Country,	Total	New	Total
Other	Cases	Cases	Deaths
World	167,516,375	478,004	3,478,219
USA	33,896,660	13,541	604,087
India	26,751,681	222,835	303,751
Brazil	16,083,573	36,134	449,185
France	5,603,666	9,704	108,596
Turkey	5,186,487	7,839	46,268
Russia	5,001,505	8,951	118,482
UK	4,462,538	2,235	127,721
Italy	4,192,183	3,995	125,225
Spain	3,654,201	1,182	87,973
Germany	3,636,453		79,620
Argentina	3,539,484	24,801	74,063
Colombia	3,232,456	21,669	84,724
Poland	2,865,622	1,075	72,928
Iran	2,832,518	8,631	78,597
Mexico	2,395,330	2,586	221,597
Ukraine	2,182,521	2,533	49,368
Peru	1,925,289	4,438	68,053
Indonesia	1,775,220	5,280	49,328
Czechia	1,657,893	334	30,020
South Africa	1,635,465	2,894	55,802
Netherlands	1,626,232	3,422	17,544
Canada	1,359,180	3,415	25,231
Chile	1,329,918	6,505	28,518
Iraq	1,179,812	3,083	19,951
Philippines	1,167,940	3,791	16,190
Romania	1,075,543	307	29,941
Sweden	1,058,341		14,366
Belgium	1,047,128	2516	24,823
Pakistan	900,552	3,084	20,251
Portugal	845,224	413	17,017
Israel	839,319	11	6,404
Hungary	802,088	416	29,519
Bangladesh	789,080	1,354	12,376
Jordan	730,546	840	9,368
Serbia	714,274	5,041	12,236
Switzerland	709,939	266	6,777
Japan	687,353		10,776
Austria	641,380	504	10,546
UAE	556,107	1,591	1,651
Lebanon	538,518	300	7,677
Morocco	517,023	211	9,122
Malaysia	513,241	7598	6,346
Nepal	512,091	6,976	2,248
Saudi Arabia	440,914	1,067	7,249
Bulgaria	418,851	1,011	20,193
Ecuador	416,646	81	17,496
Slovakia	389,804	875	11,772
Belarus	388,835	116	12,292
Greece	386,025	1,252	2,771
Panama	374,121	347	6,331
Kazakhstan	373,182	2,167	4,124
Croatia	353,986	251	7,903
Azerbaijan	348,187	2,117	13,910
Georgia	337,573	733	4,622
Bolivia	335,345	1,246	12,236
Tunisia	332,971	2,514	8,360
Paraguay	332,454	219	4,860
Palestine	305,201		3,459
Kuwait	299,219		3,765
Costa Rica	299,215	992	1,734
Dominican Republic	283,729	1,044	3,606
Ethiopia	273,494	835	2,508
Denmark	270,849	459	4,185
Lithuania	269,194	293	4,076
Ireland	265,098	3,089	3,871
Moldova	258,705	438	4,941
Slovenia	254,676	75	6,075
Egypt	253,835	1145	14,721
Guatemala	251,690	159	4,353
Uruguay	247,454	348	8,000
Honduras	232,141	581	6,143
Armenia	223,345	1293	2513
Qatar	221,948	68	4,392
Venezuela	218,047	3,177	820
Oman	215,443	283	544
Bosnia and Herzegovina	210,364		2,265
Bahrain	203,150		9,108
Libya	183,311	412	3111
Nigeria	168,432	324	3,059
Kenya	166,019	40	2,067
North Macedonia	164,201	2,959	1,210
Myanmar	155,063	35	5,311
Sri Lanka	143,234	6	3,216
Albania	135,929	585	1,931
S. Korea	133,053	1221	877
Latvia	132,209	33	2,444
Estonia	130,945	233	2,326
Algeria	129,500	3,382	776
Cuba	128,592	103	1240
Norway	126,860	209	3,418
Kyrgyzstan	122,414	451	781
Montenegro	102,511	325	1,751
Uzbekistan	99,248	45	1,574
Thailand	98,451	287	680
Ghana	93,620	37	783
Zambia	93,201	95	1268
China	91,526	121	932
Finland	90,973	19	4636
Cameroon	77,733		1,239
El Salvador	72,220		2,216
Suriname	13,111	183	249
Vietnam	5,217	131	42

 

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

 

 

 

No one's safe anymore: Japan's Osaka city crumples under COVID-19 onslaught

Kiyoshi Takenaka Retuers

 

Hospitals in Japan's second largest city of Osaka are buckling under a huge wave of new coronavirus infections, running out of beds and ventilators as exhausted doctors warn of a "system collapse", and advise against holding the Olympics this summer.

Japan's western region home to 9 million people is suffering the brunt of the fourth wave of the pandemic, accounting for a third of the nation's death toll in May, although it constitutes just 7% of its population.

The speed at which Osaka's healthcare system was overwhelmed underscores the challenges of hosting a major global sports event in two months' time, particularly as only about half of Japan's medical staff have completed inoculations.

"Simply put, this is a collapse of the medical system," said Yuji Tohda, the director of Kindai University Hospital in Osaka.

"The highly infectious British variant and slipping alertness have led to this explosive growth in the number of patients."

Japan has avoided the large infections suffered by other nations, but the fourth pandemic wave took Osaka prefecture by storm, with 3,849 new positive tests in the week to Thursday.

That represents a more than fivefold jump over the corresponding period three months ago.

Just 14% of the prefecture's 13,770 COVID-19 patients have been hospitalised, leaving the majority to fend for themselves. Tokyo's latest hospitalisation rate, in comparison, is 37%.

A government advisory panel sees rates of less than 25% as a trigger to consider imposition of a state of emergency.

By Thursday, 96% of the 348 hospital beds Osaka reserves for serious virus cases were in use. Since March, 17 people have died from the disease outside the prefecture's hospitals, officials said this month.

The variant can make even young people very sick quickly, and once seriously ill, patients find it tough to make a recovery, said Toshiaki Minami, director of the Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University Hospital (OMPUH).

Medical workers at Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University Hospital work in the operation wing of the hospital, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Takatsuki, Osaka prefecture, Japan May 17, 2021. REUTERS/Akira Tomoshige

• "I believe that until now many young people thought they were invincible. But that can't be the case this time around. Everyone is equally bearing the risk."

  BREAKING POINT

  Minami said a supplier recently told him that stocks of propofol, a key drug used to sedate intubated patients, are running very low, while Tohda's hospital is running short of the ventilators vital for severely ill COVID-19 patients.

  Caring for critically ill patients in the face of infection risk has taken a serious toll on staff, said Satsuki Nakayama, the head of the nursing department at OMPUH.

  "I've got some intensive care unit (ICU) staff saying they have reached a breaking point," she added. "I need to think of personnel change to bring in people from other hospital wings."

  About 500 doctors and 950 nurses work at OMPUH, which manages 832 beds. Ten of its 16 ICU beds have been dedicated to virus patients. Twenty of the roughly 140 serious patients taken in by the hospital died in the ICU.

  Yasunori Komatsu, who heads a union of regional government employees, said conditions were dire as well for public health nurses at local health centres, who liaison between patients and medical institutions.

  "Some of them are racking up 100, 150, 200 hours of overtime, and that has been going on for a year now...when on duty, they sometimes go home at one or two in the morning, and go to bed only to be awakened by a phone call at three or four."

  Medical professionals with firsthand experience of Osaka's struggle with the pandemic take a negative view on holding the Tokyo Games, set to run from July 23 to August 8.

  "The Olympics should be stopped, because we already have failed to stop the flow of new variants from England, and next might be an inflow of Indian variants," said Akira Takasu, the head of emergency medicine at OMPUH.

  He was referring to a variant first found in India that the World Health Organisation (WHO) designated as being of concern after initial studies showed it spread more easily.

  "In the Olympics, 70,000 or 80,000 athletes and the people will come to this country from around the world. This may be a trigger for another disaster in the summer."

•  

Retrieved from: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/no-ones-safe-anymore-japans-osaka-city-crumples-under-covid-19-onslaught-2021-05-24/

 

 

 

Singapore provisionally approves 60-second COVID-19 breathalyser test

Reuters

 

A staff member demonstrates the usage of Breathonix breathalyzer test kit developed by Breathonix, a start-up by the National University of Singapore, able to detect the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) within a minute according to the company, at their laboratory in Singapore October 29, 2020. REUTERS/Chen Lin/File Photo

 

Singapore authorities have provisionally approved a COVID-19 breathalyser test that aims to show whether someone is infected with the coronavirus in under a minute, according to the local startup that developed the product.

Breathonix, a spin-off company from the National University of Singapore (NUS), said it is now working with the health ministry to run a deployment trial of the technology at one of the city-state's border points with Malaysia.

The breath analysis will be carried out alongside the current compulsory COVID-19 antigen rapid test.

The breath test achieved more than 90% accuracy in a Singapore-based pilot clinical trial, the company said last year.

The Health Sciences Authority's website confirmed the approval, which the company said was the first such system to secure provisional authorisation in Singapore.

The system uses disposable mouthpieces and is designed to ensure there is no cross-contamination. After blowing into the device, the technology assesses the chemical compounds of the breath to determine whether or not a person is infected.

Any individual screened as positive will need to undergo a confirmatory polymerase chain reaction (PCR) COVID-19 swab test, the company said.

Breathonix said it is in discussion with several local and overseas organisations to use the system, citing strong commercial interest. Other countries, including Indonesia and the Netherlands, have rolled out similar breath tests. 

 

Retrieved from: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/singapore-provisionally-approves-60-second-covid-19-breathalyser-test-2021-05-24/

 

 

 

Coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States drop to lowest levels in nearly a year.

 

Valencia Street in San Francisco in March. San Francisco General Hospital announced this past week that it had no Covid-19 patients for the first time since March 5 of last year.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The United States is adding fewer than 30,000 cases a day for the first time since June of last year, and deaths are as low as they’ve been since last summer. In much of the country, the virus outlook is improving.

Nearly 50 percent of Americans have received at least one vaccine shot, and though the pace has slowed, the share is still growing by about two percentage points per week.

“I think by June, we’re probably going to be at one infection per a hundred thousand people per day, which is a very low level,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” The U.S. rate is now 8 cases per 100,000, down from 22 during the most recent peak, when new cases averaged about 71,000 on April 14.

The share of coronavirus tests coming back positive has fallen to below 3 percent for the first time since widespread testing began, and the number of hospitalized patients has fallen to the lowest point in 11 months, Dr. Eric Topol of the Scripps Research Translational Institute noted this week. For the first time since March 5 of last year, San Francisco General Hospital had no Covid-19 patients — “a truly momentous day,” Dr. Vivek Jain, an infectious disease physician at the hospital, said on Thursday.

Michigan, the state that reported one of the largest surges in the spring, has rapidly improved. About 1,400 cases were identified on Sunday, compared with about 7,800 cases a day in mid-April.

The virus remains dangerous in communities with low vaccination rates, and getting vaccines into these communities is crucial in continuing to curb the virus. As the virus continues to mutate, vaccines may need to be updated or boosters may need to be added.

The United States is reporting about 25,700 coronavirus cases daily, a 39 percent decrease from two weeks ago. Deaths are down 14 percent over the same period, to an average of 578 per day.

Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance that said vaccinated people could forgo masks in most situations indoors and outside, states have followed suit.

Because of changing mask rules and guidance, people will need to rely on their own judgment in some circumstances, Dr. Gottlieb said Sunday. “We’re going to have to protect ourselves based on our own assessment of our risk and our own comfort,” he said.

For instance, he said, people who are unvaccinated or in an area where infections are still high will be at higher risk than others.

“So I think people may need to make individual assessments,” he said, adding that while unvaccinated children in crowded indoor situations might need to keep masks on, “I don’t think kids need to be wearing masks outside anymore.”

Although experts who spoke with The New York Times said they were optimistic, they cautioned that the virus won’t be eradicated in the United States but would likely instead become a manageable threat we learn to live with, like influenza.

Until then, Stacia Wyman, a senior genomics scientist at the University of California, Berkley, said Americans should remain concerned as long as the virus continues to spread and evolve in parts of the world that lack vaccines.

“I think that the world will be struggling with this,” she said. “As long as that is happening, the U.S. will be struggling with it as well.”

 

 

 

C.D.C. is investigating a heart problem in a few young vaccine recipients.

 

A young woman receiving her Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine in Louisville, Ky., this month.Credit...Jon Cherry for The New York Times

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is looking into reports that a very small number of teenagers and young adults vaccinated against the coronavirus may have experienced heart problems, according to the agency’s vaccine safety group.

The group’s statement was sparse in details, saying only that there were “relatively few” cases and that they may be entirely unrelated to vaccination. The condition, called myocarditis, is an inflammation of the heart muscle, and can occur following certain infections.

The C.D.C.’s review of the reports is in the early stages, and the agency has yet to determine whether there is any evidence that the vaccines caused the heart condition. The agency has posted guidance on its website urging doctors and clinicians to be alert to unusual heart symptoms among young people who had just received their shots.

“It may simply be a coincidence that some people are developing myocarditis after vaccination,” said Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York. “It’s more likely for something like that to happen by chance, because so many people are getting vaccinated right now.”

The cases seem to have occurred predominantly in adolescents and young adults about four days after their second dose of one of the mRNA vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. And the cases were more common in males than in females.

“Most cases appear to be mild, and follow-up of cases is ongoing,” the vaccine safety group said. The C.D.C. strongly recommends Covid vaccines for Americans ages 12 and older.

 

 

 

As India stumbles, one state charts its own Covid course.

 

Police officers checking the credentials of commuters during a lockdown imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus in the Indian state of Kerala this month.Credit...R S Iyer/Associated Press

As a second virus wave has crushed India, officials in the southern state of Kerala have stepped in where the central government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has failed, in many ways, to provide relief for victims of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreak.

An ad hoc system of local officials, online networks, charities and volunteers has emerged in India to fill the gaps left by the stumbling response of the central government and many states. Patients around India have died for lack of oxygen in hospitals where beds filled up quickly.

Kerala has adapted by closely tracking patients and supplies with a network of health care workers and coronavirus “war rooms.” Though supplies have tightened, the state’s hospitals enjoy access to oxygen, with officials having expanded production months ago. Doctors there talk patients through their illness while they’re at home. Kerala’s leaders work closely with on-the-ground health care workers to watch local cases and deliver medicine.

Kerala is by no means out of trouble. Deaths are rising. Workers face long hours and tough conditions. The situation could still worsen as the outbreak spreads from cities into rural areas.

In addition to its coordination centers, Kerala has won praise for how it has tracked virus variants. Scientists are studying whether a variant first found in India has worsened the country’s outbreak, though they have been hindered by a lack of data. Kerala has used gene sequencing since November to track variants, helping to drive policy decisions, said Dr. Vinod Scaria, a scientist at the CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi.

“It’s the only state that has not given up at any point in time,” Dr. Scaria said.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/05/23/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-mask

 

 

 

The women possibly at higher risk for Covid-19 that no one is talking about

From CNN's Alessandria Masi

 

Last July, when her immediate family tested positive for Covid-19, Breanna Aguilar did not fit into any groups considered at higher risk for severe disease.

She is 31 years old, a pet sitter and former fitness teacher who once ran a half marathon. She was, by most measures, healthy.

When Aguilar got Covid-19 she lost her sense of taste, had mild fevers and muscle weakness. She could barely keep anything down yet gained about 30 pounds. Later, she developed pelvic pain, cystic acne, breast tenderness, headaches, brain fog and extreme fatigue.

It has been months since then, but she says the low energy, chronic pain and brain fog -- long-haul Covid-19 symptoms -- remain and she can't even go for a 15-minute walk without needing a break. She's also now dealing with insulin resistance and taking several medications to keep that and her hormone levels under some control. Her doctor told her she'll likely be dealing with this fallout of Covid-19 for the rest of her life.

More than a year into the pandemic, one study has found that some women are at higher risk for Covid-19 compared to others in their age and sex groups. These women, often young and otherwise healthy like Aguilar, have an underlying condition that isn't mentioned on any Covid-19 comorbidity list: polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS.

PCOS, which affect about 1 in 10 women of "childbearing age," is an imbalance of reproductive hormones that can lead to irregular menstrual cycles, high androgen levels and ovarian cysts. But it can also come with a host of other health problems, nearly all of which overlap Covid-19 comorbidities.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-05-24-21/index.html?tab=all