The United States has the highest death toll and overall coronavirus tally, with 27.4 million infected and 480,000 fatalities. It is followed by India (10.88 million cases, 155,000 deaths) and Brazil (9.7 million cases and a death toll of over 237,000), while Mexico has the third-highest death toll with over 172,000 and almost 2 million infected.
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Aterriza en rampa 4 un avión de @Conviasa con el primer lote de dosis de vacunas #Sputnik-V. @NicolasMaduro había anunciado que llegaban 100.000 dosis de la vacuna Rusa. pic.twitter.com/ezpyqYISsU
— Aníbal Sánchez (@AnibalSanchez) February 13, 2021
"We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the COVID-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them", national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement.
"We want more data. We have asked for more data", Peter Ben Embarek told AFP.
"Why that doesn't happen, I couldn't comment. Whether it's political or time or it's difficult ... But whether there are any other reasons why the data isn't available, I don't know. One would only speculate", he told Reuters.
Iranian Health Minister Saeid Namaki sounded the alarm on Saturday over the progressive spread of the UK coronavirus variant, which the local authorities fear is more infectious than declared by UK experts.
"The [mutated] virus has spread throughout the entire country. We should be conscious that this virus can be in any city, village and family. This is among the gravest concerns of our COVID-19 management", Namaki said in a televised speech.
According to the Iranian minister, the mutated coronavirus' infectiousness is significantly higher than initially declared by UK health experts.
While Iran's first UK variant case had been found in a man who recently returned from the United Kingdom in January, Namaki said that the virus was now found in a woman with no travel history at all. In this regard, the minister said Iran should scale up its COVID-19 detection capacity.
In response to the emergence of mutated strains, the Iranian authorities introduced a 14-day quarantine for all European arrivals on 30 January. The bilateral air traffic with the United Kingdom remains suspended.
TOKYO (Sputnik) - Amendments to Japan's law on infectious diseases and law on special COVID-19 measures entered into force on Saturday, making violations punishable with fines.
The amended law on infectious diseases provides for fines reaching up to 500,000 yen ($4,700) for the refusal to be hospitalised or flight from a hospital, and up to 300,000 yen for the refusal to cooperate with contact tracers or the provision of false information.
"This is a warning for all of us", Rouhani said as the number of new cases spiked in some areas of the country. "This means the beginning of moving towards the fourth wave. We all have to be vigilant to prevent this".
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia registered 14,861 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, down from 15,089 the day before, taking the overall tally to 4,057,698, the coronavirus response centre said on Saturday.
"Over the past day, 14,861 coronavirus cases were confirmed across 85 regions, including 1,595 cases (10.7 percent) that were detected among people showing no clinical symptoms", the centre said, adding that the cumulative case count has now reached 4,057,698, with the rate of increase at 0.37 percent.
NEW DELHI (Sputnik) – India has confirmed 12,143 new cases of the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, with the total number of those infected having reached 10,892,746, the country's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Saturday.
The death toll from the disease has reached 155,550 people, with 103 new fatalities being recorded over the past day. More than 10.6 million people have recovered in India since the start of the outbreak.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The Brazilian strain of the coronavirus is three times more contagious than the standard SARS-Cov-2 but vaccines are still effective against it, Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said.
“Thank God, we had clear news from the analysis that the vaccines still affect this variant. But it is more contagious. By our analysis, it is three times more contagious", Pazuello said, as quoted by Telesur. He did not specify which studies he was citing.
