MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th May, 2021) The number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide has passed 157.8 million, with nearly 3.3 million dying from the respiratory disease, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
India added more than 400,000 cases for the fourth day in a row on Sunday. It has recorded more than 22 million cases overall, second only to the United States. The chief minister of Delhi, one of the worst-hit regions, has extended the lockdown for another week.
The unprecedented spike in cases in India has been attributed to a more contagious "double mutant" variant that was found in the country in March. A sample of the new strain was delivered to Russia for studies on Sunday.
Russia's sovereign wealth fund RDIF, which markets the Sputnik V vaccine abroad, has meanwhile denied German media reports claiming that talks on shot deliveries to Germany hit a dead-end. The RDIF said the claim was part of a campaign to stop the vaccine from entering the European market.
Diether Dehm, a member of the German parliament from the Left Party, flew to Moscow on Sunday to receive a shot of Sputnik V, which has not been authorized for use by the EU drug regulator EMA. He said the Russian vaccine was safer than its UK-Swedish rival AstraZeneca.
The European Union has not renewed orders for the AstraZeneca vaccine beyond June, European Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has admitted. This is despite EMA insisting that benefits from using it outweigh the risks, including rare blood clots in the brain.
Belgium is eyeing a relaunch of some of its major festivals this summer. Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said an advisory committee will meet on Tuesday to consider the outlooks for holding festivals in the second half of the summer.
Kazakhstan's Health Ministry has refuted a COVID-19 mortality statistics published this week by the US Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health center at the University of Washington. The institute claimed that the real death toll was more than 14 times higher than the reported 5,620.
