Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	41,023,149	+381,716	1,128,938
USA	8,520,307	+61,429	226,149
India	7,649,158	+54,422	115,950
Brazil	5,274,817	+23,690	154,888
Russia	1,431,635	+16,319	24,635
Spain	1,029,668	+13,873	34,210
Argentina	1,018,999	+16,337	27,100
Colombia	974,139	+8,256	29,272
France	930,745	+20,468	33,885
Peru	874,118	+3,242	33,875
Mexico	854,926	+3,699	86,338
UK	762,542	+21,331	43,967
South Africa	706,304	+1,050	18,656
Iran	539,670	+5,039	31,034
Chile	494,478	+1,099	13,702
Iraq	434,598	+3,920	10,366
Italy	434,449	+10,874	36,705
Bangladesh	391,586	+1,380	5,699
Germany	380,898	+7,167	9,955
Indonesia	368,842	+3,602	12,734
Philippines	360,775	+1,640	6,690
Turkey	351,413	+1,894	9,445
Saudi Arabia	342,968	+385	5,217
Pakistan	324,077	+618	6,673
Ukraine	309,107	+5,469	5,786
Israel	306,162	+1,286	2,278
Netherlands	244,391	+8,165	6,814
Belgium	230,480	+8,227	10,443
Canada	203,688	+2,251	9,794
Czechia	193,946	+11,984	1,619
Poland	192,539	+9,291	3,721
Romania	186,254	+3,400	5,996
Morocco	179,003	+3,254	3,027
Ecuador	154,115	+692	12,404
Bolivia	139,890	+119	8,502
Nepal	139,129	+3,093	765
Qatar	129,944	+273	224
Panama	125,739	+558	2,585
Dominican Republic	121,973	+306	2,204
Kuwait	117,718	+886	714
UAE	117,594	+1,077	470
Oman	111,033	+439	1,122
Kazakhstan	109,623	+115	1,796
Egypt	105,705	+158	6,142
Portugal	103,736	+1,876	2,213
Guatemala	102,219	+620	3,546
Costa Rica	97,922	+847	1,222
Japan	93,480	+353	1,676
Ethiopia	90,490	+630	1,371
Honduras	89,381	+956	2,576
Belarus	88,909	+619	937
Venezuela	87,644	+483	747
China	85,704	+19	4,634
Bahrain	78,533	+309	305
Moldova	67,958	+656	1,617
Austria	67,451	+1,524	914
Armenia	66,694	+1,234	1,101
Lebanon	64,336	+1,392	531
Uzbekistan	63,831	+308	534
Nigeria	61,630	+72	1,125
Singapore	57,921	+6	28
Paraguay	56,073	+621	1,231
Algeria	54,829	+213	1,873
Kyrgyzstan	52,910	+384	1,113
Ireland	52,256	+1,263	1,865
Libya	50,906	+957	746
Hungary	48,757	+989	1,211
Palestine	48,129	+513	421
Ghana	47,461	+89	312
Azerbaijan	45,879	+584	635
Kenya	45,647	+571	842
Tunisia	44,450	+1,723	711
Jordan	40,972	+2,035	414
Myanmar	38,502	+1,297	945
Serbia	36,608	+326	780
Denmark	36,373	+529	688
El Salvador	31,975	+149	929
Bulgaria	31,863	+1,336	1,019
Slovakia	31,400	+705	98
Australia	27,429	+30	905
Croatia	26,863	+890	382
Greece	26,469	+667	528
S. Korea	25,333	+58	447
North Macedonia	24,196	+408	850
Malaysia	22,225	+862	193
Cameroon	21,570	+64	425
Ivory Coast	20,342	+18	121
Georgia	19,857	+1,194	158
Albania	17,651	+301	458
Norway	16,772	+169	278
Zambia	15,982	+85	346
Montenegro	15,892	+132	247
Senegal	15,459	+27	320
Slovenia	14,473	+794	192
Finland	13,849	+294	351
Namibia	12,367	+41	132
Maldives	11,271	+39	37
Luxembourg	11,241	+231	136
Mozambique	11,190	+110	78
DRC	11,066	+14	303
Uganda	10,788	+97	97
Tajikistan	10,574	+41	80
Jamaica	8,374	+53	174
Zimbabwe	8,187	+28	233
Angola	8,049	+220	251
Lithuania	7,928	+202	118
Guadeloupe	7,329	+207	115
Bahamas	5,923	+150	124
Malawi	5,861	+1	182
Eswatini	5,800	+12	116
Suriname	5,144	+11	109
Aruba	4,355	+21	34
Thailand	3,700	+9	59
Cyprus	2,839	+152	25

 

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

 

 

 

India is facing a double health threat this winter: pollution and the pandemic

From CNN's Jessie Yeung, Esha Mitra and Vedika Sud

 

 

 A farmer burns straw stubble in a field near Jandiala Guru in Amritsar, India, on October 16. Sameer Sehgal/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

A familiar scene is taking place in northern India. Vast fields burn, flames engulfing bare stalks of already-harvested crops. Billowing smoke travels across state borders. In towns and cities, the air is thick with yellow haze.

Stubble burning, the practice of intentionally setting fire to cultivated fields to prepare the land for its next crop, is one of the chief drivers of India's so-called annual pollution season, which begins each winter.

It is especially bad in cities like the capital New Delhi, where smog from the burning crop fields, vehicular emissions, power plants, construction sites, and smoke from Diwali firecrackers combine to create a toxic cloud that lingers until spring.

Authorities have been trying for years to combat this serious public health risk -- but there's a new urgency this year, with fears that pollution could compound the danger of Covid-19.

The coronavirus outbreak in India has infected nearly 7.6 million people and killed more than 115,000, according to the country's Health Ministry. India went into a months-long nationwide total lockdown in an attempt to contain the virus -- but with little success. Presently, India has the second highest number of infections globally, after the United States, and the third highest number of deaths.

Experts and politicians now worry that the arrival of pollution season could pose a double threat, putting people at higher risk of severe infection, while increasing the strain on public health services.

"The combination of air pollution along with Covid-19, and especially as this is going to happen during the winter months, is something we need to be really concerned about and take adequate measures, so that we don't let a huge spike occur in the number of cases," said Dr. Randeep Guleria, director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

 

 

The pandemic is speeding up automation, and 85 million jobs are on the line

From CNN Business' Hanna Ziady

 

Bank tellers are out and robotics engineers are in, according to a new report that says the coronavirus recession is accelerating technological changes that could displace 85 million jobs within the next five years.

"Automation, in tandem with the Covid-19 recession, is creating a 'double disruption' scenario for workers," said the report published Wednesday by the World Economic Forum, which warns that inequality is likely to increase unless displaced workers can be retrained to enter new professions.

More than two-fifths of large companies surveyed by the WEF plan to reduce their workforces due to the integration of technology.

"For the first time in recent years, job creation is starting to lag behind job destruction — and this factor is poised to affect disadvantaged workers with particular ferocity," the WEF said in its report.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused a sharp spike in unemployment around the world. Several major economies in Europe and elsewhere have extended support for wages in order to offset the alarming rise in joblessness. Unemployment in the United States, meanwhile, continues to march higher while lawmakers quarrel over new stimulus measures.

"As unemployment figures rise, it is of increasing urgency to expand social protection including support for retraining to displaced and at-risk workers as they navigate the paths... towards the 'jobs of tomorrow,'" the WEF report said.

The pandemic risks deepening existing inequalities because industries that have been hardest hit, including travel and tourism, hospitality and retail, tend to have younger, and lower-wage workers who are disproportionately female.

The World Bank has warned that the pandemic could increase income inequality and push up to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year.

 

Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-10-21-20-intl/index.html

 

 

 

‘Unprecedented’ speed and intensity of lockdown responsible for New Zealand’s success, researchers say

By Antonia Farzan

 

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks to the media before announcing a nationwide lockdown in March. (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images via Bloomberg)

The “unprecedented” speed and intensity of New Zealand’s response to the coronavirus sets it apart from all other countries, according to a recent article in The Lancet that highlights some of the lessons to be learned from the island nation’s success.

New Zealand announced its border restrictions before confirming its first local case of covid-19, and before being advised to do so by the World Health Organization, the study notes.

Within 15 days of confirming its first case in early March, the country entered lockdown. That swift response paid off: In two weeks, the number of cases being reported each day had dropped substantially, and most new infections were being discovered through contact tracing.

The study’s authors, drawn from universities and scientific institutes across New Zealand, point out that the country started out at an advantage: It has a centralized health system, an emergency management system accustomed to dealing with disaster in the form of frequent earthquakes, and was still in the middle of summer when the pandemic began, which meant that it didn’t have to simultaneously deal with a seasonal flu. But it also had the strictest lockdown in the world, as judged by Oxford University’s Government Response Stringency Index, and moved faster than other countries like Italy, Australia and Britain to ramp up restrictions.

Most of the roughly 1,900 cases detected in New Zealand to date have been found in travelers returning from overseas, who tend to generally be healthier, younger and financially well-off, the study also notes. Because the virus didn’t have a chance to spread widely, the country doesn’t seem to have witnessed the same disproportional impact on older people, ethnic minorities and other high-risk groups who tend to have more severe outcomes.

New Zealand has reported just 25 coronavirus-related deaths to date, giving it one of the world’s lowest fatality rates.

 

 

New Mexico announces new restrictions as hospital bed capacity reaches 81 percent

By Antonia Farzan

 

Marylou Ligier takes a to-go order to a patron at her family's restaurant and pastry shop in Santa Fe in August. (Cedar Attanasio/AP)

An alarming rise in hospitalizations across New Mexico prompted Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) to roll out new restrictions for businesses on Tuesday, saying that the goal was to avoid closing schools that have partially reopened.

The number of hospital beds per capita in New Mexico is lower than nearly any other state, and as of Tuesday, 81 percent were filled, officials said at a news briefing. Roughly 71 percent of ICU beds were in use.

Starting Friday, restaurants, gyms, and stores must shut down for a two-week period if they report four coronavirus cases in 14 days or less. If that restriction were in place today, 42 businesses across the state would be closed, Environment Secretary James Kenney said Tuesday, according to the Albuquerque Journal. A new state watch list will list businesses that have had two or more outbreaks since the start of the pandemic.

All retailers, including grocery stores and big-box stores like Wal-Mart, will be required to close at 10 p.m. “We’re not shutting down,” Lujan Grisham insisted in a Tuesday news conference, saying that the goal of the targeted restrictions was to “break the chain of escalating statewide infections and prevent the virus from overwhelming state hospitals.”

Despite being one of the poorest states in the nation and home to a large elderly population, New Mexico fared relatively well during the early months of the pandemic, which experts credited to the state’s early emphasis on social distancing and free, widespread testing. But cases have exploded since the start of September, and began reaching record highs earlier this month. Over the past week alone, hospitalizations have risen by 64 percent, while the average number of new cases being reported each day grew by 43 percent, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.

“We all acted a little more normal and little less cautious,” Jason Mitchell, a physician and chief medical officer for Presbyterian Healthcare Services, told the Albuquerque Journal. No specific demographic, activity or location appears to be driving the trend, he noted.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/21/coronavirus-covid-live-updates-us/

 

 

 

Australia may have recorded first case of Covid-19 reinfection

Melissa Davey

 

A medical worker at an aged care home in Melbourne at the height of the outbreak in July. An unidentified Victorian man who tested positive to coronavirus in July and again in October is being treated as a possible case of reinfection. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

A case of Covid-19 in Victoria is being treated as a rare case of reinfection, the first case classified as such in Australia.

Reinfection with Covid-19 is rare, with only a six cases reported among the 40m cases worldwide to date, including in the US and Hong Kong. It seems that in most cases of Covid-19, people develop immunity to the virus after being infected, though it is still unclear how strong this immunity is or for how long it remains.

In the Hong Kong case, a 33-year-old man was diagnosed with the virus more than four months after he recovered from his first infection of the disease, with genomic sequencing finding the man had been infected with two different strains. However, his reinfection was asymptomatic, indicating he may have had some clinical immunity.

The Victorian case is less clear. Genomic sequencing has not yet been completed, but the premier Daniel Andrews said the man first tested positive to the virus in July. He tested positive again in October. In many cases it is unclear whether a second positive test is truly a reinfection or merely dead virus being shed.

Andrews announced the possible reinfection on Wednesday saying the man was being treated as a reinfected case “out of an abundance of caution”.

An expert panel had “reviewed this particular case and concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to say that the positive test presented viral shedding, so the case is being monitored closely, and it is through an abundance of caution that we are assuming that it is a positive case, rather than the person shedding after the original infection,” he said.

“There have been very few reported cases of reinfection around the world. It is also the case that persistent shedding over a long period of time can be a feature of this virus. This is understandably frustrating for everyone involved, whether this is in fact a positive case or not, but we do take a very cautious approach, and I think that is the best way to go.”

Dr Larisa Labzin, from the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience, said for the sake of Victoria’s accurate tracking of Covid-19 transmission, it was important for the department of health to determine if this is indeed reinfection or a persistent original infection.

“It is important to note that after we clear an infection we are not necessarily protected from reinfection if we are re-exposed to the virus, but we anticipate that we are protected from developing severe disease,” Labzin said.

“This can be determined by genetically sequencing the virus during the first and the second test and comparing the viral sequences. The virus accumulates enough small changes with time that we can distinguish a virus that was caught in July from a virus that was caught now.

“The alternative is that the person who caught Covid in July never truly cleared that original infection, in which case this wouldn’t be a ‘new’ case of Covid-19.”

Guardian Australia has contacted the department of health to ask whether genomic sequencing is currently under way, and what methods were used to determine the case as one of reinfection, but is yet to receive as reply.

Although the Australian case is “interesting,” Associate Professor in epidemiology at La Trobe University, Hassan Vally, warned there was so far little detail to go on.

“It’s really important not to attach too much weight to this finding,” he said. “We do know that whilst infection by some viruses leads to lifelong immunity, there are others for which infection only leads to relatively short-term immunity.

“Since we have only coexisted with SARS-CoV-2 [Covid-19] for less than a year, it is not certain what the immunological characteristics of infection are yet. So far, however, there have been very few cases of reinfection reported. We also know about the law of truly large numbers, which says that with a large enough number of samples improbable events do occur. We have obviously seen a very large number of infections now around the world and so we will start to see unlikely events occur.

“No doubt there will be more done to try and understand more completely what has happened in this case, with it being recognised that if we start to see more reinfections as time goes on - which points to immunity being short-term in some individuals - this has obvious implications for how effective a vaccine or vaccines will be.”

Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake, a specialist in infectious diseases, said some people can shed the virus for a prolonged period after an infection, sometimes for more than 100 days.

“This may yet be the case here,” he said. “If, however, this turns out to be true reinfection with Covid-19, this will be an important case globally, especially to see if the second illness is milder than the first. Hopefully, they will get better soon.”

 

 

Bulgaria makes masks mandatory – as it happened

Jessica Murray (now); Lucy Campbell, Kevin Rawlinson, Archie Bland and Alison Rourke (earlier)

 

Bulgaria will make wearing face masks obligatory in all outdoor spaces from Thursday, as coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours hit a new record, its health minister said on Tuesday.

Kostadin Angelov said wearing protective masks, along with social distancing and frequent disinfection, will slow the spread of the virus by about 30% and help prevent the health system being overwhelmed.

We expect the rate of infections to decrease if people observe the measures strictly. Our main aim is to decrease the number of infected Bulgarians, so that fewer people would have to go to hospital and fewer would die in hospital.

Bulgaria reported 1,024 new infections on Tuesday, the highest since the first cases were reported in March. The Balkan country of 7 million people now has 30,527 confirmed cases including 1,008 deaths.

Angelov said the new measure, also aimed at protecting medical staff, would remain in place until the end of November. Some 71 doctors, nurses and orderlies tested positive in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 1,622 people, data showed.

 

 

Summary

 

· The UK prime minister Boris Johnson confirmed tier 3 restrictions will be imposed on Greater Manchester after talks with local leaders broke down. The failure to reach a deal concerned the amount the government was willing to offer the region in financial support, which local leaders said was insufficient for the poorest in their communities to cope with the stricter restrictions. At a news conference, Johnson refused to specify how much support the region will get, after the government’s initial offer of £60m was revised down from midday to £22m. It’s unclear if the £60m offer remains on the table and it’s understood that government and local leaders continue negotiations for an additional support package.

· Belgium will need to postpone all non-essential hospital procedures to deal with a surge in Covid-19 infections and hospital admissions. It comes days after the health minister Frank Vandenbroucke warned of a Covid “tsunami” hitting the country. The number of patients in intensive care units, which stood at 446 on Tuesday, is doubling every eight to nine days.

· Bulgaria will make wearing face masks obligatory in all outdoor spaces from Thursday, as coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours hit a new record. The health minister Kostadin Angelov said the new measure, which will remain in place until the end of November, along with social distancing and frequent disinfection, would slow the spread of the virus by about 30% and help prevent the health system being overwhelmed.

· Italy’s southern Campania region plans to introduce a night-time curfew from this weekend in an effort to tackle a surge in Covid-19 cases. The move follows a similar decision taken on Monday by the northern region of Lombardy following a rise in hospital admissions. The Campania governor Vincenzo De Luca said he planned to introduce an 11pm curfew from this weekend.

· Berlin’s municipal government has made it compulsory to wear masks at markets, in queues and on 10 busy shopping streets, but stopped short of imposing another lockdown to curb a new wave of infections in the German capital. The mayor, Michael Müller, urged the capital’s residents to comply with the new rules, which also included limits on parties, to avoid shutting down public life again.

· Residents in the Bavarian district of Berchtesgadener Land went back into lockdown, the first area in Germany to do so since April. Germany put the municipality under lockdown from 2pm today, as the picturesque Alpine region becomes the country’s main coronavirus hotspot. Schools, nurseries and restaurants will remain closed from today and after 2pm residents were not allowed to leave their homes unless they have a strong reason to do so, such as work commitments, groceries shopping or outdoor exercise.

· Iran reported a record high in daily coronavirus cases. With 5,039 new infections registered in the last 24 hours, the health minister Saeed Namaki appealed for more public and government support to enforce restrictions aimed at stemming a third wave of infections, including the wearing of masks.

· The UK government is to spend £30m on the world’s first Covid-19 “challenge trials”, in which healthy young volunteers are deliberately infected with the virus in the hope of accelerating the development of a vaccine.

· Russia reported a record high 16,319 new cases of coronavirus, including 4,999 in the capital Moscow, taking the national tally to 1,431,635.

· In Spain, the government of the northern region of Navarre announced that a two-week lockdown will come into effect from Thursday in a bid to slow a massive surge in Covid-19 cases in the area. People will only be allowed in and out of Navarre for work, university studies, to care for relatives, or for emergencies. Bars, cafes and restaurants will be closed. Shops will remain open but will need to operate at 40% capacity and close by 9pm. Navarre’s confinement is more stringent than the one imposed on the Madrid region by the central government.

· Turkey’s daily number of new coronavirus cases surpassed 2,000 on Monday, reaching levels last seen in early May when restrictions on businesses and households were in place.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/oct/20/coronavirus-live-news-who-says-failure-to-quarantine-behind-soaring-case-rises?page=with:block-5f8f0c868f08925a5d5dd649#block-5f8f0c868f08925a5d5dd649