#	Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
	World	8,251,224	+142,557	445,188
1	USA	2,208,400	+25,450	119,132
2	Brazil	928,834	+37,278	45,456
3	Russia	545,458	+8,248	7,284
4	India	354,161	+11,135	11,921
5	UK	298,136	+1,279	41,969
6	Spain	291,408	+219	27,136
7	Italy	237,500	+210	34,405
8	Peru	237,156	+4,164	7,056
9	Iran	192,439	+2,563	9,065
10	Germany	188,382	+338	8,910
11	Chile	184,449	+5,013	3,383
12	Turkey	181,298	+1,467	4,842
13	France	157,716	+344	29,547
14	Mexico	150,264	+3,427	17,580
15	Pakistan	148,921	+4,443	2,839
16	Saudi Arabia	136,315	+4,267	1,052
17	Canada	99,467	+320	8,213
18	Bangladesh	94,481	+3,862	1,262
19	China	83,221	+40	4,634
20	Qatar	82,077	+1,201	80
21	South Africa	76,334	+2,801	1,625
22	Belgium	60,155	+55	9,663
23	Belarus	55,369	+689	318
24	Colombia	54,931	+1,868	1,801
25	Sweden	53,323	+940	4,939
26	Netherlands	49,087	+139	6,070
27	Ecuador	47,943	+621	3,970
28	Egypt	47,856	+1,567	1,766
29	UAE	42,982	+346	293
30	Singapore	40,969	+151	26
31	Indonesia	40,400	+1,106	2,231
32	Portugal	37,336	+300	1,522
33	Kuwait	36,958	+527	303
34	Argentina	34,159	+1,374	878
35	Ukraine	32,476	+666	912
36	Switzerland	31,154	+23	1,954
37	Poland	30,195	+407	1,272
38	Philippines	26,781	+361	1,103
39	Afghanistan	26,310	+783	491
40	Ireland	25,334	+13	1,709
41	Oman	25,269	+745	114
42	Dominican Republic	23,686	+415	615
43	Iraq	22,700	+1,385	712
44	Romania	22,415	+250	1,437
45	Panama	21,962	+540	457
46	Bahrain	19,553	+540	47
47	Israel	19,495	+258	302
48	Bolivia	19,073	+614	632
49	Japan	17,587	+85	927
50	Armenia	17,489	+425	293
51	Austria	17,189	+54	681
52	Nigeria	17,148	+490	455
53	Kazakhstan	15,192	+383	88
54	Serbia	12,426	+59	256
55	Moldova	12,254	+375	423
56	Denmark	12,250	+33	598
57	Ghana	12,193	+229	58
58	S. Korea	12,155	+34	278
59	Algeria	11,147	+116	788
60	Azerbaijan	10,662	+338	126

 

Source：https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

 

 

An outbreak in Beijing brings a new round of restrictions.

 

Mass cancellations of flights. Abrupt farewells among students whose classes have been called off. Frustration about work and food in sealed-off neighborhoods. And unnerving uncertainty about plans for exams, work, vacation and travel.

With a fresh outbreak of coronavirus infections tied to a market — 137 cases after an additional 31 were reported on Wednesday — Beijing has started living through a milder, and so far limited, version of the disruptive restrictions that China enforced earlier this year to stifle its first tidal wave of infections. Residents in the capital have been sharply reminded that even in China — with its array of authoritarian powers — the coronavirus can leap back to life, triggering new rounds of limits on their lives.

The new outbreak of the coronavirus in Beijing has brought embarrassment and a tough response from the Chinese Communist Party. Officials had been proud to the point of gloating in recent weeks about their success in stifling the pandemic in the country. Now the virus is back.

The Communist Party officials in charge of the city, including the party secretary, Cai Qi, sounded slightly penitent in a meeting on Tuesday.

“This group outbreak at the city’s Xinfadi market has already spread to multiple districts of the city and led to associated cases outside the city,”read an official summary of the meeting in The Beijing Daily. “The lessons run very deep, the situation for epidemic control is very grim, and this has sounded a warning to us.”

So far, the scale of the infections in Beijing, and the ensuing controls, is far from the levels that gripped Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the virus first slipped out of control late last year. Most Beijing streets flowed with traffic on Wednesday, though less than usual. Restaurants were still open for business, though the government has ordered them to disinfect and to check employees.

But the flight cancellations from Beijing airports — about 60 percent, or more than 1,200 flights — and other signs of disruption have underscored how easily even a limited flare-up can ripple across society. The bulk of the flights in and out of the city were canceled, and so were many trains.

The flight cancellations were triggered by passengers pulling out of travel because of worry over infections or fear of being caught up in quarantine, Chinese news reports said. Zhao Gang, a Chinese businessman, said the cancellations illustrated how plans — like studying abroad — could be thrown into doubt by sudden restrictions because of the coronavirus.

“Maybe you’re all set to go, but before departure some sudden incident indefinitely delays the flight. What can you do?,” the businessman and aviation writer said in a video comment online. “These flip-flopping hassles.”

 

 

Elsewhere around the globe:

• Olena Zelenska, the wife of the president of Ukraine, has been hospitalized after testing positive last week, officials in Kyiv said on Tuesday. Ms. Zelenska has pneumonia in both lungs “of moderate severity” and is not in need of oxygen support, the office of President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement.

• Public health officials are flagging coronavirus outbreaks cropping up in several border regions, particularly the one between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Many Haitians live and work in the Dominican Republic, but after the outbreak there, thousands lost their jobs and moved back to Haiti. Some may have brought the virus with them.

• After declaring the pandemic eradicated last week, the New Zealand authorities on Tuesday confirmed two new cases in travelers who had returned from Britain, ending the country’s 24-day streak without new infections. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called the development “unacceptable” and said the military would now oversee quarantine facilities and strengthen border requirements.

• The Eiffel Tower announced that it would reopen June 25 after being shut for three months — its longest closure since World War II — and that visitors would have to take the stairs at first, and wear masks if they are over 11 years old.

• Hong Kong will relax some social-distancing restrictions on Thursday, allowing wedding banquets and live music to resume and lifting the limit on public gatherings to 50 people from eight, the city’s secretary of health said on Tuesday.

• Canada and the United States will keep their border closed to nonessential travel until July 21, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday. Mr. Trudeau, whose long, moppish hair has become an object of fascination and escape for Canadians during the pandemic, showed off his post-quarantine haircut on Tuesday.

• Kenya is investigating the attempted theft of personal protective equipment donated by the Chinese government, including masks, gowns, thermometers and protective suits. After the equipment arrived in Nairobi, fraudsters working with government officials and Chinese businessmen hatched an unsuccessful plot to steal the donations, the authorities said.

•  
•  

Most coronavirus tests cost about $100, so why did one cost $2,315?

 

Medical personnel performing antibody testing in Queens in May.Credit...Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

A laboratory in suburban Dallas has run some of the most expensive coronavirus tests in America.

Insurers have paid Gibson Diagnostic Labs as much as $2,315 for individual coronavirus tests. In a couple of cases, the price rose as high as $6,946 when the lab said it mistakenly charged patients three times the base rate.

The company has no special or different technology from, say, major diagnostic labs that charge $100. It is one of a small number of medical labs, hospitals and emergency rooms taking advantage of the way Congress has designed compensation for coronavirus tests and treatment.

“We’ve seen a small number of laboratories that are charging egregious prices for Covid-19 tests,” said Angie Meoli, a senior vice president at Aetna, one of the insurers required to cover testing costs.

How can a simple coronavirus test cost $100 in one lab and 2,200 percent more in another? It comes back to a fundamental fact about the American health care system: The government does not regulate health care prices.

This tends to have two major outcomes that health policy experts have seen before, and are seeing again with coronavirus testing: high prices over all, and huge price variation, as each doctor’s office and hospital sets its own charges.

Patients are, in the short run, somewhat protected from big virus testing bills. The federal government set aside $1 billion to pick up the tab for uninsured Americans who get tested. For the insured, federal laws require that health plans cover the full costs of coronavirus testing without applying a deductible or co-payment.

But American patients will eventually bear the costs of these expensive tests in the form of higher insurance premiums.

In a statement last week, Gibson said the $2,315 price was the result of “human error.” The company also said that it had recently reversed a few of its $2,315 charges and, after an inquiry from The New York Times, would reverse the rest of those bills within 24 hours.

 

 

You want to see President Putin? Right this way to the ‘disinfectant tunnel.’

 

President Vladimir V. Putin has been governing his country from his country estate.Credit...Sputnik/Via Reuters

Keep your hydroxychloroquine, President Trump. Vladimir V. Putin has found an even more unorthodox way to fight off the coronavirus: a “disinfectant tunnel.”

Visitors coming to see the Russian president at the country retreat where he is sheltering must first pass through the tunnel and be sprayed with a fine mist of a chemical agent intended to kill pathogens.

The Russian-made device had been installed at the home outside Moscow, Novo-Ogaryovo, RIA Novosti, a state-controlled news agency, reported. The news agency posted a video of a man in a suit walking through a demonstration model of the tunnel.

Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, who recently returned to work after recovering from Covid-19, has said that anyone meeting the president in person is tested beforehand for the virus.

Like Mr. Trump, who says he has taken the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to try to ward of infection, Mr. Putin has eschewed wearing a mask during what have become extremely rare public appearances. But he nonetheless seems spooked by the virus.

For the past two months, he has stayed away from the Kremlin in the center of Moscow, the epicenter of the pandemic in Russia. He has instead governed the country via videoconference from a drab and apparently windowless room — dubbed “the bunker” by Russian journalists — at his country residence.

Physically, the Russian president appears to be in good health. Politically, it is another matter: His approval ratings have slumped to 59 percent, the lowest since he came to power 20 years ago.

 

 

People are still avoiding the doctor, and not just because they fear contagion.

 

While hospitals and doctors across the country say many patients are still shunning their services out of fear of the virus — especially with new cases spiking — Americans who lost their jobs or have a significant drop in income during the pandemic are now citing costs as the overriding reason they do not seek the health care they need.

“We are seeing the financial pressure hit,” said Dr. Bijoy Telivala, a cancer specialist in Jacksonville, Fla. “This is a real worry.”

Nearly half of all Americans say they or someone they live with has delayed care since the onslaught of the virus, according to a survey last month from the Kaiser Family Foundation. While most of those individuals expected to receive care within the next three months, about a third said they planned to wait longer or not seek it at all.

While the survey didn’t ask people why they were putting off care, there is ample evidence that medical bills can be a powerful deterrent. “We know historically we have always seen large shares of people who have put off care for cost reasons,” said Liz Hamel, the director of public opinion and survey research at Kaiser.

And, just as the Great Recession led people to seek less hospital care, the current downturn is likely to have a significant impact, said Sara Collins, an executive at the Commonwealth Fund, who studies access to care. “This is a major economic recession,” she said. “It’s going to have an effect on people’s demand for health care.”

 

 

Mexico, citing safety concerns, says it won’t send workers to some Canadian farms.

 

Credit...Shannon Vanraes/Reuters

Mexico will stop sending temporary workers to Canadian farms that have been hit by the virus and do not have proper worker protections, the Mexican labor ministry said on Tuesday.

Canada depends heavily on migrant laborers to plant and harvest its crops, now Mexican workers planning to travel to farms that had corona outbreaks or do “not have a strategy of prevention and care for workers” will be reassigned, the ministry said.

The decision, reported by Reuters, came after outbreaks hit at least 17 farms in Ontario, killing two Mexican workers.

Canadian farmers bring in about 60,000 short-term foreign workers, predominantly from Latin America and the Caribbean. This year, Mexico’s Temporary Agricultural Workers Program has sent more than 16,000 people on short-term contracts to Canada, including 10,600 people since the pandemic began, the labor ministry said.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said he had expressed condolences to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico. “We are going to make sure that we’re following up,” Mr. Trudeau said.

 

 

Britain has backtracked on a plan to stop giving out school meals over the summer.

 

Staff at Waddesdon Manor prepare hot free school lunches for disadvantaged children in Buckinghamshire, Britain, in April. The country will continue to provide food to low-income families over the summer school break.Credit...Andy Rain/EPA, via Shutterstock

Bowing to public pressure, Britain has agreed to keep providing food aid to low-income families over the summer school break.

When Britain went into lockdown in March, many families that depend on school meals to help keep their children fed — more than a million a year — were suddenly in trouble.

The government set up a nationwide program to keep getting food to the children, but last week announced that it would not be extended through the summer.

The decision was greeted with off outrage. Among those denouncing it was the soccer superstar Marcus Rashford, who urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s conservative government to reverse course.

Mr. Rashford, a striker for Manchester United, was raised by a single mother and relied on free school meals and food provided by his club when he was younger. He pleaded with members of Parliament to “protect the vulnerable.”

According to estimates by the Food Foundation, a British think tank, 200,000 children have had to skip meals during the pandemic because their parents couldn’t afford enough food.

On Tuesday, the prime minister announced a £120 million — $152 million — “Covid summer food fund” that will provide families £15 vouchers once a week for the six-week summer break.

“Brilliant news!” the Food Foundation declared.

 

 

Trump’s rally on Saturday could cause a huge spike, Tulsa officials fear.

 

 

President Donald Trump delivers remarks and signs an Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities in the Rose Garden of the White House on Tuesday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Officials in Tulsa, Okla., are warning that Mr. Trump’s planned campaign rally on Saturday — his first in over three months — is likely to worsen an already troubling spike in infections and could become a disastrous “super spreader.”

They are pleading with the Trump campaign to cancel the event, slated for the BOK Center, a 20,000-person indoor arena — or at least move it outdoors.

“It’s the perfect storm of potential over-the-top disease transmission,” said the Tulsa health department’s executive director. “It’s a perfect storm that we can’t afford to have.”

Tulsa County, which includes the city of Tulsa, tallied 89 new cases on Monday, its one-day high, according to local officials. The number of active cases climbed from 188 to 532 in a one-week period, a 182-percent increase; hospitalizations with Covid-19 almost doubled.

The Trump campaign, which has required attendees to agree not to sue should they contract the virus at the rally, said Monday that it would take body temperatures and distribute masks and hand sanitizer. Those requirements may not be sufficient to stop the virus’s spread.

On Tuesday, four plaintiffs sued ASM Global, which manages events at the BOK Center, labeling the rally a public nuisance and seeking an injunction that would require it to enforce the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for large gatherings.

 

 

As cases rise in some areas, others that have seen decreases forge ahead with reopening plans.

 

 

People practice social distancing while relaxing in Millennium Park in Chicago on Tuesday. The park, which had been closed to visitors to help curtail the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19, partially reopened, with restrictions, to the public today.Credit...Scott Olson/Getty Images

Reports of new cases continue to decrease across much of the Midwest and Northeast, leading officials there to forge ahead with reopening, even as other regions see troubling surges.

Outdoor sports and popular recreation sites are reopening in New Jersey and Chicago, areas previously overwhelmed. In Chicago, bars and breweries will also start to reopen, as well as the popular trail along Lake Michigan.

“We still have a long way to go before life fully returns to normal,” the Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, said.

Kwame Raoul, the Illinois attorney general, said Tuesday that he had tested positive, with mild symptoms. Reports of new cases have been trending downward in Illinois in recent weeks, but hundreds of additional infections are still being identified daily. Illinois has more cases per capita than any state not on the East Coast.

While officials are enthusiastic about moving forward, some states that were among the first to ease restrictions are now seeing spikes, including Texas and Arizona.

Nearly half of the known cases in Maricopa County, Ariz., have been reported since the start of June. At least 300 new cases have been identified in Dallas County, Texas, on each of the last six days, and the Houston area has also seen a sharp increase. Elsewhere in the U.S.:

• Virus cases in jails and prisons are on the rise, with the five largest known clusters of the virus inside correctional facilities. The number of inmates known to be infected across the country has doubled during the past month, to more than 68,000. The swift growth in cases behind bars comes as demonstrators arrested during large protests against police brutality in recent weeks have often been placed in crowded holding cells in local jails.

• As the U.S. meat industry lobbied to keep operating during the pandemic or risk major meat shortages across American grocery stores, the industry sent a record amount of pork to China, a country vital to its growth.

• In Nebraska, the governor said restrictions on businesses would be eased next week, and officials have plans to safely reopen long-term care facilities, which have been hot zones. The number of cases and hospitalizations has gone down in recent weeks across the state.

• Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, said on Monday that her father had died from complications of the virus.

 

 

Business owners and some government officials face anger and threats over face mask requirements.

 

People enjoy the beach amid the coronavirus pandemic in Huntington Beach, California on Sunday.Credit...Apu Gomes/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

When Dr. Nichole Quick, the health officer in Orange County, Calif., issued an order requiring all residents to wear masks when in public last month, the backlash was swift — and personal.

Angry speakers flooded a public meeting calling for her firing. Protesters defaced her photo, comparing her to Hitler. The situation got so heated, local officials said, that she was placed under police protection.

By last week, Dr. Quick had resigned as county health officer, and county officials had reversed the order, making face coverings optional in the county of 3 million, where new reported cases and hospitalizations have trended slightly upward. The county has a total of nearly 9,000 cases so far, the fourth most in the state, and new reported cases are also rising overall in California.

The abrupt turnaround is perhaps one of the most pronounced examples of the backlash facing officials who promote face mask requirements, as face masks increasingly become a flash point. Support for face masks has often fallen along partisan lines, despite federal health recommendations and recent research that suggest that face masks could be critical to stopping the spread of the virus. Mr. Trump has largely declined to wear a mask in public.

Officials and business owners alike have faced pushback. In the Houston area, the county judge was sued over an order requiring face masks. Costco faced threats of boycotts over a similar requirement for its stores. And in Stillwater, Okla., north of Oklahoma City, an order requiring residents to wear face masks inside stores and restaurants was quickly rescinded last month, after an uprising among customers.

 

 

Source：https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/world/coronavirus-live-updates.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-coronavirus-national&variant=show®ion=TOP_BANNER&context=storylines_menu

 

 

 

Even if Europe wanted to break away from China post-Covid, it couldn't

Analysis from CNN's Luke McGee

 

 

This aerial photo taken on June 16, 2020 shows trucks at a logistics center in Nantong, in China's eastern Jiangsu province. AFP/Getty Images

The pandemic has kick-started a difficult global conversation about whether Western liberal democracies should radically rethink their relationships with China, an authoritarian regime upon whom many of these nations' economies rely.

This has been especially confronting for the European Union, which has spent the past few years actively seeking greater engagement and cooperation with Beijing, with the ultimate goal of smoother two-way investment and access to one another's considerable markets. 

At a glance, an EU-China reset looks simple enough.

Despite the bloc's move towards China, the transatlantic relationship is the cornerstone of the United States-led Western order. A European pause on the current talks with China to take stock of what's happened and what European priorities might be post-Covid, while economically costly, could be wise. It would also be welcome and popular in Washington.

However, China's actions since the pandemic began have not led to the conclusion in Brussels that now is the time for Europe to go cold on China.

 

 

Thai pilot, grounded by Covid-19, shifts to motorbike food deliveries

From CNN's Kocha Olarn in Bangkok

 

Co-pilot Nakarin Inta is delivering food until he gets back into the sky. CNN

With the Covid-19 pandemic halting many of the world's commercial airline flights, some in the aviation industry have had to find alternative ways to earn an income while grounded. 

Pilots are no exception. 

In Thailand, where domestic tourism is only just starting to pick up this month following an easing in lockdown restrictions, some aviators have shifted from the skies to the roads, taking on jobs delivering food by motorbike or as drivers for car-hailing apps. 

These include co-pilot Nakarin Inta, who has been a commercial pilot for about four years. He's now delivering orders for Line Man, a local messenger app.

"Some (airline staff) have been on leave without pay," he tells CNN Travel. "And for most of us the income has been cut off more than 70%. I still have expenses every month so I had to find something on my own."

And he's not alone. With multiple airlines reducing flights to the bare minimum, Inta says he knows of more than 50 Thai pilots -- including some personal friends -- now working either as food delivery men, ride-hailing app drivers or food vendors while waiting to resume their regular jobs. 

Some are even using their luxury vehicles for their part-time job, such as BMW motorbikes and sedans, says Inta.

"I think everybody (was impacted) by Covid-19, everyone in the world, but look at the one beside you, your loved ones. You have to fight for them and fight for yourself," says the pilot.

 

 

British health minister says new study on steroid drug is "brilliant news"

From CNN's Stephanie Halasz

 

 

Dexamethasone may be key in helping to treat the sickest Covid-19 patients who require ventilation or oxygen, according to researchers. John Phillips/Getty Images

New research on the commonly used steroid drug dexamethasone in helping to treat the sickest Covid-19 patients is “brilliant news for everybody,” but is not a cure, UK Health Minister Matt Hancock said on Sky News today.

“This is really really good progress, it is one of the best pieces of news we have had through this whole crisis,” Hancock said.

The findings are preliminary, still being compiled and have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal -- but some not involved with the study called the results a breakthrough.

Researchers announced that a low-dose regimen of dexamethasone for 10 days was found to reduce the risk of death by a third among hospitalized patients requiring ventilation in the trial.

 

 

Beijing cancels nearly 70% of incoming and outbound commercial flights amid new outbreak

From CNN's Shawn Deng in Beijing and Mohammed Tawfeeq in Atlanta 

 

People wearing face masks walk at Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing. Zhang Yun/China News Service/Getty Images

Beijing has canceled 1,255 inbound and outbound flights from two major airports in the city, following an increase in coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper.

The report said nearly 70% of the flights from Beijing Capital International Airport and Beijing Daxing International Airport have been canceled.

On Tuesday, Beijing raised its alert level from Level 3 to Level 2 -- the highest alert being Level 1.

Authorities imposed a soft lockdown on the entire city after the Chinese capital reported more than 100 new locally transmitted coronavirus cases in the past five days.

The city reported 31 new confirmed coronavirus cases today, according to Beijing authorities.  

This bring the total cases in the past five days since the start of the cluster to 137.

 

 

California inmates with 180 days or fewer remaining may be released due to Covid-19

From CNN's Sarah Moon

 

 

In this 2011 file photo, barbed wire marks the perimeter of a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation facility in Tracy, California. Noah Berger/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Certain California inmates who have 180 days or fewer to serve on their sentences will be released to help protect staff and other prisoners from the spread of the coronavirus, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced Tuesday. 

Eligible inmates under CDCR’s new community supervision plan, which is scheduled to begin on July 1, include those who are not currently serving time for domestic violence, a violent or serious crime, or a person required to register as a sex offender, according to a news release from the department.

The inmate must also have housing plans identified before participating in the program and will remain under close supervision for the duration of their sentence, up to 180 days, the news release states.

After serving the remainder of their time at home, “they will remain on state parole supervision, transfer to county post-release community supervision, or discharge from their sentence, depending on their post-release requirements.” 

The news release also notes that inmates participating in the community supervision program can be remanded back to state prison for any reason to serve the remainder of their sentence.

CDCR has reduced the inmate population by more than 8,000 since mid-March through the suspension of county jail intake and expediting parole of approximately 3,500 inmates in April, according to the news release.

 

Source：https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-06-17-20-intl/index.html

 

 

 

Summary

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

• Deaths worldwide are nearing 445,000. According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, which relies on official government data, the global coronavirus death toll stands at 443,685. There are 8,174,009 known infections.

• Beijing raised its emergency level as dozens of new coronavirus cases emerged and residents were barred from any “unessential” travel. Hundreds of flights were cancelled, schools suspended and all residential compounds ordered to reinstate strict screening after authorities raised the city’s four-tiered covid emergency response system from three to two on Tuesday evening. All movement in and out of the city will be “strictly controlled”, officials said at the briefing. Authorities reported 31 new cases of the virus in Beijing as of Tuesday, bringing the total number of infections to 137 over the past six days.

• Six US states saw record case increases. New coronavirus infections hit record highs in six US states on Tuesday. Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas all reported record increases in new cases on Tuesday after recording all-time highs last week. Nevada also reported its highest single-day tally of new cases on Tuesday, up from a previous high on 23 May. Hospitalisations are also rising or at record highs. Health officials in many states attribute the spike to businesses reopening and Memorial Day weekend gatherings in late May.

• New Zealand put quarantine in the hands of the military after border fiasco. The New Zealand government has so far identified 320 close contacts of the two women, who were not tested before they were released on compassionate grounds. Ardern said she would not be replacing Minister of Health David Clark. She has, however, called in the military to oversee the quarantine and isolation process, under the leadership of Assistant Chief of Defense Air Commodore Digby Webb.

• The UK began talks with Australia and New Zealand on free trade deal. Australia and New Zealand are about to begin negotiations on a free trade agreement with the UK in what the Australian trade minister said was “a strong signal of our mutual support for free trade” in a post-Covid-19 world.

• Japanese researchers confirmed coronavirus testing in sewers as possible outbreak warning system. The researchers confirmed the presence of the coronavirus in wastewater plants, a finding that could serve as a signal for future outbreaks. The findings mirror similar studies in Australia, the US, and Europe. Public health experts say such sampling could be used to estimate the number of infected people in a region without testing every individual.

• India coronavirus death toll saw a record jump of 2,000. India’s official coronavirus death toll leaped by more than 2,000 to reach 11,903 on Wednesday. Mumbai revised its toll up by 862 to 3,165 because of unspecified accounting “discrepancies” while New Delhi saw a record jump of more than 400 deaths, taking its total to more than 1,800. It was not immediately clear how many of the deaths had occurred in the past 24 hours and how many were from adjustments over a longer period.

• Mexico recorded its 3rd highest daily death numbers. Mexico’s 730 deaths are its third-highest one-day total, AP reports.Even as Mexico announced plans for reopening churches and religious events, the country posted near-record numbers of newly confirmed cases and deaths from Covid-19 on Tuesday. The Health Department reported that confirmed cases rose by 4,599, the second-highest daily increase to date, to reach an accumulated total of 154,863. Deaths rose by 730, the third-highest daily confirmation number, after one-day increases of 1,092 and 816 earlier this month. Those death tolls rivaled those of the United States.

• Brazil suffered a record increase in cases. Brazil has had its worst day for new confirmed cases, recording 34,918 in 24 hours to bring its overall total to 923,189 total infections.The health ministry said the country has also suffered 1,282 deaths since the last update on Monday, bringing the number of confirmed fatalities there to 45,241.In nominal terms, Brazil is the second-worst hit country in the world in both respects.

• Around 9% of Guinea-Bissau health workers have been infected with Covid-19. More than 170 of Guinea-Bissau’s 2,000 health workers have contracted Covid-19, a World Health Organization expert said on Tuesday, warning that hospitals were close to being overwhelmed. The tiny West African nation’s under-equipped healthcare system has been struggling to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has infected over 1,400 people and killed 15. Health authorities have raised the alarm over a lack of oxygen to treat patients.

• A steroid was found to help prevent the deaths of the sickest coronavirus patients. A cheap steroid has become the first life-saving treatment in the Covid-19 pandemic, described by scientists as “a major breakthrough” and raising hopes for the survival of thousands of the most seriously ill.

•  

Source：https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/jun/17/coronavirus-live-news-brazil-adds-record-35000-covid-19-cases-as-infections-surge-in-six-us-states-latest-updates