The global coronavirus tally has now surpassed 9.3 million, while the global death toll has jumped to 481,000 worldwide.
The United States remains the worst-hit country with over 2,376,000 cases, while Brazil is second with over 1,188,000 infected.
At the same time, many countries in Europe and Asia are easing lockdown and social distancing measures, reporting a decline in the number of new infections.
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MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Germany has confirmed 630 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, with the total count reaching 192,079, the Robert Koch Institute said on Thursday.
The death toll has grown by 13 to 8,927 people within the same period of time.
A day earlier, the country confirmed 587 new cases and 19 fatalities.
BEIJING (Sputnik) - Over the past day, China has registered 19 new cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and one asymptomatic carrier, five patients have been discharged from hospitals, the state health committee said in a statement.
Out of the 19 new cases, 14 are local (13 in Beijing, one in Hebei Province), and five are imported.
Most cases have been identified in Beijing and are related to the Xinfadi Wholesale Market in the Chinese capital's Fengtai District. It was closed on 13 June after an epidemiological investigation revealed coronavirus on a cutting board for imported salmon.
Overall, since 11 June, a total of 269 cases of coronavirus infection have been detected in the city, another 22 asymptomatic carriers are under medical supervision.
In total, during the epidemic in mainland China, 83,449 cases of COVID-19 have been recorded, 78,433 people have recovered, 382 patients remain in hospitals, 4,634 died. The number of imported cases stands at 1,893, with 1,805 recoveries.
"There will be outbreaks...we can't go stop-go-stop-go and we can't flick the light on-and-off-on-and-off-and-on-and-off," Morrison said at a press conference on Thursday morning. "So what I'm saying is we are going ahead, we built the protections to deal with outbreaks".
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) – The number of people, who have died of COVID-19 in Mexico, has risen by 947 to 24,324 within the past 24 hours, Jose Luis Alomia, the director of epidemiology at the Health Ministry, said.
He also said on late Wednesday that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases had increased by 5,473 to 196,847 within the same period of time.
"As of today, 196,847 people have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and as they showed symptoms of COVID-19, we regard them as confirmed cases", Alomia said in a televised address.
A day earlier, the Latin American nation recorded 6,288 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 793 fatalities.
UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) - Yemen has seen a 25 percent fatality rate from the coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, a figure five times larger than the world's average, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock said in a Security Council meeting.
"COVID-19 is spreading rapidly across Yemen. About 25 percent of Yemenis confirmed to have the disease have died. That's five times the global average", Lowcock said on Wednesday.
Lowcock added that the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the country are underreported, given the collapsed health care system, and considering the fact that burial places in some areas have recently increased by seven times.
Yemen has recorded a total of 1,015 COVID-19 cases and 274 deaths, according to the data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) - Mexico's economy is expected to contract 10.5 percent this year as the coronavirus pandemic continues to weigh down on the global output, according to a forecast published Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund.
"In Latin America, where most countries are still struggling to contain infections, the two largest economies, Brazil and Mexico, are projected to contract by 9.1 and 10.5 percent, respectively, in 2020", the report read.
This will leave production in Mexico 3.9 percentage points lower than in the April projections published in the IMF's World Economic Outlook in April. In 2021, its output will bounce back to 3.3 percent.
Global growth is now expected to contract 4.9 percent in 2020, 1.9 percentage points below the April 2020 estimates, before rebounding to 5.4 percent next year. The IMF warned there was a higher-than-usual degree of uncertainty around its forecast due to differences in how countries implemented social distancing measures.
BAGHDAD (Sputnik) - Iraq has for the first time seen over 2,000 new daily coronavirus cases, taking the tally to 36,702 infections, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday.
The previous record daily increase stood at 1,870 cases. The rise was registered on 20 June.
"The Health Ministry’s labs have registered 2,200 cases of infection in the past 24 hours. In addition, 79 fatalities and 1,061 recoveries have been recorded", the ministry said.
The death toll has thus risen to 1,330. The number of people recovered from coronavirus has reached 16,814. Over 18,000 are still being treated for COVID-19, with 281 of them in intensive care.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Brazil has increased by 42,725 to 1,188,631 within the past 24 hours, the national Ministry of Health said on late Wednesday.
The death toll has risen by 1,185 to 53,830 people within the same period of time.
A day earlier, Brazil reported about 39,436 new cases of the coronavirus disease and 1,374 new fatalities.
Brazil comes second on a global tally of coronavirus cases after the United States, which has recorded over 2.3 million COVID-19 patients.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Moscow has registered 12 deaths of patients with the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) over the past 24 hours - nearly the same number as the day before - bringing the Russian capital's death toll to 3,669, the city's coronavirus response centre said in a statement.
"A total of 12 patients who were diagnosed with pneumonia and tested positive for the coronavirus infection have died in Moscow", the centre said.
The day before, 14 people died from COVID-19 in the city, bringing the number of deaths to 3,657.
Russia's overall number of recorded coronavirus cases has topped 606,000. The country's COVID-19 death toll is over 8,500. More than 368,000 people (about 61 percent of the country's total case tally) have recovered.
Moscow's case count currently exceeds 216,000, with over 141,000 recoveries (65 percent of the overall number of cases in the city).
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Ireland's Health Service Executive (HSE) plans to launch a COVID-19 tracing app next week, The Irish Sun newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing HSE CEO Paul Reid.
The news comes as the country has seen the index of close contacts among people double over the past two weeks.
According to Reid, the HSE app will contain data about users of nearby mobile devices. The app has to be approved by the government before the launch.
Ireland has confirmed a total of 25,396, with the death toll of 1,726.
BRUSSELS (Sputnik) - The European Commission on Wednesday offered to complement the proposed EU budget for 2021 with approximately $387 billion in loans and grants, almost a half, from the proposed post-COVID-19 recovery instrument.
The instrument of approximately $845 billion, known as Next Generation EU, was proposed in May.
"The Commission has today proposed an EU budget of €166.7 billion [$187.9 billion] for 2021, to be complemented by €211 billion in grants and approximately €133 billion in loans under Next Generation EU, the temporary recovery instrument aimed at mobilising investments and kick-starting the European economy", the commission said in a statement, adding that the funds will be used to mend the economic and social damage wrought by COVID-19.
The commission's proposals have yet to be approved by the European Parliament and EU member countries.
As the COVID-19 epidemic has unfolded, many countries have adopted severe restrictions to stop the virus from spreading, undermining their economies in the process and necessitating additional measures to facilitate economic restoration.
According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, there are 1,524,111 confirmed coronavirus cases on the continent, along with the death toll of 175,456.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - This year's edition of one of the world's biggest marathons in Berlin has been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, the organisers said on Wednesday.
"As hard as we have tried, it is currently not possible to organize the BMW BERLIN-MARATHON with its usual Berlin charm", a statement read.
The marathon was scheduled for 26-27 September but the nationwide ban on mass gatherings will not allow it to go ahead as planned, the organizers explained.
Participants have been offered to get a refund or keep their place in the race until next year.
This is the latest marathon to be cancelled by the outbreak after races in Rome, Boston and New York. Events in Paris and Barcelona have been pushed back from spring to fall.
Vaka sayımızda bir dalgalanma var. Önceki günlere kıyasla test sayımız 10.000 fazla olsa da, sonuç hepimizi riskin büyümesine karşı uyarıyor. Artışın sebebi, yazla birlikte, tedbirlerin esnetilmesi. Bu yaz tedbir dışında ikinci bir seçeneğimiz yok. https://t.co/RVlhe7786O pic.twitter.com/C9PFsZ4CH7
— Dr. Fahrettin Koca (@drfahrettinkoca) June 24, 2020
The Israeli government on Wednesday unanimously approved a bill that would authorize the security services to phone-track COVID-19 patients amid rising daily numbers of coronavirus cases.
"I have asked to accelerate the development of the digital application that is designed to achieve this goal. This will take time – weeks and I hope not months. Until then we are seeking to complete the legislation on the use of the digital tools of the ISA [Israel Security Agency]. We are monitoring this with ‘on’ and ‘off’ switches. I hope that we will not have to activate it," Netanyahu told the cabinet.
The bill will now proceed to the unicameral parliament for approval.
The ISA tracking program that uses cellphone and credit card data to monitor COVID-19 patients was already approved by the cabinet in March, but then scrapped after a court ruled that such surveillance must be regulated by a special law. ISA chief Nadav Argaman has vociferously opposed using his agency to monitor infected patients.
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut announced that they are imposing a 14-day quarantine for all visitors from US states that have a significant community spread of the novel coronavirus, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement on Wednesday.
"I am announcing with Governor Phil Murphy and Governor Ned Lamont a joint travel advisory. All individuals traveling from states with significant community spread of COVID-19 into New York, New Jersey or Connecticut must quarantine for 14 days," Cuomo said via Twitter. "This travel advisory is effective midnight tonight."
The World Health Organization (WHO) expects that the global tally of confirmed cases of the coronavirus infection will reach 10 million next week, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.
"In the first month of this outbreak, less than 10,000 cases were reported to WHO, in the last month, almost four million cases have been reported. We expect [the global tally] to reach a total of 10 million cases within the next week," Tedros told a virtual briefing.
According to the WHO head, this is a sober reminder that even as research into vaccines and therapeutics continues, the international community should do everything it can to suppress transmission and save lives.
About 20,000 employees of airports across the United Kingdom may lose their jobs due to reduced air traffic amid the coronavirus pandemic, the UK Airport Operators Association (AOA) said on Wednesday.
"AOA analysis of its member airports suggests that up to 20,000 jobs are now at risk at airport operators, as the full effects of the pandemic on the global airline community begin to be felt. Future airline scheduling and passenger numbers are forecasted to be significantly lower year-on-year," the AOA said in a press release.
According to the AOA, since airports operators directly employ a small proportion of airport staff and many other jobs are supported by activity linked to UK airports, the total potential job losses may exceed 110,000.
Within the context, the association called on the UK government to take robust action to support the country's aviation sector hit by the pandemic. In particular, the AOA proposed to suspend Air Passenger Duty for at least six months, review and repeal the current quarantine policy, and fund the aviation sector’s regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, for the 2020-2021 charging period, among other measures.
The US government has filed a statement of interest supporting a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of an order imposing a 14-day quarantine on visitors to the state of Hawaii during the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Justice Department said in a news release on Wednesday.
"The Justice Department yesterday filed a statement of interest in Hawaii federal court in support of a lawsuit filed by Nevada and California residents who own property in Hawaii challenging a measure by Governor David Ige in response to COVID-19 that mandates a 14-day self-quarantine for individuals entering Hawaii," the release said.
Under the governor’s order, the Hawaii residents who have remained in the state since the onset of the pandemic, whether they have self-quarantined within the last 14 days or not, are free to travel between the Hawaiian islands and engage in commerce with some businesses, the release noted.
However, "Out-of-staters such as the plaintiffs [in the law suit] by contrast, must self-quarantine in a single location for two weeks before they can share in the same freedoms available to most Hawaii residents," the release said.
The statement of interest is part of US Attorney General William Barr's April 27 initiative to review state and local policies to ensure that civil liberties are protected during the pandemic, the Justice Department said.
Governments around the world should not impose quarantines as they revive their economies from COVID-19 lockdowns or it will hurt the tourism and travel sector, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Wednesday.
"IATA urged governments to avoid quarantine measures when re-opening their economies," the industry group said in a statement. "IATA is promoting a layered approach of measures to reduce the risk of countries importing COVID-19 via air travel and to mitigate the possibility of transmission in cases where people may travel while unknowingly being infected."
Imposing quarantine measures on arriving travelers, the release added, keeps countries in isolation and the travel and tourism sector in lockdown.
The industry group said it supports health declarations, screening and contact tracing.
The IATA is a trade group that represents around 290 airlines accounting for more than 80 percent of global air traffic.
The United States is working with the European Union and countries throughout the world to determine how international travel can be safely reopened after being halted to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a press briefing on Wednesday.
"We have been working with countries all across the world, including our friends in Europe, to determine how we can safely reopen international travel," Pompeo told reporters.
Pompeo emphasized the importance of reopening international travel for the United States and the EU member states’ economies.
"I am confident that we will find a set of conditions that create sufficient health and safety protections, sufficient travel opportunities," Pompeo said.
The secretary of state expressed confidence that both sides will figure out the right way to reopen international travel in the coming weeks.
However, Pompeo also said the United States will not reopen places that jeopardize the country from people traveling here.
Slovak President Zuzana Caputova went under home quarantine after one of the presidential office employees had close contact with a person diagnosed with COVID-19, media reported on Wednesday.
According to the Slovakia's RSI broadcaster, the leader will be quarantined until Friday. All meetings of Caputova scheduled for this period are canceled.
So far, Slovakia has confirmed a total of 1,607 cases of the coronavirus infection, including 28 deaths and 1,448 recoveries.
The United States this week saw the biggest daily increase in new COVID-19 cases since the peak of the outbreak in the country in April, data published by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) showed on Wednesday.
The data showed that the US on Tuesday recorded 34,700 new COVID-19 cases, which is the largest daily total of new infections with only two exceptions: on April 9 when the country documented 34,800 new cases, and on April 24 as officials documented 36,400 new infections.
New cases have been on the rise in the United States over the past week after declining from the April 24 peak, the data showed.
The United States is leading the world in the number of reported COVID-19 deaths and confirmed cases. Health officials in the country have documented at least 2,347,102 cases in the US and 121,225 deaths, according to JHU.
There are almost 9.3 million confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide and more than 478,000 deaths, according to the data.
A new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic may significantly disrupt domestic economic activity across the globe, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in its updated World Economic Outlook (WEO) on Wednesday.
“While the baseline does not rule out a possible resurgence in cases in some countries, the first scenario assumes instead that a second major global outbreak takes place early in 2021," the IMF said. “The disruptions to domestic economic activity in each country in 2021 - resulting from measures taken to contain this second outbreak - are assumed to be roughly one-half the size of what is already in the baseline for 2020.”
In such a scenario, the fund does not rule out the possibility of additional tightening in financial conditions in 2021.
“The additional tightening is about one-half of the increase in sovereign and corporate spreads seen since the beginning of the pandemic,” the IMF said. “In the second scenario, it is assumed that the recovery is faster than expected, as greater confidence in efficient post-lockdown measures lead to effective containment and less precautionary behavior by households and firms once the lockdowns are lifted."
Faster recovery will soften financial conditions next year, the report added.
“It is important to stress the considerable uncertainty surrounding these scenarios, especially Scenario 1. The second outbreak could take place in the fall, in which case the negative impact on activity in 2020 would be even larger than in the current baseline,” WEO said.
The IMF stressed the unprecedented character of the current situation.
“For the first time, all regions are projected to experience negative growth in 2020,” it said.
The fund has forecasted significant downside risks, specifically, in case of recurring waves of the pandemic.
“A more prolonged decline in activity could lead to further scarring, including from wider firm closures, as surviving firms hesitate to hire jobseekers after extended unemployment spells, and as unemployed workers leave the labor force entirely,” it said. “Financial conditions may again tighten as in January – March, exposing vulnerabilities among borrowers.”
The IMF slashed its 2020 global growth forecast by 1.9 percent to -4.9 percent.
Turkish authorities will open testing centers for the novel coronavirus in the country's busiest airports by July 1, while by July 15 such centers will become operational in other airports across the country, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy told Anadolu news agency.
Ersoy previously announced plans of the authorities to conduct tests for COVID-19 in airports and border crossing checkpoints for all arrivals.
"By July 1, 2020, COVİD-19 test centers will be opened in all major airports in Turkey, and in the remaining airports such centers will open by July 15," Nuri Ersoy said.
According to the minister, over 727 hotels and about 900 restaurants have applied for a "Safe Tourism Certification" that would indicate they had taken standard measures to prevent the spread of the infection.
He called Turkey one of the safest countries in Europe in terms of the risk of coronavirus infection and expressed regret that partners abroad were delaying the lifting of restrictions on travel to Turkey.
As of Tuesday, Turkey recorded a total of 188,897 cases of the coronavirus infection, while the death toll reached nearly 5,000.
STOCKHOLM (Sputnik) - The Swedish commission assessing the efficiency of measures undertaken in the country in response to the coronavirus pandemic will present its results in the first quarter of 2022, six months before the September parliamentary elections, the interim head of the country's Center Party, Anders Jonsson, told Sveriges Radio broadcaster on Wednesday.
"Prime Minister [Stefan Lofven] said today that the commission would have to submit its decision ahead of the 2022 elections," Jonsson said following a meeting of the prime minister with party leaders.
Meanwhile, Left Party's leader Jonas Sjostedt, who also attended the meeting, believes that the commission should begin with investigating the situation in retirement houses, where about 40 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in Sweden are recorded, the broadcaster reported.
Unlike in the rest of the world, the Swedish government has not imposed strict restrictions or a hard lockdown over the pandemic. The coronavirus toll in Sweden with over 5,000 deaths is currently disproportionately higher than in neighboring countries.
The Bulgarian government has extended the coronavirus-related emergency epidemiological situation in the country until July 15, national media reported on Wednesday.
According to the Sofia Globe news portal, citing Bulgarian Health Minister Kiril Ananiev, the extension of the state of emergency does not imply the introduction of new restrictive measures. According to Ananiev, the authorities will rely on the measures that are currently in force in the country.
On Monday, the government ordered the reintroduction of the mandatory wearing of protective masks in closed public areas due to a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases. In addition, people arriving in Bulgaria from certain countries are required to self-isolate.
The regime was previously extended from May 14 to June 14, replacing the state of emergency, which was imposed on March 13 for one month, and then extended until May 13. In early June, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said that the state of emergency and related measures would be completely lifted by June 15, however, they remained in place until the end of the month.
According to the Health Ministry's latest update, Bulgaria has confirmed 4,114 COVID-19 cases and 208 deaths. A total of 2,217 patients have recovered.
Japan's AnGes biopharmaceutical company developing a DNA vaccine against the novel coronavirus is ready to cooperate with Russian companies both at the stage of scientific research and at the production stage, Ryuichi Morishita, the company's founder and a professor of clinical gene therapy at Osaka University, told Sputnik on Wednesday.
The Japanese company is set to start conducting clinical trials of the vaccine in July. The second part of studies involving from 400 to 500 people is scheduled for the fall, and by the spring, AnGes is expected to enter the stage of industrial production of the vaccine.
"We have already received requests from foreign pharmacological companies about production in their countries. We are negotiating with them. I cannot name the countries, but we are negotiations with 3-4 countries. Russia is not among them. If Russian pharmacological companies are interested, then we are happy to respond and to jointly develop or provide technology. We are ready to respond not only to the sale proposal but also to the one on joint developments. If they contact us, we will be happy to answer. It is not only about selling the technology but also about joint development," Morishita said.
Speaking about the DNA vaccine, the professor said that the main advantage of a DNA vaccine was its safety, as it did not use pathogens, the body created antibodies responding not to a pathogen but to DNA information about it. The ability to produce a vaccine quickly and practically in unlimited quantities is its another advantage, Morishita added.
"Usually, [scientists] introduce a weakened virus into a chicken egg and create antigens — the basis for creating antibodies to the virus. As for the DNA vaccine, there is a protein S2 in the form of a spike on the surface of the coronavirus. We use it as antigen. we use the gene information of protein S2, namely DNA plasmid, to create a vaccine. That means that we do not use the virus itself," the professor said.
Another important feature of the new vaccine is the flexibility of its creation, as even if the virus mutates, according to Morishita, a new vaccine can be developed in two weeks.
At the same time, the company's own production is still focused on the domestic Japanese market due to limited production capabilities, the professor added.
The clinical trials of the Russian vaccine against COVID-19 are going as planned, without picking up the pace, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Wednesday.
"Nothing has been sped up. The clinical trials are going as scheduled," Murashko told reporters when asked if the development of the vaccine was accelerated.
He has also refrained from naming the exact date of the vaccine's release, promising to say everything when the trials are concluded.
Russia has registered 7,176 COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, bringing the total count to 606,881, the country's coronavirus response center said on Wednesday.
"Over the past 24 hours, Russia has confirmed 7,176 COVID-19 cases in 84 regions, of which 2,272 (31.6 percent) have been detected actively, with people showing no clinical symptoms," the response center said in a statement, adding that the country has confirmed 606,881 cases (+1.2 percent) in 85 regions so far.
Of all the new cases, 811 have been registered in Moscow, 507 in the Moscow Region and 323 in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area.
The country's COVID-19 death toll has grown by 154 to 8,513.
As many as 12,393 COVID-19 patients have recovered across the country, bringing the total number of cured people to 368,822.
India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Wednesday reported 15,900 new cases of coronavirus infection, in line with the record-setting numbers of daily cases registered over the past week.
This brings the country’s total to 456,183 confirmed cases with 258,684 recoveries, putting India above previous hotspots such as Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom in terms of total infections.
An additional 465 fatalities since the last update has taken the COVID-19 death toll to 14,476.
According to the ministry’s numbers, the central state of Maharashtra, where the city of Mumbai is located, is the epicenter of the subcontinent accounting for 139,000 of the confirmed cases and 6,170 deaths. The capital state of Delhi and the southern state of Tamil Nadu share second and third places in infection rates with 66,600 and 64,600 cases respectively.
Despite this, the government has begun lifting restrictions in some parts of the country with low infection rates earlier this month, allowing places of worship, shopping centers and restaurants to open in a first phase. Lockdowns are still in places in regions deemed "red zones" where the infection rates are still high at least until June 30.
Arizona, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have each admitted record numbers of new coronavirus cases, according to The Washington Post.
