#	Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
	World	19,246,679	+280,917	716,745
1	USA	5,032,179	+58,611	162,804
2	Brazil	2,917,562	+54,801	98,644
3	India	2,025,409	+62,170	41,638
4	Russia	871,894	+5,267	14,606
5	South Africa	538,184	+8,307	9,604
6	Mexico	456,100	+6,139	49,698
7	Peru	455,409	+7,785	20,424
8	Chile	366,671	+1,948	9,889
9	Colombia	357,710	+11,996	11,939
10	Spain	354,530	+1,683	28,500
11	Iran	320,117	+2,634	17,976
12	UK	308,134	+950	46,413
13	Saudi Arabia	284,226	+1,402	3,055
14	Pakistan	281,863	+727	6,035
15	Bangladesh	249,651	+2,977	3,306
16	Italy	249,204	+401	35,187
17	Turkey	237,265	+1,153	5,798
18	Argentina	228,195	+7,513	4,251
19	Germany	215,210	+1,106	9,252
20	France	195,633	+1,604	30,312
21	Iraq	140,603	+3,047	5,161
22	Philippines	119,375	+3,476	2,144
23	Indonesia	118,753	+1,882	5,521
24	Canada	118,561	+374	8,966
25	Qatar	112,092	+287	178
26	Kazakhstan	95,942	+1,060	1,058
27	Egypt	95,006	+131	4,951
28	Ecuador	90,537	+1,671	5,877
29	Bolivia	85,141	+1,780	3,385
30	China	84,528	+37	4,634
31	Sweden	81,967	+63	5,766
32	Oman	80,713	+427	492
33	Israel	79,559	+1,640	576
34	Ukraine	76,808	+1,318	1,819
35	Dominican Republic	76,536	+876	1,246
36	Panama	71,418	+1,187	1,574
37	Belgium	71,158	+510	9,859
38	Kuwait	70,045	+620	469
39	Belarus	68,503	+127	580
40	UAE	61,845	+239	354
41	Romania	57,895	+1,345	2,566
42	Netherlands	56,982	+601	6,153
43	Singapore	54,555	+301	27
44	Guatemala	54,339	+830	2,119
45	Portugal	52,061	+213	1,743
46	Poland	49,515	+726	1,774
47	Nigeria	45,244	+354	930
48	Honduras	45,098	+799	1,423
49	Bahrain	42,889	+375	156
50	Japan	42,263	+1,134	1,026
51	Armenia	39,819	+233	772
52	Ghana	39,642	+567	199
53	Kyrgyzstan	38,659	+549	1,447
54	Afghanistan	36,896	+67	1,298
55	Switzerland	36,108	+181	1,985
56	Algeria	33,626	+571	1,273
57	Azerbaijan	33,247	+144	479
58	Morocco	29,644	+1,144	449
59	Uzbekistan	28,315	+522	175
60	Serbia	27,332	+299	621
61	Moldova	26,628	+406	828
62	Ireland	26,372	+69	1,768
63	Kenya	24,411	+538	399
64	Venezuela	23,280	+981	202
65	Nepal	21,750	+360	65
66	Austria	21,696	+130	719
67	Costa Rica	21,070	+653	200
68	Ethiopia	20,900	+564	365
69	Australia	19,862	+418	255
70	El Salvador	19,126	+425	513
71	Czechia	17,731	+202	390
72	Cameroon	17,718		391
73	Ivory Coast	16,447	+98	103
74	S. Korea	14,499	+43	302
75	Denmark	14,306	+121	617
76	Palestine	13,398	+333	92
77	Bosnia and Herzegovina	13,396	+258	384
78	Bulgaria	13,014	+297	435
79	Madagascar	12,526	+304	134
80	Sudan	11,780		763

 

 

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

 

 

 

Africa reaches one million confirmed cases, although the true toll may be higher.

 

The funeral for Duduzile Margaret Mbonane, a nurse who died of Covid-19, in Thokoza, South Africa, last month. More than half the confirmed cases in Africa have been reported in South Africa.Credit...Themba Hadebe/Associated Press

Africa has passed the milestone of one million confirmed cases of the virus, despite efforts by many governments to keep people at home at great cost to their livelihoods. The continent has reported at least 22,000 deaths.

The spread of the virus has happened more slowly than some experts anticipated, although most African countries have low levels of testing. They have relatively few deaths, too, according to the official numbers, something often attributed to their large numbers of young people.

“It took Africa nearly five months to hit 500,000 Covid-19 cases, but about a month to double that number,” said Patrick Youssef, the regional director for Africa of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in a statement.

 

Governments locked down early, but quickly realized that people did not have enough money to stay home and that if they did not ease restrictions, millions would suffer.

The actual one million caseload may have been reached on the continent weeks or even months ago, hidden by extremely low rates of testing for the virus. More than half the confirmed cases are in South Africa, the African country hit hardest by far, and one that has done comparatively extensive testing.

Dr. Caroline Tatua, a senior health coordinator with the International Rescue Committee, said the lack of testing — and therefore reliable data — was hampering countries’ efforts to fight the virus.

“We are hitting a million, but we know that that doesn’t get close to the true picture of what we are really facing,” she said in an interview. “Without knowing the true picture, we’re not sure whether the response we’re mounting is sufficient, or what we should be doing.”

Indicators that the spread of the virus could be more extensive than official figures suggest include increased mortality from respiratory diseases and the high percentage of infected health workers. Most African countries do not have the resources to ramp up testing and need donors’ help, Dr. Tatua said.

Some of the dire predictions made by the World Health Organization — that 190,000 Africans could die of Covid-19 in its first year, and 44 million be infected — have not come to pass, at least in the official numbers.

Many African countries have extensive experience of dealing with outbreaks of infectious disease, but many also have weak health systems that citizens are not accustomed to using, or cannot afford.

Fear of the stigma associated with being diagnosed with the coronavirus and a plethora of conspiracy theories that mean many doubt its very existence have probably kept many infected people from reporting their symptoms, experts said.

 

 

Ohio’s governor tests positive — then negative — as Trump visits.

 

Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said his initial positive result on a coronavirus test came as a “big surprise.”Credit...John Minchillo/Associated Press

Gov. Mike DeWine tested negative for the coronavirus hours after a positive rapid-result test had prevented him from welcoming President Trump to Ohio on Thursday, a whiplash reversal that reflected the nation’s increasingly complex state of testing.

In a high-profile example of a new testing frontier, Mr. DeWine first received an antigen test, which allows for results in minutes, not days, but has been shown to be less accurate. The positive result came as a “big surprise,” said Mr. DeWine, a Republican, who had not been experiencing symptoms other than a headache.

Later on Thursday, he was tested using a more standard procedure known as polymerase chain reaction, or P.C.R., an accurate but time-intensive method that requires samples to be processed at a laboratory. His wife, Fran, and staff members also tested negative.

“We feel confident in the results,” the governor’s office said in a statement late Thursday, noting that the negative result had been processed twice. “This is the same P.C.R. test that has been used over 1.6 million times in Ohio by hospitals and labs all over the state.”

The puzzling results capped a long day for Mr. DeWine, 73, who drove three hours up Interstate 71 to meet with Mr. Trump in Cleveland. He had hoped to discuss testing, a key issue that has plagued the response to the virus in the United States. But first, he had to be tested himself as part of a routine White House screening.

After the unwelcome news, the president stood alone outside Marine One and praised Mr. DeWine as “a very good friend of mine,” while Mr. DeWine left to get the secondary test and returned to quarantine at his home in Cedarville, Ohio.

 

Source：https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/world/coronavirus-covid-19.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-coronavirus&region=TOP_BANNER&context=storylines_menu

 

 

 

Hong Kong to launch voluntary universal coronavirus testing

From Phoebe Lai in Hong Kong

 

Pedestrians wearing masks are seen in Hong Kong's Central district on August 6. Isaac Lawrence/AFP/Getty Images

Hong Kong will offer universal, voluntary coronavirus testing for all citizens, the city's Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced Friday. 

Lam said she hoped the testing scheme would launch in two weeks time.

“This is an entirely voluntary program to provide testing for those who want to have a test either to find out whether they are infected or they just want to be more sure that they are safe in that sense,” Lam said.
“The new coronavirus pandemic is still severe. The overall number is still high.”

Hong Kong officials have moved to contain a third wave of the virus, as cases continue to rise across the city.

Officials requested support from Beijing in late July to help increase its virus detection capability and its community treatment resources, Lam said Friday.

Sitting in front of backdrop reading “Fight the Virus with Central Government’s Full Support,” Lam added that Hong Kong will build an additional temporary hospital near the city's Asia World-Expo treatment center.

 

 

Young women more likely to experience poor mental health in lockdown, UK study suggests

Poor mental health during lockdown was most common among younger women in Britain, a study from University College London (UCL) suggests.

 

UCL researchers surveyed more than 18,000 people in four cohorts -- those aged 62, 50, 30 and 19 -- in research conducted in May 2020 during Britain's coronavirus lockdown.

They found that poor mental health during the lockdown was most common among the 19-year-olds, followed by the 30-year-old bracket. Women were more likely than men to experience difficulties with mental health across all four age categories.

Over a third of women and a quarter of the men among the 19-year-olds had symptoms of depression during lockdown in May, and 45% of women and 42% of men said they felt lonely during this time, according to the study.

The researchers had data on the three older cohorts across several years, predating the pandemic. They found the 30-year-old women displayed a significant increase in poor mental health during the lockdown, when compared to when they were last surveyed at the age of 25.

“This change in mental health between age 25 and 30 will reflect change that may naturally occur at this stage of life, as well as change attributable to the pandemic, however this finding chimes with other studies which have also shown that young women have experienced the largest increase in mental health problems due to Covid-19," said Professor Emla Fitzsimons, the study's co-author.

UCL noted that the study was limited by the fact that it includes people at specific ages rather than at all ages.

"However the findings about high levels of difficulties especially among young women at the ages of 19 and 30 are likely to apply to young women in their twenties too," the university said in a statement.

"Our findings clearly highlight high levels of difficulties being experienced by young people aged 19 and 30, especially young women," said Dr. Praveetha Patalay, a co-author of the briefing.
"More needs to be done to support these age groups and limit the impact of the pandemic on their future health and wellbeing.”

 

 

A South Korean NGO is sending Covid-19 test kits to North Korea

From CNN's Yoonjung Seo in Seoul, South Korea

 

The South Korean government has approved a private organization's request to send Covid-19 relief products to North Korea.

The group, the Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Research Center (IKECRC), said it plans to send 10,000 virus test kits, 20 thermal cameras and a real-time PCR test set to Pyongyang. Kim Han-shin, who leads IKECRC, said the South Korean Unification Ministry approved the shipment on Friday.

North Korea has not publicly confirmed the existence of a single case of Covid-19, but experts are dubious that the virus did not cross into its borders at some point. However, Pyongyang is taking the virus' threat very seriously. The city of Kaesong was placed under lockdown last month after reports that a North Korean defector might have returned to the country from South Korea while possibly infected.

Kim said IKECRC “will try to complete all necessary preparations by this week so they can be sent into North Korea as soon as possible.”

The goods are worth about $1 million, he said. The shipment is not a violation of the punitive United Nations sanctions levied on North Korea for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program.

The UN Security Council approved IKECRC's sanctions exemption requests last month, shortly before the South Korean government gave its own assent.

According to Kim, his group was able to raise funds for these products through help from a local government, but he didn’t reveal which local government that was.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, 40 tons of disinfectant and 20,000 hazmat suits have been sent to North Korea by private groups from South Korea, a Unification Ministry official said. The disinfectants and hazmat suits arrived in North Korea in early May and late July, respectively, according to the ministry.

 

 

Pakistan relaxes lockdown measures as Covid-19 case numbers fall 80% from peak

From CNN’s Sophia Saifi in Islamabad

 

Pakistan’s government has announced plans to reopen tourist hot spots, restaurants, salons and movie theaters next week due to a continued drop in coronavirus infections in the country.

The country has identified 281,863 cases of Covid-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 6,035 patients have died. Authorities reported Friday that 727 cases and 21 fatalities had been identified in the previous 24 hours.

However, numbers are down overall. Data from the Ministry of Health shows that coronavirus cases and fatalities have both dropped 80% since their peaks in June.

Pakistan’s Planning Minister Asad Umar announced in a briefing that “the Covid-19 pandemic had greatly been controlled due to the effective strategy of government institutions.”

What's opening when: Movie theaters, restaurants and businesses in the hospitality industry can open Monday. Tourism activities can restart tomorrow, Umar said.

All outdoor and indoor non-contact activities will also be allowed from Monday.

Umar said all the educational institutions in the country will be opened September 15 pending a final review by the Ministry of Education on September 7.

Marriage halls will be allowed to function from September 15, and train and airline restrictions will be lifted in October, Umar said.

 

 

Australian troops knocked on more than 1,100 doors Thursday

From CNN's Jadyn Sham

 

Australia's military visited 1,150 homes yesterday in the state of Victoria to conduct contact tracing, part of the country's renewed effort to stop a renewed spread of Covid-19.

State Premier Daniel Andrews said it was the largest single-day effort by the Australian Defense Force (ADF) since the military began going door-to-door.

Victoria is under renewed cororonavirus restrictions, including a lockdown in the state capital, Melbourne, following a spike in cases. 

Authorities said more than 150 people were not home when the ADF visited, all of whom could face heavy fines for potentially flouting lockdown rules.

"These are not the steps we wanted to have to take. This has never been done before, but this is the greatest challenge we have ever faced," Andrews said. "This is a wicked enemy, a silent enemy, one that moves with such speed. I think people appreciate, all Victorians appreciate that we're in a different phase now, and everyone's got to play their part."

More cases identified: Authorities in Victoria said Friday that they had identified another 450 new coronavirus cases, bringing the statewide total to nearly 13,500, according to Australia's Department of Health.

Across Australia, 19,862 people have been diagnosed with Covid-19. Of those, 255 have died and 11,112 have recovered.

 

 

Peru reports highest single-day spike in coronavirus cases

From CNN’s Claudia Rebaza

 

 

Relatives of a Covid-19 victim mourn during a funeral at a graveyard in Comas, in the northern outskirts of Lima on August 5. Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images

Peruvian authorities identified 7,785 new Covid-19 patients Thursday, the highest number of cases reported in a single day in the country since the pandemic began.

More than 455,000 people have now been diagnosed with the virus in Peru, according to the country's Health Ministry. At least 194 people died from the virus Thursday, bringing the country's death toll to 20,424.

Peru is one of Latin America's hardest-hit countries -- only Mexico and Brazil have recorded more Covid-19 patients -- and cases have been accelerating over the past two weeks.

 

 

Japan has now identified more than 900 cases of Covid-19 for 10 days in a row

From CNN's Yoko Wakatsuki in Tokyo

 

A mother and her daughters pray at the Students Peace Monument on the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, on August 6, in Hiroshima, Japan. Carl Court/Getty Images

Japan's Health Ministry recorded 1,490 Covid-19 infections on Thursday, the second-highest number of cases the country has identified in a single day during the pandemic and yet another worrying sign that its latest outbreak shows no signs of abating.

Thursday marks the 10th straight day the country has recorded more than 900 cases of the novel coronavirus. Authorities have now identified at least 44,527 cases of Covid-19, more than half of which have been reported since the beginning of July

Seven deaths were reported Thursday, bringing the nationwide death toll to 1,046.

Trouble in Tokyo: Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike urged people in the Japanese capital to refrain from traveling during the upcoming Obon summer vacation season to stop the infection spread.

Authorities reported 360 new infections in Tokyo on Thursday, the 10th consecutive day of more than 200 cases in row.

To date, more than 14,500 cases of Covid-19 have been identified in the Japanese capital.

Infections spiking elsewhere: Kanagawa, a prefecture that neighbors Tokyo, crossed the triple digit threshold for the first time Thursday, reporting 119 infections. Osaka also posted its highest number of cases in a single day Thursday, with 225.

 

 

5 former CDC directors call for increased leadership in the coronavirus pandemic

From CNN Health’s Lauren Mascarenhas

 

Five former directors of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) criticized the contradictory messages put out by President Donald Trump's administration Thursday.

Here's what some of them said:

Dr. Thomas Frieden said that the CDC had been sidelined early on in the pandemic and described Trump’s contradictory messages as “chaotic leadership,” which has led to partisanship, confusion and increased spread of the virus.

“It's unbelievable that six months into the pandemic, it's not clear who's in charge, federally,” Frieden said during a roundtable hosted by ABC News Live.
“There's no plan. There's no common data that we're looking at to see what's happening with the virus and what's happening with our response.”

Dr. Jeffrey Koplan said that every falsehood put forward by the US government damages the nation’s mitigation efforts against the virus. Americans want information from the CDC, he said. 

“Americans are voting with their clicks. There have been 1.6 billion clicks on the CDC website,” said Koplan, whose term at the CDC stretched between the Clinton and Bush administrations. “The more we learn, the more we know, the better we can control it.”

Dr. Richard Besser said the federal response to the pandemic has been “absolutely unacceptable” considering the US is the wealthiest nation on the planet.

He also criticized politicians for viewing CDC guidelines as an obstacle.

“If you have politicians saying that CDC guidance is a barrier to getting children back into school, instead of the roadmap for doing it safely, the whole system breaks down,” said Besser, who was an acting CDC chief during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, who headed the CDC under former president George W. Bush, said she hopes that the government can learn from this crisis.

“I really do hope that finally it's gotten so bad that we will reinvent how we think about our health security in the context of our national security," 

Dr. David Satcher, a former US Surgeon General who headed the CDC under former president Bill Clinton, said communities of color that have been hit harder by the pandemic are going to require particular attention during recovery efforts

“It's going to say a lot about us as a nation, whether we step up to this challenge, and remove many of the structural barriers to health that people in this country face," he said.

 

Source：https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-08-07-20-intl/index.html

 

 

 

Poland has ruled out a new nationwide lockdown after it reported 809 new coronavirus infections on Friday, the sixth record daily rise in two weeks.

According to the Health Ministry’s Twitter account, most of the cases were in and around big cities including the capital Warsaw, Katowice and Krakow.

It said 259 of the new infections were in the Silesia coal mining region, where the main city is Katowice. As of Friday 1,279 coal miners were now infected, mostly in state-run coal producer PGG, data cited by state news agency PAP showed.

The conservative nationalist government has imposed stricter sanitary rules on a number of Polish counties, which include compulsory wearing of protective face masks outside the home.

It has banned conferences, sport events and concerts, closed cinemas and gyms, and imposed a 50-person limit on the number of people taking part in weddings though churches and hotels remain open.

But deputy prime minster Jacek Sasin told state television before the latest figures were announced:

There is no way that we would impose a general lockdown again.”

“There is no talk today, with the rising number of infected people or very high number of those who are still infected, of coming back to closing the economy.”

Poland has reported 50,324 Covid-19 cases overall, and 1,787 deaths.
Critics have said the government is not conducting health checks on a big scale, and this means a lot of people who are infected are unaware of it and infect others.

 

 

Summary

Here’s a list of the key global coronavirus developments over the last few hours:

· Hong Kong has announced free mass testing for all residents, amid a third wave of Covid-19 infections. More than half the city’s total number of infections were detected in July, with 12 days in a row with cases above 100. The death toll reached 46.

· Thousands of items of personal protective equipment (PPE) and 500 hospital beds have been destroyed in the Beirut explosion. UN agencies are scrambling to support victims, while the its high commissioner has described the ongoing situation as “really dire” according to Reuters.

· More than 3.5 million health workers in India have embarked on a two-day strike over wages and PPE. It comes as the country recorded a record daily jump in coronavirus infections on Friday, taking the total to over two million. Many of those on strike have been conducting door-to-door checks to trace Covid-19 patients.

· Emmanuel Macron has called a meeting of France’s defence council over the country’s continued rise in Covid-19 cases. The president said he was calling for “the greatest vigilance” among citizens after the number of infections grew by 33% in a week between 27 July and 2 August.

 

Source：https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/aug/07/coronavirus-live-news-africa-passes-1-million-cases-checkpoints-outside-new-york-city