i_need_contribute
|
Country, |
Total |
New |
Total |
|
World |
102,011,516 |
+601,276 |
2,199,406 |
|
26,338,607 |
+162,574 |
443,769 |
|
|
10,720,971 |
+18,940 |
154,047 |
|
|
9,060,786 |
+60,301 |
221,676 |
|
|
3,793,810 |
+19,138 |
71,651 |
|
|
3,743,734 |
+28,680 |
103,126 |
|
|
3,130,629 |
+23,770 |
74,800 |
|
|
2,792,360 |
+34,899 |
57,806 |
|
|
2,515,507 |
+14,372 |
87,381 |
|
|
2,457,118 |
+7,279 |
25,605 |
|
|
2,194,562 |
+14,883 |
56,220 |
|
|
2,067,575 |
+12,270 |
52,913 |
|
|
1,905,524 |
+9,471 |
47,601 |
|
|
1,806,849 |
+17,944 |
153,639 |
|
|
1,496,665 |
+7,156 |
36,443 |
|
|
1,437,798 |
+7,150 |
43,105 |
|
|
1,398,841 |
+6,527 |
57,736 |
|
|
1,206,412 |
+5,529 |
22,351 |
|
|
1,119,685 |
+5,715 |
40,484 |
|
|
1,037,993 |
+13,695 |
29,331 |
|
|
966,252 |
+4,659 |
13,816 |
|
|
964,705 |
+8,486 |
16,018 |
|
|
766,103 |
+4,876 |
19,664 |
|
|
721,513 |
+2,901 |
18,105 |
|
|
714,143 |
+4,255 |
18,174 |
|
|
699,662 |
+3,020 |
20,933 |
|
|
685,383 |
+16,432 |
11,608 |
|
|
628,895 |
+7,305 |
4,669 |
|
|
617,202 |
+943 |
13,024 |
|
|
539,387 |
+1,910 |
11,514 |
|
|
533,953 |
+509 |
8,087 |
|
|
519,575 |
+1,169 |
10,552 |
|
|
469,139 |
+756 |
8,224 |
|
|
410,230 |
+1,449 |
7,607 |
|
|
390,637 |
+1,592 |
3,965 |
|
|
375,607 |
+3,927 |
5,361 |
|
|
367,276 |
+253 |
6,366 |
|
|
363,450 |
+1,569 |
12,291 |
|
|
324,169 |
+1,058 |
4,269 |
|
|
316,808 |
+1,408 |
5,196 |
|
|
293,157 |
+3,497 |
2,621 |
|
|
293,052 |
+3,966 |
819 |
|
|
270,588 |
+213 |
2,020 |
|
|
256,287 |
+723 |
3,127 |
|
|
246,000 |
+2,465 |
14,766 |
|
|
243,427 |
+2,035 |
4,411 |
|
|
242,851 |
+1,718 |
1,688 |
|
|
230,978 |
+619 |
4,943 |
|
|
229,793 |
+209 |
3,113 |
|
|
217,574 |
+560 |
8,973 |
|
|
208,610 |
+1,155 |
2,603 |
|
|
208,074 |
+2,866 |
10,167 |
|
|
204,351 |
+2,028 |
6,508 |
|
|
198,208 |
+4,094 |
717 |
|
|
197,208 |
+668 |
2,071 |
|
|
192,645 |
+1,463 |
3,167 |
|
|
192,637 |
+571 |
2,599 |
|
|
182,530 |
+1,413 |
2,476 |
|
|
180,168 |
+951 |
2,742 |
|
|
166,669 |
+242 |
3,067 |
|
|
164,282 |
+521 |
9,169 |
|
|
163,450 |
+588 |
958 |
|
|
163,235 |
+1,551 |
3,448 |
|
|
158,309 |
+683 |
3,413 |
|
|
157,595 |
+1,098 |
5,543 |
|
|
157,593 |
+597 |
1,812 |
|
|
154,796 |
+713 |
5,742 |
|
|
150,280 |
+347 |
248 |
|
|
144,007 |
+1,127 |
3,512 |
|
|
139,152 |
+350 |
3,103 |
|
|
135,594 |
+549 |
2,085 |
|
|
133,728 |
+154 |
1,527 |
|
|
130,917 |
+754 |
2,681 |
|
|
127,024 |
+864 |
1,547 |
|
|
125,364 |
+406 |
1,171 |
|
|
116,779 |
+715 |
1,832 |
|
|
106,610 |
+251 |
2,881 |
|
|
101,503 |
+387 |
372 |
|
|
100,422 |
+99 |
1,753 |
|
|
91,891 |
+336 |
2,831 |
|
|
89,326 |
+54 |
4,636 |
|
|
84,303 |
+128 |
1,408 |
|
|
78,556 |
+46 |
621 |
|
|
76,926 |
+497 |
1,386 |
|
|
75,454 |
+887 |
1,350 |
|
|
63,992 |
+965 |
1,148 |
|
|
63,883 |
+625 |
390 |
|
|
62,276 |
+315 |
557 |
|
|
60,288 |
+463 |
790 |
|
|
59,425 |
+34 |
29 |
|
|
8,293 |
+50 |
154 |
|
|
6,858 |
+49 |
59 |
|
|
1,642 |
+91 |
35 |
Retrieved from: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
From CNN's Maggie Fox
Dr. Rochelle Walensky speaks during a news conference at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware, on December 8, 2020. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
A variant suspected of helping fuel a surge of coronavirus in Brazil's Amazon region shows up in Minnesota. Another that's been worrying officials in South Africa pops up in two places in South Carolina.
Scientists are not surprised to see the coronavirus changing and evolving -- it's what viruses do, after all. And with so much unchecked spread across the United States and other parts of the world, the virus is getting plenty of opportunity to do just that.
Four of the new variants are especially worrisome.
"The variants that have been identified recently seem to spread more easily. They're more transmissible, which can lead to increased number of cases, and increased stress on our already overtaxed system," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a briefing Wednesday.
What scientists most fear is that one will mutate to the point that it causes more severe disease, bypasses the ability of tests to detect it or evades the protection provided by vaccination. While some of the new variants appear to have changes that look like they could affect immune response, it's only by a matter of degree.
Governments are already reacting. Colombia banned flights from Brazil, and Brazil banned flights from South Africa. It's almost certainly too late to stop the spread, and there's some indication the mutations in these variants are arising independently and in multiple places.
From CNN's Matt Rivers
The tense quiet outside the small hospital in Iranduba, Brazil, shattered when the ambulance rolled up.
Inside, medics give a woman CPR in an ultimately futile attempt to save her life. A hospital source told CNN she died soon after being brought inside.
In the four hours that CNN spent outside Hospital Hilda Freire on Tuesday morning, three Covid-19 patients died.
The chaos has become the norm here this month. What's happening in this underequipped hospital, surrounded by the Amazon rainforest, is a small example of a new, massive Covid-19 outbreak engulfing northwest Brazil.
How is this happening again? Not far from Iranduba is the epicenter of this new outbreak, Manaus. The capital city of Amazonas state often referred to as the gateway to the Amazon, its main connections to the rest of the world by plane or boat.
If the city's name sounds familiar, it could be because it was the scene of one of the world's worst Covid-19 outbreaks in April and May. The healthcare system collapsed and images of thousands of newly dug graves became emblematic of Brazil's coronavirus crisis, its death toll now second only to that of the United States.
The current situation is worse than ever. January has proven to be the deadliest month of the pandemic in Manaus by far.
In May, 348 people were buried here, the worst month until now. Through just the first three weeks of January, that number stood at 1,333.
While genomic testing is not widespread in Manaus, scientists tell CNN that evidence suggests a new virus variant mixed with government inaction to create a tragic perfect storm.
Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-01-29-21/index.html
By Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Monika Pronczuk
Nurses preparing vaccines at a nursing home in Spain last week.Credit...Manu Brabo/Getty Images
The European Union has been besieged by problems since it approved its first coronavirus vaccine in December and rushed to begin a vast immunization campaign, but now its woes have snowballed into a full-blown crisis.
With the pain of supply shortages being felt across Europe, Spain on Wednesday became the first E.U. country to partly suspend immunizations for lack of doses. It announced that it would suspend the vaccination program in Madrid for two weeks, and warned that Catalonia may follow suit.
“Tomorrow our fridges will be empty,” said Josep Maria Argimon, a regional health official in Catalonia, referring to the dwindling supplies of vaccine.
Tensions were also raised by an escalating dispute with AstraZeneca over the drugmaker’s announcement that it would slash deliveries of its vaccine by 60 percent because of production shortfalls.
When the European Union approved its first vaccine, made by Pfizer and BioNTech, in December, it was already weeks behind rich nations like the United States and Britain.
While it is flush with cash, influence and negotiating heft, the bloc of 27 nations has found itself behind not just the U.S. and Britain, but also other countries like Israel, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.
Across the world, many countries, particularly poorer ones, are struggling to secure any vaccine at all.
Last week, the E.U.’s executive branch, the European Commission, set a goal of having 70 percent of its population inoculated by this summer. Four days later the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, pronounced that “difficult.”
By this week, a mere 2 percent of E.U. citizens had received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to numbers collected by Our World in Data. That figure was around 40 percent for Israel, 11 percent for Britain and just over 6 percent for the United States.
The vaccine shortages in the European Union come against a backdrop of crisis.
The second wave of the virus is still raging second wave of the coronavirus amid prolonged lockdowns in most member countries and anxiety over the spread of at least two highly infectious variants of the virus that are bringing national health systems to their knees yet again.
In a rare bit of good news, the French drugmaker Sanofi said Wednesday that it would help produce more than 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, starting this summer, but those doses will most likely come too late to salvage vaccination plans for the first half of 2021.
Some critics have blamed the European Commission for the mess. The commission struck deals on behalf of the member states to secure a total of 2.3 billion vaccine doses from several companies. But some of its agreements lagged behind those struck by the United States and Britain by weeks.
AstraZeneca and some European opposition politicians say the delay put the bloc at the back of the line for deliveries. The commission disagrees.
“We reject the logic of first-come first-served,” the bloc’s heath commissioner, Stella Kyriakides, said at a news conference Wednesday. “That may work at the neighborhood butcher, but not in contracts and not in our advanced purchase agreements.”
Vials of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ antibody treatmentCredit...Regeneron, via Associated Press
The monoclonal antibody treatment made by Eli Lilly is powerless against a variant of the coronavirus discovered in South Africa, according to a new study posted online on Tuesday.
In addition, one of two monoclonal antibodies in a cocktail treatment made by Regeneron also is significantly less effective against that variant, although the combination still works, researchers at Columbia University reported.
The findings underscore growing concerns that because of new mutations in its genetic material, this variant, called B.1.351, may be able to resist antibodies contained in these treatments and perhaps those created by the body following vaccination.
Dr. David Ho, an infectious disease expert at Columbia University, and his colleagues also tested the monoclonal antibody therapies against the coronavirus variant discovered in Britain. The therapies were reported to be just as effective as they had been against earlier versions of the virus.
But the variant in South Africa was a different story. Activity of the monoclonal antibody made by Eli Lilly, and one of the two made by Regeneron, was “completely or markedly abolished” when tested against the variant, Dr. Ho and his colleagues found.
A third variant identified in Brazil shares many mutations with B.1.351 and is expected to behave similarly, Dr. Ho said.
Over the past week, several teams of scientists have sounded the alarm that the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines seem to be slightly less potent against the variant in South Africa, although they still successfully neutralized the virus. The vaccines were just as effective against the variant identified in Britain as against previous forms of the virus.
Dr. Ho’s study confirmed those findings. It has not yet been peer-reviewed for publication, and was posted to the online server BioRxiv.
The new research does not have an immediate effect in the United States, because neither of those variants is known to be widespread in the country, Dr. Ho said. Just one infection with the variant from Brazil has been found, in Minnesota, and no cases of the variant from South Africa have been identified.
But the United States analyzes too few viral samples to be absolutely certain the variants are not already circulating here, Dr. Ho said.
In the future, new versions of the virus, including some that evade vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, will undoubtedly emerge, he added.
“We’ve got to expect more of this, because so many people are infected with this virus,” he said. “The virus has so many chances to mutate.”
Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/27/world/covid-19-coronavirus/Covid-antibodies-South-African-variant
It usually takes several weeks for a coronavirus infection to develop into severe illness. Credit...John Moore/Getty Images
How is it that Covid-19 cases and deaths in the U.S. aren’t moving in the same direction?
As President Biden’s new coronavirus team held its first public briefing on Wednesday, trends in the two closely watched metrics were painting a confusing picture. Average daily reports of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. have decreased 33 percent over the last two weeks, but reported deaths in the same period have remained near record highs.
One key common-sense factor goes a long way to clear the confusion. The people whose deaths are being reported now were probably infected — and then reported as new cases — weeks or even months ago. So their number mainly reflects the spread of the virus in November and December, when it was surging in most of the country.
“Deaths are lagged by at least three weeks” after case reports, Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said Wednesday.
There are other factors that could contribute to a disconnect between the case and death trends, like a shift in how many especially vulnerable people were becoming infected. But Dr. Nuzzo said she did not think that was the case now.
So if the overall case counts continue to decline, she said, “I think it’s more likely that we will see the deaths start to come down.”
Even with the recent new-case declines, the daily pandemic statistics in the U.S. remain troubling. On Tuesday, the country logged 151,616 new cases, and 4,205 deaths — close to the peak of 4,406 on Jan. 12. As of Tuesday, the seven-day average for new reported deaths stood at 3,341.
Overall, more than 25 million people have tested positive in the country, and more than 425,000 people have died, since the pandemic began.
The U.S. saw significant spikes in new reported cases after Thanksgiving and during the December holidays, most likely the result of increased travel and social gatherings. Now, experts like Dr. Nuzzo are concerned that cases will be driven up again by the new and more infectious variants of the virus that are circulating.
President Biden said this week that his administration would soon reach deals to purchase 200 million additional vaccine doses, which he said could allow 300 million Americans to be fully vaccinated by the end of the summer. But experts worry that the new variants could cause significant damage in the meantime.
Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/27/world/covid-19-coronavirus/here-is-why-us-deaths-remain-near-record-highs-while-new-cases-are-declining
By Jedidajah Otte
Vaccinations in Israel will be available for all citizens aged 35 and up beginning on Thursday after the director general of the health ministry, Hezy Levy, approved lowering the minimum age for eligibility, the ministry said Wednesday, according to the Haaretz newspaper.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would bring the health ministry’s proposal to extend the lockdown for a government vote, and that a decision will be taken according to current infection rates.
Netanyahu also said that Israel will close its overland borders. “We were the first ones in the world to close our skies and not allow any commercial flights inti the country. We’ll add to that the closure of overland borders, including the border with Jordan.”
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
· Covid cases in England ‘must fall faster to ease NHS pressure’. Cases of coronavirus have started to decline in England but must fall faster to relieve pressure on the NHS, scientists behind a Covid infection survey have warned.
· Pfizer vaccine only slightly less effective against key South African mutations. Pfizer Inc and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine appeared to lose only a small bit of effectiveness against an engineered virus with three key mutations from the new coronavirus variant found in South Africa, according to a laboratory study conducted by the US drugmaker, Reuters reports.
· White House: ‘great concern’ over Covid origin ‘misinformation’ from China. The US wants a “robust and clear” international probe into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic in China, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, has said.Speaking to reporters, she said it was “imperative we get to the bottom” of how the virus appeared and spread. She highlighted “great concern” over “misinformation” from “some sources in China”.
· Tokyo Olympic qualification event postponed until May. The artistic swimming Olympics qualification event, due to be held in Tokyo in March, has been postponed until May because of novel coronavirus restrictions in Japan, Reuters reports. Tokyo 2020 organisers and Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA) announced on Thursday that the tournament, which also doubles as a test event for this summer’s Tokyo Olympics, will now take place 1-4 May.
· Mexico posted its highest one-day total of newly confirmed coronavirus cases Wednesday, with 27,944 infections, and a near-record 1,623 confirmed deaths. That brings the country’s total so far to just over 1.8 million cases and 153,639 deaths. However, Mexico has an extremely low rate of testing, and estimates of excess deaths suggest the real toll is over 195,000.
· Vietnam has reported its first cases of community transmission in months, after two infections were detected in the northern provinces of Hai Duong and Quang Ninh, just weeks before the Lunar New Year holiday. While the new case numbers are very small, they have caused concern in Vietnam, which had gone 55 days without any local infections.
· Hospital incursions by Covid deniers putting lives at risk, say health leaders. Lives are being put at risk and the care of patients disrupted by a spate of hospital incursions from Covid-19 deniers whose online activity is channelling hatred against NHS staff, say healthcare and police chiefs.In the latest example of a growing trend, a group of people were ejected by security from a Covid-19 ward last week as one of them filmed staff, claimed that the virus was a hoax and demanded that a seriously ill patient be sent home
· WHO says Covid ‘war’ can be won. The Biden administration launched its new level-with-America health briefings Wednesday with a projection that as many as 90,000 more in the US will die from the coronavirus in the next four weeks — a sobering warning as the government strains to improve delivery and injection of vaccines.
· WHO says Covid ‘war’ can be won. Humanity is not losing the war against the Covid-19 pandemic and will eventually conquer the virus, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
· Madrid health authorities pause vaccinations amid supply issues. Authorities in the Madrid region of Spain said Wednesday they have suspended new vaccinations against the coronavirus for at least two weeks because of a shortage of jabs, while another region, Catalonia, warned its supply was running out.
· New Zealand sets up extra Covid test centres as quarantine hotel at heart of outbreak closes. Extra Covid testing centres have been set up overnight in Auckland as health officials raced to trace contacts of two fresh cases in New Zealandand closed down the quarantine hotel believed to be at the centre of this week’s outbreak.
· Former tennis world No 1 Serena Williams has praised Australia’s “insane” quarantine procedures ahead of the Australia Open. In an interview with late night US TV host Stephen Colbert the 23-time grand slam champion said Australia was “doing it right” when it came to border controls.“Yeah, it’s super, super strict but it’s really good. So Australia right now has, the last I heard, they had zero cases of Covid,” she said, eliciting a “wow” from Colbert.“Unbelievable, right? The whole country. So that is really amazing.
Medicine
