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The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide has exceeded 134 million, with over 2.9 million deaths and more than 76 million recoveries, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.
Here is the latest:
The Chinese mainland recorded 14 confirmed cases on Friday, all from overseas.
The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine could possibly cause rare blood clots in some people but further studies are required to confirm the link, experts with the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.
Europe's medicines watchdog said on Friday it was reviewing reports of rare blood clots in four people who received the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Janssen, the pharmaceutical arm of Johnson & Johnson.
The more contagious coronavirus variant, first identified in the UK, is now the most common coronavirus strain in the United States, said Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVID-19 deaths in Europe surpassed the one million mark on Friday, reaching 1,001,313, according to the dashboard of the World Health Organization's Regional Office for Europe.
SUMMARY
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide has exceeded 134 million, with over 2.9 million deaths and more than 76 million recoveries, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.
Here is the latest:
The Chinese mainland recorded 14 confirmed cases on Friday, all from overseas.
The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine could possibly cause rare blood clots in some people but further studies are required to confirm the link, experts with the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.
Europe's medicines watchdog said on Friday it was reviewing reports of rare blood clots in four people who received the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Janssen, the pharmaceutical arm of Johnson & Johnson.
The more contagious coronavirus variant, first identified in the UK, is now the most common coronavirus strain in the United States, said Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVID-19 deaths in Europe surpassed the one million mark on Friday, reaching 1,001,313, according to the dashboard of the World Health Organization's Regional Office for Europe.
Production line of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine facility. /CFP
China is expected to achieve an annual production capacity of 5 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine by the end of next year, with nearly 70 percent of its population vaccinated, said Feng Duojia, president of the China Vaccine Industry Association.
According to Chinese media Caixin, Feng made the remarks on Wednesday during a Peking University seminar on "Coronavirus and the globalization of the vaccine industry."
There is a high possibility that a China's homemade mRNA vaccine will be available by the end of 2020, as many domestic companies are blueprinting for furthering research on booster doses, added Feng.
A third batch of 1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines Thailand ordered from China's Sinovac arrived in Bangkok on Saturday.
The first and second batches were delivered to Thailand on February 24 and March 20.
The Chinese mainland recorded 14 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, all from overseas, data from the National Health Commission (NHC) showed on Saturday.
No additional deaths related to COVID-19 were reported on Friday, the NHC said.
Eleven new asymptomatic cases were recorded the same day, while 285 asymptomatic patients are under medical observation.
This brings the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland to 90,400, with the death toll unchanged at 4,636.
The total number of confirmed cases in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and the Taiwan region are as follows:
Hong Kong: 11,563 (11,186 recoveries, 207 deaths)
Macao: 49 (48 recoveries)
Taiwan: 1,054 (1018 recoveries, 10 deaths)
Panama has approved the emergency use of China's Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19, the health ministry said on Friday.
The ministry said the authorization would help the Central American country secure the vaccines needed to inoculate its population against the virus.
Chinese vaccines Sinopharm and CoronaVac (Sinovac) are in the final stage of evaluation by the Emergency Use Listing of the World Health Organization (WHO) and a "final decision" should be made between April 26 and May 3, a WHO official said in a press conference on Friday.
"We have convened the technical advisory group for a vaccine assessment for the 26th of April," said Rogerio Pinto de Sa Gaspar, director of regulation and prequalification, adding that "at least one of the two" could be evaluated on that date.
The Emergency Use Listing, WHO's internal procedure to assess unlicensed vaccines, is necessary for vaccines to be used under the COVAX Facility, a WHO-led initiative aimed at providing more equitable access to vaccines for low and middle-income countries.
Argentina is seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases and infections, as the virus is spiraling out of control throughout Latin America. The new numbers forced the government to implement new measures to stall the virus. Take a look.
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Infection levels remain stubbornly high in a vast majority of the regions. /David Gannon/AFP
Germany is bracing for harsher coronavirus restrictions as the country continues to be in the grip of a third wave. There were more than 25,000 new COVID-19 infections registered on Friday, one of the highest daily numbers recorded in the current wave.
It remains unclear how much of this figure is due to a backlog of data from Easter. And to contain the surge, the government is pushing for a new national lockdown.
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Given the worsening outlook, Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to push forward new legislation that would give the federal government more control over the pandemic response.
Currently, much of the decision-making power lies with the leaders of Germany's 16 states hence a patchwork of rules exists across the country, despite stubbornly high infection levels in a vast majority of the regions.
An amendment to the Infection Protection Act would allow Merkel to oversee a consistent lockdown strategy across the country. A recent YouGov poll shows 54 percent of Germans would support such an approach.
An amendment to the Infection Protection Act would allow Merkel to oversee a consistent lockdown strategy across the country. /John Macdougall/AFP
Government spokesperson Ulrike Demmer said the necessary legislation could be tabled in German parliament as early as next week. The debate over lockdown comes as Germany works to speed up its vaccination campaign.
On Friday, almost 720,000 first and second doses were administered, the highest daily total so far.
"We need a lockdown to break the current wave and to get considerably below an incidence of 100 [new infections per 100,000 per seven days]," said Health Minister Jens Spahn. "This can then lead to more openings with the assistance of tests in the retail sector, the outdoor restaurant business and at soccer games."
He warned the hospital system is at risk of being overburdened, with the number of available intensive care beds at their lowest level since the start of the pandemic.
Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Spahn stressed the need for an urgent response.
"Our hospitals illustrate how serious the situation really is. The number of COVID-19 intensive care patients is rising much too fast," he said. "It has again reached almost 4,500 across German hospitals. Doctors and nurses right to raise the alarm. They have been under constant stress for months, many months."
He is also entering talks with Russia to explore adding Sputnik V to the country's pool of COVID-19 vaccines.
"Contract negotiations are taking place right now. This can happen relatively quickly as far as I see because the conditions are clear," he said.
"They are comparable to contracts we already have. Ultimately, it must be clear what amounts we are talking about for which time period, and approval provided. The speed for an approval depends solely on how quickly the Russian side provides data," added Spahn.
The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) has approved China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, the National Institute of Health in Islamabad confirmed on Friday.
According to a statement released by DRAP on Thursday, the CoronaVac vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac has been given emergency use authorization for people aged 18 and above.
Eighteen samples tested positive after the second round of blanket testing in Ruili City, southwest China's Yunnan Province, as of Friday.
The city, with a population of around 300,000 reported a cluster infection last week and launched the first round of mass nucleic acid testing on March 31.
Almost all the recent local transmissions in China occurred in the border city, which leads to the dismissal of the city's party chief on Thursday.
Egypt has agreed with China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd to manufacture its COVID-19 vaccine domestically, according to local media.
Egypt's Health Minister Hala Zayed said Thursday the vaccines will be distributed in Egypt and other African countries.
China has administered 155.15 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of Thursday, according to the statistics of the National Health Commission Friday.
As many as 131,968 new COVID-19 cases were registered in the past 24 hours in India, according to official data released by the health ministry on Friday.
The latest single-day spike, the highest so far, takes the total tally to 13,060,542.
This is the fourth time within this week and the third consecutive day that more than 100,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported in India. Earlier, 103,558 new cases were reported on Monday, while 115,736 new cases were reported on Wednesday, and 126,789 new cases on Thursday.
As many as 780 have died due to the pandemic since Thursday morning, taking the total death toll to 167,642, showed the ministry's data.
People in Buena Park, California during a local festival, March 30, 2021. /CFP
Five new cases infected with a "double mutant" of COVID-19 variant have been identified in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, CNBC reported on Thursday. The new cases were identified days after the area reported the first such case.
The variant was first detected in India last month. It was dubbed "double mutant" as it carries two mutations of SARS-CoV-2 strains E484Q and L452R.
These mutations are not new. The E484 was also present in the variant that was first detected in South Africa and Brazil. And the L452R mutation was observed in the U.S. and Europe, but the new variant carries both of them. "Something that has not been seen in other variants," the CNBC reported.
It is suspected to be more contagious and reduce the effectiveness of existing vaccines.
"We don't quite know that yet, although these mutations I've talked about have been associated with increased transmissibility," Dr Benjamin Pinsky, medical director of Stanford's clinical virology laboratory, which discovered the new variant in the U.S., said in the ABC7's show "Getting Answers" on Wednesday. "In fact, in India, this new variant accounts for 15 to 20 percent of cases in one particular state."
It also remains unknown whether the vaccines will be less effective against the variant, but researchers have some information on experiments on the individual mutations suggesting that "antibodies will be less able to neutralize" the variant, Pinsky added.
"But all of the vaccines are extremely effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths," he added.
Tom Kenyon, former director of global health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told CNBC that more mutations could be found as the CDC strengthens surveillance. "So the more that we look for these, the more we're going to find them."
"The variants that scare me the most are the ones that haven't been invented as yet ... the more the virus replicates, we will continue to see these escape mutants," said Peter Chin-Hong, infectious diseases expert at the University of California San Francisco.
He called for global vaccination equity and continued battles against the pandemic.
The CDC director Rochelle Walensky has warned that the country could be in trouble again as states ease prevention restrictions. She urged people to get vaccinated and continue to follow public health precautions, including wearing masks and keeping social distancing.
China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region asked the drugmaker AstraZeneca to delay the delivery of its COVID-19 vaccine, the city's Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan said Friday, adding that Hong Kong has enough supply of COVID-19 vaccines.
The city is now looking to get vaccines that can protect against new coronavirus variants, Chan said.
The decision was made following news that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) found a possible link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clotting issues in adults who had received the shot.
A handover ceremony for medical supplies donated by China to Namibia to prevent the COVID-19 transmission was held in the African country on Thursday.
Chinese Ambassador to Namibia Zhang Yiming, and executive director of Namibia's Health Ministry, Ben Nangombe, among other officials, attended the ceremony.
Nangombe expressing appreciation to China over the donation said that the donated medical equipment will help ease the pressure on Namibia's medical resources.
Namibia has expressed its willingness to strengthen its cooperation with China in the health sector to combat COVID-19 and other challenges together.
The Chinese mainland recorded 21 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, including 8 locally transmitted cases in the southwestern province of Yunnan, data from the National Health Commission (NHC) showed on Friday.
No additional deaths related to COVID-19 were reported on Thursday, the NHC said.
Twelve new asymptomatic cases were recorded the same day, while 293 asymptomatic patients are under medical observation.
This brings the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland to 90,386, with the death toll unchanged at 4,636.
The total number of confirmed cases in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and the Taiwan region are as follows:
Hong Kong: 11,549 (11,174 recoveries, 205 deaths)
Macao: 49 (48 recoveries)
Taiwan: 1,050 (1007 recoveries, 10 deaths)
Zhai Yulong was appointed as Party chief of Ruili City in southwest China's Yunnan Province on Thursday.
Zhai was appointed to replace Gong Yunzun, who was removed from the post for serious dereliction of duty in COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control.
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