Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths
World	199,565,226	+477,922	4,248,363
USA	35,895,980	+56,369	629,862
India	31,725,399	+30,031	425,228
Brazil	19,953,501	+15,143	557,359
Russia	6,312,185	+23,508	160,137
France	6,151,803	+5,184	111,936
UK	5,902,354	+21,952	129,743
Turkey	5,770,833	+22,898	51,519
Argentina	4,947,030	+11,183	106,045
Colombia	4,801,050	+6,636	121,216
Spain	4,502,983	+18,647	81,643
Italy	4,358,533	+3,190	128,088
Iran	3,940,708	+37,189	91,407
Germany	3,779,778	+1,502	92,183
Indonesia	3,462,800	+22,404	97,291
Poland	2,883,120	+91	75,261
Mexico	2,854,992	+6,740	241,034
South Africa	2,461,758	+5,574	72,437
Ukraine	2,253,534	+265	52,955
Peru	2,114,445	+1,244	196,518
Netherlands	1,869,909	+2,094	17,829
Czechia	1,673,774	+76	30,377
Iraq	1,648,727	+12,734	18,802
Chile	1,617,852	+910	35,616
Philippines	1,605,762	+8,167	28,093
Canada	1,431,605	+501	26,600
Bangladesh	1,280,317	+15,989	21,162
Malaysia	1,146,186	+15,764	9,403
Romania	1,083,478	+137	34,291
Pakistan	1,039,695	+4,858	23,462
Portugal	972,127	+1,190	17,378
Japan	935,886	+10,176	15,197
Israel	879,650	+3,849	6,487
Hungary	809,646	+155	30,027
Jordan	772,743	+990	10,059
Serbia	722,607	+386	7,122
Nepal	699,649	+2,279	9,898
UAE	683,914	+1,537	1,956
Austria	659,872	+364	10,739
Morocco	633,923	+4,206	9,885
Thailand	633,284	+17,970	5,168
Tunisia	595,532	+2,651	20,067
Kazakhstan	587,952	+7,573	6,053
Lebanon	563,124	+597	7,912
Saudi Arabia	527,877	+1,063	8,259
Greece	497,061	+2,154	12,958
Ecuador	487,702	+104	31,644
Bolivia	473,899	+393	17,839
Paraguay	453,031	+333	15,086
Belarus	447,754	+756	3,472
Panama	436,812	+337	6,842
Bulgaria	425,541	+393	18,222
Georgia	423,843	+1,655	5,876
Cuba	403,622	+9,279	2,913
Kuwait	399,343	+805	2,339
Slovakia	392,710	+6	12,540
Uruguay	381,715	+146	5,972
Guatemala	370,258	+632	10,448
Croatia	363,787	+29	8,266
Azerbaijan	344,951	+431	5,030
Denmark	318,485	+785	2,550
Palestine	317,083	+222	3,609
Sri Lanka	313,769	+2,420	4,571
Venezuela	307,570	+897	3,623
Myanmar	306,354	+3,689	10,061
Ireland	303,426	+1,352	5,035
Honduras	299,554	+1,171	7,871
Oman	297,122	+287	3,868
Egypt	284,362	+51	16,535
Lithuania	283,262	+228	4,418
Ethiopia	280,833	+268	4,391
Bahrain	269,401	+98	1,384
Moldova	259,667	+118	6,257
Slovenia	259,304	+31	4,429
Libya	256,328	+2,892	3,579
Armenia	230,476	+137	4,621
Qatar	226,540	+150	601
Kenya	204,271	+591	3,970
S. Korea	201,002	+1,215	2,099
Zambia	196,490	+197	3,412
Nigeria	174,759	+444	2,160
Algeria	173,922	+1,358	4,329
Mongolia	166,210	+1,063	823
Kyrgyzstan	164,743	+897	2,344
Vietnam	161,761	+7,455	1,695
Latvia	138,925	+26	2,556
Norway	138,265	+311	799
Estonia	133,771	+87	1,272
Albania	133,146	+25	2,457
Uzbekistan	131,079	+863	886
Mozambique	124,962	+1,421	1,479
Namibia	119,442	+157	3,064
Botswana	115,220	+8,530	1,653
Zimbabwe	110,855	+1,309	3,635
Finland	107,666	+345	982
Ghana	104,994	+664	837
Cyprus	102,716	+493	426
Suriname	25,439	+37	652
Aruba	11,807	+42	111

 

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

 

 

 

S.Korea on alert for new Delta Plus COVID-19 variant

By Sangmi Cha

 

A woman gets a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) test at a coronavirus testing site in Seoul, South Korea, July 15, 2021. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

 

South Korea has detected its first two cases of the new Delta Plus COVID-19 variant, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said on Tuesday, as the country battles with its fourth wave of infections.

The Delta Plus variant is a sub-lineage of the Delta variant first identified in India, and has acquired the spike protein mutation called K417N, which is also found in the Beta variant first identified in South Africa. read more

Reports of Delta Plus cases have been few, and a handful of countries, including Britain, Portugal and India, have reported some cases.

"The first case (in South Korea) was identified in a man in 40s who has no recent travel records," the KDCA told Reuters. The source of transmission is under investigation.

Test results in around 280 people who were in contact with the man found that only his son was positive too, Park Young-joon, a KDCA official told a briefing.

Park said it was unclear whether the son was also infected with Delta Plus.

The second case was found in a traveller who returned from the United States. The person had been vaccinated with both shots of AstraZeneca before the trip, Park said.

Health authorities have said several major vaccines work against the highly contagious Delta variant, which has already become dominant in many countries, but have raised concern new strains may evade some vaccines.

Genetic analysis of 3,014 infections last week found 64% were the Delta variant, KDCA data showed, a clear sign the variant has become the dominant strain in South Korea as well. Cases among the fully vaccinated remained low.

Some scientists have said the Delta Plus variant may be even more transmissible. Studies are ongoing in India and globally to test the effectiveness of vaccines against this mutation.

South Korea reported 1,202 new COVID-19 cases for Monday, raising the total to 202,203 infections, with 2,104 deaths.

The country on Tuesday said it has given 20 million people, or 39% of its population, at least one dose of a vaccine, while 14.1% have been fully vaccinated.

South Korea aims to immunise at least 36 million people by September.

 

Retrieved from:  https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/skorea-detects-its-first-two-cases-delta-plus-covid-19-variant-2021-08-03/

 

 

 

Coronavirus likely to lock India's women out of job market for years

By Manoj KumarAlasdair Pal

 

Chineya Devi, 32, who lost her job in a packaging firm, sits inside her roadside stall, near her house, in New Delhi, India, July 26, 2021.REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

 

Savitri Devi has been searching for work since she lost her job at a garment factory in New Delhi, along with half her co-workers, when sales plummeted at the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year.

The 44-year-old has tried her luck repeatedly - and unsuccessfully - near her home in Okhla, an industrial hub with thousands of small factories and workshops, where there was previously plenty of unskilled jobs for women.

"I am ready to take a salary cut, but there is no work," Devi said outside her one-room home in a slum of about 100 families, just a few miles away from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office.

Devi is one of around 15 million Indians who have been made redundant in an economic slowdown that has hit women disproportionately, trade union and industry leaders said.

Most employed women in India are in low-skilled work, such as farm and factory labour and domestic help, sectors that have been hit hard by the pandemic.

Worse, an anticipated slow economic recovery, the closure of thousands of factories and a sluggish vaccination rate, especially among women, is expected to undermine their attempts to return to the workforce.

"Whatever social and economic gains Indian women had made in the last decade, it has been largely wiped out during the COVID period," said Amarjeet Kaur, general secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress, one of the largest trade unions in India.

The second wave of the coronavirus pandemic is expected to deepen economic stress in India, which was already in its worst recession for seven decades.

With the vast majority of Indians working in the informal sector, precise estimates of job losses are difficult.

But in a country without a comprehensive welfare system or pandemic-related support for small businesses, several industry bodies have reported widespread redundancies over the past year.

The Consortium of Indian Industries (CIA), which represents over one million small firms, said women make up 60% of the job losses.

A report by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University found that 47% of women workers who lost their job between March and December - before the second wave of the virus hit in April - were made permanently redundant.

That compared with around 7% of male workers, many of whom were able to either return to their old jobs or take up independent work like selling vegetables.

WOMEN'S WORK

Reuters spoke with more than 50 women in Delhi, the industrial state of Gujarat and, by phone, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. All had lost their jobs in small garment factories, food processing units, travel agencies and schools, leading them to scrimp and save.

"We have cut down spending on milk, vegetables, clothes …everything," said Devi, who, along with her day-labourer husband supports an unemployed son and an aged mother.

In Okhla, home to makers of garments, auto parts and food packaging, employers say they have almost halved their workforce following a dip in orders and a rise in input costs like transport and steel.

Chetan Singh Kohli, a printing material manufacturer and an official of Okhla's factory owners' association, said the auxiliary nature of a typical woman's role meant they were not priorities for reemployment.

"The majority of female workers who work in low-skilled categories like packaging, and on assembly lines at lower wages would be the last ones to get employed, as first we want to restart operations," he said.

India’s informal service sector, including on-demand services like transportation and food delivery, has been one of the few bright spots during the pandemic, said Manisha Kapoor, researcher at the Institute for Competitiveness think tank, but were dominated by men.

"Those informal sector jobs are not something that women will be taking up," Kapoor said.

Kaur warned it could take two or three years for women to return to the workforce - if at all - and urged the government to offer incentives to lure them back.

"Migrant women workers, who have left for their villages with families after job losses, are unlikely to come back," she said.

CHILDCARE CONUNDRUM

Traditional household roles in India are further expected to impede women's return to the workforce.

India's female-to-male share of housework is among the highest in the world, and women are bearing the majority of childcare with schools still closed due to the pandemic.

"The work is available in faraway factories but I can't go as there is no one at home to take care of my children," said Chineya Devi, 32, who lost her job in an Okhla packaging firm earlier this year.

Many of the women Reuters spoke to stressed the damage from job loss to their self-esteem, leading to mental and physical health issues.

"Our men at home or government officials could never understand the impact of job losses on women," said Ritu Gupta, who owns a playschool in Najafgarh, on the outskirts of Delhi, that has been closed for over a year.

"I am feeling worthless sitting idle at home. This is not just a monetary loss but the whole meaning of my life."

 

Retrieved from:  https://www.reuters.com/world/india/coronavirus-likely-lock-indias-women-out-job-market-years-2021-08-02/

 

 

 

The E.U. is lagging on vaccine donations, aiding China, a top bloc official says

By Steven Erlanger

 

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, in Brussels in May.Credit...Olivier Hoslet/EPA, via Shutterstock

In an unusually public criticism of the European Union, its foreign policy chief has said that the bloc is falling radically short of its promises to donate Covid-19 vaccine doses to Africa and Latin America, creating a vacuum that China is filling.

Such donations are the responsibility of E.U. member countries. But the official, Josep Borrell Fontelles also singled out his boss, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch.

“The president of the Commission said we are going to give not 100, but 200 million doses to Africa,” Mr. Borrell said on Friday at a university summer course in Santander in Spain, his home country. “Yes, but when? The problem isn’t just the commitment, but the effectiveness.”

Mr. Borrell said that European countries had contributed about 10 million doses to Africa — a continent with a population of 1.5 billion. “It’s certainly insufficient,” he said.

In remarks cited by Politico Europe, Mr. Borrell said the issue was not just inequality, but also China’s efforts to expand its influence through vaccine donations.

“In Europe, we vaccinated 60 percent of our population, in Africa, they are at 2 or 3 percent,” he added. “Who’s the big vaccine supplier to Africa? China. Who’s the big vaccine supplier to Latin America? China.”

He said that Europe’s failure has “geopolitical consequences,” adding: “China’s expansion in Africa and Latin America should concern us and should occupy us a great deal.”

He also urged the European Union to move faster to approve association and trade agreements with Mexico and Chile, he said, “while China is landing in all parts of Latin America and occupying a predominant role.”

Mr. Borrell, 74, is a Commission vice president and former Spanish foreign minister. He has a particular interest in Latin America and Africa, and has been trying to persuade E.U. member states to respond more efficiently to crises in Libya, Ethiopia and Morocco, in part because of their impact on migration. He has also spoken often about how to do more for Cuba and Venezuela.

The Commission had no immediate comment. It has also been unwilling to identify how many doses have been donated to which countries.

Most European countries are still in the midst of their own vaccination campaigns, and the European Union has yet to define a bloc-wide strategy on vaccine donations. Italy said on Sunday that it had shipped 1.5 million doses to Tunisia, which has one of the world’s highest coronavirus death rates. Spain has promised to donate 7.5 million doses to Latin American countries. And France and Germany have each pledged to donate 30 million doses.

It is unclear how many of the doses promised have actually been delivered.

That compares with a pledge by the Biden administration to donate 80 million doses.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/02/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine/the-eu-is-lagging-on-vaccine-donations-aiding-china-a-top-bloc-official-says

 

 

 

Germany plans to offer vaccine booster shots starting in September

By Katrin Bennhold and Benjamin Mueller

 

A vaccine site in Berlin in July. Germany plans to offer booster shots to older people and people with underlying health conditions beginning in September.Credit...Stefanie Loos/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As concerns grow over a rise in coronavirus cases driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, Germany announced Monday it will offer vaccine booster shots to older people and people with underlying health conditions starting in September.

Germany’s move came after a top European Union official criticized the bloc as falling far short of its promises to donate vaccine doses to Africa and Latin America. Many health experts say the priority should be inoculating high-risk people around the world, and scientists also still disagree on the need for booster shots.

The issue of booster shots has been hotly debated in richer countries as vaccination rates have slowed. But as the Delta variant has become dominant in much of the United States and Europe, more governments appear to be moving toward endorsing them.

In the United States, Biden administration health officials increasingly think that vulnerable populations may need additional shots. Research continues into how long the vaccines remain effective. Israel, an early leader in administering vaccines, began administering boosters to people 60 and over last week.

France is offering booster shots only to the most elderly and vulnerable residents for now. Health officials in Belgium and Italy said they were ready to start offering boosters in the fall but were still gathering data to decide who should get a third dose, and when.

Under the German initiative, vaccination teams will be sent to care homes and other facilities for vulnerable people to administer Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots, according to the draft plan. Doctors and vaccination centers will be called on to provide the extra shots for eligible people outside care homes.

The boosters will also be offered to people who received AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson shots initially.

The guidelines cite studies that indicate “a reduced or quickly subsiding immune response after a full Covid-19 vaccination in certain groups of people,” notably those who because of age or pre-existing conditions have weakened immune systems.

Studies have indicated that immunity resulting from the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines is long-lasting, and researchers are still working to interpret recent Israeli data suggesting a decline in efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine months after inoculation.

Pfizer, which has begun making a case for booster shots in the United States, offered its own study last week showing a marginal decline in efficacy against symptomatic infection months after immunization, although the vaccine remains powerfully effective against severe disease and death.

Britain, which remains ahead of the European Union on vaccinations, has not yet formally announced plans for a booster shot program. But officials there have been planning for them ever since a committee of government advisers in late June outlined recommendations on how the shots could be administered.

Even as wealthier nations prepare to give booster shots, though, health experts say the focus should be on giving first doses to people in countries that remain largely unprotected, especially as the Delta variant spreads.

“Wealthy governments shouldn’t be prioritizing giving third doses when much of the developing world hasn’t even yet had the chance to get their first Covid-19 shots,” Kate Elder, the senior vaccines policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign, said in a statement.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/02/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine/germany-plans-to-offer-vaccine-booster-shots-starting-in-september

 

 

 

Wuhan begins city-wide COVID-19 testing after new local infections since June 2020

By GT staff reporters

 

Residents line up for nucleic acid test in Wuhan. File Photo: CFP

Wuhan in Central China's Hubei Province announced Tuesday it will conduct city-wide COVID-19 testing, as the city has upgraded its epidemic response measures in the face of the recent coronavirus infections, locking down the area where local COVID-19 infections have been reported while upgrading its risk levels. The city metro has adopted stricter anti-epidemic rules, and all schools have been closed. 

"I would give a thumbs up to the government's swift response to this flare-up, very swift and efficient," Luo Ning, a Wuhan resident, told the Global Times on Tuesday, noting that Wuhan people were traumatized by the outbreak last year, and they have learned how to stay safe and protect themselves. "I believe this small flare-up won't cause too much trouble for us, but it's better to be careful."

A Wuhan resident surnamed Xiao told the Global Times that her residential community has set up a site for nucleic acid tests this morning.

Wuhan reported seven local COVID-19 cases on Monday, breaking the zero infection record since June 2020. 

A resident of Zhuankou neighborhood who was the first case in the latest spike, transmitted the virus to six other close contacts. The community is now under lockdown and the area was upgraded to medium-risk area, the city health commission said in a statement on Tuesday. 

Another seven communities near the infected patient's workplace, a construction site in Wuhan's Jingkai district, have also been put under closed-off management. All residents living within the communities will receive nucleic acid testing, the health commission said. 

All schools and tutorial institutions have been asked to suspend offline classes and strengthen campus health monitoring, meanwhile speeding up the vaccination for teachers and students, local authorities announced on Tuesday. 

"Wuhan people are always on high alert of such things… The subways in Wuhan are all empty now, as if people have disappeared suddenly," a local resident surnamed Chen told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

The city's metro has reinforced stricter COVID-19 rules, including a mandatory on wearing masks, measuring body temperature, and checking health codes. Several stations near the Zhuankou neighborhood are temporarily closed. 

"Some of my neighbors are piling up food since last night, but I haven't. We might be overreacting but it's better to be cautious. Some of us are afraid this round of flare-up would go uncontrollable. Many people think the situation is under control but still avoid being outside," Xiao said.

Chen added that she has also been stocking life necessities as the others are doing, but this time "it won't be that dramatic," expressing her confidence in coping with the epidemic surge. 

Major supermarkets in the city are now stockpiling their shelves to ensure there is full supply and prices are kept stable, The Paper reported on Tuesday. 

Besides routine epidemic prevention, the supermarkets conducted thorough disinfection in their stores. Employees are also kept in check with daily health status monitoring. 

Daily supplies will be sent to closed-off communities and distributed into each household, the supermarket staff member said. Any items can be replenished within 2-3 hours. 

"Some would laugh and think that Wuhan people are overreacting, hiding away immediately after the epidemic strikes," Dong, a local resident, said to the Global Times. "But Wuhan shouldn't bear such scolding. We are the ones that were once the most desperate, and the deep wounds have left us with a scar."  

 

Retrieved from: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1230397.shtml

 

 

 

Indonesia's health workers are struggling to treat Covid patients amid a surge in cases and a lack of supplies

 

Thousands of residents queued at the UMM Dome building in Malang, a city in the east of Indonesia, for the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine yesterday as part of government efforts to slow down the virus. Photograph: Aman Rochman/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

 

Indonesia’s health workers are struggling under the weight of new cases seven days after the world’s fourth most populous country faced its deadliest day with 2,069 deaths.

As of Sunday, total official cases stood at more than 3.4 million with 97,291 deaths, though with poor testing and many people dying at home, the real figures are thought to be considerably higher, reports AP news agency.

As the region grapples with a new coronavirus wave fuelled by the delta variant, Indonesia’s death rate hit a 7-day rolling average of 6.5 per million on 1 August, second only to Myanmar and far higher than India’s peak rate of 3.04 that it hit in May during the worst of its outbreak.

Among the dead in Indonesia are more than 1,200 health care workers, including 598 doctors, according to the Risk Mitigation Team of the Indonesian Medical Association. The doctors included at least 24 who were fully vaccinated.

Many others are exhausted from the workload, said Mahesa Paranadipa, who co-leads the mitigation team, making them more likely to fall ill.

Paranadipa said:

We are worried about overburdened workloads lasting for a long time, causing potential burnout conditions. This fatigue causes the immunity of health care workers to decrease.

Acknowledging the risks faced by health care workers, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said Monday that a top priority is giving them a third booster vaccine dose.

Most who have been vaccinated have received Sinovac, which appears to be less effective against the delta variant, and Indonesia has already begun administering booster shots.

On top of the lack of medical personnel, Indonesia is also suffering from inadequate supplies.

Staff report oxygen shortages and hospitals filled far beyond their patient capacity, making it even more difficult to treat people properly.

Over the last two months, it has become common to see dozens of people with severe symptoms waiting in line for a bed in the hospital’s emergency unit, and more lines of people waiting for a space in the isolation ward following treatment, one worker said.

Some patients have brought their own oxygen tanks with them, and as the hospital’s own supplies have waned, doctors and nurses have had to ask them to share with others.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/aug/03/coronavirus-live-news-us-reaches-70-first-shot-goal-while-japan-shifts-to-home-care-for-most-covid-patients?page=with:block-6108e8868f089093df872953#block-6108e8868f089093df872953

 

 

 

Summary

 

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

· At least 70% of adults in the US have now received at least one Covid-19 vaccination shot, reaching a target Joe Biden originally said he had hoped to achieve by 4 July. Health and government officials have in recent days painted the resurgence of coronavirus there as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, highlighting that areas of the country with the most spread were those with lower than average vaccination rates.

· Hundreds of critical health workers in the Australian state of Queensland have gone into isolation as the country battles a growing Delta outbreak, while New South Wales raced to administer 6m vaccine doses before the scheduled end of lockdown in less than four weeks’ time.

· Boris Johnson has ditched plans for tougher quarantine restrictions for some holidaymakers after days of chaos, as it emerged the chief of the Joint Biosecurity Centre that advises on travel rules has departed the job leaving it “rudderless”.

· Japan is to focus on hospitalising patients who are seriously ill with Covid-19 and those at risk of becoming so while others isolate at home, amid worries about a strained medical system as cases surge in Olympics host city Tokyo.

· China has reported 90 new confirmed Covid-19 cases in the mainland for 2 August and the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first reported is going to test its entire population after the city reported its first local infections in more than a year.

· New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has taken a Covid-19 test after picking up a “seasonal sniffle” from her three-year-old daughter, the government spokesman said on Tuesday. It came back negative.

· Brazil had 15,143 new cases of the novel coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours and 389 deaths from Covid-19, the lowest death toll for a Monday since early December, according to Health Ministry data.

· Mexico’s health ministry reported 6,506 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the country and 245 more fatalities, bringing its total to 2,861,498 infections and 241,279 deaths.

· The Philippines will extend a night curfew in the capital, Manila, amid a tightening of curbs in the south-east Asian country to combat a potential surge in cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19, a government official said today.

· Health authorities in Iran have reported more than 37,000 cases of coronavirus in 24 hours for the first time, as the country also recorded its highest daily number of deaths from Covid for three months.

· Germany plans to offer booster shots to vulnerable people from September, as well as offer vaccinations to children over 12. Health ministers from the country’s states

· Poland is stepping up security at vaccination points following two arson incidents overnight in a single town and an attempt by anti-vaccine activists to break into another.

· A new study suggests that spending more time indoors and on screens because of Covid restrictions may be linked to an increased rate of short-sightedness in children.

 

Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/aug/03/coronavirus-live-news-us-reaches-70-first-shot-goal-while-japan-shifts-to-home-care-for-most-covid-patients