MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th December, 2020) The global COVID-19 case total has surpassed 80 million, according to the US-based Johns Hopkins University, which tracks and compiles data from Federal and local authorities, media outlets, and other sources.
As of 19:00 GMT on Saturday, 80,081,092 positive tests for the coronavirus disease have been registered by the higher education institute. The global death toll currently sits at 1.75 million.
The global case count crossed the 70 million mark on December 12.
The United States remains the world-leader in terms of cases and deaths, with more than 18.8 million confirmed positive tests and 330,678 fatalities, according to the university portal.
Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Saturday that the use of the Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 had been approved for people aged 60 and older.
"The Health Ministry approved amendments to the instructions for medical use [of the vaccine]. The Sputnik V vaccine is now approved for use in persons aged 18 and over. Thus, citizens over 60 years old can now be vaccinated against the new coronavirus infection," Murashko said during an appearance on the Russia-24 broadcaster.
Following the announcement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Sputnik that Russian President Vladimir Putin will make it public when he is vaccinated.
The official Twitter account of Sputnik V said that the Russian vaccine against coronavirus disease had proven to be more than 90 percent effective in people over 60 years old.
Countries across the European Union were expected to begin vaccinating their populations against COVID-19 from Sunday, following the European Medicines Agency's decision to approve Pfizer/BioNTech's vaccine against the disease earlier this week.
However, several EU countries began administering their first doses on Saturday, after European Commission Presdient Ursula von der Leyen announced that vaccines against COVID-19 had been delivered to the bloc's 27 member states.
A 101-year-old female resident of a care home in Saxony-Anhalt state became the first person in Germany to receive a coronavirus vaccine shot, the Bild newspaper reported on Saturday.
One day ahead of the mass rollout, public health officials in Slovakia announced that medical workers will begin receiving the vaccine on Saturday evening.
"The first 9,750 doses of a vaccine against coronavirus disease were delivered on Saturday. They are being held at a hospital in the city of Nitra. The first, symbolic vaccine will be given tonight to the famous infectious disease specialist, Professor Vladimir Krcmery," Zuzana Batova, the director of the State Institute of Drug Control, told reporters.
A new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, which was discovered in the United Kingdom, has now been detected in 11 European countries, the World Health Organization's regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said on Saturday evening.
Sweden has registered its first case of the new strain of the coronavirus, Sara Byfors, a leading official at the Public Health Agency of Sweden department, said on Saturday.
"It has been confirmed that one person from Sodermanland contracted the mutant strain of COVID-19 discovered in the United Kingdom," Byfors said at a press conference.
At least four cases of the new COVID-19 variant that recently emerged in the United Kingdom have been confirmed in Spain's Madrid, Antonio Zapatero, a prominent official in the Spanish capital's administration, said on Saturday, adding that there are a further three suspected cases of the new strain.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday has agreed to extend the current ban on all flights from the UK for another 2 weeks from December 31.
An initial one-week travel ban came into force on December 24 following the emergence of a new strain of SARS-CoV-2 in the United Kingdom that is believed to be more transmissible.
On the same day, Health Secretary Francisco Duque announced that one individual who recently arrived in the Philippines from the United Kingdom had tested positive for the coronavirus disease, the ABS-CBN broadcaster reported, adding that it was not yet known if the person was infected with the new variant.
Japan is set to suspend entry for foreigners starting Monday to contain the spread of the new strain of COVID-19, the Kyodo news agency reported.
On Friday, Japan registered its first cases of the new strain of the coronavirus. The country is also seeing record daily infections of the original coronavirus for the fourth day on end.
The media outlet stressed that all Japanese nationals would be obliged to submit negative COVID-19 test results received within 72 hours before their departure from any country that had confirmed cases of the new variant.
Thirty-six truck drivers who were stranded in the English county of Kent after the French government temporarily banned all passenger and human-accompanied freight transport from the United Kingdom have tested positive for COVID-19, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Saturday.
Thousands of trucks were directed to Manston Airport, a former military base and civilian airfield, after the French government on Monday issued an initial 48-hour ban on accompanied freight transport from the UK that began this past Monday. The ban followed the discovery of a new strain of SARS-CoV-2 in southeast England.
Russia has registered 29,258 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the case total to over 3 million, the federal response center said on Saturday.
The number of COVID-19 cases in Japan has increased by a record 3,881 infections over the past 24 hours, with the overall number surpassing 200,000, public health officials reported on Saturday.
According to the health ministry, the highest spike in infections was registered in the Japanese prefectures of Tokyo, Shiga, Kyoto, Miyagi and Tochigi.
In the United Kingdom, 34,693 new cases of the coronavirus disease were registered on Saturday by the Department of Health and Social Care.
Turkey's health ministry registered 15,118 new positive tests for COVID-19 on Saturday, the lowest single-day increase since mid-November.
The latest increase to the case total is a significant decrease from the 17,543 new positive tests registered on Friday, and continues a downward trend in new infections after a record 33,198 new cases were confirmed on December 8.
At least seven people have died after a fire broke out in a hospital ward containing COVID-19 patients in Egypt, domestic media outlets reported on Saturday, citing officials.
According to the Akhbar el-Yom newspaper, the fire broke out in an intensive care ward at a hospital in El Obour City, located roughly 22 miles northeast of Cairo, in Al Qalyubia governorate.
A US doctor developed an acute allergic reaction after receiving Moderna's coronavirus vaccine, the first such case reported, the New York Times reported.
Geriatric oncologist at the Boston Medical Center, Hossein Sadrzadeh, received the shot on Thursday and immediately developed allergic symptoms, the newspaper reported.
Sadrzadeh, who has an acute allergy to shellfish, administered his own epinephrine autoinjector and was treated at the medical center's emergency facility, the Times quoted a hospital spokesman as saying.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced on Saturday that there were no more zones with high transmission of the coronavirus in the country, but the fight against the pandemic was far from over.
"I am glad to say that today we do not have any [coronavirus] red zones in Iran; the orange zones have diminished to zero as well; however, we need to keep improving the situation," Rouhani said at the meeting with the country's COVID-19 response team, as quoted by the state-run Mehr news agency
