Country,	Total	New	Total
Other	Cases	Cases	Deaths
World	164,265,717	535,405	3,404,144
USA	33,747,439	25,030	600,533
India	25,227,970	263,045	278,751
Brazil	15,661,106	33,631	436,862
France	5,881,137	3,350	107,812
Turkey	5,127,548	10,174	44,983
Russia	4,949,573	9,328	116,211
UK	4,452,756	1,979	127,684
Italy	4,162,576	3,455	124,296
Spain	3,615,860	3,621	79,432
Germany	3,608,292	5,353	86,870
Argentina	3,335,965	28,680	71,027
Colombia	3,131,410	12,984	81,809
Poland	2,855,190	1,109	71,675
Iran	2,765,485	14,319	77,222
Mexico	2,381,923	1,233	220,433
Ukraine	2,156,000	2,136	48,184
Peru	1,893,334	4,282	66,471
Indonesia	1,744,045	4,295	48,305
Czechia	1,653,093	257	29,925
South Africa	1,615,485	1,757	55,260
Netherlands	1,600,993	2,829	17,456
Canada	1,334,108	5,526	24,983
Chile	1,292,096	5,548	27,934
Philippines	1,149,901	5,955	19,262
Iraq	1,142,925	3,552	15,995
Romania	1,072,291	392	29,571
Sweden	1,037,126		14,275
Belgium	1,031,923	1,852	24,709
Pakistan	880,362	3,232	19,617
Portugal	842,381	199	17,009
Israel	839,159	40	6,389
Hungary	798,573	426	29,213
Bangladesh	780,857	698	12,181
Jordan	725,258	1,104	9,276
Serbia	707,033	575	6,696
Japan	683,175	5,263	11,508
Switzerland	682,160	2,650	10,744
Austria	637,573	476	10,480
UAE	547,411	1,229	1,633
Lebanon	535,954	201	7,631
Morocco	515,023	79	9,104
Malaysia	474,556	4,446	1,947
Nepal	464,218	9,198	5,215
Saudi Arabia	433,980	886	7,174
Bulgaria	414,869	677	17,343
Ecuador	410,870	741	19,786
Slovakia	387,659	136	12,238
Greece	378,485	1,395	11,471
Belarus	377,532	1,191	2,711
Panama	371,145	268	6,297
Kazakhstan	360,193	2,089	4,073
Croatia	350,506	116	7,738
Bolivia	332,567	1,051	13,517
Georgia	330,879	504	4,469
Azerbaijan	330,269	426	4,792
Tunisia	327,473	901	11,899
Paraguay	315,547	2,020	7,692
Palestine	304,074	247	3,437
Kuwait	292,490	861	1,696
Costa Rica	288,626	1,322	3,625
Dominican Republic	277,919	731	3,589
Denmark	267,339	836	2,503
Ethiopia	266,646	382	4,008
Lithuania	266,110	551	4,116
Ireland	256,032	360	4,941
Moldova	253,954	109	6,034
Slovenia	249,424	113	4,327
Egypt	246,909	1,188	14,388
Uruguay	242,906	2,394	3,521
Guatemala	241,528	159	7,893
Honduras	226,719	755	5,960
Armenia	220,927	67	4,333
Venezuela	216,415	1,114	2,411
Qatar	213,485	302	532
Oman	206,297	786	2,206
Bahrain	202,556	1,579	752
Bosnia and Herzegovina	202,490	71	9,051
Libya	181,714	304	3,092
Nigeria	165,778	69	2,067
Kenya	165,537	72	3,013
North Macedonia	154,725	27	5,230
Sri Lanka	145,202	2,456	981
Myanmar	143,097	32	3,213
S. Korea	132,290	619	1,903
Albania	132,032	17	2,435
Latvia	128,125	147	2,269
Estonia	127,205	152	1,223
Cuba	125,511	1,057	814
Algeria	125,485	174	3,381
Norway	119,500	201	774
Thailand	111,082	9,635	614
Kyrgyzstan	100,732	259	1,711
Montenegro	98,898	46	1,562
Uzbekistan	96,893	223	670
Ghana	93,333	90	783
Zambia	92,460	24	1,261
China	90,872	25	4,636
Finland	90,249	144	933
Cameroon	74,946		1,152
El Salvador	71,479		2,191
Aruba	10,857	3	105
Suriname	12,107	157	230
Vietnam	4,359	184	37

 

 

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

 

 

 

The U.S. plans to send 20 million vaccination doses to help world battle the virus.

 

President Biden, heeding widespread calls to step up his response to the pandemic’s surge abroad, said on Monday that his administration would send 20 million doses of federally authorized coronavirus vaccine overseas in June — the first time he has pledged to give away doses that could be used in the United States.

The donation is another step toward what Mr. Biden promised would be an “entirely new effort” to increase vaccine supplies and vastly expand manufacturing capacity, most of it in the United States. He also put Jeffrey Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, in charge of developing a global strategy.

“We know America will never be fully safe until the pandemic that’s raging globally is under control,” Mr. Biden said in a brief appearance at the White House. “No ocean’s wide enough, no wall’s high enough, to keep us safe.”

With new cases and deaths plummeting as vaccination rates rise in the United States, the epicenter of the crisis has moved to India and other nations. A growing and bipartisan chorus of diplomats, health experts and business leaders has been pushing the president to do more to end what the AIDS activist Asia Russell calls “vaccine apartheid.”

Mr. Biden said on Monday that 20 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines — all approved for domestic use — would be sent abroad. That is in addition to the 60 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine he pledged last month, though those doses are not approved for domestic use and cannot be released until regulators deem them safe.

“He’s crossed the threshold into direct donations,” said J. Stephen Morrison, a global health expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which teamed up with three other health institutes on Monday to release a plan to ramp up vaccine supply. “That’s an important shift.”

International health activists want far more.

“Donating 80 million doses of vaccines without a plan to scale up production worldwide is like putting a Band-Aid on a machete wound,” said Gregg Gonsalves, a longtime AIDS activist.

Those 80 million doses amounted to five times the number that any other country had donated, Mr. Biden said, noting that taking the lead in helping the world beat back the coronavirus was a chance to reassert American authority. And unlike Russia and China, which have sought to use their vaccines as an instrument of diplomacy, the United States will not expect any favors in return, the president said.

“We want to lead the world with our values, with this demonstration of our innovation and ingenuity, and the fundamental decency of the American people,” Mr. Biden said. “Just as in World War II America was the arsenal of democracy, in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic our nation’s going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world.”

Mr. Biden’s announcement came not long after a World Health Organization news conference at which the director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that countries with high vaccination rates had to do more to help countries that were being hit hard by the coronavirus, or the entire world would be imperiled.

 

 

 

South Africa opens vaccines to people 60 and older.

 

South Africa opened vaccinations to everyone 60 and older on Monday.  Credit...Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

CAPE TOWN — Facing a resurgent coronavirus and plagued by delays with vaccine supply, South Africa began the second phase of its public vaccination campaign on Monday, opening appointments for people aged 60 or older.

Only about 500,000 people in the country have been vaccinated to date, and most doses have gone to health care workers in a trial involving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. South Africa is aiming to open vaccinations for people aged 40 or older in July, followed by the rest of the adult population in November.

South Africa has obtained nearly a million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and anticipates receiving around 4.5 million doses by the end of June.

The country has also ordered 3 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but only plans to begin using these in the public rollout following a verification process by international regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“It’s going to change my life,” said Zola Bisholo, who was hospitalized with Covid-19 in January, after receiving her first shot of the Pfizer vaccine at a government hospital in the Cape Town suburb of Brooklyn.

With more than 55,000 deaths and some 1.6 million confirmed cases, South Africa has been hit harder by the pandemic than any other nation in Africa. Its most recent wave of infections, in December and January, was driven by a more contagious virus variant, known as B.1.351.

The government has set a goal to vaccinate 5 million people by the end of June, South Africa’s health minister, Zweli Mkhize, said Sunday. Just over 4,000 people were scheduled to receive vaccines on Monday.

The expanded eligibility comes at a critical phase: South Africa is experiencing a sustained rise in cases, and officials have warned of a third wave in the coming weeks, as the southern hemisphere heads into winter.

The slow rollout has underscored global problems of vaccine inequality, especially in Africa, where fewer than 23 million vaccines have been administered, according to the Africa C.D.C. Even vaccines manufactured in South Africa have been disproportionately exported to wealthier nations.

But South Africa has also fallen behind many poorer African countries, including Zimbabwe, Angola and Ethiopia. The country’s vaccination efforts were dealt a severe blow in February, when officials suspended use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine after ordering more than one million doses, and again in April, following safety concerns surrounding the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

“For now, we can go on and protect the most vulnerable,” said Dr. Keith Cloete, the head of the health department in the Western Cape province.

 

 

 

England is lifting many of its Covid rules, but a spike in cases of a variant is also taking place.

 

Filmgoers at a matinee in the BFI Southbank cinema on Monday in London.Credit...Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

LONDON — Pubs opened for drinks indoors, lights went on in theaters and airports buzzed with a steady stream of travelers on Monday, but the latest easing of Covid-19 restrictions in England was accompanied by growing fears that a variant of the virus could delay a full return to normality.

The lifting of a wide range of coronavirus rules Monday coincided with a small but worrying spike in cases of a variant, first identified in India, that threatens a lockdown-lifting road map frequently described by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as “cautious but irreversible.”

Already, the second part of that pledge is sounding less secure than it once seemed. In recent days, the authorities have scrambled to ramp up testing and inoculation in parts of the country seeing a sharp rise in cases of the more transmissible variant. More than 6,200 people were vaccinated over the weekend in Bolton, a badly hit town near Manchester in the northwest of England.

The opposition Labour Party has accused Mr. Johnson of bringing on the trouble by delaying a decision to close borders to flights from India last month, while government scientific advisers have expressed their concerns about moving too fast to remove curbs.

Even Mr. Johnson, who is normally only too keen to ridicule pessimists as “doomsters and gloomsters,” urged Britons to be cautious in the face of the threat from the new variant, saying that there was a risk of “significant disruption” to plans for easing rules.

 

Retrieved from:  https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/05/17/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-cases#covid-vaccine-global-doses

 

 

 

Taiwan to close all schools amid rising Covid-19 cases

From CNN's Sophie Jeong and Beijing bureau

 

Students wearing face masks walk past a closed primary school in Taipei, Taiwan on May 18. Chiang Ying-ying/AP

 

Taiwan will close all schools and education centers for 10 days amid a rapid rise in Covid-19 cases, the Ministry of Health announced Tuesday.

"Because of the raising of coronavirus alert levels in Taiwan, and in order to reduce the infection risks for gatherings, all the schools and kindergartens will stop in-person learning from May 19 (Wednesday) to May 28 (Friday) and education facilities like daycare centers and cram schools will need to stop in-person classes too," the ministry said on Twitter.
"All the students please study at home,” it said.

In Taipei and New Taipei, all schools and kindergartens were already closed for two weeks starting Tuesday, while several local councils have also been suspended.

 

 

 

Nepal doesn't have enough Covid-19 test kits for Nepalis returning from India

From journalist Kosh Raj Koirala in Kathmandu, Nepal

 

At least two districts in Nepal do not have enough Covid-19 test kits to test all Nepali nationals entering the country from India, district officials told CNN.

Nepal’s Kailali district in Sudurpashchim province, which borders India, has not been able to test all Nepali nationals entering from India for coronavirus due to a lack of test kits, according to Assistant Chief District Officer Hira Lal Chaudhary.

Since India's second coronavirus wave, around 23,000 Nepalis have returned from India through Kailali. Among them, about 20,000 have been tested, said Shiva Raj Joshi, an official at the Kailali District Administration Office.

Up to to 800 Nepali migrant workers enter Nepal from India each day through the Gauriphanta entry point, which lies in between the districts of Kailali and Kanchanpur.

Nepal’s Kanchanpur district is also facing an acute shortage of Covid-19 test kits. The Gaddachauki entry point, which is one of 13 border points currently opened for Nepali nationals to cross from India, is located in Kanchanpur.

“Some 700 to 800 Nepalis enter Nepal through this entry point each day. We are able to conduct tests of only about 20% of those entering Nepal from India,” Chief District Officer of Kanchanpur Ram Kumar Mahato told CNN.

Nepali nationals started returning home from India after they lost their jobs as a result of the second wave and regional lockdown measures, Mahato said.

 

 

 

Thailand reports highest surge in daily Covid-19 deaths

From CNN’s Kocha Olarn in Bangkok

 

A rescue worker wearing personal protective equipment sprays disinfectant at Klong Toey Nok temple in Bangkok, Thailand on May 16. Amphol Thongmueangluang/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

 

Thailand reported 35 fatalities from Covid-19 Tuesday, its highest daily death toll since the pandemic began, according to the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA).

The country's total Covid-19 death toll now stands at 649. 

Thailand also reported 2,473 new Covid-19 infections Tuesday, including 680 cases from prisons and detention facilities.

Growing clusters in the country's overcrowded jails have been driving a surge in infections. On Monday, prisoners accounted for more than 70% of the 9,635 new cases reported, a record daily increase in infections.

Despite being the first country to report a Covid-19 case outside of China in January last year, Thailand kept its infection numbers low in 2020 thanks to successful containment measures.

Now, it is struggling to curb a third wave of infections, which started from a nightlife cluster in the capital, Bangkok. Before the ongoing outbreak, Thailand had reported 28,863 cases by March 31. By Tuesday, that number has shot up more than four times to 127,184.

 

Retrieved from:  https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-05-18-21/index.html

 

 

 

Germany to offer free COVID-19 shots for all adults from June 7

 

A person receives a vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a sports hall in Berlin, Germany, May 14, 2021. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo

 

Germany will stop restricting coronavirus vaccines to more vulnerable groups from June 7, paving the way for the entire adult population to get free immunizations from that date onwards, Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Monday.

The decision to end the prioritization in Germany's vaccination campaign does not mean everybody will get vaccinated immediately in June, Spahn said, pointing to ongoing logistical and supply bottlenecks.

But Spahn repeated the government's pledge that every citizen who wants to get vaccinated should get a COVID-19 shot in the course of the summer.

The minister added that authorities were already discussing when and how to allow COVID-19 vaccinations for adolescents between the ages of 12 and 16.

 

Retrieved from:  https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/germany-offer-free-covid-19-shots-all-adults-june-7-2021-05-17/