Global Statistics
COVID-19 cases continue to surge around the globe as there are now over 77,8 million cases that have been registered and over 1,69 million deaths.
The United States reported 183,223 new coronavirus cases and 1,414 related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The country’s Covid-19 caseload now stands at 18,267,579, with 324,869deaths, according to the university’s tally. Over the past week, the US averaged more than 219,000 new Covid-19 infections a day, according to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. There were more than 249,000 infections reported on Friday alone — another record.
The EU’s drug regulator will decide today whether to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, with desperate countries hoping for the green light to finally start inoculating their citizens. The EU will start Covid-19 inoculations on December 27 providing the EMA grants a one-year conditional marketing authorisation, the European Commission has said.
Several European countries have banned flights to and from the United Kingdom and others were considering such action, all in hopes of blocking a new strain of coronavirus sweeping across southern England from establishing a strong foothold on the continent.
The United Kingdom has again broken its daily coronavirus case record, having recorded 35,928 new cases on Sunday, according to the UK government coronavirus dashboard. This is the highest daily case number recorded by the UK according to CNN’s tally. This tops the previous record of 35,383 cases reported on Thursday. A further 326 deaths were recorded in the UK on Sunday.
The new Covid-19 variant which is 70 percent more infectious, originating from south-east England, has been identified in Denmark, the Netherlands and as far as Australia, World Health Organization (WHO) Covid-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove said on Sunday. The UK had picked [the existence of the new variant] up in September and seen that this had been circulating in south-east England since September. Studies are under way to better understand how fast it spreads and whether “it’s related to the variant itself, or a combination of factors with behavior.
Finland, Norway and Denmark implemented some of the continent’s most relaxed combinations of restrictions, they still managed to keep average daily deaths low — below one per million — for the three-month period between September 1 and November 30. Finland, Norway and Denmark kept the lowest death rates amid some of the most relaxed restrictions in Europe in the three-month period beginning in September.
South Africa’s COVID-19 infections have increased to 921 922 with 9 445 new cases reported in the last 24 hours. 152 more COVID-19-related fatalities have been reported, bringing the total death toll to 24 691.
Zimbabwe has to date recorded 12 325 confirmed cases, including 10,535 recoveries and 320 deaths. President Emmerson Mnangagwa has warned the country’s citizens that they risk losing all the early gains the country had made in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic if they continued disregarding the containment measures put in place by his administration. Zimbabwe has experienced a sudden spike in coronavirus infections since the beginning of December raising fears the country might not cope with the second wave because of its poor health delivery system and a highly disgruntled healthcare workforce.
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