Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	36,738,833	+348,774	1,066,412
USA	7,833,763	+56,652	217,738
India	6,903,812	+70,824	106,521
Brazil	5,029,539	+27,182	149,034
Russia	1,260,112	+11,493	22,056
Colombia	886,179	+8,496	27,331
Spain	884,381	+5,585	32,688
Argentina	856,369	+15,454	22,710
Peru	838,614	+2,952	33,098
Mexico	799,188	+4,580	82,726
South Africa	686,891	+1,736	17,408
France	671,638	+18,129	32,521
UK	561,815	+17,540	42,592
Iran	488,236	+4,392	27,888
Chile	476,016	+1,576	13,167
Iraq	394,566	+3,522	9,683
Bangladesh	374,592	+1,441	5,460
Italy	338,398	+4,458	36,083
Saudi Arabia	338,132	+421	4,972
Philippines	331,869	+2,363	6,069
Turkey	330,753	+1,615	8,667
Indonesia	320,564	+4,850	11,580
Pakistan	316,934	+583	6,544
Germany	315,514	+4,401	9,667
Israel	285,336	+3,855	1,864
Ukraine	244,734	+5,397	4,690
Canada	175,559	+2,436	9,557
Netherlands	155,810	+5,822	6,531
Romania	145,700	+3,130	5,247
Ecuador	145,045	+1,514	12,141
Morocco	142,953	+2,929	2,486
Belgium	137,868	+3,577	10,108
Bolivia	137,706	+238	8,192
Qatar	127,394	+213	218
Panama	118,054	+754	2,463
Dominican	116,872	+724	2,163
Poland	111,599	+4,280	2,867
Kuwait	109,441	+698	642
Kazakhstan	108,454	+92	1,746
Egypt	104,156	+121	6,017
Oman	104,129	+664	1,009
UAE	102,929	+1,089	438
Czechia	100,757	+5,397	869
Nepal	98,617	+4,364	590
Sweden	97,532	+855	5,892
Guatemala	96,480	+776	3,347
Japan	87,020	+477	1,613
China	85,500	+11	4,634
Costa Rica	84,828	+1,331	1,040
Portugal	82,534	+1,278	2,050
Belarus	81,982	+477	880
Ethiopia	81,797	+902	1,262
Honduras	81,160	+498	2,466
Venezuela	81,019	+615	678
Bahrain	74,422	+490	264
Uzbekistan	60,026	+447	496
Moldova	59,915	+1,121	1,424
Nigeria	59,841	+103	1,113
Singapore	57,849	+9	27
Armenia	54,473	+718	1,004
Algeria	52,658	+138	1,783
Austria	52,057	+1,209	838
Lebanon	49,744	+1,367	439
Kyrgyzstan	48,342	+245	1,073
Paraguay	47,316	+881	1,012
Ghana	46,947	+118	306
Palestine	43,256	+416	359
Azerbaijan	41,304	+191	603
Libya	40,292	+779	616
Kenya	40,178	+271	751
Ireland	40,086	+502	1,817
Serbia	34,344	+151	760
Hungary	34,046	+932	898
Denmark	31,156	+446	665
El Salvador	29,842	+105	877
Australia	27,206	+24	897
Tunisia	26,899	+2,357	409
S. Korea	24,422	+69	427
Bulgaria	23,259	+516	880
Myanmar	22,445	+1,012	535
Jordan	21,517	+1,317	144
Greece	21,381	+434	430
Cameroon	21,203	+279	423
Ivory Coast	19,982	+47	120
North Macedonia	19,777	+364	775
Croatia	18,989	+542	310
Madagascar	16,654	+21	235
Slovakia	15,726	+1,037	57
Zambia	15,301	+77	335
Norway	15,221	+209	275
Senegal	15,190	+16	313
Albania	14,899	+169	411
Malaysia	14,368	+375	146
Sudan	13,670	+2	836
Montenegro	13,004	+210	191
Namibia	11,781	+67	127
Finland	11,345	+296	346
DRC	10,822	+18	276
Maldives	10,742	+86	34
Georgia	10,225	+472	66
French Guiana	10,128	+25	69
Tajikistan	10,097	+42	78
Mozambique	9,639	+145	68
Uganda	9,442	+182	85
Luxembourg	9,219	+100	129
Zimbabwe	7,951	+32	229
Slovenia	7,507	+387	160
Jamaica	7,273	+82	128
Angola	5,958	+95	208
Cuba	5,917	+19	123
Malawi	5,809	+6	180
Eswatini	5,632	+15	113
Lithuania	5,625	+142	102
Hong Kong	5,162	+18	105
Suriname	5,004	+25	106
Aruba	4,150	+17	31
Thailand	3,622	+7	59
Malta	3,506	+64	41
Cyprus	1,918	+21	24

 

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

 

 

 

Czech Republic announces sweeping restrictions amid Covid-19 spike

From CNN's Tomas Etzler

 

People wearing face masks stand on an escalator in a subway station on September 16, 2020, in Prague, Czech Republic.  Gabriel Kuchta/Getty Images

The Czech Republic on Thursday announced a slew of new restrictions in an effort to curb the rapid spread of coronavirus in the country and ease the strain on health care services.

All the restrictions, announced at a government news conference Thursday, will remain in effect for two weeks. 

From Friday and for two weeks, all restaurants and bars will close at 8 p.m. local time and tables can seat no more than four people.

Starting Monday, all universities and higher education institutions will close but primary and secondary schools will rotate classes.

Pools, gyms and fitness centers must close effectively immediately. All indoor professional and leisure sports are banned and outdoor sports will be limited to 20 people.

Shopping malls will remain open but will shut Wi-Fi services to deter teens, with tables inside the food court limited to two people maximum.

Cultural and leisure facilities like theaters and cinemas will close from Monday. Weddings will be limited to 30 people.

All nonessential visits to hospitals and social institutions like care homes are also banned.

By the numbers: The Czech Republic reported at least 5,335 new Covid-19 cases Wednesday, the country's highest daily case count since the pandemic began. With that, the country has now overtaken Spain as the European Union's country with the highest number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 of the population. 

There has now been a total of 95,360 cases, and 829 coronavirus deaths in the central European country, according to Johns Hopkins University.

 

 

Trump has “knee on the neck” of public health experts preventing them from fighting Covid-19, former CDC director says

From CNN Health’s Shelby Lin Erdman

 

 

President Donald Trump walks out of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to board Marine One in Bethesda, Maryland, on October 5, 2020. Chris Kleponis/Polaris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

President Donald Trump and his administration have prevented public health officials from using the might of the country’s foremost disease-fighting agency to properly respond to the deadly coronavirus pandemic, said Dr. William Foege, the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It felt to me like President Trump had his knee on the neck of the public health community holding them down so that they could not actually do their work," Foegoe said in an interview with NPR that aired Thursday. “You can’t sit by and let this happen.”
“You have to have a national plan,” he said. “You can't have 50 states trying to figure this out on their own,” Foege said in the interview, which followed the publication of a private letter he wrote to current CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield.

USA Today posted the letter online this week.

"I think we've got about the worst response to this pandemic that you could possibly have," said Foege, who was in charge of the CDC from 1977 to 1983.
“The failure of the White House to put the CDC in charge has resulted in the violation of every lesson learned in the last 75 years that made the CDC the gold standard for public health in the world,” Foege wrote.

He told NPR he doesn’t know how USA Today got a copy of the letter, but that he stands by what he said.

In the letter, Foege wrote to Redfield that the Trump administration has “tarnished the CDC’s reputation as the premiere global public health agency through its bungled Covid-19 response, and that the situation in the US “is a slaughter and not just a political dispute.”

Foege told NPR he felt he had to speak up. “If you know how to prevent torture and don't do it, you become the torturer,” Foege said, quoting from the writings of a Holocaust survivor. “This is the burden I found myself living under: that silence was complicity.”

 

 

Italy records largest daily increase in coronavirus cases in more than five months

From Nicola Ruotolo in Rome

 

People in Rome spend time outside on October 6. Gregorio Borgia/AP

 

Italy has recorded at least 3,678 new coronavirus cases – the largest daily increase in more than five months.

According to data from Italy’s Health Ministry, there have now been at least 333,940 cases since the outbreak began. 

The last time there was a larger daily increase than today was on April 16, when 3,786 cases were reported. However, authorities are now processing twice as many coronavirus tests.

 

 

Iceland introduces new restrictions as Covid-19 cases surge

From CNN’s Arnaud Siad

 

Iceland is introducing new restrictions in the capital Reykjavík and nearby areas amid a surge in Covid-19 cases across the country, the country’s Ministry of Health has announced.

From Wednesday, any activities or services that requires close physical contact, including hair dressers and beauty parlors, are required to close.

Swimming pools and gyms are also being closed, restaurants will be required to close by 9 p.m., and face masks will now be compulsory in shops where the two-meter social distancing rule cannot be observed.

The new rules will be in effect until October 19, the Icelandic Ministry of Health says.

On Monday, the Icelandic government introduced a 20-person gathering restriction and ordered the closure of fitness centers, bars, night-clubs and gaming establishments nationwide until October 19.

Iceland has seen a significant jump in domestic infections in the past two weeks, with 99 new infections confirmed on Tuesday and 87 confirmed on Wednesday. Of particular concern for the health authorities has been the number of people diagnosed with Covid-19 but not in quarantine. Since June 15, only 52% of those who tested positive were already in quarantine, according to data from the Ministry of Health.

There are currently 18 people hospitalized and 4 in intensive care due to Covid-19.

Speaking to the press on Monday, Chief Police Superintendent Víðir Reynisson stressed how important it is for people who become infected to inform the disease tracing team who they’ve been around and where they’ve been. “There is only one way to approach this and that’s through solidarity,” he added

Iceland has had a total of 3,172 confirmed cases and 10 deaths since the pandemic began. The record for new infections was reached on March 24 with 106 confirmed cases for a total population of 364,134.

 

Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-10-02-20-intl/index.html

 

 

 

Most of Cuba to reopen to international tourists next week

By Antonia Farzan

 

A taxi driver in Havana wears a face mask Thursday. (Yander Zamora/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

 

Cuba will begin reopening to international tourists next week, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero announced late Thursday, according to Reuters.

Restrictions will still remain in place for Havana, which recently experienced a resurgence in coronavirus infections and was under a partial lockdown until last week. But flights from overseas will be able to land in 13 out of the country’s 16 provinces, opening up the possibility of winter trips to Cuba’s beach resorts.

Cuba’s economy typically relies heavily on tourism, and the extended shutdowns have had a devastating effect, leading to food shortages. But the country also has one of the world’s lowest fatality rates, thanks in large part to its universal health care system and aggressive approach to contact tracing and mandatory quarantines.

Even before Cuba closed its borders at the start of April, American visitors faced a slew of complicated travel regulations. In June 2019, the Trump administration banned cruises and “people-to-people” group tours to Cuba, which had previously been some of the most popular ways of seeing the country. Americans must now be able to prove that they’re visiting for educational, family or professional reasons — or providing “support for the Cuban people,” a vague category that tour operators interpret in a variety of ways.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/09/coronavirus-covid-live-updates-us/

 

 

 

Africa has much better control over corona than Europe: here's why

 

The first corona case on the continent was recorded in Egypt on February 14. The predictions for Africa did not seem too good. With less money, less access to medical knowledge and less access to hygiene products than in Europe, things could hardly go well.

Intervene quickly

But the figures do not lie: Africa has the virus much better under control than Europe. In Africa, about 37,000 people have died from the corona virus, in Europe this number is around 230,000. North and South America add up to more than 580,000 deaths, with the US (212,000) and Brazil (148,000) as the countries with the most fatalities.

Deaths in Africa side note

Due to the lack of tests and problems with residents' data, the actual number of deaths is likely to exceed 37,000. Although, according to the chair of the African Union's Agency for Health, there is no indication that a large number of deaths have been overlooked, the BBC reports . 

Images from Africa of mass graves and overburdened hospitals were not forthcoming. One of the reasons Africa is doing well against expectations is that African governments acted quickly, says Mary Stephen of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Africa. 

"Even before corona cases were registered, some countries declared a lockdown," said Stephen. Measures such as distancing yourself, wearing face masks and washing hands often were also quickly introduced.

Ebola centers

One advantage the continent had in making early preparations was that they had been dealing with infectious diseases earlier. There was a major Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, and the disease re-emerged in 2018. 

Ebola treatment centers were converted into rooms for corona patients at the start of the corona epidemic. Countries in Africa have been able to learn from the Ebola outbreak and are now building on those existing systems, Stephen  previously told RTL Nieuws .

Another advantage that Africa has is that the population is relatively young. The average age on the continent is only 19 years, while in Europe it is about 43 years. It is now clear that older people in particular become seriously ill from the virus. According to WHO, about 91 percent of corona cases in Sub-Saharan Africa are under the age of 60.

"The hospitals may be less good than in Europe, but that's not all about it," says Stephen. "Far fewer people got sick than we expected. And the people who got sick often got mild symptoms and got better quickly. That's because the population is relatively young."

Retirement homes, which often became corona fires in the Western world, are also few in Africa. The older community there often moves to the countryside, where it is also easier to keep a distance.

High temperatures and corona

From research at the University of Maryland to the relationship between temperature and the spread of the coronavirus would further prove that the virus is spreading more easily at a low temperature and humidity. For example, the researchers saw that the spread of the virus in South Africa accelerated when winter started.

Still, the exact link between the coronavirus and the climate is not yet completely clear. At first, virologists believed that the coronavirus would be less contagious in warm weather. That conclusion was drawn when the coronavirus was  compared to the flu .

 

Retrieved from:  https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/buitenland/artikel/5189020/coronavirus-afrika-weinig-sterfgevallen-beter-dan-verwacht

 

 

 

Summary

 

· Romania suspends flights to and from high-risk countries to stem a sharp rise in new coronavirus infections. Travellers from 49 high-risk countries will need to self-isolate for 10-14 days upon arrival, except those travelling for less than three days, who must have a negative coronavirus test. On Thursday, the government suspended flights from the countries on the list, except European Union states, the UK, the UAE and Qatar.

· Madrid court strikes down a government order imposing a partial coronavirus lockdown on the Spanish capital. The court ruled in favour of the Madrid region in a standoff with national authorities just before a long holiday weekend. The Madrid regional court called the restrictions an “interference by public authorities in citizens’ fundamental rights without the legal mandate to support it”.

· WHO reports record one-day rise in global coronavirus cases. The World Health Organization reported a record one-day increase in global coronavirus cases on Thursday, with the total rising by 338,779 in 24 hours.

· Paris hospitals move into emergency mode amid rise in Covid-19 patients. Hospitals in the Paris region have moved into emergency mode, cancelling staff holidays and postponing non-essential operations, as coronavirus patients made up close to half of all patients in intensive care units (ICUs).

· Trump says he will not take part in virtual presidential debate. Donald Trump has refused to participate in next week’s debate with Joe Biden after it was announced the event would be held virtually due to the president’s coronavirus diagnosis.

· Medical journal condemns Trump’s handling of pandemic. One of the world’s most prestigious medical journals has lambasted the Trump administration’s “dangerously incompetent” handling of the pandemic and called for them to be voted out of office, as US coronavirus cases continue to soar.

· Madrid court rejects partial lockdown as ‘harmful to basic rights’. Madrid’s top regional court has rejected a partial lockdown imposed on the capital and nine nearby towns to slow the rapid spread of coronavirus.A court statement said the measures “impacted on the rights and fundamental freedoms” of the 4.5 million residents affected by the closure.

· Italy tops 4,000 daily coronavirus cases for first time since mid-April. Italy has registered 4,458 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, the first time the country has exceeded 4,000 cases in a single day since mid-April.

· Orthodox New Yorkers condemn Cuomo over new Covid shutdowns. New rules putting parts of New York City back into lockdown amid a rise in fresh coronavirus cases have been met with protests as Andrew Cuomo was accused of using “dangerous and divisive” language against Orthodox Jews.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/oct/08/coronavirus-live-news-brazil-cases-pass-5m-trump-calls-catching-covid-a-blessing-in-disguise