At the moment, there are over 2.1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 116,000 fatalities in the US, while Brazil is second with more than 888,000 infected and almost 44,000 deaths from the virus. There are over 8 million confirmed cases worldwide, with the pandemic claiming over 436,000 lives globally.
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BEIJING (Sputnik) - China registered 44 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, including 31 cases in Beijing, amid re-imposed restrictions in the capital after a new COVID-19 cluster at the major food market was discovered, the country’s National Health Commission said on Wednesday.
Out of 44 new cases, 33 are local, and 11 are imported. In addition to Beijing, one local case were detected in the northern Hebei province and another one in the eastern Zhejiang province. Moreover, China detected 11 asymptomatic cases, six of them in the capital, and two new recoveries over the given period.
On Tuesday, China registered 40 COVID-19 cases, including 27 in the capital. At the moment, 137 COVID-19 carriers are being treated in hospitals across Beijing.
The new cluster of COVID-19 cases was detected in Beijing last week after more than 40 people linked to the Xinfadi food market tested positive for the coronavirus. Beijing authorities have said that the Chinese capital was in "wartime emergency mode" and have raised the city’s emergency response level from three to two, thus re-imposing strict containment measures in local residential communities.
The country’s total number of confirmed coronavirus cases now stands at 83,265, and the death toll is 4,634. The total number of recovered individuals in China reached 78,379.
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) - The death toll from the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mexico has risen by 730 - down from 439 the day before - over the past 24 hours to 18,310, a senior health official said.
"To date, 18,310 cases of death of patients from complications of COVID-19 have been confirmed," the Health Ministry's director of epidemiology, Jose Luis Alomia, said during a press conference broadcast on Twitter.
Alomia said the case tally had risen by 4,599 - up from 3,427 on Monday - to 154,863.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of the new coronavirus a pandemic on 11 March.
According to the global health body, the coronavirus death toll worldwide has surpassed 434,000 people, with the number of cases exceeding 7.9 million.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide has surpassed 8.1 million, with more than 441,000 deaths and over 3.9 million recoveries.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Brazil registered record 34,918 New COVID-19 Cases over the past 24 hours, up from 20,647 a day ago, and the overall tally climbed to 923,189, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
At the same time, the coronavirus-related death toll increased by 1,282 over the given period and reached 45,241. On Monday, Brazil reported 627 deaths.
According to the health authorities, the COVID-19 mortality rate is 4.9 percent.
Since the start of the outbreak, 441,729 coronavirus carriers have fully recovered.
TASHKENT (Sputnik) - Uzbekistan confirmed 200 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, and thus the total number reached 5,493 amid the extension of quarantine restrictions until 1 August, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
Despite the recent decision to extend the lockdown, the Central Asian country has already lifted some measures. In particular, movement between regions is allowed, places of worship are reopened and public transport is operating again.
"As of June 16, 2020, 23:00 [local time, 18:00 GMT] the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Uzbekistan is 5,493," the ministry said in its official Telegram channel.
At the same time, the number of recoveries increased to 4096 while the death toll stayed at 19.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The global number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus infection has surpassed 7.9 million, with over 434,000 fatalities being registered since the beginning of the outbreak, according to the latest data provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday.
The cumulative global toll of confirmed cases has increased by 118,502 over the past day, down from 132,581 the day before, to 7,941,791, according to the WHO.
Over the past 24 hours, 3,255 people died from COVID-19 worldwide, down from 3,911 the day before, taking the death toll to 434,796.
The Americas, with over 3.8 million confirmed cases, remains the epicenter of the epidemic.
The majority of cases and deaths — 3.84 million and 203,574, respectively — are still concentrated in the Americas. The United States remains the worst-hit country having the highest single count of cases, over 2 million, and fatalities, 115,484.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Moscow has registered 48 deaths of patients infected with COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, bringing the Russian capital's death toll to 3,434, the city's coronavirus response center said in a statement on Tuesday.
"Another 48 patients, who were diagnosed with pneumonia and tested positive for the coronavirus infection, died in Moscow," it said.
In the previous day, 52 people infected with the coronavirus died in Moscow.
ANKARA (Sputnik) - Turkey reported 1,467 new coronavirus cases and 17 deaths in the past day, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Tuesday.
"Today, 1,467 new cases have been identified, taking the total to 181,298. We lost 17 patients today, 4,842 in total. As many as 1,015 patients recovered today, 153,379 in total," Koca wrote on Twitter.
The number of coronavirus infections in the country has been rising for six straight days, passing the daily high of 1,500 on Sunday. The Turkish government allowed cafes, restaurants and shopping malls to reopen at the start of this month.
“Fourteen promising candidates have been chosen from the 100+ vaccine candidates currently in development - some of them already in clinical trials with US government support”, the US Department of Health and Human Services said in a fact sheet. “The 14 vaccine candidates are being narrowed down to about seven candidates, representing the most promising candidates from a range of technology options, which will go through further testing in early-stage clinical trials”.
Large-scale randomised trials for the demonstration of safety and efficacy will proceed for the most promising candidates, the department said.
The US Administration launched last month Operation Warp Speed, a joint project of Health and Defense Departments, which aims to deliver 300 million doses of a vaccine for COVID-19 by January 2021.
"3.8 million cases and almost 204,000 deaths from COVID-19 reported in the Americas. We are fast approaching 4 million cases and the epidemic is still accelerating in the region", Pan American Health Organization Director Carissa Etienne said during a videoconference.
She added that the US with over 2 million infections accounts for 54 percent of all Americas’ cases.
"Brazil has 23 percent of all cases and 21 percent of all deaths in our region", Etienne said.
With over 888,000 coronavirus cases Brazil is the second worst-hit country in the world surpassed only by the US.
The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) serves as the World Health Organization's (WHO) Regional Office for the Americas.
The local authorities in Beijing have raised the Chinese capital’s emergency response level from three to two, as the city is battling a new wave of COVID-19 infections, Chen Peixuan, the deputy secretary of the municipal government announced during a press conference on Tuesday.
After cutting off the local transmission of COVID-19 for more than two months, Beijing has begun to report a surge of new infections that appear to have originated from a local food wholesale market. The city has reported more than 100 new COVID-19 cases since June 11.
Under the containment measures of the second emergency response level, all local residential communities in Beijing will be placed under strict control and residents will only be allowed to leave their homes after registering their details with a local residential committee and having their temperatures measured.
All the schools in Beijing will resume online classes and universities students would no longer be allowed to return to the campus.
All the parks, museums and libraries will restrict the flow of visitors to about 30 percent of their normal capacity.
Although production is not suspended under the second level emergency response, companies will once again be encouraged to allow their staff members to work remotely for as long as possible.
Residents living in communities where the new cases were identified will have to show negative test results in the previous seven days before being allowed to leave the city.
Coronavirus lockdowns have almost halved the number of migrants moving across West and Central Africa, the UN-backed International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a press release on Tuesday.
"Data collected at 35 key transit points across West and Central Africa ... indicate regional migration has dropped by nearly 50 per cent during the first half of 2020," the press release reads.
The agency said that at least 33,000 migrants were stranded at borders, including overcrowded transit centers, after restrictions on mobility were introduced to curb the spread of the new coronavirus.
Many of those affected are seasonal workers involved in farming and gold mining, most of them from the Gulf of Guinea countries. Other frequent travelers are herders and Quranic students.
The remaining coronavirus-related restrictions in Moscow will not be removed at least until mid-July, the Russian capital's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said on Tuesday.
"I think that we will not remove the remaining restrictions before mid-July. These are two months of the transition period, and we are looking to ensure that nothing goes wrong," Sobyanin said.
On Tuesday, the second stage of relaxing the restrictions began in the city, with dental clinics, summer terraces of cafes and restaurants, libraries, real estate offices, rental services, advertising, consulting and other services resuming work. Museums, exhibition halls and zoos also reopen their doors. It is allowed to attend sports events, but so far provided that no more than 10 percent of seats are occupied by spectators.
In the next stage of lifting restrictions on June 23, it is planned to open stationary restaurants and cafes, resume the work of the fitness industry and urban infrastructure.
The work of theaters and cinemas, as well as mass events, are still banned.
Canada and the United States have agreed to extend border restrictions that limit non-essential travel for another 30 days to July 21 amid the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday.
“I can now confirm that Canada and the United States have once again agreed to extend by 30 days - until July 21 - the current measures in place along our border,” Trudeau told reporters during his daily COVID-19 press briefing.
Before the announcement, the restrictions on the Canada-US border were set to expire on Sunday. All non-essential travel between the United States and Canada has been halted since March 20.
"We registered 55,369 people with a positive COVID-19 test. A total of 760,549 tests have been conducted. Over the entire period of the spread of the infection in the country, 318 COVID-19 patients with a number of chronic diseases have died", the Health Ministry said in a statement, adding that the death toll has grown by six over the past day.
BRUSSELS (Sputnik) - Belgium has recorded 55 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 60,155, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday as the coronavirus-related restrictions in the country are being relaxed.
On Monday, the ministry's coronavirus response centre reported 71 new cases of the infection.
According to the health authorities, the death toll has reached 9,663 following the deaths of four people over the day. Eleven people were hospitalised in the given period, and the number of patients in intensive care units now stands at 76. A total of 15 people have recovered and been discharged from hospitals.
LONDON, 16 June (Sputnik) - The number of people on a payroll in the United Kingdom went down by 612,000, or 2.1 percentage points, since the government imposed a coronavirus lockdown on 23 March, official figures released Tuesday show.
"Data shows that the number of paid employees fell by 612,000 between March 2020 and May 2020", the Office for National Statistics said in a report.
The unemployment rate for the three months up to April was estimated at 3.9 percent, 0.1 percentage points higher than a year earlier, but largely unchanged on the previous quarter.
At the same time, the total number of weekly hours worked in the three months up to April was 959.9 million, down a record 94.2 million hours on the previous year, or 8.9 points.
The average pay growth slowed significantly from February to April, most notably in industries where furloughing was most prominent. Many of them were the lowest-paying industries, in particular accommodation and food services.
TEHRAN (Sputnik) - The cumulative COVID-19 death toll in Iran has risen to 9,065 as the country recorded more than 100 coronavirus-related fatalities for a third consecutive day, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
According to the ministry, 115 people have died from COVID-19 in Iran over the past 24 hours, and the number of deaths was 113 the day before. The health authorities have also registered 2,563 new coronavirus cases, taking the total to 192,439. Over 152,600 patients have recovered.
On Sunday, Iran reported more than 100 coronavirus-related fatalities for the first time in two months.
Iran started to gradually ease the coronavirus-related lockdown in mid-April. Since then, the number of infections has seen sporadic peaks and drops.
MOSCOW, 16 June (Sputnik) - US President Donald Trump's administration is mulling over a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to resuscitate the coronavirus-hit economy, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The plan, which is being developed by the Department of Transportation, reportedly focuses on traditional infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, but also envisages funds for 5G infrastructure and rural broadband.
According to the news agency, the proposal may become a kind of "infrastructure spending blitz" ahead of the November presidential election.
"I want to express our sympathy with the people of Russia, as you have with us about the number of [COVID-19] casualties. Fortunately, the number of casualties both in Russia and in Iran has been relatively lower than in other places. But still lots of life [was lost], reflection of individuals and families, so our sympathies and our solidarity [are] with all those who have lost their loved ones here in Russia", Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said.
The United Kingdom's suspected COVID-19 death toll has hit 53,077, Reuters reported, citing the official tally.
MOSCOW, June 16 (Sputnik) - Russia has registered 8,248 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours (8,246 yesterday), bringing the overall tally to 545,458, the national coronavirus response centre said on Tuesday.
"Over the past 24 hours, Russia has confirmed 8,248 COVID-19 cases in 82 regions, of which 2,950 (35.8 percent) have been detected with people showing no clinical symptoms", the response centre said in a statement.
Russia has so far recorded 545,458 COVID-19 cases in 85 regions (+1.5 percent), the centre added.
Of the new cases, 1,416 were registered in Moscow, 694 in the Moscow Region, and 319 in the Irkutsk Region (compared to yesterday's 1,359, 689, and 127, respectively).
The country's COVID-19 death toll has grown by 193 (143 yesterday) to 7,248.
As many as 9,767 COVID-19 patients have recovered across the country (4,489 yesterday), bringing the total number of cured people to 294,306.
India has witnessed another major jump in the coronavirus death toll as the country recorded 380 fatalities in the last 24 hours. The Indian Health Ministry said on Tuesday that causalities from the pandemic rose to 9,900 with 178 confirmed deaths in the western state of Maharashtra.
Nevertheless, country has witnessed slight slowdown in fresh COVID cases as 10,667 new cases were confirmed in the last 24 hours which is around 1,000 cases lower than Sunday. Meanwhile, the total number of coronavirus patients in the country has increased to 343,091.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – A Russian vaccine against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) will be tested on volunteers in the coming days, when the two-week isolation of volunteers ends, the Russian Defence Ministry said.
"The Russian Defence Ministry, jointly with the Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, is completing preparations for the start of clinical trials of a Russian vaccine against the new coronavirus infection on volunteers", the ministry said.
"In the coming days, after completion of a two-week isolation, the first group of volunteers will be vaccinated. The main goal is to check the safety and tolerance to the vaccine’s components", it said.
Russia's overall number of recorded coronavirus cases has topped 537,000. The country's COVID-19 death toll is over 7,000 and more than 284,000 people have recovered.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Health authorities in Germany have recorded 378 new COVID-19 cases and nine deaths over the past 24 hours, marking a two-fold increase in both parameters from the day before, the Robert Koch Institute said on Tuesday.
The latest situation update from Germany on Sunday stated a daily increase of 192 new cases and four fatalities.
The overall number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany has now reached 186,839, and the death toll has topped 8,800, according to the situation update.
According to director general of health Ashley Bloomfield, the two new cases were women who had visited a dying parent in Wellington. Both arrived from abroad and previously underwent quarantine in Auckland, and are in self-isolation right now, he stated.
إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) June 16, 2020
Surely we belong to God and to him shall we return.
It is with tremendous sadness and pain to say goodbye to my father, Nur Omar Mohamed. No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew and loved him. pic.twitter.com/gb7q0gMXG2
SEOUL (Sputnik) - South Korea has registered 34 new cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) over the past 24 hours - down from 37 yesterday - bringing the overall case count to 12,155, with 88.5 percent of those infected (10,760) having recovered by now, the Health Ministry's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said.
One new death was recorded. The death toll now stands at 278, the KCDC said.
