The overall coronavirus tally has reached 35.7 million infected worldwide and the death toll has surpassed 1,048,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. The US remains the most affected country in the world, with around 7.5 million cases and over 210,000 deaths from the virus, followed by India which has 6.6 million infected and 103,500 fatalities, and Brazil, with almost 5 million cases and a death toll of 147,500.
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WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – As many as “34 White House staffers and other contacts” have been diagnosed with the coronavirus within the past several days, US media reported.
The announced figure is higher than it was earlier expected, the ABC News broadcaster reported on late Wednesday, citing an internal government memo.
Last week, US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus after one of the presidential aides, Hope Hicks, had contracted the disease earlier. On Monday, Trump was released from the hospital.
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on 11 March. To date, more than 36 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 1.05 million fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The United States has confirmed more than 7.5 million COVID-19 cases so far, with over 211,000 fatalities, being the worst-hit nation by the pandemic.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The worldwide number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has surpassed 36 million, Johns Hopkins University says.
The exact number of the coronavirus cases stood at 36,026,644 as of 00:01 GMT on Thursday. More than 1.05 million people have died of the disease, the university added.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Moscow has registered 55 deaths of patients infected with COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, bringing the Russian capital's death toll to 5,497, the city's coronavirus response center said in a statement on Wednesday.
"Another 55 patients, who were diagnosed with pneumonia and tested positive for the coronavirus infection, died in Moscow," the center said.
This figure is the highest single-day death toll since June 10, when 56 people died from COVID-19.
In the previous day, 41 people infected with the coronavirus died in Moscow.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The number of COVID-19 cases in Brazil has surpassed 5 million, the country's Health Ministry reported.
The ministry said the case tally stood at 5,000,694, with 148,228 deaths and over 4.3 million recoveries.
The US State of Wisconsin will open a field hospital to treat COVID-19 patients due to the record uptick in the hospitalizations, Governor Tony Evers said in a release on Wednesday.
"Due to increased COVID-19 hospitalizations and at the request of hospital systems, Gov. Tony Evers announced today the Alternate Care Facility (ACF) at Wisconsin State Fair Park will begin accepting COVID-19 patients within the next week", the release said.
The announcement comes as the Wisconsin health systems experience rising pressure to manage record surges in COVID-19 patient hospitalizations, the release said.
"As of yesterday, there were 853 COVID-19 hospitalizations, an increase of 71 over the day before", the release added.
Work on new tests to determine the level of immunity to coronavirus infection is underway in Russia, the country's chief public health official, Anna Popova, said.
"We need new tests that determine the strength of immunity. We are working on this. And I am sure that soon we will be able to register new tests", Popova told the Rossiya 1 broadcaster.
She clarified that this was being done by research centres in the city of Obolensk and Vector Research Center.
"The first tests that we all used and are using, they were tuned and focused on very high levels of antibodies in the blood of those who have been ill. If a person is ill, if he had antibodies, and if today's test system does not detect them, this does not mean that he is not protected. Science must deal with this and provide a new tool that will allow us to determine the level of antibodies after time after illness and how much it protects a person from illness", Popova explained.
"It is quite obvious that the epidemiological situation in Russia is getting more complicated. We were preparing for this. We have growth in 60 constituent entities of Russia, in 20 constituent entities the situation is stable and somewhere even goes down, but exactly in those constituent entities where these the requirements are observed", Russia's chief public health official Anna Popova told the Rossiya 1 broadcaster.
"We are working with partners and estimate that between 10 and 20 percent of cases are responsible for about 80 percent of transmission events, which is why we say that this operates in clusters and that its setting that is so important", Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO expert on epidemiology, said during a Q&A session with her colleague, Mike Ryan.
She reiterated that when the novel coronavirus was allowed to spread in enclosed spaces and long-term living facilities, it was likely to spread via singing and shouting as well as staying together for extended periods of time.
Active duty service members at four US military bases will be randomly tested for the novel coronavirus in an initial effort announced by the Air Force in a press release on Wednesday.
"The surveillance testing will begin with active-duty populations at four AFMC [Air Force Materiel Command] bases: Edwards Air Force Base, California; Eglin, Florida; Hanscom AFB, Massachusetts; and Hill AFB, Utah", the release said.
The Air Force explained in the release that tests of healthy, asymptomatic service members are intended to identify pockets of active virus transmission, hopefully before people begin getting sick.
Plans call for the testing protocol to be expanded to other bases, the release said.
The testing will be conducted in 14-day periods, eventually testing 100 total active-duty personnel at each location within the first two months, beginning with healthcare workers, followed by dorm residents, host wing personnel and installation workforce, the release added.
At the end of the two-month roll-out phase, and once the testing is further streamlined, the Air Force leadership will evaluate and possibly to begin an expansion of the surveillance testing to other bases and broader base populations, including civilian workers, according to the release.
"Our mortality rates are reducing. But that's not because the virus changes. That is because we are doing better. And that to me is an incredible sign of hope", Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) expert on epidemiology said during a Q&A session with her colleague Mike Ryan, the WHO’s executive director.
The epidemiologist added that health experts now have improved equipment and diagnostics to detect active cases. According to van Kerkhove, accumulated experience helps doctors in treating coronavirus-positive patients.
The WHO expert also said that access to oxygen for people who arrive at medical facilities and access to dexamethasone to critically ill patients "saves lives".
"The COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction", the report said.
The World Bank pointed out in the report that about 82 percent of the so-called "new poor" will be in the middle-income countries that already have high poverty rates.
Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than $1.9 per day and it may affect about 9.1 percent to 9.4 percent of the population.
The World Bank noted that absent the pandemic, the extreme poverty rate was expected to be less than 8 percent.
"The pandemic and global recession may cause over 1.4 percent of the world’s population to fall into extreme poverty", World Bank President David Malpass said.
Malpass urged countries to prepare for a different post-COVID-19 economy by allowing capital, labour, skills and innovation to move to new businesses and sectors.
"World Bank Group support… will help developing countries resume growth and respond to the health, social and economic impacts of COVID-19 as they work toward a sustainable and inclusive recovery", Malpass said.
The World Bank called on countries to cooperate with each other to ensure the results of the continuing efforts to reduce poverty levels.
US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is trying to negotiate with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a narrower COVID-19 stimulus deal to help struggling airlines, after President Donald canceled talks over a larger bill, Congress spokesperson Drew Hammill said Wednesday.
Speaker Pelosi & Secretary Mnuchin spoke by phone at 9:33 a.m. The Secretary inquired about a standalone airlines bill. The Speaker reminded him that Republicans blocked that bill on Friday & asked him to review the DeFazio bill so that they could have an informed conversation.
— Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) October 7, 2020
Iran has registered 239 coronavirus-related fatalities over the past 24 hours — a record spike since the beginning of the pandemic — while the case count rose by over 4,000, the government said in its official Twitter account on Wednesday.
The overall COVID-19 death toll has reached 27,658, and the case count has surpassed 483,800. At the same time, nearly 400,000 people have recovered from the coronavirus.
The recent surge in coronavirus cases and deaths has prompted Iran to re-impose restrictions in several provinces, including Tehran. The new measures include the temporary closure of universities, schools, mosques, cinemas, wedding halls, gyms, beauty salons and swimming pools.
First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon has announced that pubs and restaurants will close in five areas in the central belt of the country for 16 days from 9 October to stop the number of COVID-19-infected people from rising.
LONDON (Sputnik) - The recent surge in new COVID-19 cases in the United Kingdom, which has seen the country break its single-day record for new positive tests multiple times, is a "very serious problem", Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Wednesday.
"It is a challenge, and everybody will have seen, from the rising case rates and unfortunately the rising hospitalization rates which have risen really quite sharply in the last week or so, that we have got a very serious problem on our hands", Hancock said during a webinar organized by the Confederation of British Industry.
The health secretary said that the UK government faced a challenge in curbing the second wave of the pandemic while causing as little "damage" as possible.
ROME (Sputnik) - The Italian Council of Ministers has decided to extend the country's coronavirus disease-related state of emergency until 31 January 2021, sources in the government told reporters on Wednesday.
The decision has been taken as public health officials have noticed a surge in new COVID-19 cases after Italy had begun to accept tourists for the end of the summer season. The state of emergency had initially been scheduled to expire on 15 October.
Ministers took the decision at a meeting in Rome on Wednesday, upon consultation of a document published by the minister of health, Roberto Speranza, one day before.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said this past Thursday that he would ask parliament to extend the COVID-19 state of emergency until the end of January.
"The local and regional approach combined with the national measures remains correct", Boris Johnson told Parliament, adding, however, that the number of infected is rising in the capital and elsewhere in the country.
"It is a challenge, and everybody will have seen, from the rising case rates and unfortunately the rising hospitalisation rates which have risen really quite sharply in the last week or so, that we have got a very serious problem on our hands", Health Secretary Matt Hancock said at a Confederation of British Industry webinar.
"The challenge is how to deal with this second peak in a way that has as little damage as possible. Thankfully we know far more about it than first time around".
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia has registered 11,115 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, down from 11,615 yesterday, taking the cumulative case total to 1,248,619, the country's coronavirus response centre said on Wednesday.
"In the past 24 hours, Russia has confirmed 11,115 COVID-19 cases in 85 regions, of which 3,019 (27.2 percent) were detected with people showing no clinical symptoms", the response centre said in a statement, specifying that the total count has reached 1,248,619.
