Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	31,229,795	+249,164	964,762
USA	7,004,768	+33,344	204,118
India	5,485,612	+87,382	87,909
Brazil	4,544,629	+16,282	136,895
Russia	1,103,399	+6,148	19,418
Peru	768,895	+6,030	31,369
Colombia	765,076	+6,678	24,208
Mexico	694,121	+5,167	73,258
South Africa	661,211	+1,555	15,953
Spain	640,040	+14389	30,495
Argentina	631,365	+8,431	13,053
France	452,763	+10,569	31,285
Chile	446,274	+1,600	12,286
Iran	422,140	+3,097	24,301
UK	394,257	+3,899	41,777
Bangladesh	348,918	+1,544	4,939
Saudi Arabia	329,754	+483	4,485
Iraq	319,035	+3,438	8,555
Pakistan	305,671	+640	6,416
Turkey	302,867	+1,519	7,506
Italy	298,156	+1,587	35,707
Philippines	286,743	+3,311	4,984
Germany	273,477	+1,169	9,470
Indonesia	244,676	+3,989	9,553
Israel	187,902	+4,300	1,256
Ukraine	175,678	+2,966	3,557
Canada	143,649	+875	9,217
Bolivia	130,470	+419	7,586
Ecuador	126,419	+799	11,090
Qatar	123,376	+230	210
Romania	112,781	+1,231	4,435
Dominican	108,289	+589	2,047
Kazakhstan	107,262	+63	1,671
Panama	106,203	+602	2,257
Egypt	102,015	+115	5,770
Morocco	101,743	+1,927	1,830
Belgium	100,748	+1,099	9,944
Kuwait	99,434	+385	584
Netherlands	93,778	+1,844	6,279
Oman	93,475	+1,722	846
Sweden	88,237	+0	5,865
Guatemala	85,444	+292	3,119
China	85,279	+10	4,634
UAE	84,916	+674	404
Poland	79,240	+910	2,293
Japan	78,657	+584	1,500
Belarus	75,674	+213	780
Honduras	71,143	+532	2,166
Ethiopia	68,820	+689	1,096
Portugal	68,577	+552	1,912
Venezuela	66,656	+707	547
Bahrain	65,039	+540	221
Nepal	64,122	+1,325	411
Costa Rica	63,712	+1338	706
Singapore	57,576	+18	27
Nigeria	57,242	+97	1,098
Uzbekistan	51,640	+648	433
Algeria	49,826	+203	1,672
Czechia	49,290	+984	503
Armenia	47,431	+277	930
Moldova	46,596	+260	1,203
Ghana	46,004	+127	297
Kyrgyzstan	45,416	+81	1,063
Azerbaijan	39,188	+146	575
Austria	38,095	+621	766
Kenya	36,981	+152	648
Palestine	35,686	+683	262
Paraguay	33,520	+505	659
Ireland	32,933	+395	1,792
Serbia	32,908	+68	741
Lebanon	29,303	+1,006	297
Libya	27,949	+715	444
El Salvador	27,553	+125	811
Australia	26,898	+13	849
S. Korea	22,975	+82	383
Denmark	22,905	+469	638
Cameroon	20,431	+60	416
Ivory Coast	19,320	+51	120
Bulgaria	18,863	+44	761
Hungary	17,990	+1,070	683
North Macedonia	16,735	+178	693
Madagascar	16,053	+33	223
Greece	15,142	+164	338
Croatia	14,922	+197	248
Senegal	14,714	+26	302
Zambia	14,131	+61	330
Sudan	13,555	+20	836
Norway	12,897	+39	267
Albania	12,385	+159	362
DRC	10,515	+27	271
Namibia	10,377	+85	112
Guinea	10,325	+39	64
Malaysia	10,219	+52	130
Tunisia	9,736	+626	155
Maldives	9,724	+75	33
Tajikistan	9,346	+43	73
Finland	8,980	+58	339
Montenegro	8,612	+714	136
Luxembourg	7,907	+103	124
Zimbabwe	7,683	+11	225
Mozambique	6,771	+234	43
Slovakia	6,677	+131	39
Uganda	6,287	+270	63
Malawi	5,731	+13	179
Myanmar	5,541	+671	92
Eswatini	5,269	+24	104
Cuba	5,091	+36	115
Hong Kong	5,033	+23	103
Jamaica	4,988	+230	67
Jordan	4,779	+239	30
Suriname	4,723	+14	97
Rwanda	4,711	+22	26
Slovenia	4,420	+111	142
Angola	3,991	+90	152
Trinidad and Tobago	3,901	+48	65
Syria	3,800	+35	172
Lithuania	3,744	+80	87
Aruba	3,551	+91	23
Gambia	3,526	+22	108
Thailand	3,506	+6	59
Georgia	3,502	+196	19
Bahamas	3,315	+101	74
Mali	3,013	+7	128
Malta	2,731	+32	20
New Zealand	1,815	+4	25
Cyprus	1,600	+10	22

 

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

 

 

 

Schools in Seoul, South Korea, resume in-person classes as cases decline

From CNN’s Gawon Bae in Seoul

 

Health officials spray anti-septic solution in markets and shopping districts on September 17 in Incheon, South Korea. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

All schools in the Seoul metropolitan area resumed in-person classes on Monday, though with certain new rules, as the region's coronavirus cases continue to decline.

South Korean Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae first announced the return to school on September 15, along with the easing of other social distancing measures.

Kindergartens, elementary and middle schools are now allowed to have up to one third of the school capacity filled; this cap goes up to two thirds for high schools. Some schools can adjust the attending capacity after discussing with the Ministry of Education.

Schools in Seoul have been doing remote learning since August 26, when the capital experienced a surge in coronavirus cases.

The number of daily cases has fallen slightly the past month; the country reported 70 new cases on Sunday, 55 of which were locally transmitted, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yoo said the Health Ministry will closely monitor infection development and the regional situation to decide whether school reopenings will be expanded further next month.

 

 

The UK is at a "critical point" as Covid-19 cases rise, warns chief medical officer

From CNN's Mia Alberti 

 

Pedestrians walk past a sign for a Covid-19 test centre in Leyton, east London on September 19. Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty

 

The United Kingdom is at a critical point in the pandemic, with cases continuing to rise as winter approaches, the country's chief medical officer is expected to announce on Monday.

“The trend in UK is heading in the wrong direction and we are at a critical point in the pandemic," professor Chris Whitty will say on Monday, according to a statement released by 10 Downing Street on Sunday. 

“We are looking at the data to see how to manage the spread of the virus ahead of a very challenging winter period."

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently warned that the UK is "now seeing a second wave coming in" and that an increase in coronavirus cases was "inevitable."

Threat of a new lockdown: UK Health Minister Matt Hancock told the BBC on Saturday that people must follow the rules or new restriction measures such as a second national lockdown could be imposed.

"People must follow the rules and if they don't we will bring in this much more stringent measures," Hancock said. When asked about re-imposing a second national lockdown, the minister said, "I don't rule it out. I don't want to see it."

"Everybody knows if people break the rules we are more likely to end up with national measures. I don't want to see those national measures but it is absolutely critical at this moment that everybody stops and realizes they all have a part to play," he said.

 

 

 

Lebanon records highest new daily jump in cases for third day in a row

From CNN’s Tamara Qiblawi and Ghazi Balkiz in Beirut

 

Lebanon recorded 1,006 new cases of Covid-19 on Sunday, the largest daily increase since the start of the pandemic, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry -- marking the third consecutive day of record increases in cases.

Sunday's figures bring the country's total number of infections to 29,303. 

The Health Ministry also announced 11 additional deaths on Sunday, raising the country’s Covid-19 death toll to 297.

Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan told Lebanon’s Al-Jadeed TV Sunday that he’s calling for a two-week lockdown.

“People in most areas aren’t conforming with (social distancing) measures. Instead they are belittling the situation,” he said. 

Hassan’s call for the lockdown is not binding; the measure needs to be decided by the caretaker government. 

 

Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-09-21-20-intl/index.html

 

 

Lake of the Ozarks ‘Bikefest’ draws thousands to coronavirus ‘red zone’

 

 

A large inflatable eagle greets fireworks customers near the Lake of the Ozarks in July. (Christopher Smitha/For The Washington Post)

Large gatherings in Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks, which became nationally notorious for hosting crowded, mask-free pool parties over Memorial Day Weekend, are once again putting public health officials on edge.

This time around, the event raising eyebrows is Bikefest, which typically draws upward of 100,000 bikers to the Ozarks region. Though it’s not yet clear how many bikers attended this year’s rally, which began Wednesday and wrapped up on Sunday, the Kansas City Star estimated that the total was in the thousands.

Local and state officials largely did not require masks or social distancing for the rally, or put any capacity limits on bars and restaurants. That’s led experts to worry that the gathering could become another “superspreader” event like South Dakota’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, especially since the counties around Lake of the Ozarks are considered a “red zone” by the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted, Bikefest attendees could enter the lottery for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle by collecting “passport stamps” showing that they’d visited 24 local restaurants and bars. “These events tend to draw many people into crowded spaces,” Steve Edwards, chief executive of local health-care system CoxHealth, told the paper. “It’s especially worrisome if participants gather indoors at bars and restaurants which have proven to be high-risk areas.”

While the much-maligned Memorial Day parties didn’t seem to lead to a spike in infections, central Missouri now has a 19.3 percent positivity rate, nearly twice the statewide average. Meanwhile, the Ozarks region has witnessed one of its best summers on record, with some local officials attributing the surge in visitors to media attention. After Lake of the Ozarks appeared on TMZ, a local businessman who owns vacation rentals in the area told the Star, “we were getting calls from all over. That was the best publicity that money could never buy.”

 

 

Nearly 11,000 people have been exposed to the coronavirus on flights, the CDC says

 

Melaku Gebermariam of Grupo Eulen uses an electrostatic spraying process before passengers board a Delta Air Lines flight at Reagan National Airport on July 22. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated 1,600 cases of people who flew while at risk of spreading the coronavirus, identifying nearly 11,000 people who potentially were exposed to the virus on flights.

Although the agency says some of those travelers subsequently fell ill, in the face of incomplete contact tracing information and a virus that incubates over several days, it has not been able to confirm a case of transmission on a plane.

That does not mean it hasn’t happened, and recent scientific studies have documented likely cases of transmission on flights abroad.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/09/21/coronavirus-covid-live-updates-us/

 

 

Taj Mahal reopens as coronavirus cases continue to rise in India

Reuters in Agra Mon 21 Sep 2020 08.31 BST

 

 A small number of tourists outside the Taj Mahal as it reopened at sunrise on Monday. Photograph: Pawan Sharma/AP

 

India has reopened its famed monument to love, the Taj Mahal, as authorities reported 86,961 new coronavirus infections with no signs yet of a peak in the number of infections.

A Chinese national and a visitor from Delhi were among the first to step into the white marble tomb built by a 17th-century Mughal emperor for his wife when it opened at sunrise on Monday, ending six months of closure.

Daily visitor numbers have been capped at 5,000, compared with an average of 20,000 before the pandemic. Tickets are being sold only online, with fewer than 300 bought on the first day.

India has reopened its famed monument to love, the Taj Mahal, as authorities reported 86,961 new coronavirus infections with no signs yet of a peak in the number of infections.

A Chinese national and a visitor from Delhi were among the first to step into the white marble tomb built by a 17th-century Mughal emperor for his wife when it opened at sunrise on Monday, ending six months of closure.

Daily visitor numbers have been capped at 5,000, compared with an average of 20,000 before the pandemic. Tickets are being sold only online, with fewer than 300 bought on the first day.

 

Visitors will have their temperatures taken and must adhere to advice to keep a safe distance from each other.

“We are following all Covid-19 protocols,” said Vasant Swarnkar, superintendent of the Archaeological Survey of India, which oversees the Taj in the northern city of Agra, among other historical monuments.

India’s coronavirus tally of 5.49 million infections lags behind only the US, with 6.79 million, a figure the south Asian could could overtake in the next few weeks at its current rate of increase.

The death toll of 87,882 was up 1,130 from the previous day, health ministry figures showed.

But as a proportion of its population, India’s toll is still small compared with countries such as the US, Brazil and Britain.

Faced with the deepest economic contraction in decades, the government of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, is pushing to relax pandemic restricitions so jobs and businesses can resume.

“We can survive for another four to six months: after that we will have to take some serious calls,” said Abid Naqvi, who reported bookings at his boutique hotel drop to zero overnight after India’s abrupt lockdown in March.

Until then, the 13-room Ekaa Villa, which opened in Agra last year at a cost of almost £770,000, had been operating at close to capacity.

Tourism contributed about £185bn, or 9.2% of India’s gross domestic product in 2018, employing more than 42 million people, World Travel and Tourism Council data show.

However, foreign tourists were unlikely to return until at least April, said Manu PV, secretary of industry body the Association of Tourism Trade Organisations India (ATTOI), a month that traditionally ends the tourist season.

And a confusing system of regional lockdowns and quarantine rules is deterring domestic tourists. “People don’t want to go on holiday,” he added. “They are very worried. There is the fear factor.“

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/21/taj-mahal-reopens-as-coronavirus-cases-continue-to-rise-in-india

 

 

Protests in Madrid over coronavirus lockdown measures

Sam Jones in Madrid

@swajones

 

 Protesters in Madrid on Sunday. Photograph: Pablo Blázquez Domínguez/Getty Images

 

By midday on Sunday, the chants of “Unity!” and “Healthcare!” that echoed around a busy crossroads in north-east Madrid had given rise to a more specific demand: “Ayuso resign!”

On Friday, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the president of the Madrid region, announced that 850,000 people – many of them living in some of the poorest parts of the city and surrounding area – would be placed in partial lockdown from Monday in an attempt to arrest the second wave of the virus.

Neither Ayuso’s decision, nor her claim that “the way of life of immigrants in Madrid” was partly to blame for the epidemiological situation, was well received in the 37 affected areas, where there are more than 1,000 cases per 100,000 people.

The neighbourhood groups that organised the protests around Madrid accused the regional government of spreading “fear and hatred” and picking on already marginalised communities.

“Instead of protecting and looking after the most vulnerable people in our city and seeing to it that they didn’t suffer the highest infection rates, they have instead opted for stigmatisation, exclusion and territorial discrimination,” they said in a joint manifesto.

They pointed out that many of those to be placed in confinement worked in low-paid but vital jobs such as in childcare, looking after older people, hospitality and delivery services. The groups also called for urgent action to help overstretched health centres cope with the demand, and for long-term investment in their communities.

Arturo Soriano was one of the hundreds of people who joined the demonstration in Ciudad Lineal. “I think Ayuso behaves according to her political ideology and not according to the interests of the people,” he said.

His wife, Alicia, said Madrid had come out of Spain’s strict, national lockdown too quickly and insufficient thought had been given to preparing for the second wave. But she also pointed out that Ayuso’s party, the conservative People’s party (PP), had not invested enough in Madrid’s healthcare system.

“The PP has spent years neglecting the basics, like healthcare,” she said. “It’s an old problem.”

Nearby stood two people holding up homemade placards that read “Racist!” and “Classist!”. Miguel Montoya, holding one of the signs, said the regional government was trying to stigmatise and discriminate against parts of the community, and drive a wedge between “people who were born in Spain and immigrants … It’s criminal”.

Spain has logged more than 640,000 Covid-19 cases, 125,944 of them over the past two weeks alone. The Madrid region accounts for about a third of all cases and a similar proportion of the country’s 30,495 deaths.

Ayuso and Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, will meet in Madrid on Monday to see what can be done to “flatten the curve” in the region. The encounter is likely to be fraught as Ayuso has accused the central government of singling out Madrid, while the central government has called on regional authorities to do more.

The blame game continued in Sunday’s newspapers. Spain’s transport minister, José Luis Ábalos, told El País that the regional government had “put the economy before health”, while Madrid’s regional health minister, Enrique Ruiz Escudero, told ABC the Sánchez administration had been engaging in PR stunts instead of lending a hand.

The Ruiz Escudero also dismissed suggestions that the partial lockdown punished the poor and favoured the rich. “The criteria have been strictly epidemiological,” he said. “It’s about the highest incidences and where the most cases are being detected.”

The protests in Madrid came a day after France reported nearly 13,500 new infections in 24 hours, bringing its total to 467,614. India, meanwhile, registered 92,605 new infections on Sunday, pushing its total caseload to 5.4m. The US remains the country with the most cases, with 6.7m.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/20/protests-madrid-coronavirus-lockdown-measures-spain