Coronavirus Watch

Global Statistics

There are now more than 19 million cases of the Coronavirus pandemic in the world, after 283, 009 new cases were recorded.

The US has recorded more than 5 million cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began mainly contributed to by the fact that the country has for the past two weeks been recording more than 40,000 new cases daily.

India’s cases have doubled in three weeks, reaching two million on Friday following a record daily jump of more than 60,000 new infections. India has become the third nation to top 2 million cases. Only the United States and Brazil have more. The country has also recorded 42,578 fatalities.

Latin America and the Caribbean surpassed Europe on Friday to become the region hardest-hit by coronavirus deaths. The region had reported 213,120 fatalities, 680 more than Europe. The region also has the largest number of cases of 5.4 million.

Over the last week, 44 percent of global deaths from COVID-19 (18,300 out of 41,500) happened in the Latin America. Brazil, which has also recorded 99,702 deaths among its 212 million people.

With cases in Africa surpassing the 1 million mark, more than 22,000 people have died with Covid-19 and almost 690,000 people have recovered. South Africa and Egypt remain the hotspots of the pandemic in Africa.

 7 292 new coronavirus infections recorded in South Africa to bring the total number of cases to 545 476 305 fatalities were recorded and the death toll is now at 9 909.  The number of recoveries currently stands at 394 759 which translates to a recovery rate of 72%.

Gauteng had recorded 187 631 cases, still the highest in the country, followed by the Western Cape, where more than a third of deaths have been recorded, KwaZulu-Natal with 90 115 infections and the Eastern Cape with 81 014.

The Western Cape government plans to start testing for Covid-19 antibodies soon, to get an idea of how many people may have had the virus already without knowing it, as the pandemic plateaus in the province

Zimbabwe recorded 112 new cases to bring the total number of cases to 4,451. 18 fatalities were recorded and the death toll is now at 102 fatalities. 1,345 recoveries have been recorded and the recovery rate is at 32.51%.

Virus cases are soaring among younger people, WHO says

The Covid-19 pandemic is moving into younger populations, health experts said Thursday, with cases skyrocketing among children, teens and young adults.

Early in the outbreak, health experts stressed that older adults were most at risk for the virus that has infected more than 4.8 million people in the United States, but new data from the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that most cases — by far — are reported in people aged 25 to 64. The proportion of cases in teens and young adults has gone up six-fold, and in very young children and babies the proportion has increased seven-fold, WHO said.

The increase might be explained by broader testing, greater detection of milder cases and shifting demographics of hotspots, but “a rise in risky behavior after easing of public health and social measures” is also to blame, WHO said. CNN

Metal Prices Asia/Europe/NY market

08/08/2020

 (Source: Kitco)