Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	182,962,080	+390,783	3,962,432
USA	34,540,845	+14,197	620,249
India	30,410,577	+48,878	399,475
Brazil	18,559,164	+45,859	518,246
France	5,775,301	+2,457	111,082
Russia	5,514,599	+21,042	135,214
Turkey	5,425,652	+5,496	49,732
UK	4,800,907	+26,068	128,140
Argentina	4,470,374	+22,673	94,304
Italy	4,259,909	+776	127,566
Colombia	4,240,982	+27,908	106,544
Spain	3,808,960	+9,227	80,875
Germany	3,736,223	+841	91,459
Iran	3,204,557	+11,748	84,264
Poland	2,879,912	+104	75,021
Mexico	2,513,164	+5,711	232,803
Ukraine	2,235,096	+633	52,340
Indonesia	2,178,272	+21,807	58,491
South Africa	1,973,972	+19,506	60,647
Netherlands	1,685,000	+634	17,745
Czechia	1,667,284	+158	30,304
Chile	1,555,902	+2,128	32,545
Canada	1,415,284	+548	26,295
Philippines	1,412,559	+4,509	24,662
Iraq	1,345,904	+7,300	17,186
Belgium	1,084,550	+1,072	25,170
Romania	1,080,792	+52	33,786
Pakistan	957,371	+979	22,281
Bangladesh	913,258	+8,822	14,503
Portugal	879,557	+2,362	17,096
Israel	841,777	+291	6,429
Hungary	808,128	+52	29,992
Japan	798,159	+1,380	14,740
Malaysia	751,979	+6,276	5,170
Jordan	751,404	+518	9,750
Serbia	716,562	+104	7,047
Austria	650,412	+59	10,702
Nepal	638,805	+1,889	9,112
UAE	632,907	+1,747	1,811
Lebanon	544,866	+161	7,851
Morocco	531,361	+776	9,296
Saudi Arabia	487,592	+1,486	7,819
Ecuador	458,504	+1,015	21,560
Bolivia	437,623	+2,055	16,702
Paraguay	423,282	+1,693	12,895
Kazakhstan	423,137	+2,016	4,349
Greece	422,456	+627	12,687
Bulgaria	421,829	+78	18,061
Tunisia	420,103	+5,921	14,959
Belarus	417,189	+914	3,143
Panama	403,778	+1,197	6,545
Slovakia	391,642	+33	12,510
Uruguay	369,350	+1,172	5,593
Costa Rica	367,938	+1,777	4,667
Georgia	366,078	+1,010	5,316
Croatia	359,872	+136	8,206
Kuwait	356,687	+1,836	1,969
Azerbaijan	336,047	+86	4,974
Palestine	314,167	+154	3,563
Denmark	293,677	+340	2,534
Guatemala	293,583	+909	9,215
Egypt	281,282	+251	16,169
Lithuania	278,769	+40	4,384
Ethiopia	276,174	+137	4,320
Venezuela	272,712	+1,033	3,119
Oman	268,545	+2,009	3,100
Bahrain	265,827	+184	1,352
Honduras	262,069	+1,188	6,980
Thailand	259,301	+4,786	2,023
Sri Lanka	259,089	+1,864	3,077
Slovenia	257,335	+47	4,419
Moldova	256,734	+65	6,194
Armenia	225,095	+128	4,514
Qatar	222,071	+118	590
Libya	193,474	+236	3,193
Cuba	190,993	+2,970	1,284
Kenya	184,161	+558	3,634
Nigeria	167,618	+75	2,120
Myanmar	157,277	+1,580	3,334
S. Korea	156,961	+794	2,018
North Macedonia	155,684	+2	5,484
Zambia	154,948	+2,892	2,199
Algeria	139,626	+397	3,716
Latvia	137,429	+100	2,513
Albania	132,521	+7	2,456
Norway	131,316	+279	794
Estonia	131,064	+36	1,269
Kyrgyzstan	125,003	+1,965	2,000
Afghanistan	120,216	+1,557	4,962
Mongolia	115,478	+2,246	563
Uzbekistan	110,677	+487	736
Montenegro	100,252	+22	1,613
Ghana	95,914	+272	796
Finland	95,742	+355	969
China	91,780	+9	4,636
Namibia	89,917	+1,364	1,521
Cyprus	75,860	+429	374
Suriname	21,732	+213	522
Vietnam	16,863	+450	81
Aruba	11,138	+3	107

 

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

 

 

 

Final trial results confirm that CureVac’s mRNA vaccine is far less protective than others

By Carl Zimmer

 

A volunteer in Brussels receiving a dose of either CureVac’s vaccine or a placebo in March, during a clinical trial. Credit...Yves Herman/Reuters

The German company CureVac announced on Wednesday the final results of its late-stage vaccine trial, confirming earlier data showing that its shot is far less protective than other vaccines.

Overall, the CureVac vaccine had an efficacy of just 48 percent against Covid-19. The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which use the same mRNA technology as CureVac’s, delivered efficacy rates around 95 percent in clinical trials.

CureVac’s vaccine proved somewhat better for younger volunteers: For those between the ages of 18 and 60, the efficacy rose to 53 percent. In that group, the researchers also found the vaccine provided 100 percent protection against hospitalization and death.

Forty thousand people participated in the company’s trial in Europe and Latin America. By the end of the study, 288 volunteers had gotten Covid-19.

CureVac had to contend with 15 different variants of the coronavirus. Genetic testing showed that only 3 percent of the cases were caused by the original version of the coronavirus. It’s possible that some of the variants were able to evade the immunity provoked by the CureVac vaccine. (No variants had become widespread in 2020 when Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech ran their trials.)

But vaccine experts have also questioned whether part of CureVac’s problem was with the design of the vaccine itself. The precise recipe that CureVac used to build its vaccine may have blunted its effectiveness.

The European Medicines Agency opened a rolling review of CureVac’s vaccine in February, and the company said it would continue its submission with these data. The vaccine “will be an important contribution to help manage the Covid-19 pandemic and the dynamic variant spread,” Franz-Werner Haas, the chief executive of CureVac, said in the announcement.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/science/curevac-vaccine-results.html

 

 

 

Here’s what scientists know about the Delta variant

By  Emily Anthes

 

A vaccination center in New Delhi in May. The Delta variant was first identified in India and has reached at least 85 countries.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

The Delta variant of the coronavirus now accounts for about one in every four infections in the United States, according to new estimates this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

First identified in India, Delta is one of several “variants of concern,” as designated by the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization. It has spread rapidly through India and Britain and poses a particular threat in places where Covid vaccination rates remain low.

Here are answers to some common questions.

Does the Delta variant cause different symptoms?

It’s not clear yet. “We’re hurting for good data,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

But some evidence of a potential shift is emerging in Britain, where Delta has become the dominant variant.

“What we’ve noticed is the last month, we’re seeing different sets of symptoms than we were seeing in January,” said Tim Spector, a genetic epidemiologist at King’s College London, who leads the Covid Symptom Study, which asks people with the disease to report their symptoms in an app.

Headaches, a sore throat, and a runny nose are now among those mentioned most frequently, Dr. Spector said, with fever, cough and loss of smell less common.

These findings, however, have not yet been published in a scientific journal, and some scientists remain unconvinced that the symptom profile has truly changed. The severity of Covid, regardless of the variant, can vary widely from one person to another.

If I’m vaccinated, do I need to worry?

Although there is not yet good data on how all of the vaccines hold up against Delta, several widely used shots, including those made by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, appear to retain most of their effectiveness against the variant, research suggests.

“If you’re fully vaccinated, I would largely not worry about it,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

Pockets of unvaccinated people, however, may be vulnerable to outbreaks in the coming months, scientists said.

“When you have such a low level of vaccination superimposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you are going to see among under-vaccinated regions, be that states, cities or counties, you’re going to see these individual types of blips,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said on CNN on Tuesday. “It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas.”

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/30/world/covid-19-vaccine-coronavirus-updates/heres-what-scientists-know-about-the-delta-variant

 

 

 

Should you wear a mask after you’ve been vaccinated? It gets complicated

By Tara Parker-Pope

 

The World Health Organization wants everybody to wear masks, but according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccinated people often don’t need to wear them.

So which do we listen to?

Virus experts and epidemiologists also offer mixed advice, but largely agree on one point: Whether a fully vaccinated person needs to wear a mask really depends on the circumstances and what’s happening in your community.

The reaffirmed push to ask vaccinated people to mask up has sown confusion. Here are some answers.

Why is the W.H.O. telling vaccinated people to wear masks?

Mask mandates are largely intended to protect the unvaccinated — people who are vaccinated are already well protected by vaccines, and breakthrough infections are still very rare. But since you can’t tell who is vaccinated and who is not, advising everyone to wear a mask can help stop the spread of the virus.

Linsey Marr, a professor at Virginia Tech and one of the world’s leading experts on viral transmission, said her advice to a fully vaccinated friend about mask wearing would be to follow local rules and to take extra precautions in certain situations, like a very crowded indoor setting or an airplane.

What’s my risk of getting Covid-19 after I’m fully vaccinated?

Although the Covid vaccines are highly effective, no vaccine offers 100 percent protection. While breakthrough infections happen, they are extremely rare, and in most cases, they cause only mild illness.

But because the risk isn’t zero, some health experts still advise that vaccinated people take reasonable precautions, like wearing a mask in crowded spaces.

And people who live in areas with low vaccination rates may also want to consider wearing masks in public because of the potentially higher number of unvaccinated people they might encounter.

Those suggestions could change with time, Dr. Marr said.

“I know everyone wants this to be over or wants a one-size-fits-all rule, but we need to get used to things changing as the virus changes, vaccines roll out, public health responses in different countries shift, and scientists learn more,” she said. “The 1918 flu pandemic lasted two years.”

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/30/world/covid-19-vaccine-coronavirus-updates/should-you-wear-a-mask-after-youve-been-vaccinated-it-gets-complicated

 

 

 

‘Unacceptable’: A W.H.O. official denounces unequal vaccine access for Latin America and the Caribbean

By Daniel Politi and Dan Levin

 

A health worker recorded the information of patients who died of complications related to COVID-19, at the morgue of the Regional Hospital in Zipaquira, Colombia, on Monday.Credit...Ivan Valencia/Associated Press

BUENOS AIRES — Latin America and the Caribbean continue to be hammered by increasing numbers of Covid-19 infections and deaths, highlighting the stark global inequalities in access to vaccines, officials from the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday.

At a time “when we are seeing some reprieve from the virus in countries in the Northern Hemisphere,” Carissa Etienne, the director of the W.H.O.’s Pan American Health Organization, said at a news conference that for most countries in the Southern Hemisphere, “the end remains a distant future.”

Only one person in 10 has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean, she added, calling it an “unacceptable situation.”

“Access to Covid-19 vaccines shouldn’t be a privilege for a few but a right we all share,” Dr. Etienne said.

Economic inequality, the huge informal economy and the difficulty of implementing public health measures in Latin America and the Caribbean have all been major obstacles to containing the coronavirus there, said Ciro Ugarte, the director of health emergencies at Dr. Etienne’s organization.

New cases continue to increase in many countries in Central America, including Panama and Guatemala; the Caribbean, including Cuba and the Dominican Republic; and South America, including Colombia and Brazil.

Brazil recently surpassed 500,000 official Covid-19 deaths, the world’s second-highest known total behind the United States. About 1 in every 400 Brazilians is reported to have died from the virus, but many experts believe the true toll may be higher. Home to just over 2.7 percent of the world’s population, Brazil accounts for roughly 13 percent of recorded fatalities.

This time of year, countries in the region also have to prepare for conditions that could further exacerbate outbreaks: the hurricane season and the flu season farther south, both of which come as social distancing measures have been relaxed.

Variants of the virus have surfaced across the Americas, with 14 countries detecting cases of the more-transmissible Delta variant, adding to the urgency of vaccinating as many people as quickly as possible, Dr. Etienne said. She said donations from developed countries could help speed up inoculations.

Eighty-five percent of shots administered worldwide have been in high- and upper-middle-income countries, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. Only 0.3 percent of doses have been administered in low-income countries.

Less wealthy countries are relying on a vaccine-sharing arrangement called Covax, which aims to provide two billion doses by the end of the year.

On Wednesday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the United States was sending 2.5 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Colombia as part of President Biden’s pledge to dispatch vaccines to countries desperate for them.

For now, the Delta variant remains largely tied to travelers in Latin America and the Caribbean and “community transmission has been limited,” said Jairo Méndez, a regional adviser for viral diseases at the Pan American Health Organization. The group has called on governments with high rates of variants to limit travel from their countries, or even to close their borders entirely.

“Now may not be the ideal time for travel,” Dr. Etienne said, “especially in places with active outbreaks or where hospital capacity may be limited.”

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/world/americas/latin-america-covid-vaccine.html

 

 

 

The pandemic, driven by new variants, is surging in many parts of the world

By Hannah Beech and Livia Albeck-Ripka

 

Medical workers removing a man last week from an emergency tent erected to accommodate a surge of Covid patients at Cengkareng Regional General Hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia.Credit...Tatan Syuflana/Associated Press

In Indonesia, grave diggers are working into the night, as oxygen and vaccines are in short supply. In Europe, countries are slamming their doors shut once again, with quarantines and travel bans. In Bangladesh, urban garment workers fleeing an impending lockdown are almost assuredly seeding another coronavirus surge in their impoverished home villages.

And in countries like South Korea and Israel that seemed to have largely vanquished the virus, new clusters of disease have proliferated. Chinese health officials announced on Monday that they would build a giant quarantine center with up to 5,000 rooms to hold international travelers. Australia has ordered millions to stay at home.

A year and a half since it began racing across the globe with exponential efficiency, the pandemic is on the rise again in vast stretches of the world, driven largely by the new variants, particularly the highly contagious Delta variant first identified in India. From Africa to Asia, countries are suffering from record Covid-19 caseloads and deaths, even as wealthier nations with high vaccination rates have let their guard down, dispensing with mask mandates and reveling in life edging back toward normalcy.

Scientists believe the Delta variant may be twice as transmissible as the original coronavirus, and its potential to infect some partially vaccinated people has alarmed public health officials. Unvaccinated populations, whether in India or Indiana, may serve as incubators of new variants that could evolve in surprising and dangerous ways, with Delta giving rise to what Indian researchers are calling Delta Plus. There are also the Gamma and Lambda variants.

“We’re in a race against the spread of the virus variants,” said Professor Kim Woo-joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University Guro Hospital in Seoul.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/30/world/covid-19-vaccine-coronavirus-updates/the-pandemic-driven-by-new-variants-is-surging-in-many-parts-of-the-world

 

 

 

Myanmar, which has been persecuting healthcare workers, turns to Russia and China for vaccines

 

Myanmar is negotiating to buy 7m doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, the head of its authoritarian military regime said, as the Southeast Asian country tries to tackle a new wave of coronavirus infections.

Reuters report that in an interview with Russia’s RIA news agency, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said after initially planning to buy 2m doses, Myanmar was now looking to buy 7m.

“We have made negotiations to buy more from Russia,” Min Aung Hlaing was quoted as saying.

Having recently returned from a trip to Russia, he said neighbouring India, which had initially supplied the bulk of Myanmar’s vaccines, was unable to provide more doses due to its own outbreak.

“China has also sent some vaccines and we have used those as well. We will also continue negotiations with China,” he said.

Myanmar has officially recorded 155,697 cases and 3,320 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to health ministry data, but reported infections have jumped in the last month.

Some health experts say the real rate of infection is likely to be far higher given a collapse in testing since the 1 February coup.

The regime has repeatedly targeted frontline medical staff in Myanmar for participating in protests against the coup. Earlier this month we carried on the website the testimony of a doctor from Myanmar, who withheld their name for fear of reprisals. They told the Observer:

The state is interfering with our Covid response in Myanmar. We procured thousands of vaccines to give to the public but the military took them all for themselves.

Forces are stopping us from providing treatment to Covid patients. A few days ago, we were notified of a Covid patient who was in respiratory distress at home. I dispatched a team to bring oxygen tanks to the patient. They were stopped on the way and asked to get out of the ambulance they were in and taken to the police station. An hour later, the patient died because of a lack of oxygen. He could have been saved had we been able to deliver oxygen and drugs.

 

 

 

Summary

 

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

· India’s version of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine is not authorised in the EU due to the possibility of “differences” with the original, Europe’s drug regulator said after the African Union yesterday criticised as “inequitable” a decision not to include Covishield, the Indian-made vaccine used by the global Covax programme, on a list of approved vaccines for a digital certificate for travellers in the bloc.

· The prime minister of Portugal, Antonio Costa, went into isolation despite being fully vaccinated, after one of his aides tested positive amid a high in a new wave of infections blamed on the Delta variant.

· India’s disaster management agency was ordered by the country’s supreme court to establish guidelines for paying compensation to bereaved relatives of those who have died from Covid.

· Bangladesh will deploy soldiers tomorrow to enforce a strict lockdown amid a record spike in coronavirus cases driven by the Delta variant first detected in India, the government said.

· The Australian home affairs minister rejected calls to reduce caps on international arrivals amid outbreaks of the Delta variant, saying “we need to learn to live” with Covid.

· France ended most capacity limits imposed in April on restaurants, cinemas, stores and other public venues, although the measures were extended in parts of the southwest over the spread of the Delta variant as the doctor who heads president Emmanuel Macron’s coronavirus advisory panel said a “fourth wave” of cases was likely this autumn.

· Vladimir Putin said for the first time that he was inoculated with Russia’s own Sputnik V vaccine as he gave a careful endorsement of the country’s floundering campaign while distancing himself from tough new measures designed to pressure more Russians into taking the jabs.

· Switzerland is to give 4m doses of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine that it has reserved to the vaccine-sharing programme Covax, the government has said with the country’s medical regulator, Swissmedic, yet to approve the shot, on grounds it has not received all necessary data from clinical trials.

· Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, fired a health ministry official who reportedly asked for a bribe in a vaccine deal, the latest graft accusation to rock the government amid investigations of its pandemic response.

· Dozens of Italian prison guards beat unarmed inmates with truncheons and fists in the aftermath of a coronavirus-related protest last year, video footage captured on surveillance shows, with fifty-two people working in the prison network facing arrest or legal action in the case this week

· A UK vaccine advisor made a significant intervention to the debate over whether to inoculate children against Covid, saying “it is not immoral to think that they may be better protected by natural immunity generated through infection than by asking them to take the possible risk of a vaccine.”

· Cases of Covid-19 are declining in North America, but in most of Latin America and the Caribbean an end to the pandemic “remains a distant future”, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) director Carissa Etienne said.

· Members of the US military who were vaccinated against Covid showed higher-than-expected rates of heart inflammation, although the condition was still extremely rare, according to a new study.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jun/30/coronavirus-live-news-thailand-suffers-record-deaths-kim-jong-un-warns-of-grave-incident-in-north-korea