Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	184,918,598	+339,288	4,000,519
USA	34,598,361	+4,405	621,335
India	30,618,939	+34,067	403,310
Brazil	18,792,511	+22,703	525,229
France	5,786,999	+796	111,197
Russia	5,635,294	+24,353	138,579
Turkey	5,449,464	+4,678	49,959
UK	4,930,534	+27,334	128,231
Argentina	4,552,750	+17,277	96,521
Colombia	4,375,861	+25,366	109,466
Italy	4,263,797	+480	127,680
Spain	3,866,475	+10,675	80,934
Germany	3,738,843	+392	91,595
Iran	3,270,843	+16,025	84,949
Poland	2,880,308	+38	75,085
Mexico	2,540,068	+2,611	233,622
Indonesia	2,313,829	+29,745	61,140
Ukraine	2,237,823	+270	52,484
South Africa	2,075,409	+12,513	62,171
Peru	2,066,677	+1,564	193,389
Netherlands	1,690,625	+1,519	17,757
Czechia	1,668,044	+105	30,312
Chile	1,572,608	+2,824	33,249
Philippines	1,441,746	+5,392	25,192
Canada	1,417,639	+670	26,368
Iraq	1,379,505	+8,030	17,345
Belgium	1,087,694	+709	25,185
Romania	1,080,979	+28	33,973
Pakistan	963,660	+1,347	22,427
Bangladesh	954,881	+9,964	15,229
Portugal	890,571	+1,483	17,117
Israel	843,465	+496	6,429
Hungary	808,262	+65	29,996
Japan	806,834	+1,488	14,848
Malaysia	785,039	+6,387	5,574
Jordan	753,776	+584	9,785
Serbia	716,983	+110	7,059
Austria	650,817	+80	10,713
Nepal	646,367	+1,745	9,248
UAE	641,049	+1,573	1,839
Lebanon	545,671	+101	7,863
Morocco	534,797	+247	9,329
Saudi Arabia	494,032	+1,247	7,891
Ecuador	462,649	+507	21,695
Tunisia	447,161	+3,530	15,482
Bolivia	444,968	+878	16,951
Kazakhstan	436,962	+3,031	4,469
Paraguay	429,884	+1,141	13,447
Greece	426,963	+801	12,722
Bulgaria	422,151	+98	18,125
Belarus	421,964	+614	3,194
Panama	408,728	+605	6,583
Slovakia	391,720	+3	12,513
Costa Rica	374,324	+690	4,726
Uruguay	373,286	+577	5,711
Georgia	369,886	+838	5,373
Kuwait	365,649	+1,977	2,029
Croatia	360,246	+9	8,219
Azerbaijan	336,479	+62	4,978
Guatemala	302,534	+522	9,498
Denmark	295,654	+337	2,537
Thailand	289,233	+6,166	2,276
Egypt	282,257	+175	16,284
Lithuania	278,910	+22	4,392
Venezuela	278,665	+1,030	3,209
Oman	276,736	+1,570	3,316
Ethiopia	276,503	+68	4,332
Ireland	274,641	+335	5,000
Honduras	267,858	+940	7,089
Bahrain	266,557	+131	1,363
Sri Lanka	266,499	+869	3,268
Slovenia	257,429	+8	4,420
Moldova	257,035	+65	6,197
Armenia	225,606	+53	4,527
Qatar	222,667	+93	593
Cuba	207,322	+3,075	1,372
Libya	195,824	+782	3,213
Kenya	186,053	+185	3,690
Myanmar	168,374	+2,969	3,461
Nigeria	167,909	+50	2,122
Zambia	165,513	+1,231	2,492
S. Korea	160,795	+711	2,028
Algeria	141,966	+495	3,765
Latvia	137,653	+22	2,528
Albania	132,537	+2	2,456
Norway	132,136	+187	794
Kyrgyzstan	132,070	+1,437	2,046
Estonia	131,207	+19	1,270
Mongolia	126,811	+1,551	629
Uzbekistan	113,072	+475	751
Montenegro	100,338	+11	1,619
Namibia	97,087	+1,384	1,662
Finland	96,569	+106	973
Ghana	96,402	+85	796
China	91,869	+22	4,636
Cyprus	78,809	+787	380
Suriname	22,465	+85	548
Vietnam	21,035	+1,102	90

 

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

 

 

 

An overnight vaccination drive in Rome reaches out to the ‘most fragile.’

By Elisabetta Povoledo

 

An overnight vaccination drive for people on the margins of society, called Open Night, in Rome on Saturday.Credit...Giuseppe Lami/EPA, via Shutterstock

Nearly 900 people tried to take advantage of an overnight vaccination drive, called Open Night, over the weekend in an inoculation effort organized by the health authorities in the Lazio region of Italy, which includes Rome.

The initiative, organized in a cloister of the Santo Spirito hospital, near the Vatican, was targeted at “people on the margins of society, the most fragile,” said Angelo Tanese, the director general of ASL Roma 1, the region’s largest local health unit.

To help draw in the crowds, a jazz pianist serenaded those present on Saturday night, while free espresso and cornetti — Italian croissants — were offered on Sunday morning.

Doctors and nurses administered the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to homeless people, undocumented migrants, foreign students and foreigners who legally work in Rome but are not registered with the national health service.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which requires only one dose — unlike the two-shot regimens made by AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech — is especially useful for inoculating people who may be harder to reach or may not return for a second dose. About 80 percent of the people at the Santo Spirito clinic were undocumented migrants, Mr. Tanese said.

As of Sunday, nearly 20 million people in Italy had been fully vaccinated — about 32 percent of the total population.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/05/world/covid-19-vaccine-coronavirus-updates/an-overnight-vaccination-drive-in-rome-reaches-out-to-the-most-fragile

 

 

 

Italian health care workers sue to block suspensions after refusing to be vaccinated

By  Gaia Pianigiani

 

A doctor receiving a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a hospital in Codogno, Italy, last year.Credit...Pool photo by Flavio Lo Scalzo

Hundreds of Italian health care workers have sued local health authorities in an attempt to avoid being suspended after they refused to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

Workers including doctors, dentists and pharmacists filed cases in courts all over northern and central Italy aiming to to block their employers from freezing shifts and denying them pay for refusing to be vaccinated, according to their lawyer, Daniele Granara.

“They believe that the vaccines do not grant enough safety and efficacy,” said Mr. Granara. “I am representing hundreds of general practitioners with 1,000 to 1,500 patients each. Will the health authorities suspend them and leave their patients with no medical assistance, or push to change the law?”

In April, Prime Minister Mario Draghi signed a decree allowing health care authorities to suspend without pay any worker who refused a vaccine, after outbreaks in hospitals and longterm care homes tied to unvaccinated staff.

A government report estimated that 2 percent of healthcare workers in Italy have not received their first shot, roughly 42,000 people out of 1.9 million professionals.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/05/world/covid-19-vaccine-coronavirus-updates/italian-health-care-workers-sue-to-block-suspensions-after-refusing-to-be-vaccinated

 

 

 

Germany removes Portugal from Covid travel ban, in a boost to its tourism industry

By Raphael Minder

 

Portugal is a popular summer tourist destination within the European Union. Visitors took in the view of Lisbon last week.Credit...Armando Franca/Associated Press

 

Portugal’s tourism industry received a boost late Monday when Germany said that it would lift a travel ban that had been recently introduced to help stop the spread of the Delta variant.

The Robert Koch Institute — Germany’s national disease control center — announced that Portugal, as well as Britain, Russia, India and Nepal, would be removed from a list of countries rated as the highest risk for travel. The change will take effect on Wednesday.

The Portuguese government had strongly criticized Germany’s earlier ban because it was the only nation on the list from the European Union. The E.U. has been trying to align its travel rules among its 27-member nations to help revive travel and tourism.

Just last week, Portugal reimposed curfews in several cities as the Delta variant surged through the country, another blow to some of its popular summer tourist destinations. The country has fully vaccinated about 37 percent of its total population, below the 47 percent in the United States, according to Our World in Data.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/05/world/covid-19-vaccine-coronavirus-updates/germany-removes-portugal-from-covid-travel-ban-in-a-boost-to-its-tourism-industry

 

 

 

England plans to lift most virus restrictions, including those for masks, on July 19

By Mark Landler and Stephen Castle

 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to let individuals decide whether to keep wearing masks in subways, buses and other confined spaces, though the transportation authorities could still require them.Credit...Henry Nicholls/Reuters

As Britain forges ahead with reopening its economy after 16 months of virus-driven restrictions, Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces a backlash over an issue that has vexed the country’s response to the pandemic from the start: whether to require people to wear face masks indoors.

In outlining his government’s plans to lift most remaining restrictions in England on July 19, Mr. Johnson said in a news conference Monday that he wanted to leave it up to people to decide whether to keep wearing masks in subways, buses and other confined spaces, though the transportation authorities could still require them.

That drew fire from local officials and scientists, who said the government was putting more vulnerable people at risk and being overly casual at a time when the virus continues to course through the population. Britain reported 27,334 new cases on Monday and 178,128 over the last week, an increase of 53 percent over the previous week.

“Wearing a mask is not to protect yourself, it is to protect others, which is why it has to be a requirement on public transport,” said David King, a former chief scientific adviser to the government who has been an outspoken critic of its approach. “That is where I don’t think they understand the problem.”

Mr. Johnson said that thanks to Britain’s widespread deployment of vaccines, the link between cases and hospital admissions had been weakened, if not broken completely. Britain, he said, must find a way to live with Covid by allowing people to use their personal judgment to manage the risks.

While cases in Britain have risen steeply in recent weeks, hospitalizations are rising more slowly, and deaths more slowly still. But hospitalizations doubled in the last week, England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said at the news conference, and admissions and deaths always lag behind case numbers. So there are lingering concerns among epidemiologists that those numbers, too, might begin to rise sharply in coming weeks.

Given how widespread the virus is, local officials and labor unions that represent transportation workers said that ending the requirement for mask wearing on public transportation would be an act of “gross negligence” on the part of the government.

A final decision will be made next week but, under the plans Mr. Johnson presented on Monday, rules requiring the wearing of masks in England would be lifted on July 19, with decisions left to individuals. Government guidance would suggest that people might do so in confined and crowded places. Travel companies and businesses would be permitted to set their own rules on masks.

Regardless, the planned relaxation would lift almost all legal Covid restrictions for England. That would allow nightclubs to reopen and remove curbs on numbers of people in theaters and cinemas and at live events. The rule limiting the numbers of those meeting inside homes to six people, or two households, would end, as would the requirement that pubs only serve people who are seated.

Customers would no longer be required to leave their contact details when entering pubs and restaurants, the current one-meter distancing rule would be scrapped and the government’s appeal to people to work from home would end. The gap between vaccination shots for those 40 and younger would be shortened to eight weeks, allowing the rollout of vaccines to be stepped up.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are working on separate, though similar timelines to also fully reopen the economy in their regions.

Britain also received a boost on Monday from Germany, which announced that it was lifting a ban on entry for British travelers who were not German residents or citizens. The ban had lasted for six weeks, as Germany tried to keep a lid on the highly contagious Delta virus variant. Now all British travelers can avoid quarantine if they can prove that they are fully vaccinated, or have recovered from Covid-19.

Germany is also removing Portugal, Russia, India and Nepal from its list of “virus variant areas.”

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/05/world/covid-19-vaccine-coronavirus-updates/england-covid-reopen

 

 

 

As masks become optional, they also become a symbol of class and inequality

By Jacob Bernstein

 

An employee wearing a mask at a restaurant in New York last month while patrons were free to go without face coverings..Credit...Sara Messinger for The New York Times

In the weeks since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its mask guidelines to allow fully vaccinated people to take their masks off in most indoor settings, a stark divide has emerged, particularly in wealthier enclaves where services are at a premium.

Those still wearing masks tend to be members of the service class — store clerks, waiters, janitors, manicurists, security guards, receptionists, hair stylists and drivers — while those without face coverings are often the well-to-do customers being wined and dined.

Employers are hesitant to discuss their mask policies, but there are sensible reasons for requiring staffers to keep their masks on.

Just under 50 percent of people in the United States are fully vaccinated. And coronavirus variants, some of which are highly infectious and may be more resistant to vaccines, are on the rise, said Dr. Lisa Maragakis, an epidemiologist and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Food servers, retail clerks, grocery cashiers and other public-facing workers interact all day with customers, which can put their health (and the health of their customers) at risk. This creates not only potential liability issues for employers, but also could hamstring a business at a time of worker shortages.

Even at establishments that give vaccinated employees the choice to take their masks off, many are keeping them on. “Who knows who has had their shot and who hasn’t,” said Michelle Booker, a store clerk from the Bronx who works at a Verizon store in Midtown Manhattan.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/04/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-mask/as-masks-become-optional-they-also-become-a-symbol-of-class-and-inequality

 

 

 

Australia denies using ‘plants’ to undermine China’s Covid vaccine rollout in Pacific

By Daniel Hurst 

 

Health workers administer Covid vaccines in Papua New Guinea in March. China has accused the Australian government of working to delay the authorisation of the emergency use of Chinese vaccines in PNG. Photograph: Kalolaine Fainu/The Guardian

The Australian government has denied undermining China’s plan to roll out Covid vaccines to Pacific countries after Beijing lashed Canberra’s purported “callous” and “irresponsible behaviour”.

The allegation, first aired in Chinese state-controlled media and then amplified by the foreign ministry in Beijing, was “absolutely not” true, the Australian government said on Tuesday.

The spat is the latest flashpoint in the deteriorating relationship between China and Australia amid intense competition for influence in the Pacific region.

The Global Times, a Chinese state-run newspaper, said it had “learned exclusively from sources that Australia has been racking its brain to undermine China’s vaccine cooperation with Pacific Island countries” and had “planted several ‘consultants’ in the national epidemic prevention center in Papua New Guinea”.

The paper accused Australia of “working in the shadows” to delay the authorisation of the emergency use of Chinese vaccines in PNG and of “threatening senior officials from welcoming Chinese vaccines”.

The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, called on the Australian government to “stop disrupting and undermining vaccine cooperation between China and Pacific island countries”.

“Those in Australia who take advantage of vaccine issues to engage in political manipulation and bullying coercion are being callous to the life and health of the people in PNG,” Wang told reporters on Monday, in response to a question from CCTV, another state-controlled broadcaster.

But the Australian minister for international development and the Pacific, Zed Seselja, told the ABC the claim Canberra was interfering was “absolutely not the case” and “rejected by the Australian government”.

“My message to people who may have read that, or other articles, would simply be to look at Australia’s record during this period, and over a long period of time, of providing high-quality healthcare support and providing vaccine support,” Seselja said.

Seselja arrived in PNG on Sunday for a trip aimed at strengthening “cooperation on health security and infrastructure”. He met with the prime minister, James Marape, in Port Moresby on Monday.

In an interview with the ABC’s PNG correspondent, Natalie Whiting, Seselja said the Australian government was “fulfilling our moral and economic responsibility” to the region.

“We come to these issues in good faith, and we’ll continue to do things that are in the interests of our region and in the interest of our friends and neighbours, most particularly PNG,” Seselja said.

The Australian government announced on Tuesday it was planning to allocate up to 15m doses of Covid-19 vaccines to the Pacific and Timor-Leste, saying it would help “our closest partners” to “achieve comprehensive vaccine coverage”.

The allocation comes from the 20m doses that Scott Morrison pledged to the broader Indo-Pacific region when he attended the G7 summit last month, although the deadline for delivery is mid-2022.

“Australia has already shared more than half a million vaccine doses with our Pacific and Timor-Leste partners since March,” Seselja and the foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, said in a statement.

Marape said in March PNG was also “working closely with the Chinese government” and “once the vaccines from China are cleared by the medical board then we will bring that in as well”.

Australian government officials have previously raised concerns that China’s vaccine diplomacy could come with “strings attached”, saying it “wouldn’t be surprising if there were conditions attached in some instances”.

But Wang hit back at that idea on Monday, saying China was doing its utmost “to help developing countries save more innocent lives”. “We have no geopolitical agenda and attach no political strings,” he said.

The latest dispute is part of a broader rift between China and Australia over diplomatic, trade and security issues.

Beijing announced last month that it was launching a formal challenge against Australian tariffs on several Chinese products.

That follows Australia’s own twin challenges at the World Trade Organization against Beijing’s imposition of tariffs on Australian barley and wine.

China has blocked ministerial-level talks for at least the past year, amid a souring of the relationship over a range of issues including Australia’s early public calls for an international investigation into the origins of the coronavirus and its criticism of China over the crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong and human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/06/australia-denies-using-plants-to-undermine-chinas-covid-vaccine-rollout-in-pacific