Global coronavirus infections pass 20 million
PARIS, France — More than 20 million coronavirus cases have been now been registered across the world, over half in the Americas, according to an AFP tally of official sources at 2215 GMT on Monday.
At least 20,002,577 cases and 733,842 deaths have now been reported. More than four out of 10 coronavirus cases have been in the United States and Brazil, the two most affected countries in the world.
While the US has logged 5,075,678 cases and 163,282 deaths, Brazil has recorded 3,057,470 infections and 101,752 deaths.
The pace of the pandemic appears to be stabilising across the world with an additional one million cases detected roughly every four days since mid-July.
It took 94 days for one million infections to be registered, after the announcement of the first official case in China. Eighty-six days later, on 28 June, the 10 million barrier was broken. The number of known infections has since doubled in a month and a half.
Latin America and the Caribbean, the hardest-hit region with 5,601,470 cases and 221,281 deaths, continues to experience rapid spread with 576,583 new infections reported in the last seven days.
It is followed by Asia (495,663), Canada and the US (379,017), Europe (153,879), Africa (89,644), Middle East (74,588) and Oceania (3,372).
Canada and the United States make up the second hardest-hit region overall, having recorded 5,195,417 cases and 172,300 deaths, ahead of Asia (3,493,026 cases, 72,486 deaths), Europe (3,374,166 cases, 213,484 deaths) and the Middle East (1,257,417 cases, 30,363 deaths).
Africa (1,057,730 infections, 23,582 deaths), which is the least-affected continent after Oceania (23,351, 346), has recorded more than half of its cases in South Africa.
India is the country with the most new infections over the last week (402,287), ahead of the United States (376,471), which on Sunday passed the five million mark of officially reported cases. Brazil (301,745), Colombia (69,830) and Peru (49,174) are the next most affected nations.
The figure for the number of infections reflects only a fraction of the actual number of cases, as many countries use the tests only for tracing or do not have sufficient resources to carry out widespread testing.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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