Global coronavirus infections pass 15 million
WASHINGTON, United States — The number of coronavirus infections around the world passed 15 million on Wednesday with more than a quarter of those cases in the United States, where President Donald Trump warned that the pandemic was likely to get worse before it gets better.
The US data makes grim reading with more than 140,000 fatalities and regular daily death tolls of more than 1,000, yet Trump repeated his claim late on Tuesday that the pandemic would somehow "disappear".
Trump has been a critic of lockdown measures and has argued in favour of reopening the economy even as death tolls have climbed.
Signs are emerging in other parts of the world that the virus quickly springs back when lockdown measures are lifted.
Australia, Belgium, Hong Kong and Japanese capital Tokyo had all used restrictive measures to successfully beat outbreaks earlier in the pandemic, but all are now facing an upsurge in cases.
Australia and Hong Kong set new daily records for confirmed cases on Wednesday and Tokyo's governor urged residents to stay at home during a forthcoming holiday as cases climb.
Belgian officials said people must stick to social-distancing guidelines to halt a "snowball effect before it provokes a new avalanche".
However, one of the more controversial measures taken by any government -- South Africa's decision to ban the sale of alcohol and enforce a curfew -- continued to cause anguish.
"What the government has put in place has been knee-capping," restaurateur Sean Barber said during a protest in Johannesburg. "It's decimating our industry."
Vaccine hopes
The crisis has left tens of millions unemployed around the world and crippled global commerce, prompting the European Union to agree an unprecedented 750 billion euro ($858 billion) aid package for the hardest-hit member countries earlier this week.
But the airline industry continues to struggle under the weight of travel restrictions and reluctance among potential passengers to fly.
Irish carrier Ryanair said on Wednesday it would shut its base near the German business hub Frankfurt after pilots refused to take a pay cut.
The firm, which is looking to shed 3,000 staff in total, said the pilot's union had "voted for job cuts and base closures when they could have preserved all jobs".
The production of a vaccine is now key to ensuring a return to something close to normality for businesses and the general public.
More than 200 candidate drugs are being developed with 23 having progressed to clinical trials.
The US government has agreed to pay almost $2 billion for 100 million doses of a potential vaccine being developed by German firm BioNTech and US giant Pfizer.
Another leading candidate, developed in part by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, registered promising results from clinical trials this week.
But the firm's chief said on Tuesday a global rollout was not imminent.
"We hope to be able to produce a vaccine by the end of the year... perhaps a little earlier if all goes well," said Pascal Soriot.
'Bake a giant cake'
With the sporting world just about getting back on its feet, Olympic officials conceded on Wednesday that their hopes of holding the Tokyo 2020 Games next year rested on a vaccine.
"If things continue as they are now, we couldn't" hold the Games, said local organising committee president Yoshiro Mori.
While global efforts to prevent new infections are the principal concern of policymakers, the extent and severity of the disease in countries with struggling health systems has becoming clearer in recent days.
India passed the one-million infections milestone last week and is now behind only the US and Brazil, but new data on Wednesday suggested a vast underestimate.
A study showed almost a quarter of the population in New Delhi had contracted the virus, equating to roughly five million infections in the capital city.
Officials have registered just 125,000 cases.
Meanwhile, for those who recover from the disease, the path back to full health is not always straightforward.
In Brazil, 63-year-old Elenice da Silva had a severe infection that lasted nearly three months.
The illness left her temporarily unable to speak.
"Intensive care was awful. But now I'm feeling marvellous," she told AFP during her recovery. "I'm going to bake a giant cake for everyone."
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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