New York City coronavirus deaths suspected to be more than 10,000
NEW YORK, United States — The number of coronavirus-linked deaths in New York City soared past 10,000 on Tuesday after officials said almost 4,000 people who never tested positive were presumed to have died from COVID-19.
The city's health department announced that 3,778 people had probably succumbed to the illness — on top of the 6,589 confirmed fatalities.
The new figures, released at 4:00 pm (2000 GMT), saw the total number of deaths in the Big Apple, which quickly became America's coronavirus epicenter, soar to 10,367.
"While these data reflect the tragic impact that the virus has had on our city, they will also help us to determine the scale and scope of the epidemic and guide us in our decisions," the city's health commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, said.
The probable deaths define someone "who had no known positive lab test but with a death certificate that lists as a cause of death 'COVID-19 or an equivalent,'" according to the department guidelines.
New York state has borne the brunt of America's fast-spreading pandemic, accounting for almost half of fatalities from the crisis in the United States.
Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted that the city's official death toll probably underestimated the true extent of the deadly outbreak.
He explained that many people who had passed away at home had not been counted as having died from COVID-19 even though it had likely been the cause.
The extra deaths are also suspected to have occurred in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
The "probable" numbers highlight a lack of widespread of testing for the virus.
Before the city updated its toll with the likely COVID-19 deaths, New York state had reported almost 11,000 fatalities.
Hospitalizations and infections are falling, however, and Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared the "worst is over."
More than 25,400 people have died in the US, according to a running tally by Johns Hopkins University.
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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