Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	180,350,952	+430,350	3,907,029
USA	34,449,004	+12,942	618,294
India	30,082,169	+54,319	392,014
Brazil	18,170,778	+114,139	507,240
France	5,762,322	+2,320	110,862
Turkey	5,387,545	+5,809	49,358
Russia	5,368,513	+17,594	130,895
UK	4,667,870	+16,135	128,027
Argentina	4,326,101	+27,319	90,986
Italy	4,255,434	+951	127,352
Colombia	4,027,016	+29,995	101,947
Spain	3,773,032	+4,341	80,748
Germany	3,732,423	+1,136	91,146
Iran	3,128,395	+11,059	83,329
Poland	2,879,192	+165	74,893
Mexico	2,482,784	+4,233	231,505
Ukraine	2,230,977	+835	52,123
Peru	2,036,449	+2,843	191,073
Indonesia	2,033,421	+15,308	55,594
South Africa	1,861,065	+17,493	59,258
Netherlands	1,680,880	+652	17,734
Czechia	1,666,325	+131	30,289
Chile	1,528,409	+2,746	31,746
Canada	1,410,927	+721	26,175
Philippines	1,372,232	+4,353	23,928
Iraq	1,305,000	+6,297	16,968
Sweden	1,088,518		14,578
Romania	1,080,389	+66	32,626
Belgium	1,080,035	+395	25,144
Pakistan	950,768	+930	22,073
Portugal	868,323	+1,497	17,077
Bangladesh	866,877	+5,727	13,787
Israel	840,225	+146	6,428
Hungary	807,775	+91	29,971
Japan	787,650	+1,437	14,496
Jordan	748,103	+599	9,693
Serbia	716,016	+103	7,013
Malaysia	711,006	+5,244	4,637
Switzerland	702,278	+154	10,876
Austria	649,845	+117	10,686
Nepal	627,854	+1,511	8,894
UAE	618,148	+1,988	1,773
Lebanon	543,865	+167	7,832
Morocco	527,696	+522	9,254
Saudi Arabia	478,135	+1,253	7,716
Ecuador	449,107	+1,931	21,367
Bolivia	424,478	+1,667	16,243
Bulgaria	421,339	+93	18,013
Greece	419,455	+512	12,589
Belarus	412,353	+802	3,072
Kazakhstan	411,771	+1,248	4,261
Paraguay	411,615	+2,148	11,973
Panama	396,526	+1,077	6,491
Slovakia	391,420	+35	12,502
Tunisia	391,411	+3,638	14,318
Georgia	360,828	+773	5,211
Uruguay	360,247	+1,786	5,374
Croatia	359,302	+43	8,190
Costa Rica	357,523	+1,903	4,567
Kuwait	344,799	+1,870	1,894
Azerbaijan	335,625	+57	4,965
Dominican Republic	319,254	+886	3,773
Palestine	313,015		3,555
Denmark	292,179	+223	2,531
Guatemala	284,741	+2,028	8,845
Egypt	278,761	+466	15,967
Lithuania	278,529	+57	4,372
Ethiopia	275,502	+111	4,292
Ireland	269,793	+298	4,989
Venezuela	264,551	+1,179	3,007
Bahrain	264,107	+418	1,330
Slovenia	257,116	+50	4,417
Moldova	256,324	+92	6,178
Honduras	255,117	+923	6,818
Oman	254,656	+2,047	2,816
Sri Lanka	246,109	+2,196	2,769
Thailand	228,539	+3,174	1,744
Armenia	224,430	+100	4,503
Qatar	221,273	+154	586
Bosnia and Herzegovina	204,910	+24	9,651
Libya	191,476	+223	3,183
Kenya	180,498	+622	3,514
Cuba	172,909	+2,055	1,193
Nigeria	167,375	+44	2,118
North Macedonia	155,645	+5	5,478
S. Korea	152,545	+644	2,007
Myanmar	149,927	+680	3,269
Latvia	137,077	+102	2,497
Algeria	137,049	+370	3,660
Zambia	137,026	+3,367	1,794
Albania	132,497	+1	2,455
Estonia	130,880	+25	1,269
Norway	129,944	+178	792
Kyrgyzstan	117,284	+738	1,953
Afghanistan	109,625	+1,668	4,456
Uzbekistan	107,266	+419	722
Mongolia	100,263	+2,213	469
Montenegro	100,117	+13	1,608
Finland	94,596	+107	969
China	91,653	+24	4,636
Cyprus	73,999	+167	374
Vietnam	13,947	+220	70
Aruba	11,118	+2	107

 

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

 

 

 

Here’s what to know about the Delta variant in the U.S

By Emily Anthes

 

Medical personnel remove the body of a Covid-19 victim from the coronavirus ward at the Honorio Delgado Hospital in Arequipa, Peru, last week, following an outbreak of cases of the Delta strain in the city.Credit...Diego Ramos/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

The super-contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus is now responsible for about one in every five Covid-19 cases in the United States, and its prevalence has doubled in the last two weeks, health officials said on Tuesday.

First identified in India, Delta is one of several “variants of concern,” as designated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. It has spread rapidly through India and Britain.

Its appearance in the United States is not surprising. And with vaccinations ticking up and Covid-19 case numbers falling, it’s unclear how much of a problem Delta will cause here. Still, its swift rise has prompted concerns that it might jeopardize the nation’s progress in beating back the pandemic.

“The Delta variant is currently the greatest threat in the U.S. to our attempt to eliminate Covid-19,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said at the briefing. The good news, he said, is that the vaccines authorized in the United States work against the variant. “We have the tools,” he said. “So let’s use them, and crush the outbreak.”

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/22/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-mask/heres-what-to-know-about-the-delta-variant-in-the-us

 

 

 

Angela Merkel gets ‘mix and match’ vaccine doses, and other news from around the world

By Christopher F. Schuetze, Natasha Frost, Megan Specia, Niki Kitsantonis and Rick Gladstone

 

  

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany at a cabinet meeting in Berlin on Wednesday. Unlike other world leaders, she has refrained from widely publicizing her vaccinations with a selfie or public event. Credit...Pool photo by Henning Schacht

When Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany received her second coronavirus vaccination recently, she was given a Moderna shot to follow the AstraZeneca one she received in mid-April, a spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.

Germany has permitted “mix and match” vaccinations for those who received one AstraZeneca dose before the authorities introduced age-specific recommendations for that vaccine at the end of March. Since then, the combination of one AstraZeneca shot followed by either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine has become standard in Germany for people under 60.

It was not clear why Ms. Merkel, who will turn 67 next month, chose the mixed approach.

Initial studies suggest the combination of the two types of vaccines is effective, but a report published in May in The Lancet, a medical journal, also found that side effects were more common than with uniform first and second shots.

AstraZeneca shots make up only about 17 percent of the doses administered in Germany, while Moderna vaccines account for just 9 percent. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the most widely used, with nearly 71 percent of doses administered so far (unsurprising, perhaps, as BioNTech is a German company). A relatively small number of Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses have also been administered.

Unlike other world leaders, Ms. Merkel refrained from widely publicizing her vaccinations with a selfie photograph or public event. After her first dose in April, her spokesman merely tweeted a picture of her W.H.O.-issued vaccination booklet. It is not clear exactly when Ms. Merkel received the second dose, but a spokesman confirmed on Tuesday that it had been within the last few days.

Currently, 52 percent of the German population has received at least one dose of a vaccine. Ms. Merkel joined the 32 percent of Germans who are fully vaccinated.

In other news from around the world.

The government of New Zealand announced on Wednesday that it would impose social-distancing and mask-wearing requirements until Sunday in the city of Wellington, after a tourist visiting the capital from Sydney, Australia, over the weekend tested positive for the coronavirus. New Zealand began a 72-hour pause on Tuesday for quarantine-free travel from the Australian state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, after more than 20 cases were reported in the eastern suburbs of the city.

The Red Cross has urged residents of the South Pacific island nation of Fiji to get vaccinated after a surge in new coronavirus infections there reached record highs. The health and humanitarian organization said that new infections were doubling every 10 days as the country grappled with the more transmissible Delta variant, adding that “misinformation and rumors” on social media were stoking fear and undermining immunization efforts.

The health authorities in Greece announced on Wednesday that face masks will no longer be mandatory in uncrowded outdoor areas starting Thursday. The decision comes amid a significant drop in the rate of daily infections and follows the country‘s official opening to international tourists last month. Masks will continue to be obligatory in all indoor public areas and in outdoor spaces with crowds, officials told a news conference. The officials also announced the revocation, as of next Monday, of a public curfew first imposed last November, which has been gradually shortened in recent weeks.

Despite concerns about the dangerous Delta variant of the coronavirus, Switzerland will terminate most remaining restrictions this weekend, including those limiting entry to the country, the government announced Wednesday. As of Saturday, the Swiss Ministry of Health said, rules requiring that masks be worn outdoors will end, shops will be permitted to open at full capacity, and limits on patrons in restaurants will be lifted. In a statement posted on its website, the health ministry attributed the relaxation of safety measures to “the positive development of the epidemic situation and the progress made with vaccination.”

In a new sign of worry over the Delta variant, the Tourism Ministry of Israel said Wednesday that it had postponed, by at least one month, the granting of individual tourist visas. Despite the country’s high rate of vaccinations, the ministry said its plan to resume issuing those visas as of July 1 would now be delayed until Aug. 1. The new caution came as the Israeli news media reported that more than 100 new cases had been registered in the country for the third consecutive day. Just three weeks ago, with new cases having dropped below 20 a day, Israel lifted many restrictions.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/23/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-mask/angela-merkel-gets-mix-and-match-vaccine-doses-and-other-news-from-around-the-world

 

 

 

Some mysteriously deleted early virus sequences haven been recovered by Seattle researcher

By Carl Zimmer

 

A medical staff member holding samples from patients infected by Covid-19 in Wuhan, China, in March 2020.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

About a year ago, genetic sequences from more than 200 virus samples from early cases of Covid-19 in China mysteriously disappeared from an online scientific database.

Now, by rooting through files stored on Google Cloud, a researcher in Seattle reports that he has recovered 13 of those original sequences — intriguing new information for discerning when and how the virus may have spilled over from a bat or another animal into humans.

The new analysis, released on Tuesday, bolsters earlier suggestions that a variety of coronaviruses may have been circulating in Wuhan before the initial human outbreaks linked to animal and seafood markets in December 2019.

As the Biden administration investigates the contested origins of the virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, the new study neither strengthens nor discounts the hypothesis that the pathogen leaked out of a famous Wuhan lab. But it does raise questions about why original sequences were deleted from the open database, which is run by the National Institutes of Health, and suggests that there may be more revelations to recover from the far corners of the internet.

Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who wrote the new report, called the deletion of these sequences suspicious. It “seems likely that the sequences were deleted to obscure their existence,” he wrote in the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.

Dr. Bloom belongs to an outspoken group of scientists who have called for more research into how the pandemic began. In a letter published in May, they complained that there wasn’t enough information to determine whether it was more likely that a lab leak had spread the coronavirus, or that it had leapt to humans from contact with an infected animal outside of a lab.

The genetic sequences of viral samples hold crucial clues about how SARS-CoV-2 shifted to our species from another animal, most likely a bat. Most precious of all are sequences from early in the pandemic, because they take scientists closer to the original spillover event.

Some scientists are skeptical that there is anything sinister behind the removal of the sequences. Dr. Bloom acknowledged that the reasoning is unknown, but he also noted that the Chinese government ordered the destruction of a number of early samples of the virus and barred the publication of papers on the coronavirus without its approval.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/23/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-mask/some-mysteriously-deleted-early-virus-sequences-haven-been-recovered-by-seattle-researcher

 

 

 

The Delta variant is likely to make up 90 percent of E.U. cases by late August, officials warn

By Elian Peltier

 

The main port area in Patmos, Greece in May.Credit...Byron Smith/Getty Images

Residents of the European Union should be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus as quickly as possible this summer, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control warned on Wednesday, as concerns grew that the contagious Delta variant would sweep across the bloc.

Andrea Ammon, the agency’s director, said the variant was expected to account for 90 percent of all coronavirus cases in the European Union by the end of August. The variant has already spread to 23 European countries; in some it is linked to a limited share of cases, but it is responsible for more than 66 percent of new cases in Portugal, which has faced a recent surge of infections. In Moscow, 90 percent of new cases are reported to be the Delta variant, according to the local authorities.

“Unfortunately, preliminary data shows that it can also infect individuals that have received only one dose of the currently available vaccines,” Dr. Ammon said. “It is very likely that the Delta variant will circulate extensively during the summer, particularly among younger individuals that are not targeted for vaccination.”

The Delta variant is unlikely to pose much risk to people who have been fully vaccinated, experts said. According to one recent study, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 88 percent effective at protecting against symptomatic disease caused by Delta, nearly matching its 93 percent effectiveness against the Alpha variant. But a single dose of the vaccine was just 33 percent effective against Delta, the study found.

After a sluggish start, the distribution of vaccines in the European Union has sped up in recent months. Even so, around 30 percent of residents over 80 years old and around 40 percent of those over 60 have yet to be fully vaccinated, according to the center.

Most E.U. countries have not yet fully vaccinated one-third of their total populations: the average is about 27 percent.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said on Wednesday that her country’s entire population will have been offered at least one dose of a vaccine by Sept. 21 if vaccine deliveries arrive as planned.

Public health officials have said that Delta may be 50 percent more contagious than Alpha, though precise estimates of its infectiousness vary. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control estimates that Delta is between 40 and 60 percent more transmissible.

The warning on Tuesday brought a feeling of déjà vu: Last summer, a rise of cases among younger populations in some European countries and the United States led to new lockdown measures and a surge of infections among older people. But vaccines are driving down coronavirus case numbers in most of the United States, and it’s unclear whether Delta will reverse that trend.

The Delta variant has been detected in at least 85 countries to date, and public health experts say a surge of new cases in Britain in recent weeks has been driven in part by the variant. Dr. Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, said this month that the variant was “poised to take hold” in Europe.

The European Union is set to launch a bloc-wide program for proof of vaccination — the so-called digital green certificate — on July 1. Its purpose is to allow residents to travel freely within the bloc if they have been fully vaccinated, have proof of a recent negative test, or have recovered from Covid-19, although individual countries can impose their own restrictions.

Under recommendations issued last week by the European Union, American visitors would be able to travel to countries of the bloc if they can show a proof of vaccination or a recent negative test.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/world/europe/covid-europe-delta-variant.html

 

 

 

The White House plans to send 3 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to Brazil on Thursday

By Noah Weiland

  

A health care worker loading up protected vials of Covid vaccine bound for hard-hit riverside areas in the Amazon rainforest in northwestern Brazil.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

The White House said on Wednesday that the United States would send three million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to Brazil on Thursday. The country’s virus cases and fatalities are surging again, with a death toll above 500,000.

Less than a third of the country’s population has had at least one shot, and an average of 74,490 new cases per day were reported in the country in the last week — an increase of 26 percent from the average two weeks ago.

The vaccines, which are set to arrive in Campinas, near São Paulo, are part of President Biden’s pledge to dispatch 80 million doses overseas by the end of the month, a White House official said. The official added that “scientific teams and legal and regulatory authorities” from the United States and Brazil had worked to secure the arrangement.

The shipment to Brazil follows one to Taiwan last weekend: 2.5 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine. Mr. Biden, who has been under intense pressure to increase his vaccine commitments abroad, announced this month that his administration would buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and distribute them among about 100 countries over the next year.

Asked last week at a pandemic news conference whether the administration would send vaccines to Brazil, Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, said that the United States was working with other countries on complicated logistical issues, including securing needles, syringes and alcohol pads that would accompany the medicine.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which confers a high level of protection against virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, has faced sagging demand in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration in April recommended a pause in its use after reports of a rare blood-clotting disorder in a small number of people who had received the vaccine, a decision that state officials said had derailed interest in the shot.

And with manufacturing problems at a Baltimore plant operated by a subcontractor, Emergent BioSolutions, Johnson & Johnson has been able to deliver fewer than half of the 100 million doses it promised the federal government by the end of this month. A little more than half the Johnson & Johnson doses delivered to states so far have been administered, according to C.D.C. data.

Roughly two-thirds of the doses the U.S. is sending to Brazil are from a federal pool that holds vaccines that states choose not to order, the White House said. Around a third of them were produced at Emergent and recently cleared by the F.D.A. in a special review of the facility and the doses produced there.

Earlier this month, the F.D.A. cleared around 10 million doses for use in the United States or for export, with a proviso that regulators could not guarantee that Emergent had adhered to manufacturing standards.

Last week, the agency released another 15 million doses from Emergent. It is still reviewing other batches of the vaccine to determine if they are safe. A decision is expected soon.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/world/white-house-brazil-covid-vaccine-doses.html

 

 

 

Summary

 

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

· Portugal on Wednesday reported almost 1,500 new cases, two-thirds of them in the capital region where 2.8 million people live. Three people died in Portugal of Covid-19 over 24 hours, Reuters reports. The national 14-day cumulative Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people has risen to 130 — over double what it was three weeks ago.

· A Brazilian health ministry official has revealed he alerted president Jair Bolsonaro to internal pressure he was facing to buy a Covid-19 vaccine developed by India’s Bharat Biotech, according to a newspaper interview.

· The share of Covid-19 infections caused by the Delta variant of the coronavirus has doubled in Germany in a week and is likely to gain more traction over other variants, the Robert Koch Institute public health agency said.

· Tunisia has detected six cases of the Delta variant, the health ministry said on Wednesday, amid a rapid spread of the virus in the North African country.

· Angela Merkel said travellers from the UK should be quarantined wherever they arrive in the EU, as the union’s agency for disease control forecast that the Delta variant of Covid will account for 90% of cases in member states by the end of August.

· The Australian federal government announced it will shelve the controversial AstraZeneca vaccine by October after safety fears, suggesting it will have enough supplies of other vaccines to meet “allocation horizons” for vaccinating the population by the end of the year.

· A UK-backed study is investigating anti-parasite drug Ivermectin as a possible Covid treatment after a pilot showed promising signs of efficacy and a number of authorities around the world rolled out the cheap drug, reporting significant benefits – with data from January already suggesting Covid mortality falls where it is being used.

· Switzerland will scrap most of its remaining coronavirus restrictions this weekend, the government confirmed, including for entry into the country, but non-Schengen arrivals will need to have been vaccinated.

· Greece is to end the mandatory wearing of face masks outdoors and ease other remaining restrictions imposed to curb the pandemic, authorities said, with infections now clearly on the wane.

· Over 150 staff at a hospital in Texas, US, were forced to leave their jobs after refusing to be vaccinated against Covid. Employees had been told they had to be inoculated by 7 June or face a fortnight’s suspension as dozens protested over the mandatory vaccine policy and filed an unsuccessful lawsuit.

· The US embassy in Thailand turned down a direct appeal to fly in coronavirus vaccines for its citizens even as French officials begin a rollout to its expatriates in the country.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jun/23/coronavirus-live-news-thailand-record-daily-deaths-tokyo-olympics-alcohol