Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	172,893,459	+474,634	3,716,842
USA	34,174,752	+17,821	611,611
India	28,572,359	+131,371	340,719
Brazil	16,803,472	+83,391	469,784
France	5,694,076	+8,161	109,857
Turkey	5,270,299	+6,602	47,882
Russia	5,099,182	+8,933	122,660
UK	4,499,878	+5,274	127,812
Italy	4,225,163	+1,968	126,342
Argentina	3,884,447	+32,291	79,873
Germany	3,701,690	+3,686	89,605
Spain	3,693,012	+5,250	80,099
Colombia	3,488,046	+28,624	90,353
Iran	2,945,100	+9,657	80,658
Poland	2,874,092	+572	74,075
Mexico	2,423,928	+3,269	228,146
Ukraine	2,209,417	+2,581	50,959
Peru	1,968,693	+3,261	185,380
Indonesia	1,837,126	+5,353	51,095
South Africa	1,680,373	+5,360	56,765
Czechia	1,662,610	+350	30,142
Netherlands	1,657,017	+2,735	17,658
Chile	1,403,101	+8,128	29,598
Canada	1,387,445	+2,167	25,644
Philippines	1,247,887	+7,205	21,356
Iraq	1,214,367	+4,262	16,462
Romania	1,078,338	+196	30,499
Sweden	1,076,993		14,474
Belgium	1,065,358	+1,859	24,982
Pakistan	926,695	+2,028	21,022
Portugal	851,031	+769	17,029
Israel	839,532	+15	6,416
Bangladesh	805,980	+1,687	12,724
Hungary	805,302	+315	29,792
Japan	752,233	+3,078	13,245
Jordan	738,521	+633	9,500
Serbia	713,207	+218	6,890
Switzerland	696,801	+588	10,828
Austria	645,834	+282	10,627
Malaysia	595,374	+8,209	3,096
UAE	576,947	+1,989	1,689
Nepal	576,936	+5,825	7,630
Lebanon	541,009	+165	7,747
Morocco	520,423	+395	9,165
Saudi Arabia	454,217	+1,261	7,408
Ecuador	429,817	+952	20,706
Bulgaria	419,180	+170	17,792
Greece	406,751	+1,209	12,184
Belarus	396,869	+879	2,882
Kazakhstan	390,376	+1,385	4,007
Slovakia	390,129	+139	12,375
Panama	380,207	+701	6,388
Bolivia	378,028	+3,310	14,732
Paraguay	364,702	+3,262	9,498
Croatia	357,109	+280	8,056
Tunisia	350,487	+1,576	12,839
Georgia	346,983	+833	4,853
Azerbaijan	334,416	+128	4,929
Costa Rica	325,779	+2,181	4,124
Kuwait	313,289	+1,443	1,783
Palestine	309,333	+297	3,509
Uruguay	304,411	+2,887	4,460
Denmark	284,117	+1,028	2,517
Lithuania	275,550	+344	4,290
Ethiopia	272,285	+249	4,185
Egypt	265,489	+932	15,222
Ireland	263,191	+465	4,941
Guatemala	258,633	+1,466	8,238
Moldova	255,354	+69	6,125
Slovenia	254,692	+273	4,383
Bahrain	246,658	+1,932	1,050
Honduras	239,428	+608	6,403
Venezuela	238,013	+1,258	2,689
Armenia	222,978	+108	4,448
Oman	220,702	+1,173	2,385
Qatar	218,080	+198	563
Sri Lanka	195,844	+3,297	1,608
Libya	186,567	+244	3,132
Kenya	171,658	+432	3,223
Thailand	169,348	+3,886	1,146
Nigeria	166,682	+122	2,117
North Macedonia	155,364	+19	5,435
Cuba	145,567	+1,053	985
Myanmar	143,945	+122	3,221
S. Korea	142,157	+681	1,968
Latvia	134,162	+296	2,392
Albania	132,360	+9	2,451
Algeria	129,976	+336	3,497
Estonia	129,909	+105	1,260
Norway	126,218	+289	785
Kyrgyzstan	105,840	+371	1,830
Uzbekistan	100,997	+271	693
Montenegro	99,717	+34	1,587
Zambia	97,388	+825	1,288
Finland	92,913	+143	959
China	91,170	+24	4,636
El Salvador	74,141	+439	2,260
Cyprus	72,626	+53	362
Suriname	15,676	+248	325
Vietnam	8,063	+250	49

 

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

 

 

 

A safe return to U.S. schools seems closer with vaccines and testing improvements

By Noah Weiland, Sharon LaFraniere and Sheryl Gay Stolberg

 

Schoolchildren swabbing and testing themselves for Covid-19 in Boston early this year.Credit...Allison Dinner/Reuters

After a school year rife with debate over the safety of returning to classrooms, experts say that the United States is edging closer to a safe return to in-person learning in the fall.

First, there is continuing good news on the vaccine front. Last month, about 17 million children ages 12 to 15 became eligible to get the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. And Moderna plans this month to ask the Food and Drug Administration to clear its vaccine for use in 12- to 17-year-olds.

For more than a year, parents across the United States have scrambled to adapt to online learning and keep their children focused. (And parents who balanced remote learning with work were the lucky ones. Many others lost their jobs, lacked adequate internet access or stopped work to tend to their families.)

Until vaccines are approved for children of all ages, rapid antigen testing might be the best way to limit rare outbreaks of the virus, detect them early and keep schools open consistently.

There are signs that Abbott’s BinaxNOW, a widely available antigen test, is highly sensitive in young children with symptoms of Covid-19, according to a small new study. Among children younger than 7, the test detected 100 percent of coronavirus cases, researchers write in a forthcoming paper in the journal Pediatrics.

The study, led by researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, enrolled 199 children and young adults, ranging from 2 months to 20 years old. All participants had at least one symptom of Covid-19 and had been symptomatic for less than a week.

The Abbott test was somewhat less sensitive in older children, however, and generated a substantial number of false positives in children of all ages. Among children who did not have the virus, 8 to 10 percent tested positive on the antigen test, the researchers found.

“One hundred percent sensitivity in children less than seven years is excellent — outstanding,” said Dr. Alejandro Hoberman, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and the senior author of the study. “The problem was the false positives.”

The findings suggest that while the test could help schools and day cares operate more safely, it might be more useful for ruling infections out than at definitively detecting them.

Experts say that more research is needed. “It is important data to have, but we need reinforcing studies that replicate what this study has done with larger numbers of children,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician and founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.

Dr. Redlener expects that all children will be eligible to be vaccinated against Covid-19 toward the end of the year or early in 2022.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic, said in an interview with CNN on Thursday that he was “cautiously optimistic” that children younger than 12 would be eligible for vaccinations by Thanksgiving.

Until then, experts are confident that masks, distancing, hand washing, cleaning and ventilation — along with rapid tests — can enable a return to full-time in-person classroom settings.

Mara Aspinall, an expert in biomedical diagnostics at Arizona State University, said that children had become comfortable with tests to the point of administering swabs themselves. “The perception of testing — that it was expensive, it took a long time, it was tickling your brain — none of that is true anymore,” she said. “We’ve made such progress on the technology.”

Having this kind of testing available everywhere, Dr. Redlener said, “should help reassure schools and parents that it’s safe to return to the classroom.”

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/us/covid-schools-in-person-learning.html

 

 

 

Travelers returning to the U.K. from Portugal must quarantine starting Tuesday, officials say

By  Isabella Kwai and Raphael Minder

 

Tourists at the Santa Luzia Viewpoint in Lisbon last week.Credit...Ana Brigida for The New York Times

 

Travelers returning to Britain from Portugal and its island territories of Madeira and the Azores will no longer be able to avoid quarantining as of Tuesday, British officials said on Thursday, complicating the plans of people hoping for easy getaways this summer.

Last month, Britain had put Portugal and 12 other countries and territories with low coronavirus caseloads on a “green list,” allowing visitors coming from Britain to avoid a quarantine period upon returning from those locations.

Britons fatigued by a miserable winter and a four-month national lockdown had begun flocking to Portugal, because most of the other green-listed places were either not accepting tourists or were not already favored destinations. The process still involved several forms and P.C.R. virus tests, whose costs can total hundreds of dollars.

The decision to move the country off the green list was a “safety first approach” Grant Shapps, Britain’s transportation secretary, told the BBC on Thursday.

Portugal had remained on Britain’s green list even as the rate of positive coronavirus cases there rose 37 percent over the past two weeks. British fans poured into the city of Porto to see two of England’s top soccer teams, Chelsea and Manchester United, face off in the Champions League final last Saturday. (Chelsea won.)

Portugal has seen the spread of the virus variant first identified in India, now known as Delta, Mr. Shapps said in a public statement released on Thursday.

Officials did not add any new countries to the green list — a decision that also dealt a blow to Spain, particularly for its two tourism-dependent archipelagos, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, which had seen improvement in their virus numbers. British travelers are the largest international contingent of visitors to Spain, accounting for 18 million of the almost 84 million who came to the country in 2019, before the pandemic.

The announcements caused disappointment for British visitors who had booked trips already or hoped that wider travel in Europe was on the rebound. It also caused dismay for the travel industry, which has been hit hard by the pandemic.

In Portugal, vendors had been excited to welcome back tourists, although some in the country had grumbled about foreign visitors not following local restrictions, which include mask wearing outdoors and a 10:30 p.m. curfew.

The move by British officials comes as cases remain generally low in Britain, though officials have been working to contain surges of the Delta variant.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/world/europe/britain-portugal-travel.html

 

 

 

The coronavirus surges across Africa as vaccine programs flounders

By Abdi Latif Dahir

 

South African retirees waiting to receive doses of Covid vaccine at a clinic near Johannesburg, South Africa, last week.Credit...Themba Hadebe/Associated Press

A sudden, sharp rise in coronavirus cases in many parts of Africa could amount to a continental third wave, the World Health Organization warned on Thursday, a portent of deeper trouble for a continent whose immunization drives have been crippled by shortfalls in funding and vaccine doses.

The W.H.O., an arm of the United Nations, said test positivity had risen in 14 African countries over the last seven days, with eight reporting a surge of over 30 percent in new cases. Infections are steadily climbing in South Africa, where four of nine provinces are battling a third wave. There has also been a sharp increase in cases in Uganda, with hospitals overwhelmed with Covid patients and the authorities mulling a lockdown.

The W.H.O. attributed the rise to loose compliance with social restrictions, and increasing travel along with the arrival of the winter season in southern Africa.

Experts also believe the spread of new coronavirus variants — like those first identified in Britain, India and South Africa — is contributing to the surge and the ensuing rise in deaths. While Africa has reported less than 3 percent of global coronavirus cases, the W.H.O. said the continent accounted for 3.7 percent of total deaths. And that is almost certainly a severe undercount, since in the vast majority of countries on the African continent, most deaths are never formally registered.

“The threat of a third wave in Africa is real and rising,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the W.H.O. regional director for Africa, said in a statement. “It’s crucial that we swiftly get vaccines into the arms of Africans at high risk of falling seriously ill and dying of Covid-19.”

While many wealthier countries have vigorous vaccination campaigns and some are on track to fully reopen, many of Africa’s poorer countries face a huge challenge in accessing vaccines.

Out of a continental population of 1.3 billion people, only 31 million have received at least one dose, Dr. Moeti said. Seven million are fully vaccinated. In Kenya, one of Africa’s biggest economies, with more than 50 million people, only 1,386 have received two doses of a vaccine.

Countries like Ghana and Rwanda have run through their first deliveries of vaccines through Covax, the global facility working to ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines.

Vaccine hesitancy has afflicted the rollout in nations like Malawi, while concerns over rare blood clots and limitations in inoculation capacity pushed the Democratic Republic of Congo to donate millions of doses to other African states before they expired.

The rising cases, the W.H.O. warned, could overwhelm already creaky health care systems that are struggling with limited intensive care beds, oxygen and ventilators. To forestall a full-blown crisis, Dr. Moeti urged “countries that have reached a significant vaccination coverage to release doses and keep the most vulnerable Africans out of critical care.”

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/world/africa/africa-coronavirus-cases.html

 

 

 

Australia announces major revamp of troubled vaccine programme

By Paul Karp

 

Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison has announced a major revamp of the country’s Covid-19 vaccination programme, opening access for those aged 40 to 49 and calling in the army to oversee the rollout.

After national cabinet on Friday, Morrison announced the appointment of Lieutenant General John Frewen to oversee a rollout beset by missed targets and delays, in an effort the prime minister likened to turning back asylum seeker boats during Operation Sovereign Borders.

But in other respects the Morrison government was on the back foot, delaying a demand for states to require aged care workers to be vaccinated and seeking further medical advice about possible unintended consequences.

At national cabinet the federal government also agreed to pay 100% of income support through the temporary Covid disaster payment, unveiled on Thursday to support Victoria through its two-week lockdown, while states will pick up the tab for business support.

From 8 June, people aged 40 to 49 will be eligible for the vaccine, expanding their access from state-run mass vaccination clinics in several states to GPs and clinics nationwide.

Frewen, who has been leading Operation Covid Assist within the defence force, will now become the head of the national Covid vaccination taskforce, a change Morrison told reporters in Canberra would “gives us the opportunity to step up another gear”.

The taskforce and Frewen would gain “direct control” of all aspects of the vaccination program “from communications, to dealings with states, to the distribution and delivery of vaccine [and] the working of the GPs and pharmacists”, he said.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jun/04/coronavirus-live-news-japan-taiwan-vaccine-fauci-calls-wuhan-lab-records?page=with:block-60b9c5178f082e80569f5cad#block-60b9c5178f082e80569f5cad

 

 

 

UK urged to give 20% of its Covid vaccines to other countries

By Sarah Boseley

 

The G7 should commit to sharing 1bn doses this year, according to Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

One of the UK’s leading scientists has called on the prime minister to donate 20% of the UK’s Covid vaccines to other countries in an effort to try to save lives and stem the spread of coronavirus variants.

The head of the Wellcome Trust, Sir Jeremy Farrar, and the executive director of Unicef UK, Steven Waugh, have published an open letter to Boris Johnson appealing for the UK to set an example ahead of the G7 summit in Cornwall, which begins in a week’s time.

UK science played a core part in “breathtaking advances” that have enabled vaccines to be developed, which is the way out of the pandemic, they say in their letter.

“At home, the UK vaccination rollout has been a phenomenal success and has already saved countless lives,” they write. “Yet, globally too many countries still lack doses to protect healthcare workers and the most vulnerable.

“As president of the G7, the UK has the opportunity to set the standard for global action on sharing doses. Three months ago, you proudly pledged that the UK would share vaccines with the world. Now we ask that you turn this pledge into reality.”

The UK should “show the historic leadership needed to end this crisis”, they say. It should share at least 20% of the vaccines it has between now and August and call on the G7 nations to commit to sharing 1bn doses this year. The G7 should also fully fund the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, which is a partnership involving the World Health Organization to speed up the development of vaccines, tests and treatments and ensure all countries can access them.

“We can share vaccines now and still meet UK vaccination targets,” they write. “The truth is, the UK cannot afford not to share its vaccines. The world won’t be safe while any single country is still fighting the virus. Failing to act now risks reversing our hard-won progress.”

It is the best way to protect the UK and end the pandemic quickly, they say: “As long as the virus continues to circulate, it will continue to mutate. We have already seen first-hand how quickly new variants can emerge and travel. We cannot rule out variants against which our vaccines and treatments no longer work.”

Covax, the UN scheme to distribute vaccines equitably, is 190m doses short of what it needs for this year. The UK has ordered more than 400m vaccine doses. Johnson told a virtual G7 meeting in February that the UK would donate its surplus to poorer countries, but has not said when or how many doses that would involve.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/04/uk-urged-to-give-20-of-its-covid-vaccines-to-other-countries

 

 

 

Summary

 

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

· John Hopkins university confirmed that more than two billion vaccine doses have been distributed worldwide, with Israel remaining the country with the most vaccinated – as nearly six-in-10 people are fully inoculated against Covid.

· Italy opened vaccinations for everybody over the age of 12, after the European Medicines Agency approved the Pfizer/BioNTech jab for 12 to 15-year-olds last week.

· The US is to donate 75% of its unused Covid-19 vaccines to the UN-backed Covax global vaccine sharing program, president Joe Biden announced as more Americans have been vaccinated and global inequities have become more glaring.

· The heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank also urged the G7 advanced economies to release any excess Covid-19 vaccines to developing countries as soon as possible, and called on manufacturers to ramp up production.

· India placed an order for 300m doses of an as-yet unapproved coronavirus vaccine, a day after its Supreme Court criticised the government for bungling the country’s vaccination programme.

· The potential Covid treatment based on a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies developed by US drugmaker Regeneron and Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche was purchased by the EU to the tune of about 55,000 doses.

· The US embassy ‘strongly suggested that US citizens make plans to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible’ amid spiking reported Covid cases and US citizens reportedly being denied admittance because of a lack of beds, with other concerns unrelated to the virus in the country also growing.

· Portugal was removed from the UK government’s “green list” of destinations from which people can return to England without having to quarantine, and no extra countries have been added, sparking industry fury.

· The head of a Pakistani province decreed that government employees who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid would not be paid from next month.

· A cruise ship arrived in Venice, Italy, for the first time in 17 months, signalling the return of tourists after the pandemic but enraging those who decry the impact of the giant floating hotels on the world heritage site.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jun/03/coronavirus-live-news-brazil-anger-toll-olympics-japan-us-uk?page=with:block-60b9138c8f08b9889b368072#block-60b9138c8f08b9889b368072