Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	160,320,028	+710,164	3,330,905
USA	33,550,115	+34,904	596,946
India	23,340,426	+348,499	254,225
Brazil	15,285,048	+71,018	425,711
France	5,800,170	+19,791	106,935
Turkey	5,059,433	+14,497	43,589
Russia	4,896,842	+8,115	113,976
UK	4,439,691	+2,474	127,629
Italy	4,123,230	+6,946	123,282
Spain	3,586,333	+4,941	79,100
Germany	3,544,315	+8,961	85,757
Argentina	3,191,097	+25,976	68,311
Colombia	3,031,726	+16,425	78,771
Poland	2,838,180	+3,098	70,336
Iran	2,691,352	+18,133	75,568
Mexico	2,366,496	+704	219,089
Ukraine	2,124,535	+2,208	46,631
Peru	1,858,239	+4,869	64,691
Indonesia	1,723,596	+5,021	47,465
Czechia	1,646,994	+1,542	29,772
South Africa	1,599,272	+1,548	54,896
Netherlands	1,571,398	+5,518	17,383
Canada	1,299,572	+5,386	24,714
Chile	1,256,546	+3,738	27,356
Iraq	1,122,914	+5,287	15,834
Philippines	1,113,547	+4,734	18,620
Romania	1,067,887	+1,156	29,135
Belgium	1,017,876	+1,267	24,583
Pakistan	864,557	+3,084	19,106
Portugal	840,008	+268	16,994
Israel	839,000	+43	6,378
Hungary	792,879	+493	28,792
Bangladesh	776,257	+1,230	12,005
Jordan	721,853	+855	9,151
Serbia	702,451	+1,125	6,594
Japan	645,817	+4,938	10,941
Austria	632,766	+870	10,413
UAE	539,138	+1,614	1,617
Lebanon	533,685	+544	7,527
Morocco	514,164	+242	9,083
Malaysia	448,457	+3,973	1,722
Saudi Arabia	428,369	+999	7,098
Nepal	413,111	+9,317	4,084
Bulgaria	412,157	+877	17,104
Ecuador	402,595	+535	19,286
Slovakia	386,136	+350	12,077
Belarus	370,509	+742	2,652
Panama	368,368	+460	6,282
Greece	367,076	+3,172	11,141
Kazakhstan	346,497	+1,766	3,948
Croatia	345,623	+876	7,549
Azerbaijan	327,601	+514	4,713
Georgia	324,256	+1,788	4,336
Tunisia	322,998	+1,161	11,556
Bolivia	320,209	+1,599	13,258
Palestine	302,777	+528	3,393
Paraguay	302,061	+2,377	7,284
Kuwait	287,199	+1,153	1,660
Costa Rica	273,714	+2,236	3,456
Ethiopia	263,672	+552	3,911
Denmark	260,913	+925	2,499
Lithuania	259,898	+1,262	4,056
Ireland	253,567	+378	4,929
Moldova	252,949	+151	5,970
Slovenia	246,725	+491	4,302
Egypt	239,740	+1,180	14,033
Guatemala	236,266	+962	7,776
Uruguay	225,847	+2,977	3,208
Honduras	220,988	+803	5,701
Armenia	219,596	+243	4,256
Qatar	211,732	+343	516
Venezuela	210,116	+954	2,320
Oman	202,713	+576	2,148
Bahrain	192,750	+1,732	697
Libya	180,692	+466	3,077
Nigeria	165,515	+47	2,065
Kenya	163,976	+356	2,928
Myanmar	142,974	+11	3,210
Albania	131,803	+50	2,420
Sri Lanka	131,098	+2,568	850
S. Korea	128,283	+511	1,879
Estonia	125,693	+356	1,206
Latvia	124,960	+659	2,217
Algeria	124,483	+195	3,343
Cuba	118,168	+1,071	755
Norway	117,495	+473	767
Kyrgyzstan	99,033	+379	1,667
Montenegro	98,449	+84	1,545
Uzbekistan	95,072	+313	664
Zambia	92,152	+40	1,258
China	90,783	+14	4,636
Thailand	86,924	+1,919	452
Afghanistan	62,718	+315	2,713
Suriname	11,306	+93	220
Aruba	10,795	+14	104
Vietnam	3,537	+76	35

 

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

 

 

 

About 263 million Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the US

From CNN's Naomi Thomas

 

Lorena Castilla gets a Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccination from a healthcare worker at Miami International Airport on May 10 in Miami. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

About 263 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the United States, according to data published Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC reported that 263,132,561 total doses have been administered, about 79% of the 334,081,065 doses delivered.

That’s about 1.5 million more administered doses reported since yesterday, for a seven-day average of about 2.2 million doses per day.

Just over 46% of the population – 153 million people – have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 35% of the population – 117 million people — have been fully vaccinated.

Note: Data published by the CDC may be delayed, and doses may not have been given on the day reported.

 

 

 

AstraZeneca pledges $1 million in aid to India and other hard-hit communities  

From CNN’s Sarah Dean

 

A health worker wearing personal protective equipment walks inside a banquet hall temporarily converted into a Covid-19 ward in New Delhi, India, on April 27. Money Sharma/AFP via Getty Images

British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca has pledged $1 million in humanitarian aid to India and other communities around the world hardest hit by the pandemic, a statement from the company said Tuesday.

“This includes directing $250,000 USD to Direct Relief to support their efforts in India, which includes the distribution of oxygen concentrators, medicines, other supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) to provide treatment and care for those with COVID-19,” the statement said. It did not specify where the rest of the pledged money would be directed. 

“We remain steadfast in our continued commitment to changing the course of the pandemic for the people of India,” AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said. “We hope that through increasing vaccinations, humanitarian relief efforts, and critical donations of medicines and needed equipment, India will steadily recover from this crisis. We stand united with the people of India, as we work tirelessly to bring this pandemic to an end as quickly as possible.”

CEO of the Serum Institute of India – the world's largest vaccine maker – Adar Poonawalla said in the statement: “We thank AstraZeneca for their unwavering support. We are working together to scale up and committed to provide more vaccines to India by July. This will help us to protect countless lives against this devastating virus.”

The SII is producing the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, also known as Covishield, and has pledged to manufacture and deliver 200 million doses for COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing initiative that supplies discounted or free doses to lower-income countries. However, the SII has had to pause exports as India battles a deadly second wave of the coronavirus infections.

The SII responded to AstraZeneca's statement on Tuesday, tweeting: "Much appreciated help from AstraZeneca, will help save countless lives in India."

 

 

 

South African President: Unequal access to Covid-19 immunization amounts to "vaccine apartheid" 

From CNN's David McKenzie in Johannesburg

 

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa speaks in Cape Town, South Africa, on May 6. Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty images

Allowing millions of people to die in poorer countries while wealthy countries immunize their populations could amount to “vaccine apartheid,” according to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who also expressed his support for the proposal to waive patent rights for coronavirus shots.

“A situation in which the populations of advanced, rich countries are safely inoculated while millions in poorer countries die in the queue would be tantamount to vaccine apartheid,” Ramaphosa said in statement Monday.

If the international community is "truly committed to human rights and the values of equality and non-discrimination, vaccines should be viewed as a global public good,” he said.

"They should be made available to all, not just to the highest bidders,” Ramaphosa added. 

Signs of change: Last week, the Biden administration announced that it is supporting the temporary waiver on intellectual property rights of Covid-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization.

The waiver on patents that belong to pharmaceutical companies would allow other nations to develop generic versions of the drugs.

Some experts say that even with patents waivers, much of the developing world doesn't necessarily have the means to produce vaccines at the scale needed. They say there is an urgent need to simply share more of the rich world's vaccines and to transfer technology to help poorer countries manufacture shots further down the line.

 

Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-05-12-21/index.html

 

 

 

The W.H.O. warned India’s homegrown virus variant could be highly contagious

By Carl Zimmer and Emily Schmall

 

Medical workers tending to a coronavirus patient in an emergency room in New Delhi last week.Credit...Adnan Abidi/Reuters

A virus variant that has been spreading rapidly in India and designated a variant of concern by the World Health Organization might be more contagious than most versions of the coronavirus, the U.N. agency said in a report it published on Tuesday evening.

The W.H.O. emphasized in its report that it wasn’t yet clear how much the variant, known as B.1.617, has contributed to the devastating surge that has crushed India in recent weeks. It cautioned that India, like many countries, is only sequencing a tiny fraction of positive samples, and that with so little surveillance, it’s difficult to make firm conclusions about B.1.617.

The W.H.O. study comes amid growing condemnation of the Indian government’s response to its ferocious virus wave and calls for nationwide restrictions to try to limit the death toll, as hospitals are overrun and crematories burn nonstop.

India recorded more than 360,000 new cases on Wednesday and more than 4,200 deaths, the country’s highest daily death toll since the pandemic began. India has now reported more than 250,000 deaths from the virus, although experts believe that the true toll is far higher.

Experts also caution that it is not yet clear just how much of a factor B.1.617 has played in the explosion of cases in India. They point to a perfect storm of public health blunders, such as permitting enormous political rallies and religious festivals in recent months. It’s possible that the variant is being lifted up by the surge, rather than the other way around.

The W.H.O. speculated that another variant known as B.1.1.7, first identified in Britain and now dominant in the United States, might also be driving the spike in cases.

It’s not yet clear whether B.1.617 causes more severe Covid-19. Anecdotally, doctors in India are reporting higher numbers of young people and children testing positive for the virus and more patients with severe disease requiring oxygen support. But until more genetic sequencing is done, it’s impossible to know if the variant is to blame.

Stacia Wyman, a genomics scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, said that the W.H.O. made the right decision. She pointed to the fact that the variant has already spread to at least 49 countries. “This appears to be posing the biggest threat right now in terms of transmissibility, with many countries reporting increasing trajectories of the B.1.617 variant,” she said.

B.1.617 is the fourth variant of concern recognized by the W.H.O. The others include B.1.1.7; B.1.351, which swept through South Africa; and P.1, which has devastated Brazil.

B.1.617 first came to light in October 2020. It had a number of mutations, some of which have been proven worrisome in other variants. Preliminary studies on these mutations suggest that some of them might give the coronavirus a tighter grip on cells, increasing their chances of a successful infection.

Other mutations could make it more difficult for antibodies produced by infections with other variants to stick to them. Studies on antibodies produced by vaccinated people also suggest that they work less successfully against B.1.617. Experts expect that most vaccines will remain effective against the variant.

W.H.O. researchers determined that B.1.617 is spreading fast in India, making up over 28 percent of samples from positive tests. The shift suggests that B.1.617 has a higher growth rate than other variants circulating in India, with the possible exception of B.1.1.7. And B.1.617 has been growing rapidly in Britain.

Gagandeep Kang, a pre-eminent Indian virologist, said there was not enough data to conclude whether either variant was contributing to India’s deadlier second wave.

“There is some conflicting data regarding the B.1.1.7 variant, which seems to indicate in some studies that it does cause more severe disease, in other studies not,” said Dr. Kang, the executive director of India’s Translational Health Science and Technology Institute.

Based on reports from hospitals, Dr. Kang said, it appeared that B.1.617 was causing more severe disease but that, again, there was insufficient data to draw conclusions. She said that real-time genetic information would be needed to determine that B.1.617-infected people needed more oxygen.

Officials in India are trying to track how many fully vaccinated people have fallen ill. If an unusual number of these so-called breakthroughs are caused by a variant such as B.1.617, that could point to the variant’s ability to evade a vaccine.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/05/11/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-cases/the-who-warned-indias-homegrown-virus-variant-could-be-highly-contagious

 

 

 

India variant found in 44 countries – WHO

 

 

The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that a variant of Covid-19 behind the explosion of cases in India has been found in dozens of countries all over the world.

The UN health agency said the B.1.617 variant of Covid-19, first found in India in October, had been detected in more than 4,500 samples uploaded to an open-access database “from 44 countries in all six WHO regions”. Its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic said it had received reports of detections from five additional countries.

Outside of India, it said that Britain had reported the largest number of Covid cases caused by the variant.

 

 

 

Summary

 

Here are the other key developments from the last few hours:

· The Netherlands expects to further relax coronavirus restrictions next week, giving the green light to sex workers and zoos so long as cases keep falling, prime minister Mark Rutte said Tuesday.

· Major US airlines have weighed in alongside UK carriers to urge the reopening of transatlantic travel, calling on governments in Washington and London to arrange a summit as soon as possible.

· Burger chain McDonald’s has announced it is partnering with the White House to promote vaccination information on its coffee cups. Separately, Joe Biden announced on Tuesday a new program with Lyft and Uber which will offer free rides to anyone going to a vaccination site to get vaccinated.

· Pfizer has asked the UK medical regulator for permission to use its Covid-19 vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds in Britain, the Telegraph has reported.

· Teachers in Buenos Aires are demanding a return to virtual learning due to the increase in cases of coronavirus since the return of students.

· Brazil recorded 72,715 additional confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, along with 2,311 deaths from Covid-19, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

· The Canadian provinces of Alberta and Ontario said on Tuesday they would stop offering first doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, with Ontario citing evidence that the risk of rare blood clots is somewhat higher than previously estimated.

· Brazil’s federal government on Tuesday nationally suspended the vaccination of pregnant women with the AstraZeneca shot, after an expectant mother in Rio de Janeiro died from a stroke possibly related to the inoculation.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/may/11/coronavirus-live-news-india-variant-of-concern-globally-says-who-pfizer-vaccine-approved-for-us-12-15-year-olds