, three hours of talks left them no closer to a final deal.
“Timing is very important. We must reach a deal by the end of July,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told the gathering, according to sources. “In this historic debate, it’s Europe who should prevail.”
Under discussion is the EU’s 2021-27 budget of about 1.1 trillion euros, and a proposal by the European Commission to borrow 750 billion euros from the market to replenish a new recovery fund to help revive economies hardest hit by coronavirus, notably Italy and Spain.
Lagarde said financial markets were relatively calm because of expectations that bloc would act to show “the EU is back”, according to sources briefed on the discussion.
2020-06-19 18:02:37
OTTAWA: Canadian retail sales plummeted 26.4% in April as the coronavirus pandemic continued to wallop the economy, Statistics Canada data showed.
Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast a 15.1% decline in April, while Statistics Canada flash estimate released last month had predicted a 15.6% decline.
2020-06-19 18:03:04
2020-06-19 17:54:25
2020-06-19 17:53:06
The Health Department Sindh said that the door-to-door coronavirus testing had been halted as several of the personnel conducting them had contracted the virus.
While it is a setback, the department aims to restart the service from Monday after inducting new staff.
2020-06-19 17:48:21
The number of coronavirus cases in Saudi Arabia exceeded 150,000 on Friday following a rise in new infections over the past 10 days.
The Saudi Ministry of Health reported 4,301 new cases on Friday, taking the total to 150,292, with 1,184 deaths. The country hit more than 100,000 cases on June 7. Authorities are expected to lift a nationwide curfew on June 21.
2020-06-19 17:40:27
2020-06-19 17:33:42
LONDON: The death rate from COVID-19 in England and Wales is higher among people who identify as Muslims, Jews, Hindus or Sikh than Christians or those with no stated religion, Britain’s statistics office said.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics also reflected previous studies which showed that black and other ethnic minority groups had a far higher risk of death from the disease than those with white ethnicity.
“With ethnicity included, (this) demonstrates that a substantial part of the difference in mortality...between religious groups is explained by the different circumstances in which members of these groups are known to live; for example, living in areas with higher levels of socio-economic deprivation and differences in ethnic makeup,” the ONS report said.
“However, after adjusting for the above, Jewish males are at twice the risk of Christian males, and Jewish women are also at higher risk,” said Nick Stripe, Head of Life Events at the ONS, adding that more research was needed to explain this.
The mortality rate among Muslim men was 98.9 deaths per 100,000 and 98.2 deaths per 100,000 for women. For those who said they had no religion in Britain’s 2011 census, the figure was 80.7 deaths per 100,000 males and 47.9 deaths per 100,000 females.
2020-06-19 17:31:25
2020-06-19 17:37:29
2020-06-19 14:39:13
The first trial results of a coronavirus vaccine being developed by CureVac are expected in two months, German news agency dpa reported on Friday.
CureVac, an unlisted German company, said this week that the first meaningful results could be available in September or October and, under favourable conditions, the vaccine could be approved by the middle of next year.
The first results are now expected in two months, dpa reported, citing the clinical trial's lead researcher Peter Kremsner, from Tuebingen university hospital. "It will happen pretty quickly," Kremsner was quoted as saying.
While checks of trial participants started on Thursday, the first vaccination was still pending, he added.
The trial launch, first reported by Reuters on Tuesday, will see 144 participants in Germany and Belgium receive different dosages of the vaccine and a further 24 getting a placebo.
2020-06-19 14:36:49
A lockdown was reimposed on 15 million people in southern India on Friday as the number of coronavirus infections in the hard-hit nation neared 400,000.
New restrictions in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state, and surrounding districts followed a surge of cases, even as the rest of the country of 1.3 billion people gradually resumes normal life.
During the 12-day lockdown, food shops and petrol stations will be allowed to open between 6:00 am and 2:00 pm.
People can only travel within two kilometres (1.2 miles) of their homes except for medical emergencies.
India has recorded more than 380,000 cases of COVID-19, the fourth-highest in the world, with over 12,500 deaths, health ministry data show.
Many experts say limited testing means the real figures are likely much higher.
This week India hiked its official death toll by more than 2,000 after financial hub Mumbai increased the number of fatalities by almost 900 following an audit of its data.
2020-06-19 14:36:24
The coronavirus was already present in two large cities in northern Italy in December, over two months before the first case was detected, a national health institute study of waste water has found.
Researchers discovered genetic traces of Sars-CoV-2 -- as the virus is officially known -- in samples of waste water collected in Milan and Turin at the end of last year, and Bologna in January, the ISS institute said in a statement seen by AFP on Friday.
Italy’s first known native case was discovered mid-February.
The results "help to understand the start of the circulation of the virus in Italy," the ISS said.
They also "confirm the by-now consolidated international evidence" as to the strategic function of sewer samples as an early detection tool, it added.
Italy was the first European country to be hit by the virus and the first in the world to impose a nationwide lockdown. The first known case, other than a couple of visiting Chinese tourists, was a patient in the town of Codogno in the Lombardy region.
2020-06-19 14:18:49
French President Emmanuel Macron called on UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street and avoided handshakes to maintain social distancing amid COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-06-19 11:53:18
About 20% of projects under China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to link Asia, Europe and beyond have been “seriously affected” by the coronavirus pandemic, an official from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.
According to a survey by the ministry, about 40% of projects have seen little adverse impact, and another 30-40% have been somewhat affected, said Wang Xiaolong, director-general of the ministry’s International Economic Affairs Department, at a news briefing in Beijing.
The results from the survey were better than expected and although some projects had been put on hold, China had not heard of any major projects being cancelled, he added.
2020-06-19 11:14:06
Masks, visors, gloves or screens ... all are crucial accessories to keep COVID-19 at bay; however, it is also leading to a rise in plastic waste.
Masks, gloves and other plastic-based items are now ending up in our oceans -- already strewn with the slow-to-degrade detritus of a constantly growing industry.
2020-06-19 10:50:05
The Commissioner Karachi, Iftikhar Shalwani, said on Friday that authorities have decided to lock down all areas in the megalopolis where cases are on the rise.
"In areas that have been locked down,only one person from each household is allowed to leave home and make purchases," he said while speaking on Geo Pakistan."All businesses and commercial centers in these areas will remain closed."
"In all these areas, people can only leave the area in case of a medical emergency," he added.
"We are taking these measures to limit the spread of coronavirus," he added.
2020-06-19 10:41:25
A media statement from the National Command & Operations Center (NCOC), the apex government authority overseeing the coronavirus relief effort, has claimed that Pakistan yesterday witnessed the fifth consecutive day of decline the the ratio of positive cases.
The declining trend comes after a sharp increase in positive cases for the preceding three weeks.
The statement added that 103 additional vents have been added to the national COVID-19 effort across Pakistan, taking the total count to 1,503.
"To meet additional requirements of hospitals, procurement of additional vents on a fast-track basis [is] in progress and will be completed between mid to end July, adding more than 1500 [new ventilators]," the statement said.
"Operationalisation of 2,150 additional oxygenated beds across Pakistan is [being] pursued on war footing to ease extra pull on major hospitals in mega cities across Pakistan," the statement added.
"Testing capacity has increased by 65 times and is being further increased to more than 100,000 tests per day by mid-July," the statement added.
Meanwhile, 28,824 tests were conducted during the last 24 hours, and 61,383 people have recovered so far across Pakistan, taking the total active COVID-19 cases in Pakistan to 100,450.
In total, 165,062 confirmed positive cases have been reported so far, of which there have been 3,229 deaths, 136 of which were recorded on Jun 18.
2020-06-19 10:24:58
The tourism ministry of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has issued SOPs for guests and workers at hotels and apartments.
Under the new rules, all staff will have to wear protective masks at all times, while tourists and travelers have been told to use masks in the hotel lobby and reception areas.
Furthermore, all door handles, dining tables, chairs and elevators have to be sanitized on a daily basis and guidelines relevant to the SOPs should be pasted on hotel doors in different languages.
2020-06-19 10:19:13
PTI Member of the Sindh Assembly Murad Saeed Afridi has said the smart lockdown in Karachi is a "good decision" by the Sindh Government and that the party will support the provincial government if its help is sought.
"The Sindh government shouldn't rely solely on statements like it did earlier. If they work to provide facilities for the people and resolve public issues, we will appreciate their work," he said while asking the provincial authorities to ensure uninterrupted supply of electricity to the locked down areas.
2020-06-19 10:10:19
The Commissioner Karachi has told residents of freshly locked-down areas that they should take leave from work as no one will be allowed to leave the areas in question.
2020-06-19 00:23:20
2020-06-18 23:59:52
2020-06-18 23:44:00
The latest moves come as Scotland transitions to the second phase of its four-step plan to lift coronavirus lockdown restrictions, which has seen the nation move at a slower pace than neighbouring England.
"There is no perfect route out of lockdown," Sturgeon told Scottish lawmakers, as she announced the next steps in her staged approach "to avoid bearing all of the risk at the same time".
Sturgeon said working from home should remain the norm, and people should not travel more than five miles (eight kilometres) unless meeting a small group of family and friends.
However from Friday, those deemed particularly vulnerable and shielding can meet outdoors with people from another household in groups of up to eight, and also do non-contact activities such as golfing.
Meanwhile, those who are not shielding can meet up to two other households in groups of no more than eight people, while still maintaining social distancing of at least two metres.
2020-06-18 23:33:29
2020-06-18 23:31:41
Canada officially racked up 100,000 cases of the novel coronavirus and although the outbreak is slowing, health experts said major challenges remain.
While the 10 provinces are slowly reopening their economies, major restrictions remain in place in Montreal and Toronto, Canada’s two biggest cities.
“We haven’t done brilliantly, we’ve done acceptably,” said University of Toronto epidemiologist Camille Lemieux, saying the outbreak was “a very big wake-up call” about shortfalls in a fragmented health care system.
The province of Ontario on Thursday announced another 190 cases a day after public health agency data showed 99,853 people had been diagnosed positive. That pushed Canada over the 100,000 mark and into 17th place on the global list.
2020-06-18 23:30:52
Kuwait’s cabinet decided to ease curfew hours to start from 7pm until 5am effective June 21, Kuwait TV citing government spokesman’s live conference.
The cabinet also decided to extend working with the first phase in a 5-phases plan to go back to normal life for one more week, also total lockdown on Hawally area has been lifted.
Kuwait will also allow traveling for patients with critical health conditions and students who might be missing exams with applying needed precautionary measures.
2020-06-18 23:29:48
Iran is approaching 10,000 deaths from the coronavirus outbreak in the country, according to official figures from the Ministry of Health.
There have been nearly 200,000 people infected with the new coronavirus in the Islamic Republic and the number deaths in a single day from the pandemic topped 100 for the first time in two months on Sunday.
After gradually relaxing its lockdown since mid-April, Iran has seen a sharp rise of new infections in recent weeks, with five provinces currently considered to be red zones where infections have been on the rise.
Iran recorded 87 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 9,272. The total number of cases in the country has reached 197,647, of whom 156,991 people have recovered.
“The statistics show that in recent days every 12 to 15 minutes an Iranian lost their life because of #corona,” Mizan, the news agency of the Iranian judiciary, tweeted on Thursday.
2020-06-18 23:25:28
LONDON (Reuters) - Standing apart on either side of a strip of red carpet outside Number 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron demonstrated the unusual reality of international diplomacy in the coronavirus era.
Macron’s visit to London on Thursday to mark the 80th anniversary of General de Gaulle’s call for wartime resistance is one of the most high-profile foreign trips by a head of state since many countries imposed lockdowns to curb the virus.
Unable to shake hands then stand shoulder to shoulder while posing for photos outside the famous black door of Number 10, which would be the usual ritual, the two leaders had to improvise.
Macron put his palms together and offered a small bow - a gesture Johnson clumsily reciprocated while waving one hand around to direct the French leader to stand at a suitable distance.
Smiling and turning to face the cameras, Macron held up an arm sideways to check the distance between the two, while Johnson offered his counterpart a slightly awkward thumbs up.
Britain’s social distancing rules state that people should remain two metres apart to help limit the spread of the coronavirus which has swept across the globe, causing tens of thousands of deaths in both Britain and France.
Macron was exempted from a 14-day quarantine period imposed by British authorities on all visitors arriving from overseas.
2020-06-18 23:18:33
2020-06-18 23:16:15
2020-06-18 23:09:51
2020-06-18 23:07:19
Wearing riding pants, logo-decorated shirts and helmets, Gaza horse-riders resumed local show-jumping competitions on Thursday as coronavirus restrictions were eased.
Sami Zeyara, the federation’s assistant secretary-general, said the hiatus would force them to extend the season into early 2021.
“I am very happy to be back to competitions. Together with my horse, Diesel, we hope to come first,” said 12-year-old Hala al-Batrawi.
Contestants were divided in six categories. The most junior group included children under the age of 10, known to many as the “Smurfs.”
“I have worked hard to get back into shape, and I want to prove myself in this competition,” said Mohammad al-Sadi, 16, standing next to his horse Plutonium.
Sitting around tables separated by flower boxes in deference to social-distancing, spectators cheered when riders crossed the finishing line and applauded those who faltered or fell.
2020-06-18 23:01:48
The number of people who died from coronavirus infection in France rose by 28 to 29,603, the same increase as Wednesday.
In a statement, the health ministry said the number of new confirmed cases of the virus was 467, at 158,641, nine more than 24 hours earlier.
2020-06-18 22:59:08
The Bank of Canada sees the Canadian economy facing a prolonged and uneven recuperation with households remaining cautious with their spending until there is a vaccine for COVID-19, Deputy Governor Lawrence Schembri said on Thursday.
Schembri, speaking to a business audience, said the central bank expects the economic recovery to be in two phases, and noted fiscal policy will be needed to target the specific needs of vulnerable households, sectors and regions of Canada. He made no mention of future policy moves.
2020-06-18 22:52:39
A group of 27 leading executives added to calls for Canada to ease coronavirus-led air restrictions in a letter published in the country’s Globe and Mail newspaper on Thursday.
The move lends support to the travel industry’s push to relax air curbs as most international flights to and from Canada remain canceled.
The executives, including the CEO of the largest Canadian lender Royal Bank of Canada, asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and provincial premiers to “find a responsible way to co-exist with COVID-19 until there is a vaccine.”
Air Canada's Chief Executive Officer Calin Rovinescu and the tourism industry group Canadian Travel & Tourism Roundtable last week urged the government to lift travel restrictions in an open letter.
2020-06-18 22:47:52
Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on Youth Affairs said that authorities would take stern action against violation of safety measures issued by the government to stem the spread of COVID-19.
"People could go to jail for violating SOPs," he said, adding: "The administration taking stern action will slap the violators with heavy fines."
2020-06-18 22:39:35
LJUBLJANA: Concerned about the biggest rise in new cases of coronavirus in seven weeks, Slovenia will introduce an obligatory 14-day quarantine from Friday for most people coming from Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the government said.
“We want to prevent not being able to follow the contacts of those who are infected ... so we need to react immediately where it is needed, primarily on our borders,” Health Minister Tomaz Gantar told a news conference.
The government could also increase restrictions inside the country if the virus continues to spread, he added. In May Slovenia became the first European country to declare an end to its coronavirus outbreak, although some restrictions remain in place.
2020-06-18 22:37:01
BOGOTA: Colombia’s economy contracted 20.06% in April versus the same month last year - its largest fall on record - as the country suffered the fallout of a national coronavirus lockdown, the government’s statistics agency said on Thursday.
President Ivan Duque declared an ongoing national quarantine to curb the spread of the disease in late March. Though some restrictions have recently been lifted, the lockdown is set to last until July 1.
The collapse of Colombia’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the fourth month of the year was much higher than the 4.9% drop seen in March, statistics agency DANE said.
From January to April this year Latin America’s fourth-largest economy contracted 4.3%, compared with the same period in 2019.
The tertiary sector - made up of retail, public services, restaurants, bars, accommodation and transport - shrank 9.2%, the agency said. Tertiary economic activities overall account for some 67% of the economy.
2020-06-18 22:25:31
SANTIAGO: LATAM Airlines Chief Executive Roberto Alvo said he expects the region's largest carrier to be operating at half of pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2020, and that a full recovery was unlikely for at least 3-4 years.
LATAM filed for US bankruptcy protection last month, aiming to restructure $18 billion in debt. It was the world’s largest airline to date to seek an emergency reorganization due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Alvo said the company plans to file a $2 billion plan with the US bankruptcy court in the coming days to address the crisis.
2020-06-18 22:19:51
Oil prices rose slightly as a panel of OPEC and its allies met to review record oil supply cuts, even as the market remained concerned about additional coronavirus cases reported in parts of the United States and China.
Brent crude LCOc1 futures were up 54 cents at $41.25 a barrel and US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 futures rose 59 cents to $38.55 a barrel.
“You’re going to see more OPEC compliance,” said Phil Flynn, senior oil analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. “I think we’d be a lot higher if it weren’t for these coronavirus fears.”
An OPEC+ ministerial panel met on Thursday to review record oil supply cuts and plans by countries such as Iraq and Kazakhstan to improve compliance with quotas to support oil prices battered as demand plunged by up to a third during the pandemic.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, known as OPEC+, have been cutting output by a record 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) or 10% of global supply since May 1.
2020-06-18 22:09:28
European shares closed lower as a spike in COVID-19 cases in China and some US states triggered fears of a second wave of infections, while a 60% plunge in Wirecard shares over missing cash balances weighed on the STOXX 600 index.
Investors scaled back on risk as the daily count of cases hit new highs in California and Texas, two of the United States’ most populous states, while Beijing ramped up movement curbs.
“The faster economies reopen, the more likely we will see a second wave of infections translate into new lockdowns. Hence, the path over the coming months will be murky,” said Hussein Sayed, chief market strategist at FXTM.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index fell 0.7% after two straight days of gains, as hopes of a swift recovery from the pandemic-led economic slump were knocked back.
2020-06-18 22:05:00
GENEVA: The World Health Organisation said that a few hundred million COVID-19 vaccine doses could be produced by the end of the year — and be targeted at those most vulnerable to the virus.
The UN health agency said it was working on that assumption, with a view to two billion doses by the end of 2021, as pharmaceutical firms rush to find a vaccine.
WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said researchers were working on more than 200 vaccine candidates around the world, including 10 that are in human testing.
"If we're very lucky, there will be one or two successful candidates before the end of this year," she told a virtual press conference.
She identified three groups most in need of the first wave of vaccine doses.
They are front-line workers with high exposure, such as medics and police officers; those most vulnerable to the disease, such as the elderly and diabetics; and people in high-transmission settings, such as urban slums and care homes.
"You have to start with the most vulnerable and then progressively vaccinate more people," Swaminathan said.
2020-06-18 21:59:38
PARIS: People who catch COVID-19 but don't show symptoms may have significantly lower levels of immunity against the virus than those who become severely ill, new research showed Thursday.
The majority of virus patients display relatively minor signs of infection, and a small proportion show no symptoms at all.
Very little is known about this group, given that they are far less likely to be tested than those who go on to develop severe symptoms including respiratory problems.
Researchers based in China compared two groups of individuals infected with COVID-19 in Chongqing's Wanzhou district: 37 who showed symptoms versus 37 who did not.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-18 21:45:37
Balochistan reported 204 new infections and another six deaths from coronavirus, taking the overall cases to 8,998 and death toll to 99.
However, 3,140 patients have recovered from the virus.
2020-06-18 21:37:06
Prime Minister Imran Khan visited the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) to review the prevalent COVID-19 situation.
Federal Minister Asad Umar and Major General Asif Mehmood Goraya, DG Operations & Planning NCOC, briefed the premier on the analysis of patterns of COVID-19 spread, pressure on hospitals, fatalities, and future projections.
The participants through a consensus resolved to continue the strategy of balance between life and livelihood being pursued. It was reiterated that while businesses must remain open, strict implementation of SOPs will be ensured through awareness and administrative actions.
PM Imran, during the meeting, said: "All our efforts must remain focused on controlling the disease spread," adding that availability of medicines, oxygen, and beds in hospitals must be ensured.
2020-06-18 21:29:24
2020-06-18 21:25:32
Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) members warned the government that they will boycott services if the security of doctors is not ensured at hospitals.
The association condemned the incident where a policeman shot and injured a doctor on duty at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD).
According to a report by Dawn, the doctor was shot for allegedly not prescribing sleeping pills to the officer, who was suffering from typhoid and had been urging medical staff to prescribe the pills as he wasn't able to sleep the past few days.
While addressing a press conference in Karachi, the association asserted: "If doctors are not provided security, the medical fraternity will also go on a lockdown (strike)."
Read complete story here.
2020-06-18 21:20:42
2020-06-18 21:15:10
GWADAR: Najeeba was disappointed. Like millions of other students around the world she found out she wouldn’t be able to continue studying at school due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But her disappointment wasn’t just about how the temporary closure of schools in Pakistan would affect her own plans.
“What bothered me the most was that it disrupted children’s education,” says Najeeba, 19, who lives in the city of Gwadar in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province. “I wanted every child in my family to keep studying, but…they couldn’t leave their homes.”
If the children in her family couldn’t go to class, Najeeba decided she’d arrange for the next best thing: class would come to them. “I decided to teach them myself, at home,” she says.
Najeeba volunteered for “Mera Ghar Mera School”, which means “My Home, My School”, an initiative supported by UNICEF and Balochistan’s Secondary Education Department that helps children continue learning despite the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Najeeba turned one of the rooms inside her home into a classroom to give her space to teach English, maths and science. She received support from the “My Home, My School” initiative in the form of access to WhatsApp groups that provide guidance on home schooling. The groups also share information on how to protect families from the coronavirus, as well as tips for staying physically active.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-18 21:09:31
The federal government has decided to open Taftan border throughout the week for trade, Radio Pakistan reported.
According to a notification from the Ministry of Interior, standard operating procedures and guidelines will be ensured during trade activities.
2020-06-18 21:03:00
WASHINGTON: A defacto lockdown in the United States has lasted longer than expected despite a rollback in some restrictions on mobility, pointing to a deeper-than-expected contraction in gross domestic product in the second quarter, the IMF said.
Given the continuing lockdowns, the pace of recovery in the world’s largest economy could be slower, he said, without giving an exact forecast.
Spokesman Gerry Rice, in a regular briefing held online, said the Chinese economy was gaining momentum, with high frequency data showing a stronger-than-expected recovery in investment and services through May. Overall, the balance of risks remained on the downside, he said.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and other top IMF officials have said the Fund is likely to revise downward its already pessimistic forecast for a 3% contraction in global gross domestic output in 2020.
2020-06-18 21:00:38
MADRID: The Spanish government announced a near 4.3 billion euro ($4.82 billion) plan to help the crucial tourism industry recover from the coronavirus crisis that halted leisure travel for three months.
“Spain is reopening itself to tourism,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said while presenting the plan. “We are a world leader and each step we take will be safe.”
Most of the package, about 2.5 billion euros, is made up of credit guarantees offered by the government for tourism operators, Sanchez’s office said in a statement.
2020-06-18 20:57:09
2020-06-18 20:53:58
2020-06-18 20:43:59
A lockdown has been imposed in several neighborhoods of the metropolis to curb the spread of coronavirus as the province's cases surpassed 62,000, with most of them in the port city.
According to a notification issued from Commissioner Karachi's office late Wednesday, potential coronavirus hotspots have been put under lockdown for two weeks from June 18 to June 2, while grocery and medical will remain open.
Coronavirus 'hotspots'
1. District Korangi
- Korangi Town: UC-2 Makhdoom Bilawal, Qayyomabad-A & B Area, Allahwala Town, Nasir Colony, P&T Colony, Darrusalam
- Malir Town: UC-1 Moinaabad Phase 3, SI, 35/3 Model Colony, Jaffar Bagh and Nashtar Square
- Landhi Town: UC-9 36-B Area near to Street Rehmania Nlasjid, Awami Colony, Imambargh Wali Asar Area and Power House Area
- Shah Faisal Town: UC-7 Millat Town, Al-Falah Society and Malir Halt and UC-9 CAA Colony, Cantt. Bazar and Old Iqbalabad
Read complete story here.
2020-06-18 20:35:15
NEW YORK: New York City will begin phase two of reopening on Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, citing continued improvements in coronavirus data.
Offices, in-store retail, outdoor dining, hair salons and barbershops are among the businesses allowed to reopen their doors during phase two.
“We’ve seen consistent progress and it is time to say to everyone get ready for phase two,” de Blasio told a daily news conference.
De Blasio signed an executive order launching the “Open Restaurants” initiative that will allow restaurants, cafes and bars that serve food to apply to utilize certain spaces like sidewalks for outdoor dining.
Backyard and patio seating will also be allowed. De Blasio said the initiative will help an estimated 5,000 restaurants and save some 45,000 jobs.
2020-06-18 20:31:09
State oil giant Saudi Aramco started laying off hundreds of employees this month, two sources familiar with the matter said, as global energy companies reduce their workforces in response to the coronavirus crisis.
Like other top oil firms, Aramco has cut capital spending for 2020 after the pandemic brought an unprecedented drop in oil demand and hammered crude prices. Oil majors have cut workforces by 10% to 15% to cuts costs and as part of restructuring plans.
Most of those who lost jobs at Aramco were foreigners, the sources said. One source estimated that 500 people had been laid off, adding that the job losses were mostly based on performance and similar actions took place each year.
Aramco has more than 70,000 employees.
2020-06-18 20:26:08
Steel producer ArcelorMittal South Africa Ltd said it plans to cut an unspecified number of jobs as part of a restructuring to cut costs and deal with excess capacity due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The company, which is Africa’s biggest steel producer and majority-owned by ArcelorMittal SA, said it expects crude steel production to take some time to return to historical or planned levels for 2020.
2020-06-18 20:16:43
2020-06-18 20:14:27
LONDON: Britain’s economy is recovering a bit more quickly than the Bank of England thought a month ago as the government eases its COVID-19 lockdown, but news from the labour market is mostly negative, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said
“As partial lifting of the measures takes place, we see signs of some activity returning,” Bailey said after the BoE announced a 100 billion pound ($124 billion) increase in the size of its bond-buying programme but slowed the pace of purchases sharply.
“We don’t want to get too carried away by this. Let’s be clear, we’re still living in very unusual times.”
Bailey told reporters that the BoE’s plan to stretch its now 745 billion-pound bond-buying programme until around the turn of the year was still faster than anything done by the British central bank prior to the coronavirus crisis.
“We’re slowing from ... warp speed to something that by any historical standards still looks fast,” he said.
2020-06-18 20:07:02
The British government will abandon the centralised model of its coronavirus test-and-trace app and switch to one based on technology provided by Apple and Google, the BBC reported.
Apple and Google have been in talks with Britain about the technology, which uses a decentralised model. The head of the UK’s programme said last month a centralised app can potentially give more insight into outbreaks of COVID-19, but offers less privacy than decentralised rivals.
Apple and Google have barred authorities using their technology from collecting GPS location data or requiring users to enter personal data.
The current UK app is being tested on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England.
Britain’s testing co-ordinator has said the tracing system and the app are “distinct but complementary”, and it is advantageous to introduce one before the other.
2020-06-18 20:01:35
Chairman China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Authority and SAPM on Information and Broadcasting Lt Gen (retd) Asim Saleem Bajwa said despite the coronavirus pandemic, the progress of the multi-billion dollar project has not been hampered.
Addressing an agreement signing ceremony between CPEC Authority and Chines companies in Taxila, SAPM Bajwa said the signing of agreements between the two countries over various new projects will bring even more investment to Pakistan. "The agreement will boost foreign investment in the mega project leading to prosperity in the region," he said.
“CPEC is a reflection of the brotherly relations between Pakistan and China,” Lt Gen (retd) Bajwa said.
He added under Phase-1 of CPEC, eight energy projects have been completed and nine others were well on their way to completion.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-18 19:56:36
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi held a telephonic conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov to discuss a range of issues including the current COVID-19 outbreak and its ramifications on the region, as well as the crackdown by Indian occupation forces in Kashmir.
"Matters of mutual interest, including the COVID-19 pandemic, cooperation at the multilateral fora, prospects of enhanced bilateral cooperation, and regional issues were discussed by both ministers," read a press release issued by the Foreign Office (FO).
Reiterating that Pakistan considered Russia as an important partner and desired to forge a long-term and multi-dimensional partnership with the country, Qureshi offered condolences on the loss of precious lives in Russia due to the on-going global pandemic.
In response, Foreign Minister Lavrov also expressed solidarity with Pakistan in its efforts to combat the outbreak.
Read compete story here.
2020-06-18 19:40:56
2020-06-18 19:37:43
England’s high streets and shopping centres are still half empty compared to last year, despite the easing of lockdown rules which has allowed all stores to re-open, showing the challenge faced by the government to get the economy moving again.
After 83 days of coronavirus lockdown, non-essential stores in England were permitted to open on Monday, but data from market researcher Springboard found much lower shopper numbers, or footfall.
Getting shoppers spending again is key to Britain’s recovery after official data on Friday showed the economy shrank by a quarter over March and April.
In the first two days of this week, footfall in English high streets remained down over 50% compared to the same days last year, in a sign that shoppers remain cautious despite forecasts that pent-up demand would get tills ringing again.
Shopping centres in England fared a little better, with footfall down 43% on Monday, but worsening on Tuesday to be down by half.
One brighter spot was retail parks, whose footfall was only down by 14% on Monday, before falling to be down by 20% on Tuesday.
2020-06-18 19:35:29
The Prime Minister's Tiger Force could not be made operational despite 38 meetings between PM, chief ministers, and bureaucracy sources informed Geo News.
According to sources, a new plan was proposed in every meeting and the older one was scrapped.
Many of the people included in the lists were not willing to work, sources said, adding that several deputy commissioners of Punjab had informed the higher authorities about their concerns over the volunteer force.
The Tiger Force, a voluntary force, has been established to aid the police, civil servants, and health officials in the plight against coronavirus.
2020-06-18 19:25:30
Lockdown beings in several areas of Karachi, including, Malir, Jinnah Square, Jafar-e-Tayyar, and UC-5, Geo News reported.
The lockdown will be imposed from 18 June to 2 July, while, all the entrances and exits to the affected areas will be closed. The authorities have started to shut down shops and businesses.
Grocery and medical stores will remain open from 11am to 5pm in the virus hotspots, whereas public transport and online taxi services will remain suspended.
2020-06-18 19:18:22
2020-06-18 19:17:22
2020-06-18 19:14:26
The headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency's Cyber Crime Wing has been sealed after three of the officials tested positive for coronavirus.
According to a notification, disinfectants were sprayed in all offices, while all of the employees would be tested for the virus.
2020-06-18 19:09:30
The federal government, from the National Command and Control Centre's platform, along with the provinces, is enhancing the health sector's capacity, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar said.
Addressing a press conference, alongside Information Minister Shibli Farz, he said: "Till the end of this month, 1,000 beds and by the end of July 2,150 beds will be added."
Umar said that on directives of the Prime Minister, a special package to address the need of the frontline workers will be given, as announced earlier by Dr Zafar Mirza, PM's aide on health.
"The health ministry's process for registering a new medicine has also been shortened from several months to two weeks," he added.
2020-06-18 18:43:14
Hydroxychloroquine can be ruled out as a treatment for hospitalised COVID-19 patients — but the World Health Organization said it was aware of ongoing trials into its value as a preventative measure.
"As far as the use of hydroxychloroquine for prophylaxis or prevention of COVID-19 — either before or after exposure — the last word is not yet out," WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told a virtual press conference.
"There are some good and big trials going on, and we hope those will be completed so that we have the kind of evidence that we need to make sure that patients receive the drugs which help — and do not receive drugs which do not help."
2020-06-18 18:39:46
Authorities sealed four neighbourhoods in Jhang as coronavirus infections surged.
Deputy Commissioner Tahir Wattoo said that the areas include Iqbal Nagar, the alley of Dr Farzana Mumtaz's clinic,Marzi Pura, andChak 214.
2020-06-18 18:35:59
Hyderabad Commissioner urged all deputy commissioners and senior superintendents of police of the division to ensure effective smart lockdown in COVID-19 hotspots to tackle the pandemic.
Smart lockdown will be imposed in Badin, Thatta, Tando Allahyar, Sujawal, and Matiari, he said, adding that COVID-19 tests will also be conducted in the areas.
2020-06-18 18:22:57
President Donald Trump said the United States would not close businesses again as several states reported rising numbers of new coronavirus infections.
“We won’t be closing the country again. We won’t have to do that,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Channel.
Trump’s comments come after White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin both said the United States could not shut down the economy again.
In a call with governors, Vice President Mike Pence encouraged them to repeat the administration’s claim that increased testing accounts for the spike in numbers, the New York Times has reported.
2020-06-18 18:18:01
Pakistan Medical Association opposing smart lockdown said that the strategy could not lead to desired results.
PMA's Secretary Dr Qaiser Sajjad said that the Sindh government was not managing the prevailing coronavirus situation in the correct manner.
"Despite smart lockdown, people move from one place to another, he said, adding that the results will not be achieved until the whole city is put under lockdown.
The government should at least follow the recommendation of the World Health Organisation, Dr Sajjad added.
2020-06-18 18:13:01
2020-06-18 18:11:35
2020-06-18 18:00:37
As stock markets roar back from the coronavirus-led rout, advisers to the world’s wealthy are urging them to hold more gold, questioning the strength of the rally and the long-term impact of global central banks’ cash splurge.
While gold prices have already risen 14% since the start of the year to $1,730 an ounce, many private bankers bet that gold - a hedge for both inflation and deflation - has further to run.
“Our view is that the weight of monetary supply, expansion, is going to ultimately be debasing to the dollar, and the Fed commitments, which (are) anchoring real rates, make the case for gold pretty sturdy,” said Lisa Shalett, Chief Investment Officer, Wealth Management at Morgan Stanley.
Nine private banks spoken to by Reuters, which collectively oversee around $6 trillion in assets for the world’s ultra-rich, said they had advised clients to increase their allocation to gold. Of them, four provided forecasts and all saw prices ending the year higher than they are now.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-18 17:56:55
The luxury industry will feel the fallout from the coronavirus crisis for the next two years if not longer, Chanel’s chief financial officer said, warning the French fashion label’s 2020 revenues and profit would be significantly hit.
It did not give details of the slide in sales so far this year but the next 12 to 18 months would be particularly tough, finance chief Philippe Blondiaux told Reuters, adding that a strong recovery in countries where the group’s shops have reopened could not make up for the lack of international travel.
“We anticipate that the external environment will continue to impact the luxury sector negatively for at least the next 18 to 24 months,” he said in a phone interview after the group reported 13% growth in comparable sales for 2019.
Like rivals, Chanel had to shut shops across the globe and idle manufacturing sites as the virus first emerged in the sector’s key market of China and then spread to the rest of the world.
Some 85% of the group’s stores have now reopened and Blondiaux said Chanel had seen sales rebound in China - by over 100% in some weeks. Shoppers were returning in Paris, Milan and Berlin, he said.
2020-06-18 17:35:12
The European Commission is in advanced talks with pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to reserve or buy up-front doses of its COVID-19 vaccine under development, two officials familiar with the talks told Reuters.
The move would be the first arranged by the European Union executive since it was mandated by the 27 EU national governments to use an emergency fund of more than 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) to strike deals with up to six vaccine makers.
The Commission’s deal with the U.S. firm Johnson & Johnson is “in the pipeline”, a top health official from an EU member state said, asking to remain anonymous as these were confidential discussions about vaccines between the EU executive and EU governments.
A second EU source said the Commission had a call with Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday about the possible agreement.
A Commission spokesman had no comment. Johnson & Johnson was not immediately available for comment outside U.S. business hours.
It was unclear whether any deal would involve an advance purchase of the vaccine in testing, or an option to buy it.
Johnson & Johnson plans next month to start human clinical trials for its experimental vaccine against the highly contagious coronavirus, which has infected more than 8.36 million people worldwide, with 447,985 deaths.
2020-06-18 17:08:01
BEIJING: China has found the trading sections for meat and seafood in Beijing’s wholesale food market to be severely contaminated with the new coronavirus and suspects the area’s low temperature and high humidity may have been contributing factors, officials said on Thursday.
Their preliminary report comes as the country’s capital tackles a resurgence of COVID-19 cases over the past week linked to the massive Xinfadi food center, which houses warehouses and trading halls in an area the size of nearly 160 soccer pitches.
The latest outbreak infected more than 100 people and raised fears of wider contagion in China.
Among the patients who work at the Xinfadi market, most serve at seafood and aquatic product stalls, followed by the beef and mutton section, and patients from the seafood market showed symptoms earlier than others, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a daily briefing on Thursday.
Low temperatures favorable to viral survival as well as high humidity might be possible explanations for why seafood markets could be a source of outbreaks based on a preliminary assessment, Wu said, cautioning that further investigation was necessary.
China has halted imports from European salmon suppliers this week amid fears they may be linked to the recent outbreak in Beijing.
Health officials have also warned against eating raw salmon after the virus was discovered on chopping boards used for imported salmon, although the origin of the outbreak is not known.
Low standards of hygiene in wholesale food markets and vulnerabilities in its food supply chain need to be urgently addressed, a leading body of the ruling Communist Party said this week.
2020-06-18 16:58:09
BANGKOK: International health organisations on Thursday praised Laos’ early response and countrywide networks for containing the novel coronavirus after the Southeast Asian nation declared itself free of the virus earlier this month.
But they said the country with a border with China, which is tackling a new outbreak, must remain vigilant.
Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith declared Laos free of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 on June 10 after the last of the country’s 19 cases recovered and 59 days with no new infections. The country has suffered no fatalities.
Howard Sobel, acting World Health Organisation representative in Laos, issued a statement on Thursday commending Thongloun, the COVID-19 Task Force and the Emergency Operations Center.
He also thanked “frontline health staff for their tireless efforts (including weekends and holidays) to enhance early warning and early detection systems, contact tracing, and prepare the Lao health system, borders and quarantine centers to respond to COVID-19.”
He warned imported cases remain a threat.
“The measures put in place for these initial wins, must remain and continue to be strengthened,” he said.
The low number of cases in Communist-run Laos had prompted scepticism, but a representative of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Laos said there were few unofficial reports of illnesses or deaths on social media or in villages.
“It’s difficult to hide, so yes, I believe it,” said Ludovic Arnout, the IFRC’s Asia Pacific Coordinator for Water, Sanitation, Health and Care, based in Laos.
He praised the government’s community information campaign that reached remote areas.
He also credited awareness among Lao people, who willingly embraced the cancellation of April’s annual Laos New Year water festival and accepted wearing face masks to prevent spread of disease.
“The masks were widely used quite quickly,” he said
2020-06-18 16:42:40
Pakistan Medical Association’s Dr Qaiser Sajjad has urged Special Assistant Dr Zafar Mirza not to mention the name of drugs in his press conference as people start hoarding them.
Dr Sajjad, in a press conference, urged the SAPM to take generic names of the medicines.
2020-06-18 16:21:45
The nationwide positive cases rose to 162,404 on Thursday after Sindh recorded new cases.
According to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, 11,044 tests were conducted in the last 24 with 2,286 tests turning out to be positive.
The new cases takes Sindh's tally of positive cases to 62,269.
2020-06-18 16:17:59
KARACHI: Sindh on Thursday recorded its highest single day death toll of 48, said chief Minister Murad Ali Shah.
The new deaths take Sindh’s death toll closer to 1,000 with the province currently standing at 964. While the nationwide death toll rises to 3,141.
2020-06-18 16:09:24
BRUSSELS: The European Commission is in advanced talks with pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to reserve or buy up-front doses of its COVID-19 vaccine under development, two officials familiar with the talks told Reuters.
The move would be the first arranged by the European Union executive since it was mandated last week by the 27 EU national governments to use an emergency fund with more than 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) available to reach advance purchase or call-option deals with up to six vaccine makers.
The Commission’s deal with the US firm Johnson & Johnson is “in the pipeline”, a top health official from an EU member state said, asking to remain anonymous as was mentioning confidential discussions about vaccines between the EU executive and EU governments.
A second EU source said the Commission had a call with Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday over the possible agreement on its potential vaccine.
A Commission spokesman had no comment. Johnson & Johnson was not immediately available for comment outside US business hours.
It was unclear whether any deal would involve an advance purchase of the vaccine in testing, or an option to buy it.
Johnson & Johnson plans next month to start human clinical trials for its experimental vaccine against the highly contagious coronavirus, which has infected more than 8.36 million people worldwide, with 447,985 deaths.
Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands said last week they had acquired 400 million potential vaccine doses, in principle available to all member states, from British drugmaker AstraZeneca, which is developing a COVID-19 shot in conjunction with Oxford University.
AstraZeneca signed a similar deal in May with the United States.
2020-06-18 15:08:08
QUETTA: More than 1,200 tests are being carried out in Balochistan on a daily basis, shared the spokesperson of the provincial government Liaquat Shahwani.
The spokesperson also said that the regional blood centre in the province has also started plasma therapy, adding that the local spread of the virus stands at 98%.
While sharing details of doctors affected by the virus, Shahwani stated that 287 doctors have been affected and five have lost their lives to the infection. He also shared that 111 police officials have been injured affected by the virus, adding that parliamentarians have also been affected by the coronavirus.
2020-06-18 14:26:05
PARIS: French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called on Air France to avoid compulsory layoffs, as the airline prepares to cut thousands of jobs in response to the coronavirus crisis.
“Some readjustments will be necessary for Air France,” Le Maire said on Thursday following media reports that the airline plans to eliminate 8,000-10,000 jobs. “What I’m asking of Air France is that there should be no forced redundancies.”
A spokeswoman for Air France-KLM group declined to comment.
Air France is preparing voluntary layoffs in response to the crisis, Chief Executive Ben Smith told Reuters on May 7 as he announced a 20% cut to structural capacity - which potentially affects some 9,000 of its 45,000 jobs.
Competitors are moving fast to reduce staff numbers in the face of a deep global travel slump unleashed by COVID-19 and resulting lockdowns. Among them, British Airways is cutting 12,000 jobs and Ryanair at least 3,000, while Lufthansa is seeking as many as 22,000 departures.
Smith, who has negotiated more flexible labour deals since his 2018 appointment as Air France-KLM CEO, must tread carefully to keep the peace with unions as well as the French government, which owns 15% of the airline group and has underwritten a 7 billion euros ($7.9 billion) bailout for Air France.
The government message has been clear from the start that redundancies must be voluntary, a source close Air France management told Reuters. “While you’re in partnership with the government and you’ve got loans from them I think you’ve got to be very balanced as to what you do.”
In response to the pandemic, Air France has said it will accelerate moves to expand its low-cost Transavia division and shrink its domestic network, which lost 200 million euros last year and is operated in part by its short-haul carrier Hop!
The restructuring plans are to be presented at a strategic workforce planning meeting now expected in early July, according to union and company sources.
2020-06-18 13:59:56
Karachi police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon has admitted that the police do not have the required strength to seal the so many UC ordered by the government to put under lockdown.
However, Karachi’s top cop assured that they were trying to deploy as many officials as they can from the lockdown and urged the citizens to cooperate with the police.
2020-06-18 13:44:47
D G Khan: District Administration in Dera Ghazi Khan has sealed 10 areas of under the smart lockdown strategy being pursued by the government.
The sealed areas include Hospital colony, Khayaban-e-Sarwar, Faridabad, Shehzad Sultan Town, New defence, Shakir Town.
2020-06-18 13:33:12
Sindh Police announced on Thursday that it lost another of its cop to the coronavirus, taking the death toll of the police force to 11, said the law enforcement agency.
The police shared that so far 630 cops are being treated for the coronavirus in the province and 238 affected cops have recovered from the virus.
2020-06-18 13:19:00
Travel agents on Thursday demanded the government to provide grants to them to save their businesses.
Chairman Travel Agents Association shared that they have fired 800% of their staff, adding that not one travel agent was provided with funds under the State Bank’s scheme. He added that they were expecting the government to waive of the licence fees but that did not happen.
2020-06-18 13:02:34
PESHAWAR: Marriage hall owners have demanded the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to reopen marriage halls with SOPs in the province.
President of Marriage Hall Owners Association told shared the 600 marriage halls across the province have been shut down due to the coronavirus.
2020-06-18 12:56:35
WASHINGTON: A second wave of layoffs amid weak demand and fractured supply chains is likely keeping new US applications for unemployment benefits elevated, supporting views that the economy faces a long and difficult recovery from the COVID-19 recession.
The Labor Department’s weekly jobless claims report on Thursday, the most timely data on the economy’s health, is expected to sketch a picture of continued labor market distress even though employers hired a record 2.5 million workers in May as businesses reopened after shuttering in mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Millions are still collecting unemployment checks. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers this week that “significant uncertainty remains about the timing and strength of the recovery.” The economy fell into recession in February.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits likely totaled a seasonally adjusted 1.3 million for the week ended June 13, down from 1.542 million in the prior week, according to a Reuters survey of economists.
The 11th straight weekly drop would push claims further away from a record 6.867 million in late March. Still, claims would be roughly double their peak during the 2007-09 Great Recession.
“People will say claims are coming down, but for an economy that is reopening, that is a huge number,” said Steven Blitz, chief US economist at TS Lombard in New York.
“The economy is losing workers and employment beyond the initial impact tied to businesses that shut down. There are a lot of industries that are getting hurt and that’s starting to cascade down, that is what those numbers are showing.”
From manufacturing, retail, information technology and oil and gas production, companies have announced job cuts. State and local governments, whose budgets have been shattered by the COVID-19 fight, are also cutting jobs.
2020-06-18 12:52:29
ALMATY: Kazakhstan’s influential former president Nursultan Nazarbayev has self-isolated after testing positive for COVID-19, his spokesman Aidos Ukibay wrote on Twitter.
“There is no reason for concern,” Ukibay wrote, referring to the health of 79-year-old Nazarbayev, who retains sweeping powers as Yelbasy, or national leader, and chair of the oil-rich nation’s security council.
2020-06-18 12:45:18
Prime Minister Imran Khan has summoned over the rising number of coronavirus cases across the country, sourced told Geo News on Thursday.
According to the sources, officials from the NCOC and health ministry will brief PM Imran and advise him on making the smart lockdown stricter.
The officials shared that PM Imran will also be briefed on the lockdown imposed in certain areas of hotspots. While NDMA officials will brief the premier on the availability of vents and other medical equipment across the country.
2020-06-18 12:25:43
SHANGHAI: China reported 28 new coronavirus cases in the mainland as of end-June 17, 21 of which were in the capital of Beijing, the country’s health commission said on Thursday.
The National Health Commission said four of the 28 cases were so-called imported ones involving travellers from overseas, and that there were 8 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases.
A day earlier, the commission reported 44 confirmed cases, 11 of which were imported, and 11 asymptomatic cases.
The total number of confirmed cases stands at 83,293. The death toll remains unchanged at 4,634.
China does not count asymptomatic patients - those who are infected with the coronavirus but have no symptoms - as confirmed coronavirus cases.
2020-06-18 12:06:38
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza on Thursday chaired a meeting to strengthen the testing capacity and developing a unified testing fee for the coronavirus tests, said the National Institute of Health.
According to NIH, representatives from the public and private sector laboratories attended the meeting.
2020-06-18 11:35:58
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the United States would not close businesses again as several states reported rising numbers of new coronavirus infections.
“We won’t be closing the country again. We won’t have to do that,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Channel.
Trump’s comments come after White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin both said the United States could not shut down the economy again.
In a call with governors, Vice President Mike Pence encouraged them to repeat the administration’s claim that increased testing accounts for the spike in numbers, the New York Times has reported.
The paper’s analysis found that positive cases outstripped the average number of administered tests in at least 14 states.
Restaurants, gyms, schools and other locations closed down in March as the country braced for the coronavirus, which has so far sickened 2.16 million Americans and killed nearly 118,000.
Millions of Americans found themselves unemployed as a result of the pandemic. Trump had previously touted the strength of the economy, making it central to his re-election bid in November.
2020-06-18 11:14:24
WELLINGTON: New Zealand recorded on Thursday its third new case of the coronavirus this week as quarantine breaches and other failures undermined public confidence days after it declared itself among the first countries in the world to be free of the virus.
The new case is a man in his 60s who flew in from Lahore in Pakistan, via Doha and Melbourne on June 11, and is in quarantine.
It comes after two women who had arrived from Britain and were given permission to leave quarantine early on compassionate grounds tested positive.
The government has been forced to explain why the women were let out without proper testing, and questions were raised about whether quarantine facilities are being properly managed.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Wednesday called in the military to oversee the facilities and to manage border defences.
“I know the case of these two women will have upset people ... I am certainly upset by it,” Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told a news conference on Thursday.
“I apologise that we ended up in this position,” he said.
New Zealand’s border is closed to everyone except returning citizens though some exceptions have been made for business and compassionate reasons. Everyone has to go into quarantine.
In response to the case of the two women, the government has suspended all exemptions to quarantine rules and said no one is to leave the isolated hotels where people are kept unless they have been tested.
Contact tracing is underway for the hundreds of people who may have come into contact with the three new cases.
Only last week, New Zealand trumpeted its achievement of becoming one of the first countries to eliminate the novel coronavirus and return to normal with the lifting all social and economic restrictions except the border controls.
Bloomfield said he was convinced there had been no community transmission linked to the new cases.
2020-06-18 10:48:22
The first phase of the coronavirus testing of national cricketers for the upcoming tour of England will be carried out on June 22, sources told Geo News on Thursday.
According to the officials, the test was first scheduled for June 20 but it has now been shifted to a new date. They added that the test will be carried out in Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar.
The sources also shared that it has been recommended to the PCB that the second phase of the corona testing be done on June 25 before the team departs for England.
However, the date for the team’s departure has not been finalised as of yet but sources said that the players may depart on June 28. They added that the final shape of the series between England and Pakistan will be finalised tomorrow after a meeting between both the board officials.
2020-06-18 10:34:01
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi on Wednesday and discussed the need for full transparency and information sharing between the two nations to combat the coronavirus pandemic and prevent future outbreaks.
Pompeo also discussed the need for fully reciprocal dealings in commercial, security, and diplomatic interactions, the US State Department said in an emailed statement.
Pompeo met Yang in Hawaii, amid a deep deterioration in relations between the world’s two top economies.
2020-06-18 10:18:27
Multiple officials of the Islamabad High Court, including a judge, have tested positive for the coronavirus, confirmed judicial authorities on Thursday.
According to officials, Justice Lubna Saleem Pervez cause list has been cancelled for the upcoming week after she contracted the coronavirus. They added that the judge has quarantined herself at her home following the test results.
Officials said that three secretaries of the judges, including Justice Pervaz’s secretary, have already contracted the coronavirus. They added that the reader of IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah has also contracted the coronavirus. While Assistant Registrar Civil Branch Haji Shahid has also tested positive for the virus.
The officials shared that 15 employees of the court, including court officials, have tested positive for the virus.
2020-06-18 10:01:44
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 160,118 on Thursday after Islamabad, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) recorded new cases.
According to the national dashboard, 395 new cases were recorded in the federal capital and 37 new cases in AJK in the last 24 hours.
The country’s death toll also climbed to 3,093 with Islamabad reporting four new deaths and AJk reporting two new deaths.
2020-06-18 09:40:17
SHANGHAI: Low standards of hygiene in China’s wholesale food markets and vulnerabilities in its food supply chain need to be urgently addressed after a new coronavirus outbreak in Beijing, a leading body of the ruling Communist Party said.
The resurgence of COVID-19 in the country’s capital over the past week, infecting more than 100 people and raising fears of wider contagion, has been linked to the city’s massive Xinfadi food centre.
The Communist Party’s top disciplinary body said the outbreak underlined the urgent need to improve sanitation standards and minimise health risks at markets.
“The epidemic is a mirror that not only reflects the dirty and messy aspects of wholesale markets but also their low level management conditions,” the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a report published on its website on Wednesday.
China’s sprawling food markets have emerged as an ideal breeding ground for the coronavirus, which has now infected more than 8 million people worldwide. The first major cluster of infections was traced to the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, where bats and other wild animals were believed to be on sale.
The CCDI report noted that most of the markets were built 20 to 30 years ago, when drainage and wastewater treatment was relatively undeveloped.
An Yufa, a professor at China Agricultural University, was cited in the report as saying the markets must follow international practice and implement origin tracing systems as well as documentation on storage, transport and sale.
Officials in Wuhan province took 3,000 samples from tools, chopping boards and drains in 114 farmers’ markets and 107 supermarkets this week to check for potential new sources of infection. All came up negative, they said.
China has promised to ban the trade and consumption and wildlife in a bid to minimise disease transmission, though the use of wild animal products in traditional medicine will still be permitted.
2020-06-18 00:28:29
2020-06-17 23:53:04
2020-06-17 23:51:43
Coronavirus hotspots in Pakistan's financial capital were to be locked down starting Thursday, the city's commissioner said late Wednesday.
In an update, Commissioner Karachi Iftikhar Ali Shallwani said a decision has been made to lock down the metropolis' sensitive areas by 7pm on Thursday. The move comes in light of a report from the deputy commissioner Karachi that determined the coronavirus hotspots.
Shallwani would soon issue a notification with details of the areas to be locked down to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Any movement in the restricted hotspot areas would be banned during the lockdown, the update mentioned.
A day prior, the deputy commissioners of three of Karachi's districts had identified the hotspots.
All 43 union councils in the West, East, and Korangi districts were recommended to be locked down.
2020-06-17 23:38:11
After 14 weeks locked up in their homes, some Venezuelans are welcoming a decision by President Nicolas Maduro’s government to relax a coronavirus lockdown, though doctors warn the measure could speed up contagion in the crisis-hit country.
“It’s like restarting one’s routine,” said Yolimar Quintero, a 47-year-old lawyer working out in a Caracas gym, which opened its doors again on Monday and is enforcing mask use and temperature checks. “I’m super happy.”
Nearby, Natalia Alvarez, a 38-year-old marketer lifted weights for the first time in weeks, alongside several dozen other gym-goers. “It’s normal that it makes you a bit afraid,” she said.
Maduro decreed a national quarantine on March 17 to contain the virus, which so far has killed 26 people among 3,000 confirmed cases, according to the socialist government. Medical experts have expressed doubts about the government’s testing regime and the validity of the official figures.
Authorities began to relax the lockdown on June 1, allowing some complexes like gyms, shopping centers and drive-in cinemas to open, while courts, schools and bars remain closed.
Health workers warn that a recent acceleration in the number of cases coincides with the easing of lockdown measures, with the weekly case count rising from 45 to 450. They say Venezuela’s dilapidated health system, where some hospitals lack basics like soap and running water, would be unable to deal with a significant leap in severely sick patients.
2020-06-17 22:26:16
Prime Minister Imran Khan revealed that the number of people who got unemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic were higher in Sindh than any other province.
"[According] to applications received by my PM Relief Fund — 32% of all applicants are from Sindh whereas [population] of Sindh comprises around 22% of [Pakistan's population]," he said in a tweet.
2020-06-17 22:18:15
2020-06-17 22:14:23
2020-06-17 22:09:42
BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans to remain cautious and stick to social distancing rules, but also added that the number of new coronavirus infections had stabilized at a low level.
After speaking with the premiers of Germany’s 16 states, Merkel also said that all sides agreed to extend a ban on large events until at least the end of October to avoid another wave of new infections.
2020-06-17 22:00:30
2020-06-17 21:53:45
MADRID: Spain will trial a new smartphone app aimed at helping to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus on one of the Canary Islands, authorities said.
Europe’s latest scheme using Bluetooth technology to log contacts between people and send a warning if any of them test positive for the virus will start in late June on La Gomera, near tourist hot spot Tenerife.
“The aim is to explore the potential of this mobile tracing application in a real-life scenario,” the archipelago’s government said in a statement, adding the results will be used to decide whether to roll out the app nationwide.
Local authorities have committed to promoting widespread take-up to improve the reliability of the trial’s findings, the statement said. Germany’s national app was downloaded 6.5 million times in the 24 hours after its launch.
Spain follows several countries - led by Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Poland and Latvia - in opting to use Bluetooth short-range radio, rather than risk invading people’s privacy by using location data.
To guard further against intrusion, contacts between users will be stored on individual devices, rather than passing through a central server.
2020-06-17 21:38:44
BRUSSELS: European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen urged rich countries to prepare to share any future coronavirus vaccine with their poorer neighbours, as she launched Brussels' pandemic strategy.
Ahead of an address to the European Parliament, the head of the EU executive said member states would work together without "harmful competition" to find a vaccine — and suggested other world powers do the same.
"We are working towards a global summit on the 27th of June," Von der Leyen said, referring to the second leg of an international fund raising effort that began with a May 4 videoconference and has so far seen pledges of more than $9 billion.
"We will explore with our international partners, whether a significant number of countries would agree to pool resources for jointly reserving future vaccines from companies while at the same time making advance reservations for low and middle income countries," she said.
"The high income countries would then act as an inclusive international buyers group".
2020-06-17 21:29:48
FRANKFURT: Unlisted German biotech firm CureVac will become the second company after rival BioNTech 22UAy to launch human trials of an experimental coronavirus vaccine in the country, eyeing a potential approval in mid-2021.
The trial launch will see 144 participants in Germany and Belgium receive different dosages of the vaccine and a further 24 getting a placebo.
First meaningful results could be available in September or October, and approval could be on the cards under favourable conditions in the middle of next year, CureVac’s acting Chief Executive Franz-Werner Haas told an online media briefing.
Germany’s vaccines regulator, the Paul Ehrlich Institut, said that if trial results turn out to be “very good”, a request for approval as early as the beginning of next year was possible.
2020-06-17 21:23:16
2020-06-17 21:16:06
Canadian gold miner Iamgold halted operations at its Rosebel gold mine in Suriname as a workers union issued a stop work order after seven employees tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
The company said the infected employees were quarantined and it was taking steps to disinfect the workers’ living and work areas, but the union used one of its preventative measures as the basis to stop work.
“Due to Union resistance to the implementation of COVID-19 control measures, we are suspending operations until the appropriate controls are in place to protect the safety of all employees,” the company said in a statement.
Miners globally had temporarily suspended production at some of their mines due to the COVID-19 pandemic and government-mandated lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus.
2020-06-17 21:10:53
India's official coronavirus death toll leapt by more than 2,000 to reach 11,903 on Wednesday as Germany advised its nationals to consider leaving the country because of growing health risks.
Mumbai revised its toll up by 862 to 3,165 because of unspecified accounting "discrepancies" while New Delhi saw a record jump of more than 400 deaths, taking its total to more than 1,800.
It was not immediately clear how many of the deaths had occurred in the past 24 hours and how many were from adjustments over a longer period.
The pandemic has badly hit India's densely populated major cities and Chennai ordered a new lockdown from Friday because of a surge in cases.
Elsewhere, lockdowns are gradually being eased because of the damage they have caused the economy.
2020-06-17 21:01:48
The Premier League makes its eagerly anticipated return after 100 days in lockdown, with Manchester City's clash against Arsenal taking centre stage at the start of a frenetic dash to finish the season.
Coronavirus restrictions mean the drama will be played out with no fans in the stands but football-starved supporters will be able to feast on 92 televised games crammed into less than six weeks.
Liverpool could be just days away from winning their first English top-flight title for 30 years.
Jurgen Klopp's men, who hold a 25-point lead at the top of the table, could be crowned champions as early as Sunday when they face local rivals Everton if City lose to Arsenal.
The battle for Champions League places next season and to avoid the drop are far more closely contested.
2020-06-17 20:12:15
2020-06-17 19:58:57
ALMATY: The speaker of Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament has self-isolated after contracting the new coronavirus, authorities said as they raised the alarm about a fresh surge in COVID-19 cases in the capital Nur-Sultan.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the coronavirus situation was “challenging” because of widespread non-compliance with social distancing rules, but the government remained in control.
“Tomorrow the government will announce measures to stabilise the epidemiological situation, including broader testing,” he wrote on Twitter.
Last week, lower house speaker Nurlan Nigmatulin met Healthcare Minister Yelzhan Birtanov who then tested positive and is now in hospital being treated for pneumonia.
Unlike Birtanov, Nigmatulin’s case is asymptomatic, the parliament’s press office said. Tokayev’s spokesman also tested positive earlier this month.
Saule Kisikova, the head of Nur-Sultan’s healthcare department, said the situation had worsened in the capital over the last few weeks and that more hospitals were being converted into COVID-19 facilities.
2020-06-17 19:48:11
2020-06-17 19:39:23
The Prime Minister's focal person for COVID-19, Dr Faisal Sultan, said that the plasma therapy and actemra injections are not suitable for every coronavirus patient and that the former could be lethal for some.
2020-06-17 19:34:34
Sindh recorded 2,115 new coronavirus infections and 30 more deaths taking the over cases to 59,983 and death toll to 916, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said.
The chief minister said the province's death rate stood at 1.5%.
2020-06-17 19:22:20
Israeli researchers say they have invented a reusable face mask that can kill the coronavirus with heat by drawing power from a mobile phone charger.
The disinfecting process takes about 30 minutes - and users should not wear the mask while it is plugged in, said Professor Yair Ein-Eli, who led the research team at Technion University in Haifa.
The new mask has a USB port that connects to a power source such as a standard cellphone charger that heats an inner layer of carbon fibers to up to 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit), high enough to kill viruses.
Ein-Eli said disposable masks, in high demand globally during the health crisis, were not economically or environmentally friendly.
“You have to make it reusable and friendly, and this is our solution,” he said about the invention.
The prototype looks like a standard N95 face mask, with a valve at the front and rubber bands to hold it in place around the head.
2020-06-17 19:19:07
2020-06-17 19:06:29
Alphabet Inc’s Google introduced new advertising features intended to help local businesses get more customers and recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
The features come as retailers across the United States were battered after being forced to shut their doors in March as the health crisis spread, and are now navigating reopening as the economy confronts a recession.
Google, the largest digital advertising company in the world, said people searching on their mobile phones for local services like air conditioning repair or carpet cleaning will now be able to book those services directly through Google.
Small businesses, using a Google tool that lets them easily set up advertising campaigns, will be now be able to promote their business for free on Google Maps until the end of September, the tech giant said. These companies will be able to place a pin on Google Maps, normally a paid advertising feature, and highlight services they offer such as curbside pickup or delivery.
2020-06-17 18:53:23
China will step up monetary easing and keep liquidity “reasonably ample”, the state cabinet said in a meeting chaired by premier Li Keqiang, as it looks to support the economy and help small and medium-sized firms.
The cabinet indicated that the government will keep liquidity ample by cutting the required reserved ratio (RRR) - the amount of cash banks are required to hold - and re-lending, while guiding market interest rates lower, the state broadcaster CCTV reported.
The government will ensure that China’s issuance of new yuan-denominated loans and total social financing in 2020 exceed last year’s total, the report added.
China will also push financial institutions to sacrifice 1.5 trillion yuan ($212 billion) in profit this year to support companies of all kinds by lowering lending rates and fees, and deferring loan payments, according to the report.
2020-06-17 18:37:42
BRASILIA: Services activity in Brazil slumped 11.7% in April, figures showed, the biggest fall since comparable record-keeping began nearly a decade ago as social isolation measures to combat the COVID-19 outbreak slammed the economy into reverse.
Coming a day after data showed a record crash in April retail sales, the economy’s incredibly weak start to the second quarter would appear to justify the expected cut in interest rates to a new low by the central bank later on Wednesday.
Services account for around 70% of Brazilian economic activity, and April reflected the first full month of strict coronavirus-linked policies restricting people’s movement in key states like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
According to statistics agency IBGE, the level of service sector activity in Brazil is now 27% lower than the peak in November 2014.
The 11.7% month-on-month fall in April was more than the 10.5% drop forecast in a Reuters poll of economists and the biggest fall since IBGE began the series in January 2011.
2020-06-17 18:25:46
Azad Jammu and Kashmir will seal all entry points for a week string June 20, the region's deputy commissioner said after coronavirus cases surged.
Inter-provincial public transport will also remain closed, he said, adding that public transport will continue to operate within Kotli district.
The businesses will also continue to run under SOPS, the government official added.
2020-06-17 18:20:50
BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet passed another extra budget to finance its bumper stimulus package, pushing up overall new borrowing to a record 218.5 billion euros ($245.35 billion) this year in its fight against the coronavirus.
“Now we gonna spit in our hands, we increase the gross national product,” Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told a news conference to present the second supplementary budget within three months, citing the refrain of a famous German 1980s pop song.
Scholz pointed out that Germany could afford “this fiscal act of strength” because the government had reduced its debt burden in economic good times and now had solid public finances.
“We are not saving up against the crisis,” Scholz added.
The finance minister said Germany was benefiting from record low borrowing costs which would push down Berlin’s bill for debt servicing to 9 billion euros this year from some 12 billion euros last year — despite the additional record new borrowing.
Germany now plans to sell 218.5 billion euros of additional debt this year, equivalent to 6.5% of economic output.
2020-06-17 18:13:19
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on National Security Mooed Yusuf said that the government would be bringing back 45,000 international passengers per week from June 20.
Talking about the SOPs that the passengers would have to follow once they land, he said that only symptomatic passengers will be tested.
"All others will go home but they must observe strict 14 day home quarantine. Province will track and trace them through their established systems," he said.
2020-06-17 18:07:17
2020-06-17 18:01:00
A special meeting at the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), chaired by the Minister for Planning Development Reforms and Special Initiatives Asad Umar, was apprised about the situation of COVID-19 pandemic in the country and steps taken to contain it.
The meeting was briefed that over a million people were restricted under smart lockdown across the country after trace, test, and quarantine (TTQ) strategy was implemented in the high-risk areas with a large number of coronavirus infections.
The forum also discussed the arrangements regarding Eid-ul-Azha.
The meeting was briefed that during the last 24 hours more than 9,827 violations of health guidelines were observed across Pakistan.
2020-06-17 17:41:20
Minister for Interior Brig (retd) Ejaz Ahmed Shah said the ministry was working out a comprehensive policy to contain the COVID-19 outbreak in the country during Eid-ul-Adha.
Shah chaired a meeting at the Ministry of Interior to review arrangements to be made for managing the risk of coronavirus outbreak during Eid-ul-Adha.
Speaking on the occasion, Interior Minister said, "Sacrifice of animals on Eid-ul-Adha is a religious obligation and the government will ensure every possible facility in this regard to manage the occasion safely and contain the risk of COVID-19 outbreak."
He added that all arrangements should be made in line with the safety measures and guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health.
2020-06-17 17:29:27
King Felipe of Spain will lead a ceremony, attended by top EU officials, on July 16 to honour the 27,000 victims of the COVID-19 pandemic and health workers, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said.
Spain is emerging from a three-month lockdown after suffering one the world’s heaviest death tolls from the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Sanchez told parliament the state ceremony would honour “the 27,000 compatriots who lost their lives,” as well as civil servants who had been on the frontline of the fight against the pandemic.
European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, the President of the European Council Charles Michel, top EU diplomat Josep Borrell and also the head of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will attend, he said.
He did not specify where the ceremony would be held.
At the height of the pandemic in late March and early April, when almost 1,000 people were dying of the disease each day, hospitals were overwhelmed.
2020-06-17 17:18:29
Changes in estimates for the COVID-19 reproduction rate in selected countries, according to data from Imperial College London:
Iraq falling to 1.78
Philippines rising to 1.61
South Africa falling to 1.34
India rising to 1.31
2020-06-17 17:12:29
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was moving to update its guidelines on treating people stricken with COVID-19 to reflect results of a clinical trial that showed a cheap, common steroid can help save critically ill patients.
Trial results announced on Tuesday showed dexamethasone, used since the 1960s to reduce inflammation in diseases such as arthritis, cut death rates by around a third among the most severely ill COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital.
The WHO’s clinical guidance for treating patients infected with the new coronavirus is aimed at doctors and other medical professionals and seeks to use the latest data to inform clinicians on how best to tackle all phases of the disease, from screening to discharge.
Although the dexamethasone study’s results are preliminary, the researchers behind the project said it suggests the drug should immediately become standard care in severely stricken patients.
For patients on ventilators, the treatment was shown to reduce mortality by about one third, and for patients requiring only oxygen, mortality was cut by about one fifth, according to preliminary findings shared with WHO.
2020-06-17 17:08:48
As the COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the country with each passing day, the federal government has already initiated a 'smart lockdown' whereby certain areas, with a large number of coronavirus cases, are locked down so that a colossal loss to the economy is averted.
Dr Umar Saif, CEO AutoSurvey.com and Chief Digital Officer Jang/Geo Media Group was asked by the government to use his start-up's technological prowess to create a system whereby the strategy can be executed.
AutoSurvey.com came up with a system that can pinpoint hotspots of the coronavirus disease, enabling the government to only seal selective areas rather than locking down the whole country, which would otherwise severely hamper economic activity.
How the system works is simple: Data obtained from the government's field workers, who use smartphones to record them, is used to generate sophisticated mathematical and epidemiological analysis.
A critical element to spatial analysis of the outbreak is done by using Artificial Intelligence on satellite imagery, which generates population maps, house counts, case incidence rates and forecasts using SEIR prediction models.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-17 16:57:52
Russian President Vladimir Putin is protected from the coronavirus by special disinfection tunnels that anyone visiting his residence outside Moscow or meeting him in the Kremlin must pass through, his spokesman said.
One such special tunnel, manufactured by a Russian company based in the town of Penza, has been installed at Putin’s official Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow and two more in the Kremlin, said Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman.
He said they were installed at the height of the pandemic in Russia which authorities say is now on the wane, particularly in Moscow where lockdown restrictions are being lifted.
Some restrictions in the Kremlin remained in place, said Peskov, though many had been removed. He said precautions regarding Putin’s health continued to be justified, however.
Demonstration footage of the tunnel, published by the state-controlled RIA news agency on Tuesday night, showed masked people passing through it being sprayed with disinfectant from the ceiling and from the side.
2020-06-17 16:51:33
Oil fell on fears over fresh outbreaks of COVID-19, but prices drew some support from stimulus measures and positive tests of a drug that could save some critically ill patients.
Brent crude LCOc1 was down 61 cents, or 1.5%, at $40.35 a barrel at 1118 GMT. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) CLc1 fell 74 cents, or 1.9%, to $37.64 a barrel.
Oil prices are influenced by opposing forces at the moment, said UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo, with support from stimulus measures that are also boosting equity markets, but pressure from fears a second wave of infections could hit demand.
The administration of US President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing an up-to $1 trillion infrastructure package to support the economy.
To contain the spread of a new virus outbreak in Beijing, scores of flights were cancelled and schools shut.
However, markets found some relief after clinical trial results showed the corticosteroid medication dexamethasone cut death rates by around a third among the most severely ill COVID-19 patients.
2020-06-17 16:39:30
2020-06-17 16:09:01
OSLO: Chinese and Norwegian authorities have concluded salmon from Norway was not the source of the coronavirus found on cutting boards at a Beijing wholesale food market, Norway’s fisheries and seafood minister said on Wednesday.
“We can clear away uncertainty,” Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen told a video conference.
Chinese and Norwegian officials had decided on Tuesday the source of the outbreak did not originate in fish from Norway, he added.
China halted imports of European salmon after reports on Saturday that the virus was discovered on equipment used for handling fish at Beijing’s Xinfadi market, prompting supermarkets in the Chinese capital to remove salmon from their shelves.
Norwegian salmon producers saw orders from China cancelled over the weekend, although Norway’s Food Safety Authority said there was no evidence fish could be infected.
Shares in Norwegian salmon farmers, which had fallen on Monday, rose on Wednesday with market leader Mowi up 3.6% and Salmar up 2.9% at 1004 GMT.
The Norwegian Seafood Council, a state-run marketing company, told Reuters that some shipments of salmon were being sent to major Chinese cities, with the exception of Beijing.
One salmon exporter, who declined to be named, said that some exports went through to China but most were still on hold.
2020-06-17 15:49:03
Special Assistant to Prime Minister Moeed Yusuf announced that the corona tests of all passengers returning to Pakistan will be done.
Yusuf, addressing a press conference alongside SAPM Zulfi Bukhari, stated that eight airports are operational in the country right now. He added that anyone found with coronavirus patients will be quarantined.
While Bukhari appealed to the Pakistanis who were gone abroad for vacations not to return to the country at this point. He urged them to allow those who have become unemployed to return to the country first.
2020-06-17 14:37:19
BEIJING: Beijing cannot rule out the possibility that the number of COVID-19 cases in the city will stay at current levels for some time, a city official said on Wednesday.
Pang Xinghuo, a senior official for the Beijing disease control authority, said the COVID-19 epidemic was still growing in the city.
2020-06-17 14:27:35
JAKARTA: Indonesia reported 1,031 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday taking the total to 41,431 and overtaking Singapore with the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia.
Health ministry official Achmad Yurianto said 45 more deaths were reported on Wednesday, taking the total number of fatalities to 2,276. Indonesia has the highest coronavirus death toll in East Asia outside of China.
2020-06-17 13:57:40
The National Disaster Management Authority announced on Wednesday that it has released the eighth tranche of medical equipment for the doctors and medical staff to the provinces.
A spokesperson of the NDMA announced that hospitals in Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have been provided with the necessary equipment. He added that the relief includes over 300,000 different medical and face masks.
The relief also includes 50,700 protective suites, 30,000 shoes cover distributed to the provinces.
2020-06-17 13:49:37
AFP on Wednesday shared a graphic showing the highest number of national deaths' around the world.
According to the graphic, the US is leading with the most deaths with Brazil and UK in the second and third place.
2020-06-17 13:27:27
BERLIN: Germany’s smartphone app to help trace coronavirus infections has been downloaded 6.5 million times in the first 24 hours since its launch, the CEO of software company SAP said on Wednesday.
Christian Klein said the reception was testimony to the excellent work that teams from SAP and Deutsche Telekom had put into readying the Corona-Warn-App in just six weeks.
2020-06-17 13:01:32
MOSCOW: Russia on Wednesday reported 7,843 new cases of the novel coronavirus, its lowest daily caseload registered since April 30, pushing the nationwide total to 553,301.
Russia’s virus response team said 194 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 7,478 since the crisis began.
2020-06-17 12:49:34
The district authorities in Dera Ismail Khan have decided to seal three areas of the city due to the rising number of coronavirus cases being reported from the city.
The authorities shared that different streets and societies of Union Council Diala, UC two and three have been included in the list. They added that the lockdown will start being implemented from noon onwards.
2020-06-17 11:59:50
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr Zafar Mirza has said a technical team in Pakistan will consider using Dexamethasone medicine to treat critically ill coronavirus patients.
In a series of tweets, the SAPM pointed out that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has welcomed the initial clinical trial results from the United Kingdom that show dexamethasone can be lifesaving for patients who are critically ill with COVID-19.
"It is an old and cheap anti-inflammatory medicine (steroid) and we have multiple producers in Pakistan," said Dr Mirza.
The Special Assistant, however, warned dexamethasone is only for critically ill COVID-19 patients who are on oxygen and ventilators.
"The medicine must not be used by mild to moderate patients and that self-medication is strictly prohibited and can be dangerous as the medicine has many side-effects," said Dr Mirza.
2020-06-17 11:47:25
Azad Jammu Kashmir’s senior minister Chaudhry Tariq Farooq tested positive for the coronavirus, confirmed a spokesperson of the minister.
The spokesperson said the minister has gone into quarantine at his home.
2020-06-17 11:36:46
2020-06-17 11:24:21
Deputy Commissioner of Gujranwala shared on Wednesday that the authorities have imposed a smart lockdown in six areas of the city due to rising coronavirus cases.
The DC stated that a lockdown has been imposed in Satellite Town’s B and E block, Peoples Colonies W and Y block. He added that a complete lockdown has been imposed in Wapda Town and Model Town’s A and B have been put under a smart lockdown.
The DC also stated that some streets of Ahmed Nagar and Killa Dedar Singh have been sealed as well.
2020-06-17 10:55:45
The National Command and Coordination Centre's daily situation report has stated that 7% of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa MPAs have tested positive for coronavirus with the tally of COVID-19 lawmakers rising to 20.
2020-06-17 10:46:54
The World Health Organisation (WHO) hailed as “great news” initial clinical trial results that showed a cheap and widely used steroid called dexamethasone can help save the lives of critically ill COVID-19 patients.
“This is the first treatment to be shown to reduce mortality in patients with COVID-19 requiring oxygen or ventilator support,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement late on Tuesday.
“This is great news and I congratulate the government of the UK, the University of Oxford, and the many hospitals and patients in the UK who have contributed to this lifesaving scientific breakthrough.”
The researchers shared initial insights about the results of the trial with WHO, “and we are looking forward to the full data analysis in the coming days,” it said.
“WHO will coordinate a meta-analysis to increase our overall understanding of this intervention. WHO clinical guidance will be updated to reflect how and when the drug should be used in COVID-19,” the agency added.
2020-06-17 10:19:03
SYDNEY: Australia is unlikely to reopen its border to international travellers until next year but will look to relax entry rules for students and other long-term visitors, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said on Wednesday.
Australia has been largely successful in containing the spread of the novel coronavirus, which it attributes to curbs on international travel and tough social-distancing rules.
Birmingham said a quarantine rule for returning citizens could be applied to international students and other visitors who plan to stay for a long period of time.
“We can simply work through the 14-day quarantine periods that have worked so well in terms of returning Australians to this country safely,” Birmingham said in a speech to the National Press Club.
The return of international students will be a boost for universities facing big financial losses with the border closed as international education is Australia’s fourth-largest foreign exchange earner, worth A$38 billion ($26.14 billion) a year.
Australia has had more than 7,300 cases of the coronavirus and 102 people have died from COVID-19, the disease it causes.
2020-06-17 10:01:59
BEIJING: Scores of domestic flights in and out of Beijing were cancelled on Wednesday as officials ramped up attempts to contain a coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese capital over the past week that has sparked fears of renewed wider contagion.
Health officials recorded 31 new confirmed infections for June 16, bringing the cumulative infections since Thursday to 137 cases, the worst resurgence of the disease in the city since early February.
Authorities on Tuesday raised Beijing to a level two alert, the second-highest level in a four-tier COVID-19 emergency response level system. That reversed a one step downgrade from level two to level three a mere 10 days earlier.
Some 27 neighbourhoods have been designated as medium-risk areas where people entering are subjected to temperature checks and registration. One neighbourhood, near the massive wholesale food centre detected as the source of the latest outbreak, was marked high-risk.
The city’s roads and highways were still open, companies and factories were not ordered to stop work, and there was no blanket curb on residential compounds.
But movement of people in and out of the city was strictly controlled and subject to COVID-19 tests, while residents in high-risk areas were both quarantined and required to undergo tests. Kindergartens, primary schools and high schools were shut.
Aviation data tracker Variflight showed that half the scheduled inbound flights and 40% of outbound flights from Beijing Capital International Airport, one of the city’s two major airports, have been or will likely be cancelled on Wednesday. The majority of the flights are domestic routes.
State media reported that rail officials were granting full refunds on all tickets to and from Beijing booked before Tuesday evening, an apparent bid to discourage people from travelling even though services have not been officially cancelled.
All outbound taxi and car-hailing services, and some long-distance bus routes to nearby Hebei and Shandong provinces were cancelled on Tuesday.
Some Beijing residents worried that the city was inching closer to a lockdown, echoing the strict bans on movement earlier this year in the city of Wuhan, where the new coronavirus was first detected at a seafood market in December.
“What I’m worried about is whether there will be a level one response like it was before, making it impossible for people to work,” said a 23-year-old media sector worker who gave her surname as Wang.
The Beijing outbreak has been traced to the massive Xinfadi wholesale food centre in the southwest of the city where thousands of tonnes of vegetables, fruit and meat are traded each day. Xinfadi is much larger than than the Wuhan seafood market, from where the virus spread around the world, infecting more than 8 million people.
2020-06-17 09:53:35
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 154,760 on Tuesday after Islamabad, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) recorded new cases.
According to the national dashboard, 385 new cases were recorded in the federal capital and 40 in cases in AJK in the last 24 hours.
The country’s death toll also climbed to 2,975 with Islamabad reporting seven new deaths.
2020-06-16 23:59:00
2020-06-16 23:50:00
A coronavirus contact tracing app being introduced in France may not be able to connect with others across the European Union because it stores data centrally, EU Commission vice-president Margrethe Vestager said, Reuters reported.
The EU has been hoping that apps developed by member states to track infections will be able to link up when people move within the bloc, mapping the virus’s spread better and so creating more security for a revival of travel and tourism. Member states agreed technical standards for this on Tuesday.
But France’s approach, which allows central location tracking but has also raised privacy concerns, differs from that of Germany, Italy and others, which log contacts by Bluetooth signal on individual smartphones only.
“It’s somewhat more tricky to develop the technical standards for interoperability between decentralised systems, as I think will be the general rule, and the centralised system that France has been aiming for,” Vestager told the French parliament in a videoconference.
2020-06-16 23:48:00
2020-06-16 23:40:00
Deputy Commisioner Gilgit-Baltistan said that a complete lockdown will be imposed in the district from 17-21 June.
"All the markets, business centers, and transports will reamin closed," he said, adding that shops of basic neccesisties will remain open.
"People should cooperate and refrain from leaving ther homes," he addded.
2020-06-16 23:30:00
US bank profits fell by 69.6% to $18.5 billion in the first quarter of 2020 from the year prior as banks felt the economic impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to data from a banking regulator.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reported that “deteriorating economic activity” caused lenders to write off delinquent debt and set aside billions of dollars to guard against future losses. Over half of all banks reported a profit decline, and 7.3% of lenders were unprofitable.
The new report, the first government survey of the industry since the pandemic shut down large parts of the economy, shows banks set aside $38.8 billion to cover potential loan losses in the future, up nearly 280% from the year prior. The amount of loans banks charged off as delinquent was up nearly 15%, driven by an 87% increase in charge-offs for commercial and industrial loans.
The amount of non-current loans rose 7.3% from the previous quarter, the biggest increase since 2010.
2020-06-16 23:12:00
2020-06-16 22:33:00
Islamabad's recovery rate reached 35% after 402 people recovered from the virus.
2020-06-16 22:42:00
2020-06-16 22:33:00
2020-06-16 22:33:00
Chairman Prime Minister’s coronavirus task force Dr Atta-ur-Rahman said that the actual number of patients have not been identified as random testing has not taken place.
Speaking in Geo News' programme "Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Sath" he said that the identified hotspots should be put under complete lockdown to stem coronaviurs.
"Coronavirus will spread, it will not stop [...] The numbers might surpass Asad Umar's numers," he said.
The scientist said that the areas where the virus is spreading should be sealed completely.
2020-06-16 22:38:00
2020-06-16 21:47:00
Beijing's education commission ordered the closure of the capital's schools again following a new outbreak of the coronavirus in the city of 21 million people.
The commission said on its WeChat social media account that all schools would resume online teaching from Wednesday and universities should also suspend the return of students.
2020-06-16 21:32:00
2020-06-16 21:30:00
The deputy commisioner Mardan said that starting tomorrow morning five areas in the city would be placed under smart lockdown.
The government offical said that Dosehra Chowk, Jan Abad, Takht Bhai, tehsil road katlang, and sector A of Sheikh Maltoon Town will be placed under smart lockdown.
2020-06-16 21:35:00
Denmark’s health minister urged people who took part in a large Black Lives Matter demonstration in Copenhagen to get tested for COVID-19 after one protester tested positive, Reuters reported.
Around 15,000 people took to the streets in Copenhagen on June 7 to protest against racism and police brutality, spurred by the killing of black US citizen George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer.
2020-06-16 20:39:00
2020-06-16 20:33:00
2020-06-16 20:23:00
The World Health Organisation’s regional director for the Americas Carissa Etienne said that the region is fast approaching 4 million cases of coronavirus and the pandemic continues to accelerate, Reuters reported.
Speaking in a virtual briefing from Washington-based Pan American Health Organisation, Etienne said Brazil accounts for 23% of the more than 3.8 million cases in the Americas and 23% of the almost 204,000 deaths in the region and “we are not seeing transmission slowing down.”
2020-06-16 20:24:00
Canada will extend by eight weeks federal income support for those who lost their jobs amid the COVID-19 outbreak, and the border with the United States will remain closed to non-essential travel, the prime minister said, Reuters reported.
The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) had been put in place for those eligible for a maximum of 16 weeks, which meant that some people would have seen their benefits expire as soon as July.
Separately, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a news conference that the US border restrictions would remain in place until July 21, confirming a Reuters story published last week.
2020-06-16 20:17:00
2020-06-16 20:06:00
People with underlying health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes are six times more likely to be hospitalised with COVID-19 and have a risk of coronavirus-related death 12 times higher than otherwise healthy individuals, a US study found.
Men were more likely than women to have bad outcomes, and the prevalence of hospitalisations and deaths were highest among patients aged 70 years and older, according to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that confirmed similar reports from outbreak hotspots in recent months.
“These findings are consistent with previous reports that found that severe outcomes increased with age and underlying condition, and males were hospitalised at a higher rate than were females,” the CDC wrote in its report issued on Monday.
By analysing data from over 1.3 million COVID-19 patients between January 22 to May 30, the CDC found that the most prevalent underlying health conditions in more severe cases were cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic lung disease.
About 45% of patients who had underlying health conditions were hospitalised, compared with 7.6% of those without such chronic health issues. Death due to COVID-19 was reported in 19.5% of patients with health complications, compared with 1.6% of people who did not suffer from chronic illnesses.
2020-06-16 19:59:00
Beijing’s city government raised its COVID-19 emergency response level to II from III, according to state media.
The Chinese capital has been battling with a fresh outbreak of the new coronavirus, with more than a 100 new cases confirmed in recent days.
2020-06-16 19:50:00
2020-06-16 19:49:00
Kuwait and Bahrain must stop using “highly invasive” COVID-19 apps which violate the privacy of hundreds of thousands of people by tracking them almost in real time, Amnesty International said.
The human rights group also slammed a Norwegian app, which health authorities said they would stop using on Monday after the country’s data protection watchdog cited privacy concerns given the low spread of the new coronavirus.
“Authorities are essentially able to see movements in real time of anybody who has the apps installed,” Claudio Guarnieri, head of Amnesty’s Security Lab, which focuses on digital threats, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“They would be able to tell where you are, who you are meeting, where you live, where you work ... or whatever it is that might tell something about you,” he said, adding such information was open to abuse.
2020-06-16 19:44:00
US President Donald Trump’s administration is narrowing its list of promising experimental coronavirus vaccines to about seven from 14, the US Department of Health and Human Services said, Reuters reported.
The announcement is part of the administration’s “Operation Warp Speed”, the White House program to accelerate coronavirus vaccine development.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that the White House had selected five companies, including Moderna Inc, AstraZeneca Plc and Pfizer Inc, as the most likely candidates to produce a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
2020-06-16 19:41:00
The United Kingdom death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose by 233 to 41,969, according to government data released, Reuters reported.
Earlier, a Reuters tally of official sources showed a toll of 53,077, taking into account cases where COVID-19 was mentioned on death certificates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland up to June 5, and up to June 7 in Scotland.
2020-06-16 19:33:00
2020-06-16 19:19:00
Switzerland’s economy will suffer its worst downturn in decades during 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic damages output and jobs, the government said, but the downturn will be less severe than initially feared, Reuters reported.
Swiss gross domestic product will fall 6.2% this year, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said, the worst downturn since 1975, when the country was hit by the aftermath of the oil price shocks.
Unemployment is forecast to rise to 3.8% this year, as foreign trade suffers, consumer spending shrinks and companies emerge slowly from shutdowns imposed to halt the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Still, the forecast was a slight improvement from the 6.7% downturn in GDP foreseen by the Swiss government’s economists in their April statement, and compares favourably with other European countries.
2020-06-16 19:30:00
2020-06-16 19:22:00
2020-06-16 19:10:00
Austria’s conservative-led government approved a fresh stimulus package on Tuesday that it said boosts the sum of its coronavirus-related economic measures to some 50 billion euros ($56 billion) and will further swell its debt pile, Reuters reported.
The new package consists of measures that were largely announced over the weekend, including a one-off top-up payment to unemployment benefits of 450 euros spread over three months, cutting the lowest income tax bracket to 20% from 25%, and a tax break for company investments of up to 14%.
It comes on top of 38 billion euros, or about 9.5% of last year’s economic output, in aid for companies and workers first announced in March. After conflicting totals for the new package were announced, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said it amounted to roughly 12 billion euros.
“We are returning towards normality faster than many other countries but it is still necessary to provide help...and to provide stimulus for growth so that the economy can bounce back as soon as possible,” Kurz told a news conference.
2020-06-16 19:08:00
Data from an ongoing trial showed Tuesday that administering low doses of dexamethasone, a generic steroid drug, to patients admitted to hospital with coronavirus reduced death rates by around a third among those with the most severe cases of infection.
The results, described as a "major breakthrough" by scientists leading the UK-led clinical trial known as RECOVERY, suggest the drug should immediately become standard care in patients treated in hospital with the coronavirus disease, the researchers said.
"This is a result that shows that if patients who have COVID-19 and are on ventilators or are on oxygen are given dexamethasone, it will save lives, and it will do so at a remarkably low cost,” said Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor who is co-leading the trial.
Read complete story here.
2020-06-16 18:59:00
2020-06-16 18:59:00
2020-06-16 18:53:00
2020-06-16 18:43:00
Deputy Commissioner Hyderabad said that a proposal consisting of 90 potential virus hotspots has been sent to the Sindh government.
According to the plan, no one will be able to enter and exit the areas after the lockdown is imposed, meanwhile, the shops granted exceptions will be able to operate from 7 am to 12 pm.
In addition, ambulances will be available in all areas where the smart lockdown has been imposed.
2020-06-16 18:34:00
Data from the Sindh Health Department revealed that the novel coronavirus has taken the lives of people ranging from 10-100 years.
According to the provincial health department, at least five children of age 10 have succumbed to the virus.
10 people of ages 11-20 have died of the virus, the department said, adding that 25 persons of ages 21-30 have succumbed to the virus.
Furthermore, the health department said that 48 people of ages 31-40 have died due to coronavirus, while 112 patients of COVID-19 aged 41-50 have lost their lives to the pandemic.
Meanwhile, 228, 229, and 137 people of ages 51-60, 61-70, and 71-80 have lost their lives battling coronavirus. Moreover, 42 people of ages 81-100 have died of COVID-19.
2020-06-16 18:24:00
Britain will immediately start giving dexamethasone to coronavirus patients, after a trial showed the steroid saved the lives of one third of the gravest cases, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said, AFP reported.
"We're working with the NHS (National Health Service) so that the NHS standard treatment for COVID-19 will include dexamethasone form this afternoon," Hancock said.
2020-06-16 18:26:00
Saudi Arabia is expected to scale back or call off this year's Haj pilgrimage for the first time in its modern history, observers say, a perilous decision as coronavirus cases spike, AFP reported.
Muslim nations are pressing Riyadh to give its much-delayed decision on whether the annual ritual will go ahead as scheduled in late July.
But as the kingdom negotiates a call fraught with political and economic risks in a tinderbox region, time is running out to organise logistics for one of the world's largest mass gatherings.
2020-06-16 18:07:00
The steroid dexamethasone has been found to save the lives of one third of the most serious COVID-19 cases, according to trial results hailed Tuesday as a "major breakthrough" in the fight against the disease, AFP reported.
Researchers led by a team from the University of Oxford administered the widely available drug to more than 2,000 severely ill COVID-19 patients.
Among those who could only breathe with the help of a ventilator, dexamethasone reduced deaths by 35 percent, and it reduced deaths of those receiving oxygen by a fifth, according to preliminary results.
2020-06-16 18:00:00
2020-06-16 17:33:00
Deputy Commissioner Peshawar said that shops of basic necessities, including, groceries, medicine, emergency services will remain open.
Only a congregation of five people will be allowed inside a mosque, he said, adding that the smart lockdown has been imposed in these areas as the cases are on the rise here.
The government official warned that action will be taken against those who will violate the law.
2020-06-16 17:17:00
2020-06-16 16:26:00
French carmaker Renault plans to cut 1,500 engineering jobs in France, a trade union source told Reuters on Tuesday.
The engineering job cuts are part of cost savings plans that Renault announced last month aiming to find 2 billion euros ($2.27 billion) in savings over the next three years.
Renault declined to comment.
The carmaker had planned to cut 15,000 jobs worldwide, including 4,600 in France.
2020-06-16 16:32:00
The Punjab government has extended the lockdown in the province till June 30, said a notification issued by the secretary of primary and secondary health care department.
However, the latest notification has allowed the University of Health Sciences to carry out supplementary exams. It has also allowed the university to carry out the final exams for BDS, BSS nursing, doctor of physical therapy and BSS allied health.
2020-06-16 16:17:00
2020-06-16 15:53:00
2020-06-16 15:52:00
Nationwide positive cases of coronavirus rose to 151,208 after new cases were reported in Sindh.
According to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, 2,287 people tested positive for the virus in the last 24 hours.
2020-06-16 15:47:00
Nationwide death toll from the coroanvirus rose to 2,872 after new deaths were reported in Sindh.
According to Sindh CM, 33 new deaths were recorded in province taking the provincial tally to 886.
2020-06-16 15:42:00
2020-06-16 15:45:00
Germany sought to mobilise the public on Tuesday to download a new smartphone app that seeks to help break the chain of coronavirus infections, one of several such apps in Europe that governments hope will revive travel and tourism.
The new Covid-Warn-App, which became available for download for Apple and Android phones overnight, uses Bluetooth short-range radio to monitor close contacts between people and issue a warning should one of them test positive.
“Everyone who downloads the app, and everyone who encourages friends to do so, is making a difference,” Health Minister Jens Spahn told ZDF public television ahead of a launch event in Berlin.
Germany follows European countries like Italy, Poland and Switzerland in launching an app based on technology from Apple and Alphabet’s Google that protects privacy by storing Bluetooth logs securely on devices.
The project nearly went off the rails in April as Berlin abandoned an initial approach that stored data on a central server — which privacy experts said could allow people’s relationships to be spied on.
Still, public enthusiasm for the app is moderate - last week’s Politbarometer opinion poll for ZDF found that 42% of people would download it and 46% would not, while 8% didn’t have a smartphone.
2020-06-16 15:42:00
Spain is considering imposing a quarantine on British travellers when it reopens its borders next week, the foreign minister said, in response to a similar policy at London’s end.
Arancha Gonzalez Laya told the BBC she hoped Britain would lift its restriction, making a reciprocal Spanish one unnecessary.
“We will be in a dialogue with the UK to see whether or not we should be introducing reciprocity as they have different measures than the rest of the European Union,” she said in an advance excerpt from current affairs programme HARDtalk.
Britain, with more than 41,000 documented coronavirus-linked deaths, and Spain, with more than 27,000, have been two of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic.
Both, along with other European countries, are now easing lockdown restrictions, including border closures.
Spanish officials gave no mention of any quarantine curbs on Sunday, when the government moved forward the date for allowing European visitors back into the country to June 21 from July 1.
In recent weeks, Spain has caused confusion in neighbouring countries and exasperation in the travel industry by repeatedly changing the date and conditions for lifting the ban on foreign visitors it imposed in mid-March.
“I still don’t know what I will do with my staff and it’s June 16,” Jorge Marichal, CEO of Canary Islands hotel group Inversiones Marylanza, said at a business event.
“We cannot work this way.”
2020-06-16 15:41:00
The United Kingdom’s suspected COVID-19 death toll has hit 53,077, according to a Reuters tally of official data sources that underline the country’s status as one of the worst hit in the world.
The Reuters tally comprises fatalities where COVID-19 was mentioned on death certificates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland up to June 5, and up to June 7 in Scotland. It also includes more recent hospital deaths.
Unlike the lower death toll published daily by the government, the death certificate figures include suspected cases.
2020-06-16 14:39:00
2020-06-16 15:17:00
2020-06-16 14:18:00
Russia on Tuesday reported 8,248 new coronavirus cases, bringing its nationwide infection tally to 545,458.
The authorities said 193 people had died of the virus in the last day, raising the official death toll to 7,284.
2020-06-16 14:28:00
Saudi Arabia will start relief flights to Pakistan from today after getting approval from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
According to a notification, the CAA has allowed Saudi airlines to start its operations from today to bring back stranded Pakistanis.
The airline will operate six special flights from 16-20 June to various cities of the country with the first flight landing in Islamabad today.
2020-06-16 13:28:00
Federal Minister for IT Syed Amin ul Haq has tested positive for the coronavirus, confirmed the MQM lawmaker on Tuesday.
The minister shared that he had a fever since last week which had turned into typhoid and had then had himself tested for the virus which came back as positive.
He added that he had isolated himself as soon as h had a fever.
2020-06-16 13:25:00
Deputy Commissioner of Hyderabad has said list of areas that need to placed under a smart lockdown has been finalised.
However, he added, the final list will be approved by the commissioner, adding that the lockdown will be imposed after being approved by the Sindh government.
2020-06-16 12:24:00
The district authorities in Faisalabad have finalised a list of coronavirus hotspots in the city, officials confirmed on Tuesday.
According to the list, 50 areas have been identified as hotspots, with district authorities recommending smart lockdown in over 25 residential areas of the city.
Officials said the final decision regarding the lockdown will be taken on the recommendation of the government and district coordination committee.
2020-06-16 10:35:00
The health minister in Delhi’s state government checked into hospital with high fever and was being tested for coronavirus on Tuesday as India reported more than 10,500 new infections that are threatening to overwhelm hospitals.
India has opened up businesses, public transport and shopping malls to resuscitate a battered economy but the ending of the nearly 70-day lockdown has come just as cases are rising at their fastest daily levels.
The total number of infections stood at 343,091, the world’s fourth most after the United States, Brazil and Russia, the health ministry data showed. At least 9,900 people have died, far fewer than the United States and Brazil, but more than Russia.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who initially won praise for imposing a vast lockdown on India’s 1.3 billion population early on in the pandemic, called state chief ministers for a video conference to discuss measures to deal with the surge in cases.
The big cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai remain the worst affected.
2020-06-16 10:34:00
District Health Officer (DHO) East, in a letter, has recommended areas in Karachi that should be put under lockdown due to the rising number of coronavirus cases.
According to DHO East cases being reported in Pehlwan Goth, Gulzar-e-Hijri, Faisal cantonment, PECHS Block two, Soldier Bazar, Jamshed Quarter and Metroville are very high and should be placed under lockdown.
2020-06-16 10:29:00
Deputy commissioner Islamabad Hamza Shafqat tweeted on Tuesday that the the authorities in the federal capital's Sector I-8 and I-10 are formalising a plan to seal the areas due to rising coronavirus cases.
The DC shared that the notification regarding the lockdown orders will be issued in the next 24 hours.
2020-06-16 10:24:00
Father of Somalia-born US Representative Ilhan Omar died on Monday night of complications from the novel coronavirus, local media reported.
“It is with tremendous sadness and pain to say goodbye to my father,” the Minnesota congresswoman tweeted late on Monday. “No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew and loved him.”
Omar and her father Nur Mohamed came to the United States as refugees in 1995 from Somalia during the country’s civil war and eventually settled in Minneapolis, according to Politico.
Omar was elected along with Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib in November 2018 making them among the first two Muslim women to serve in the US Congress.
The Minnesota representative did not respond to Reuters request for a comment.
2020-06-16 10:19:00
Exit and entry points of four areas of Peshawar have been sealed under the smart lockdown strategy being pursued by the government.
The sealed areas are Ashrafia colony, Chana road, Danisahabad, and Hayatabad Phase one’s sector I-1. The police have been deployed in the areas and markets have been shut down across the areas apart from milk stores, naanbais and medical stores.
Residents of the area have also been barred from exiting the area.
2020-06-16 10:15:00
The District Health Officer (DHO) has recommended that a smart lockdown should be implemented in a letter sent to deputy commissioners of Malir and Korangi.
The DHO has recommended that a smart lockdown should be implemented in Korangi 2.5, 1.5, 4 and Mehran town as more than 2,400 cases have been reported from those areas. The letter also warned that cases are also rising in Shamsi society in Korangi, Saadat colony, Mardan chowk and Shah Faisal number 2.
The letter states that cases are also very high in Malir Khokhrapar, Kala Board, Landhi’s UC 9, 11 and other areas. It adds that a smart lockdown should be imposed in these areas of the districts.
2020-06-16 10:07:00
Confirmed cases in the country climbed to 148,921 on Tuesday after Islamabad, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) recorded new cases.
According to the national dashboard, 288 new cases were recorded in the federal capital and 16 in cases in AJK in the last 24 hours.
The country’s death toll also climbed to 2,839 with Islamabad reporting five new deaths.
2020-06-16 09:20:00
Beijing authorities imposed more restrictions to stop the spread of a fresh outbreak of coronavirus to other provinces, banning outbound travel of high-risk people and suspending some transportation services out of the city.
Beijing officials reported on Tuesday 27 new confirmed COVID-19 cases for June 15, taking the cumulative number of infections in the city's current outbreak to 106.
The outbreak has been traced to the sprawling Xinfadi wholesale food centre in the southwest of Beijing where thousands of tonnes of vegetables, fruits and meat change hands each day.
2020-06-16 09:08:00
New Zealand said on Tuesday that it has two new cases of the coronavirus, both related to recent travel from the UK, ending a 24-day streak of no new infections in the country.
New Zealand lifted all social and economic restrictions except border controls last week, after declaring it had no new or active cases of the coronavirus, one of the first countries in the world to return to pre-pandemic normality.
The health ministry said the new cases were related to the border as a result of recent travel from the UK. Both cases are connected, it said in a statement.
2020-06-16 09:37:00
Global cases of the novel coronavirus reached over 8 million on Monday, as infections surge in Latin America, according to a Reuters tally.
About 25% of those cases, or 2 million infections, are in the United States, though the fastest-growing outbreak is in Latin America which now accounts for 21% of all cases.
Brazil's COVID-19 cases and deaths have surged to make it the No.2 hot spot in the world, behind only the United States.
2020-06-16 09:59:00
The organisers of the Oscars have shifted the date of the 2021 movie awards ceremony to April from February because of the coronavirus epidemic.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said the Oscars, the highest honours in the film industry, would take place on April 25, 2021. It was originally scheduled for February 28.
2020-06-16 08:35:00
A new forecast projects 201,129 deaths due to COVID-19 in the United States through the beginning of October mainly due to reopening measures underway, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington said on Monday.
The IHME raised its estimate by 18% from 169,890 and said Florida would be among the hardest-hit states, with an estimated 18,675 deaths, up 186% from a previous estimate of 6,559 on June 10.
The institute raised its estimate for deaths in California by 72% to 15,155 from 8,812 and increased its outlook for Arizona by 56% to 7,415 fatalities from 4,762.
2020-06-15 23:17:00
Prime Minister Imran Khan should call an emergency meeting of the NCOC to formulate a new policy to tackle the coronavirus, Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab said.
Talking about what the Sindh government plans to do in light of the NCOC's recommendations, he said: "The province's 85% cases are from six districts of Karachi, while the situation is not alarming in Hyderabad, Ghotki, Larkana, and Sukkur — on an average they have 1,500 cases."
Speaking in Geo News programme "Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Sath", he said that infections had surpassed 10,000 in district East and 9,800 in South.
The hotbed of the virus in the province is Karachi, and pinpointing a neighbourhood in the metropolis will be hard for us, Wahab said.
"There are several institutions in Karachi which are under the federal government's control and we cannot impose restrictions on them if the Centre does not approve," he said, adding: "A unanimity of thought is needed [to tackle the disease]."
2020-06-15 00:04:42
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr Zafar Mirza emphasised that the smart lockdown is necessary for running the wheel of national economy, Radio Pakistan reported.
Dr Mirza said the government is not agreed with proposal of World Health Organisation for imposing 15 days lockdown and 15 days ease in it.
The SAPM said the government is providing all health facilities, equipments and enhancing the capacity building of hospitals.
Replying to a question, he said the government would increase the capacity of 1,000 ventilation beds in different hospitals in provinces.