Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	153,480,141	+680,296	3,216,157
USA	33,180,441	+30,701	591,062
India	19,919,715	+370,059	218,945
Brazil	14,754,910	+28,935	407,775
France	5,652,247	+9,888	104,819
Turkey	4,875,388	+25,980	40,844
Russia	4,823,255	+8,697	110,862
UK	4,420,201	+1,671	127,538
Italy	4,044,762	+9,148	121,177
Spain	3,524,077	+9135	78,216
Germany	3,425,598	+13,225	83,826
Argentina	3,005,259	+11,394	64,252
Colombia	2,893,655	+15,909	74,700
Poland	2,803,233	+4,612	68,068
Iran	2,534,855	+18,698	72,484
Mexico	2,347,780	+3,025	217,168
Ukraine	2,083,180	+5,094	44,596
Peru	1,810,998	+6,083	62,126
Indonesia	1,677,274	+4,394	45,796
Czechia	1,634,114	+1,169	29,343
South Africa	1,584,064	+1,222	54,417
Netherlands	1,507,615	+5,508	17,172
Canada	1,234,181	+7,146	24,300
Chile	1,210,920	+6,165	26,561
Iraq	1,074,930	+4,564	15,536
Romania	1,057,655	+1,083	28,282
Philippines	1,054,983	+8,346	17,431
Belgium	993,434	+3,205	24,258
Israel	838,554	+73	6,366
Portugal	837,277	+330	16,977
Pakistan	829,933	+4,414	18,070
Hungary	782,892	+1,593	27,802
Bangladesh	761,943	+1,359	11,579
Jordan	712,901	+824	8,897
Serbia	691,920	+989	6,409
Austria	622,110	+1,625	10,245
Japan	597,225	+5,836	10,296
Lebanon	528,208	+700	7,324
UAE	523,795	+1,847	1,593
Morocco	511,856	+294	9,028
Saudi Arabia	419,348	+937	6,979
Malaysia	415,012	+3,418	1,533
Bulgaria	405,194	+348	16,492
Ecuador	387,299	+2,710	18,740
Slovakia	383,098	+378	11,766
Panama	365,104	+260	6,238
Belarus	361,063	+1,081	2,562
Nepal	336,030	+7,137	3,325
Croatia	335,173	+944	7,182
Kazakhstan	325,499	+2,804	3,717
Azerbaijan	321,380	+1,058	4,561
Georgia	312,445	+988	4,151
Tunisia	311,743	+1,009	10,868
Bolivia	306,527	+933	13,009
Palestine	297,638	+512	3,272
Paraguay	282,543	+1,520	6,572
Kuwait	276,586	+1,316	1,578
Dominican Republic	267,455	+594	3,493
Ethiopia	258,384	+322	3,726
Denmark	252,912	+867	2,490
Moldova	251,335	+175	5,838
Ireland	249,838	+401	4,906
Lithuania	249,680	+949	3,950
Slovenia	241,672	+362	4,263
Egypt	229,635	+1,051	13,469
Guatemala	228,684	+207	7,558
Armenia	216,863	+267	4,139
Honduras	213,167	+834	5,318
Qatar	206,948	+646	472
Uruguay	202,492	+1,584	2,724
Venezuela	200,067	+1,202	2,172
Oman	195,807	+2,554	2,043
Bahrain	179,297	+1,300	651
Libya	177,871	+363	3,039
Nigeria	165,153	+43	2,063
Kenya	160,422	+369	2,763
North Macedonia	152,685	+104	4,936
Myanmar	142,838	+7	3,209
Albania	131,238	+53	2,397
S. Korea	123,240	+606	1,833
Estonia	122,685	+174	1,168
Algeria	122,522	+211	3,270
Latvia	119,750	+380	2,144
Norway	113,469	+210	756
Sri Lanka	111,753	+1,891	696
Cuba	108,693	+1,071	664
Montenegro	97,619	+102	1,505
Kyrgyzstan	96,060	+308	1,619
Zambia	91,693	+23	1,253
Uzbekistan	91,643	+393	652
China	90,686	+15	4,636
Finland	87,228	+132	914
Thailand	68,984	+1,940	245
Suriname	10,489	+61	207
Vietnam	2,962	+20	35

 

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

 

 

 

How you can help India as it experiences the world's worst Covid-19 outbreak

From CNN's Ashley Vaughan

 

Workers are seen sorting oxygen cylinders that are being used for Covid-19 patients before dispatching them to hospitals at a facility on the outskirts of Amritsar, India, on April 28. Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images

India is experiencing the world's worst coronavirus outbreak.

The country has reported more than 19.5 million cases since the pandemic began last year. But experts fear the the real number could be up to 30 times higher.

Grieving families are struggling to keep themselves and their loved ones safe amid an overwhelmed health care system, and medical workers are stretched thin as some hospitals run out of oxygen and supplies.

The global community is rallying to help India push back against the pandemic, with countries around the world offering aid.

 

 

 

Nepal imposes flight suspensions as Covid cases surge

From CNN's Sugam Pokharel

 

Nepal will suspend domestic commercial flights at midnight on Monday and ban all commercial flights originating from India, Brazil and South Africa from midnight Wednesday until May 14, Health Minister Hridayesh Tripathi said Sunday. 

As India continues to grapple with an unrelenting second wave of Covid-19, its neighbor Nepal is seeing its own surge in case numbers, prompting the Nepali government to seal the land border shared by the two countries. 

The tiny South Asian nation on Sunday registered 7,137 new coronavirus infections -- the highest single-day rise in infections since the pandemic began, according to the Nepal Health Ministry. Twenty-seven new virus-related deaths were also reported.

Nepal had seen case numbers begin to fall in February, with newly identified cases hovering between 50 to 100 each day. But infections began soaring in mid-April, about the same time India's second wave began. New cases now number in the thousands each day, and health authorities have identified cases involving a variant of the coronavirus found in India.

Nepal has limited health care infrastructure and access to life-saving resources, raising fears it is ill-equipped to deal with a massive outbreak like the one ravaging India. On Thursday, Nepali authorities imposed a two-week lockdown in the capital, Kathmandu, in efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19. 

 

 

 

The world is in the midst of its worst Covid crisis so far. It didn't have to be this way

From CNN's Laura Smith-Spark and Nectar Gan

 

 

A woman arrives to receive free oxygen distributed for coronavirus patients on May 1, in New Delhi, India. Anindito Mukherjee/Getty Images

A year ago, when the Covid-19 pandemic was still in its relative infancy, the head of the World Health Organization stressed that a global approach would be the only way out of the crisis.

"The way forward is solidarity: solidarity at the national level, and solidarity at the global level," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing in April 2020.

Fast-forward 12 months and the devastating scenes in India, where hospitals have been overwhelmed by a surge of Covid-19 cases and thousands are dying for lack of oxygen, suggest the warnings went unheeded.

India is not the only global Covid-19 hotspot. Turkey entered its first national lockdown Thursday, an unwelcome step prompted by infection rates which are now the highest in Europe.

Some countries have offered help as hotspots emerge, for example flying in oxygen concentrators, ventilators and other medical supplies to India in recent days. But the coordinated global response urged by Tedros a year ago -- and repeatedly since, by WHO and other global heath bodies -- remains elusive.

 

Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-05-03-21/index.html

 

 

 

Aid shipments are beginning to flow into India, including oxygen supplies from the U.S., Britain and France

By Andrew Jacobs and Chris Cameron

 

Relief supplies from the United States  arriving at the Indira Gandhi International Airport cargo terminal in New Delhi, India, on Friday.Credit...Pool photo by Prakash Singh

Countries around the world are accelerating deliveries of desperately needed medical supplies to India as the country endures an unrelenting, catastrophic coronavirus wave.

On Sunday, the United States delivered the third of six aid shipments to New Delhi, including 1,000 oxygen cylinders; Britain donated more than 400 oxygen concentrators; and France sent eight oxygen generators, each of which can serve 250 hospitalized patients.

Oxygen in India has been in short supply as it grapples with a crushing second virus wave, leaving some dying Covid patients gasping for air in hospital beds. Others, unable to find room in overwhelmed health care centers, have died in hospital parking lots, or at home.

On April 15, the Indian health ministry said in a statement that India had a daily production capacity of about 7,700 tons of oxygen, some of which is used for industrial purposes, with 55,000 tons in reserve. A week later, a government official told the Delhi High Court that medical demand had reached 8,800 tons per day, beyond the daily production capacity.

More than three dozens countries large and small have pledged to help India, which on a single day this weekend reported a world record of 401,993 new cases. Daily deaths have nearly doubled over the last two weeks, hitting 3,689 on Saturday.

Relatives of the sick have taken to social media with pleas seeking not only portable oxygen tanks, but also hospital beds or medicines like remdesivir. The country’s misery has been compounded by a series of deadly hospital accidents, including a fire on Saturday that killed 16 Covid patients and two health care workers in the city of Bharuch, in western India.

Over the weekend, aid from a half dozen countries touched down at airports across India; they included a shipment of 157 ventilators from the United Arab Emirates, 500 oxygen cylinders from Taiwan and 1,000 vials of the medicine Remdesivir from Belgium.

President Biden has been under intense pressure to do more to address the crisis in India. His administration intends to make up to 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine available to other countries, as long as federal regulators deem the doses safe. Vaccines are badly needed in India, where shortages forced several states on Saturday to delay expanding access to everyone aged 18 and over.

The United States has pledged to provide $100 million worth of supplies, which will include 15 million N95 masks and a million rapid diagnostic tests. On Sunday, Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, said that the Biden administration had sent the raw materials to produce 20 million vaccine doses, and he said the U.S. was considering whether to lift patents on vaccines to boost global production.

“We are rushing aid to India,” Mr. Klain said in an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” The administration, he added would soon announce “how we can get this vaccine more widely distributed, more widely licensed, more widely shared.”

The United Kingdom announced it will send another 1,000 ventilators, in addition to the oxygen concentrators, 200 ventilators, and three oxygen generation units that were pledged last week.

France announced plans to deliver additional oxygen generators and medical equipment beyond the supplies that arrived Sunday. Air Liquide, a French industrial gases company, will begin shipments of several hundred tons of oxygen next week.

 

Retrieved from:  https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/05/02/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-cases/india-aid-covid-oxygen

 

 

 

Russia’s vaccine diplomacy sows discord across Europe

By Andrew Higgins

 

The old town of Bratislava, Slovakia. Uproar in the country over the decision to order Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine forced Prime Minister Igor Matovic to step down.Credit...Akos Stiller for The New York Times

It remains unclear whether Sputnik V, the world’s first registered vaccine, is the medical breakthrough proclaimed last summer by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but the shot has already proved to be remarkably effective in spreading disarray and division in Europe.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron talked to Mr. Putin recently about possible deliveries of Sputnik, which Mr. Macron’s own foreign minister derided as a “propaganda tool.” The Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, furious that European regulators have been slow in approving Sputnik, has clashed with Germany’s leader, Angela Merkel, over the bloc’s vaccination program, which so far involves only Western vaccines. Skepticism over Russia’s intentions with its vaccine runs deep across the former Communist lands of East and Central Europe

In Slovakia, Prime Minister Igor Matovic’s decision to order two million doses of the Sputnik vaccine from Russia blew up in his face, costing him his job last month and almost toppling the whole government — the most concrete example of how Russia’s vaccine diplomacy has had side effects that can be highly toxic.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/05/02/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-cases/russias-vaccine-diplomacy-sows-discord-across-europe

 

 

 

Japan nurses voice anger at call to volunteer for Tokyo Olympics amid Covid crisis

 

A recent request to the Japanese Nursing Association to send 500 of its members to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics was met with a wave of anger. Photograph: AP

 

The organisers of the Tokyo Olympics have sparked anger in Japan’s medical community after they asked 500 nurses to volunteer at this summer’s Games.

The request came as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and organisers pressed ahead with plans to hold the Games, even as the coronavirus pandemic continued to worsen in the host nation, amid warnings that the event could place an intolerable strain on exhausted health workers.

The total number of Covid-19 deaths in Japan recently passed 10,000 – the highest in the region – while media reports said the number of people with severe Covid-19 symptoms reached a record 1,050 at the weekend.

Medical staff in Tokyo and other areas where cases are surging say their professional focus must remain on coronavirus patients and people with other illnesses who have had their treatment delayed due to the virus.

Osaka prefecture, the epicentre of Japan’s fourth wave, has run out of beds for seriously ill patients, with other people suffering from the virus forced to spend hours waiting in ambulances before they can be admitted.

Olympic officials say 10,000 medical workers will be needed during the Games, which will be held during the hottest time of the year.

But a recent request to the Japanese Nursing Association to send 500 of its members to Tokyo 2020 was met with a wave of anger on social media from nurses who said they were too busy to devote time to the Olympics.

A tweet by a local federation of medical unions outlining it opposition to performing Olympic duties has received hundreds of thousands of retweets in recent days.

The secretary general of the Japan Federation of Medical Workers’ Unions, Susumu Morita, said the pandemic should take priority. “We must stop the proposal to send nurses who are engaged in the fight against a serious coronavirus pandemic to volunteer at the Olympics,” Morita said in a statement.

“I am furious at the insistence on staging the Olympics despite the risk to patients’ and nurses’ health and lives.”

Although medical workers were the first group in Japan to start receiving vaccines in mid-February, many have yet to be given their first jab. Morita said unprotected medical staff fear contracting the virus while treating patients or administering vaccines.

So far, less than 2% of Japan’s population of 126 million has received at least one dose – the lowest rate among OECD countries.

“Beyond feeling anger, I was stunned at the insensitivity [of the request],” Mikito Ikeda, a nurse in the central city of Nago, told Associated Press. “It shows how human life is being taken lightly.”

The prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, provoked dismay when he suggested that nurses who had stopped working, including those suffering from stress and exhaustion, could be enlisted for Tokyo 2020.

“I hear many are taking time off, and so it should be possible,” he said last week.

His comment drew criticism from Yukio Hatoyama, a former prime minister, who tweeted: “Now people in Japan are barely getting by, wondering if they will die from the coronavirus or as a result of the economic slump. And Osaka and other places are asking for nurses to help out. Don’t we need nurses to work at vaccination centres?”

Opposition MP Tomoko Tamura said: “The situation is extremely serious. Nurses don’t know how they can possibly take care of this situation. It is physically impossible.”

While Suga repeats claims by the IOC and organisers that it will be possible to put on a “safe and secure Olympics in 81 days’ time, medical experts are increasingly sceptical. An article in April’s BMJ said Japan should “reconsider” holding the Olympics, arguing that “international mass gathering events … are still neither safe nor secure”.

Haruo Ozaki, head of the Tokyo Medical Association, has said it will be “extremely difficult” to hold the Olympics now that new, more transmissible variants of the virus are spreading in Japan, where the cumulative caseload recently topped 600,000.

On Sunday, Japan reported 5,900 new infections and a further 61 deaths.

“We have heard enough of the spiritual argument about wanting the Games,” Ozaki said. “It is extremely difficult to hold them without increasing infections, both inside and outside Japan.”

Suga last month declared a state of emergency in Tokyo, Osaka and two other virus hotspots in an attempt to check the surge in cases, with restaurants that serve alcohol asked to close until at least 11 May and “dry” establishments to cut their opening hours.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/may/03/japan-nurses-voice-anger-at-call-to-volunteer-for-tokyo-olympics-amid-covid-crisis

 

 

 

Summary

 

The world’s largest maker of vaccines is still short of critical supplies — the result of lagging manufacturing and raw material shortages. Those factors delayed the rollout in several states.

Here are the other key developments from the last few hours:

· Britain will send another 1,000 ventilators to India, the government announced on Sunday, stepping up its support as India’s healthcare system struggles to cope with the surge of positive Covid-19 cases.

· Saudi Arabia to open land, sea, and air borders as of 17 May, the interior minister announces on Twitter.

· Oman to ban the movement of people and vehicles from 7 pm to 4 am from May 8 to May 15, the state news agency said.

· South Africa to get the first delivery of its 4.5 million Pfizer coronavirus vaccines as the country begins to increase its vaccination efforts.

· The English city of Liverpool hosted a one-off music festival to test whether significant events spread Covid-19. Nearly 5,000 people took off their masks and ditched social distancing rules in the name of science and music.

· A maximum of 1,000 fans will be allowed on-court at Roland Garros this year, with capacity capped at 35%.

· India recorded a number of deaths on Sunday. New coronavirus cases fell slightly on Sunday but deaths due to the infection jumped by a record 3,689, with one more state going into lockdown as the nation’s healthcare system struggles to cope with a massive caseload.

· Secondary school pupils in England will be offered Covid-19 vaccinations from September under plans being developed by the NHS, according to The Sunday Times. It reports that “core planning scenario” documents compiled by NHS officials include the offer of a single dose of the Pfizer jab to children aged 12 and over when the new school year starts.

· A major new pilot scheme could see the end of people in England having to self-isolate if they have been in contact with someone who has Covid. The government-backed research will trial giving people daily lateral flow tests for seven days instead of asking people quarantine for 10 days.

· Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has urged the British public to keep their resolve for the “last lap” of the fight against coronavirus, saying there is only “a little bit more time” until all legal restrictions on social interaction are removed.

· Campaigners call for urgent action to prevent oxygen shortage in Covid-hit countries. They warn that scenes in India of families desperately searching for oxygen for critically ill Covid patients will be repeated in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and other countries in Africa and around the world unless a significant international effort is made to ensure all countries have good oxygen supplies.

· A total of 41,730,517 Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between December 8 and May 1, according to NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 452,789 on the previous day.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/may/03/coronavirus-live-news-india-offers-vaccination-to-all-adults-as-country-nears-20m-cases