Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	114,989,641	+290,483	2,549,894
USA	29,314,254	+53,147	527,226
India	11,123,619	+11,563	157,275
Brazil	10,589,608	+38,349	255,836
Russia	4,257,650	+11,571	86,455
UK	4,182,009	+5,455	122,953
France	3,760,671	+4,703	86,803
Spain	3,204,531	+6,308	69,609
Italy	2,938,371	+13,114	97,945
Turkey	2,711,479	+9,891	28,638
Germany	2,455,569	+5,207	70,924
Colombia	2,255,260	+3,570	59,866
Argentina	2,112,023	+4,658	52,077
Mexico	2,086,938	+2,810	185,715
Poland	1,711,772	+4,786	43,793
Iran	1,639,679	+8,510	60,181
South Africa	1,513,959	+566	50,077
Ukraine	1,352,134	+4,285	26,050
Indonesia	1,341,314	+6,680	36,325
Peru	1,332,939	+3,134	46,685
Czechia	1,240,092	+4,575	20,605
Netherlands	1,092,452	+3,762	15,584
Canada	870,033	+3,530	22,017
Chile	829,770	+4,145	20,660
Portugal	804,956	+394	16,351
Romania	804,090	+2,096	20,403
Israel	779,958	+4,151	5,760
Belgium	771,511	+2,097	22,077
Iraq	699,088	+3,599	13,428
Pakistan	581,365	+1,392	12,896
Philippines	578,375	+2,031	12,322
Bangladesh	546,801	+585	8,416
Morocco	483,766	+112	8,637
Serbia	462,728	+3,469	4,459
Austria	460,849	+1,353	8,574
Hungary	432,925	+4,326	15,058
Japan	432,773	+1,033	7,887
Jordan	397,158	+6,068	4,727
UAE	394,050	+2,526	1,238
Saudi Arabia	377,700	+317	6,500
Lebanon	376,938	+1,888	4,743
Panama	341,420	+505	5,858
Slovakia	308,925	+842	7,270
Malaysia	302,580	+1,828	1,135
Belarus	288,267	+961	1,985
Ecuador	286,367	+212	15,832
Nepal	274,216	+73	2,777
Georgia	270,918	+160	3,520
Bulgaria	249,626	+2,588	10,308
Bolivia	249,010	+463	11,649
Croatia	243,064	+91	5,537
Dominican Republic	239,998	+381	3,106
Azerbaijan	234,662	+125	3,223
Tunisia	233,669	+392	8,022
Ireland	220,273	+681	4,319
Kazakhstan	213,431	+622	2,540
Denmark	211,692	+497	2,365
Costa Rica	205,086	+180	2,812
Lithuania	199,399	+244	3,256
Greece	192,270	+1,170	6,534
Kuwait	192,031	+1,179	1,085
Slovenia	190,324	+243	3,854
Moldova	186,447	+994	3,975
Palestine	185,336	+1,724	2,058
Egypt	183,010	+586	10,736
Guatemala	174,653	+111	6,402
Armenia	172,216	+158	3,195
Honduras	170,304	+550	4,151
Qatar	164,137	+473	259
Paraguay	160,448	+974	3,198
Ethiopia	159,972	+900	2,373
Nigeria	156,017	+360	1,915
Myanmar	141,916	+20	3,199
Oman	141,808	+312	1,577
Venezuela	139,545	+429	1,348
Libya	134,127	+789	2,210
Bahrain	123,039	+645	452
Algeria	113,255	+163	2,987
Albania	107,931	+764	1,816
Kenya	106,125	+152	1,859
North Macedonia	103,020	+233	3,144
S. Korea	90,028	+352	1,605
China	89,912	+19	4,636
Latvia	86,458	+272	1,621
Kyrgyzstan	86,251	+22	1,466
Cyprus	35,009	+302	231
Thailand	26,031	+80	83
Suriname	8,933	+4	173
Aruba	7,908	+17	74

 

 

Retrieved from:  https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

 

 

Hydroxychloroquine should not be used to prevent Covid-19, WHO says 

From CNN’s Christopher Rios

 

 

A bottle of hydroxychloroquine at Rock Canyon Pharmacy in Provo, Utah, on May 20, 2020. George Frey/AFP/Getty Images

 

A panel of World Health Organization experts has strongly advised against using hydroxychloroquine to prevent Covid-19 after reviewing all existing studies on the subject. 

The panel announced the recommendation in the BMJ medical journal on Monday, as part of the first version of WHO’s living guideline for drugs to prevent Covid-19. 

The panel concluded with high certainty that taking hydroxychloroquine does not prevent hospitalization or death from Covid-19. The panel also recommended that researchers studying hydroxychloroquine as means of Covid-19 prevention — also known as prophylaxis — consider ending their trials. 

Trump's claims: Hydroxychloroquine is typically used to treat autoimmune diseases and to prevent malaria, but early in the pandemic it was touted by former US President Donald Trump as a “game-changer,” prompting a flurry of clinical trials and a bump in sales of the pills. But many studies later showed the drug was not helpful in treating coronavirus patients and also did nothing to prevent infection.

The panel’s recommendation is based on six studies that included more than 6,000 participants. Three of the trials included volunteers who had a known exposure to Covid-19. 

“The panel felt that further research was unlikely to uncover a subgroup of patients who benefited from hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis on the most important outcomes (mortality, admissions to hospital) given the consistent results of the trials completed to date,” the researchers wrote.  

Emergency use: The US Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency use authorization for use of the drug against coronavirus last year, and the National Institutes of Health stopped its research.

 

 

 

NIH director fears lingering symptoms of Covid-19 infection could become a chronic illness for some

From CNN's Lauren Mascarenhas

 

 

For some people, symptoms that persist months after getting sick with Covid-19 could become a chronic illness, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said Monday.

“I fear that some people who have had these effects who are already three or four months out may not be on a path to get better in a few more months, and this could be something that becomes a chronic illness,” Collins said during an NBC Nightly News interview.

“That is cruel. That is just one more heartbreak that we didn't see coming,” he said. “I promise you we are all in on this. There will be no stones left unturned. We're going to figure it out.”

NIH recently launched an initiative aimed at better understanding the long-term consequences of Covid-19 and how to help the people who experience them.

“When you consider we know 28 million people in the United States have had Covid, if even 1% of them have chronic long-term consequences, that's a whole lot of people, and we need to find out everything we can about how to help them,” Collins said.

“If any organization on the planet can figure this out, it's NIH,” he added.

 

 

 

France approves use of AstraZeneca vaccine in 65 to 75 year olds with certain health conditions

From CNN’s Pierre Bairin in Paris

 

 

Syringes used to administer the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, at the office of a general practitioner in Gragnague, France, on February 26. Fred Scheiber/AFP/Getty Images/FILE

France has extended the upper age limit for use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, now approving use of the vaccine in 65 to 75 year olds with serious health conditions, the country’s health minister announced Monday. 

The decision comes after a previous warning from the government that AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine should only be administered in people under the age of 65, citing a lack of clinical data on its efficacy for older people.

“I can confirm that, from now on, anyone who is 50 years of age and over and who has medical conditions like diabetes, hypertension or a history of cancer can be vaccinated with AstraZeneca,” French Health Minister Olivier Veran said during a televised interview, adding that “for people who are 75 years old and over, it is always the Pfizer or Moderna” vaccine that is administered. 

Speaking to France 2 TV, the health minister said the French National health authority now considers all vaccines available in France, including the AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, to “have an effectiveness qualified as ‘remarkable’ in protecting people from the risks of serious forms of coronavirus.” 

While coronavirus restrictions are still in place across the country, Veran also suggested that the government would consider easing measures over the coming weeks. 

"We obviously hope that in four to six weeks, we can have more freedom,” Veran said. 

“We did this last year. Spring is less conducive to the circulation of the virus. We vaccinate, we protect the most vulnerable, we keep our fingers crossed,” he added. 

 

 

 

China aims to have more than half a billion of its citizens vaccinated by the end of June

From CNN’s Beijing bureau

 

 

A nurse administers a Covid-19 vaccine at a community vaccination center in Hong Kong, on February 26. Paul Yeung/Bloomberg/Getty Images

China plans to inoculate 40% of its population with Covid-19 vaccines by the end of June, respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan has revealed.   

“Today I asked my CDC friends about China’s (vaccination) plan and they replied that (China is) planning to reach 40% by the end of June," said Zhong on Monday at a panel hosted by Tsinghua University and the Brookings Institution.

With a population of 1.4 billion, 40% represents about 548 million people. China has only vaccinated 3.56% of its population — roughly 51 million people — so far, Zhong said.

He added that it could take at least three years to reach any kind of herd immunity.

However, Wu Zunyou of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention said if existing vaccination rates continue, China and the US could be the first countries to open up travel.

“In the United States, [let’s] look at the vaccination rate," Wu said, speaking at the same event. "Now it's already reached over 20%. Hopefully it can reach over 80% by June. So by August could reach 90 % to reach the herd immunity.
"So if that’s the case, if we could remove all the political barrier [and] just based on the science, the two countries could possibly be the first two countries to remove all the barrier for free travel. We can try our best. No matter what’s the result, we could do our best.”

 

https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-03-02-21/index.html

 

 

 

The E.U. will propose a vaccine passport system for Europe

By Monika Pronczuk

 

 

The European Union will propose issuing a certificate called a Digital Green Pass, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said.Credit...Pool photo by Johanna Geron

The European Union will propose issuing a certificate called a Digital Green Pass that would let people who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus travel more freely, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said on Monday.

“The Digital Green Pass should facilitate Europeans’ lives,” Ms. von der Leyen wrote on Twitter. “The aim is to gradually enable them to move safely in the European Union or abroad — for work or tourism.”

The announcement followed an intense debate at a virtual meeting last week that laid bare deep divisions among leaders of the bloc’s 27 member nations.

Tourism-dependent nations like Greece have been pushing for such a plan to help salvage the summer travel season, while others, led by France, have been wary of the potential for discrimination between vaccinated and non-vaccinated Europeans, as well as possible infringement on personal data protection.

“In the future, it will certainly be good to have such a certificate, but that will not mean that only those who have such a passport will be able to travel,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said after the meeting last week.

Vaccination efforts in the European Union have generally gotten off to a sluggish start. Just 5 percent of the bloc’s population has received at least one shot of vaccine so far. But the certificates will go beyond vaccination status to include the holder’s wider medical history concerning the virus, according to Christian Wigand, the commission’s spokesman.

“We will also be looking at other categories of information to avoid discrimination of citizens, such as test results and statements of recovery,” Mr. Wigand said on Monday.

Getting the system set up and issuing certificates would take at least three months, the commission said. It was not immediately clear what legislative and technical steps would be required, nor whether the system would extend beyond European Union citizens.

The commission said there should be a way to scale it up globally, in cooperation with the World Health Organization. But when pressed for further details, Mr. Wigand asked for “a little bit of patience,” explaining that “this is all very fresh.”

After the meeting with the 27 national leaders last week, Ms. von der Leyen said: “It is important to have a European solution, because otherwise others will go into this vacuum. Google and Apple are already offering solutions to the W.H.O., and this is sensitive information.”

Apple said afterward that Ms. von der Leyen might have misunderstood and that the company was not currently offering such a solution.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/world/eu-vaccine-passport.html

 

 

 

Trump and his wife received coronavirus vaccine before leaving the White House

By Maggie Haberman

 

Former President Donald Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump before boarding Air Force One for his last time as president on Jan. 20.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Former President Donald J. Trump and his wife, Melania, quietly received coronavirus vaccinations in January before leaving the White House, an adviser said on Monday.

The news came a day after Mr. Trump appeared at the CPAC political conference in Orlando, Fla., where for the first time he encouraged people to go get vaccinated.

“Everyone should go get your shot,” Mr. Trump said during the speech. When The Times asked an adviser to the former president whether he had received his, the answer was that he had, in private, a month earlier.

The secret approach by Mr. Trump came as a number of his supporters have expressed resistance to the vaccine, and as other officials have tried setting an example by getting the shot in public.

President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and former Vice President Mike Pence received vaccine shots in front of television cameras.

Mr. Trump’s concern about the vaccine has generally been about whether he is getting credit for its development while he was president. He never publicly encouraged people to take it while he was in office; the first vaccines were approved shortly after Election Day.

The adviser did not say whether Mr. Trump received both his first and second shots of the vaccine in January, or if the second one was at another time.

Mr. and Mrs. Trump were both infected with the coronavirus in the fall, and the former president was hospitalized with a severe case.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/us/politics/donald-trump-melania-coronavirus-vaccine.html

 

 

 

Brazil Covid variant in at least 15 countries not on UK's travel red list

By Aubrey Allegretti and Sarah Boseley

 

The P1 coronavirus variant that originated in Brazil has been found in at least 15 countries that are not on the government’s red list – those from which travel is banned for all but UK residents, who must quarantine in a hotel on arrival for 10 days – it has emerged.

Six cases of P1, which originated in Manaus on the Amazon river in Brazil, have been identified in the UK – three in England and three in Scotland. The variant is worrying scientists and public health experts because it has mutations that could allow it to escape the vaccines currently available.

Five people with the variant are isolating, but the identity of the sixth is unknown. The health secretary, Matt Hancock, told Monday’s Downing Street briefing it was possible that person took a test during a local authority surge – house-to-house testing aimed probably at detecting the variant that originated in South Africa and is similar to P1.

Advertisement

Residents arriving from red-listed Brazil or South Africa would face quarantine in a hotel, while non-residents cannot travel to England at all. In Scotland, all international arrivals are quarantined. The three Scottish cases are residents who flew to Aberdeen from Brazil via Paris and London, according to the Scottish government.

But according to a list compiled by the World Health Organization, P1 has been found in 15 countries that are not on the UK red list. These include Canada and the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, Mexico, India, Italy and the Republic of Korea.

The WHO report said there were further reports of the variant being found in other countries it was still working on verifying, including China, Croatia, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.

Hancock said at the briefing that the proportion of cases that were identified as caused by the P1 variant in those countries was “exceptionally low”. The red-listed countries were those where variants were dominant or found in substantial numbers, he said.

But some experts are concerned that the red list may not be adequate to check the flow of variants into the UK. Dr Julian Tang, a virologist and University of Leicester honorary associate professor, said the government’s red list “could go out of date at any time” because of the time it takes to sequence coronavirus cases.

“We saw that Ireland reported three cases of the P1 Brazilian variant about 10 days ago,” he told the Guardian. “It was not surprising to see other imported cases in the UK mainland soon afterwards – and these cases may have already created others here.”

Tang added: “Restricting international travel from red-listed countries may slow down the introduction of new variants from elsewhere, but eventually, such variants will likely spread to non-red-listed countries from red-listed countries – then to the UK from there – if different countries have different red lists.”

Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour’s shadow home secretary, said the number of countries where variants including the Brazil and South African ones have been discovered that still do not feature on the red list was “significant”.

“UK government action is consistently too little, too late,” he said. “What is needed is a comprehensive hotel quarantine system without delay.”

Prof Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick Medical School, said he feared “we might be adding insult to injury by bringing in variants from overseas” that would compound the difficulty of suppressing domestic variants which spring up in the UK.

He warned that while “stringent controls” are in place with the 33 red list countries, that is unlikely to be enough.

“Either you do it all or not it at all,” he said. “Many of us have been concerned all the way through about border control, because we knew during the first and second wave from sequencing the genome that most of the introductions into the UK were from people travelling back from mainland Europe.”

The government’s deputy chief medical officer, Dr Jonathan Van-Tam, made it clear that travel this summer was still in doubt. “We are still in a zone of great uncertainty about what the virus will do next,” he told the briefing.

“On top of that, many of the vaccination programmes in Europe – which is a place where we frequently go on holiday abroad – are running behind ours.

“Clearly, whether we can go on holiday abroad to places such as Europe depends on what other countries will say and do in terms of foreign tourism. There has to be great uncertainty at the moment.”

 

 

 

Summary

 

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

· China said it aims to vaccinate 40% of population by June. Health experts in China say their country is lagging in its coronavirus vaccination rollout because it has the disease largely under control, but plans to inoculate 40% of its population by June.

· France, Germany are struggling to sell AstraZeneca vaccine safety. Already facing a daunting Covid vaccination challenge, French and German authorities are fighting to convince more people that a jab from the pharma giant AstraZeneca is just as effective as others.

· World won’t be done with Covid-19 this year, the WHO warned. It is unrealistic to think the world will be done with the Covid-19 pandemic by the end of the year, the World Health Organization warned on Monday.

· Donald and Melania Trump received the coronavirus vaccine before leaving the White House, according to multiple news reports on Monday. Citing unnamed advisers, the New York Times, CNN and other outlets reported that while other officials, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the former vice-president Mike Pence, chose to get their shots publicly to encourage confidence in the vaccines, the Trumps opted to quietly get vaccinated in January. There was no detail on which shot they received or how many doses they had been given.

· Fauci said the US must stick with two-dose strategy for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. The United States must stick to a two-dose strategy for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid vaccines, top US infectious disease official Anthony Fauci told the Washington Post newspaper. Fauci said that delaying a second dose to inoculate more Americans creates risks.

· Mexico’s coronavirus chief came home from hospital. Mexico’s coronavirus czar is back home after being hospitalized for Covid last Wednesday, but will still be monitored and receive treatment, a health official said on Monday, as the country’s coronavirus death toll passed 186,000.

· New infections rose last week for first time in seven weeks. More from the World Health Organization: The WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said new case numbers rose last week in Europe, the Americas, southeast Asia and the eastern Mediterranean. The number of new coronavirus infections globally rose last week for the first time in seven weeks.

· Philippines confirmed its first cases of South African variant. The Philippines has documented six cases of the South African coronavirus variant, its health ministry said on Tuesday, raising concern among its experts that the current vaccines might be less effective.

· The US downplayed the possibility of sharing Covid vaccines with Mexico. The Biden administration on Monday downplayed the prospect of sharing coronavirus vaccines with Mexico, saying it is focused first on getting its own population protected against a pandemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans.

· Stop doing anal Covid tests on our citizens, Japan told China. Tokyo has requested Beijing to stop taking anal swab tests for Covid-19 on Japanese citizens because the procedure causes psychological pain, a government spokesperson has said.

· Data on long Covid in UK children is cause for concern. Scientists have warned that emerging data on long Covid in children should not be ignored given the lack of a vaccine for this age group, but cautioned that the evidence describing these enduring symptoms in the young is so far uncertain.

· Fossil fuel emissions in danger of surpassing pre-Covid levels. The world has only a few months to prevent the energy industry’s carbon emissions from surpassing pre-pandemic levels this year as economies begin to rebound from Covid-19 restrictions, according to the International Energy Agency.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/mar/02/coronavirus-live-news-who-says-covid-wont-be-over-this-year-france-and-germany-fight-astrazeneca-concerns?page=with:block-603dd9888f0875da1a29d9af#block-603dd9888f0875da1a29d9af