More than 20.72 million people have now been reported to have been infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 749,629 have died, according to a Reuters tally. Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases in the Covid-19 pandemic were identified in China in December 2019.
Some 3.4 million people in England have been infected with Covid-19, a figure far higher than previous estimates, a new study suggests.
The results come from the world’s largest home-testing programme to find antibodies for the coronavirus, a study involving more than 100,000 volunteers and carried out by Imperial College London.
The British government is under increasing pressure to review its moderation and appeals system for exams after thousands of pupils’ A-level results in England were downgraded amid cancelled exams due to Covid-19.
Germany has recorded its highest daily number of new coronavirus cases in more than three months. There were 1,319 new cases in Germany in the 24 hours through Thursday morning, the most since May 1st and bringing the country’s case total to 220,859, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Spain reported 2,935 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, the highest such number since the country’s lockdown ended and up from the 1,690 new cases recorded the previous day, when the Madrid region had failed to update its data due to technical reasons. The new data brought the country’s cumulative total number of cases to 337,334. Its death toll from the virus now stands at 28,605.
Various Spanish regions have reimposed some pandemic restrictions and even come up with new ones, such as a ban on smoking in public spaces in Galicia and the Canary Islands.
Greece reported on Thursday its second-highest daily number of new cases since the start of the pandemic, after hitting a record the previous day. The nation added 204 new cases, bringing the total to 6,381.
Italy’s health ministry has imposed mandatory coronavirus tests on travellers arriving from Spain, Croatia, Malta and Greece. The country also imposed a ban on entries or transit for travellers from Colombia.
New coronavirus cases in Romania reached a daily record of 1,454 on Thursday, bringing the total number of people infected with Covid-19 in the country to 66,631, according to government data. The country also reported 53 additional deaths related to the disease, the highest toll since the start of the pandemic.
The European Commission has said it’s seeking to secure 200 million doses of a vaccine from Johnson and Johnson, stepping up efforts to protect citizens against the pandemic.
Russia has reported 5,057 new coronavirus cases, bringing its nationwide tally to 907,758, the fourth-largest caseload in the world.
Meanwhile, two patients in China who recovered from Covid-19 months ago have tested positive for the disease again, raising concern about the coronavirus’s ability to linger and reappear in people who it previously infected.
A 68-year-old woman in the central Chinese province of Hubei, where the virus first surfaced in December, tested positive on Sunday, six months after she was diagnosed with Covid-19 and recovered.
Another man found to have contracted the disease in April after returning from abroad tested positive in Shanghai on Monday. The two cases are the latest additions to a growing number of “virus reactivation” anecdotes found among patients believed to have recovered from the viral infection. While rare, the phenomenon raises questions over whether any immunity to the disease might be too ephemeral to protect against reinfection.
source: irishtimes.com