MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th May, 2021) The death toll from the coronavirus infection across the world topped 3.371 million as of Sunday, while over 162.6 million cases of infection were detected, according to the US-based Johns Hopkins University, which tracks and compiles data from Federal and local authorities, media and other sources.
The United States still has the highest case count in the world � 32,927,943 infections, including 585,768 fatalities.
The people of Venezuela need millions of Russia's Sputnik Light vaccine doses, recently approved for use in the country, Venezuelan Ambassador Carlos Rafael Faria Tortosa told Sputnik. The diplomat added that he was hoping for Venezuela to approve EpiVacCorona as well, another Russian-developed vaccine.
Doctors mistakenly injected an elderly woman in a nursing home in Japan's Aichi prefecture with two shots of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in one day, Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday. A medical team has been constantly monitoring the woman's health since the mishap. No side effects have yet been detected.
The second batch of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 has arrived in India's southern city of Hyderabad, Russian Ambassador to India, Nikolay Kudashev, said.
Twenty percent of Russian citizens are ready to undergo COVID-19 vaccination only if it becomes a prerequisite for travel abroad, a poll by the SuperJob job search service showed on Sunday. Meanwhile, 18% said they planned to get vaccinated anyway. Another 42% said that they did not want to get vaccinated under any conditions and 20% were undecided.
Some 85% of the Japanese think that the rate at which COVID-19 vaccination is progressing in the country is slow, a public opinion poll by Japan's Kyodo news agency showed on Sunday. The findings showed that 71.5% of respondents were dissatisfied with the government's actions aimed at containing the pandemic, while 90.3% said that they were concerned about new mutations of the virus.
A record 530 coronavirus-related deaths were confirmed in Colombia in the past 24 hours, which is the highest daily increase in COVID-19 fatalities recorded in the country since the start of the pandemic, according to the National Institute of Health. Colombia's COVID-19 death toll had gone up to 80,780. The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country stands at over 3.1 million.
Russia registered 8,554 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, which brought the cumulative total to 4,940,245, the federal response center said Sunday. Meanwhile, the death toll has increased by 391 to 115,871.
Lockdown in India's capital was extended until May 24 as the country continues to struggle with the new COViD-19 wave, marking the fourth time that the New Delhi authorities refrain from lifting the restrictions, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced on Sunday.
Nearly 60% of Japanese citizens are in favor of canceling the Tokyo-hosted Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer over COVID-19, a public opinion poll by Japan's Kyodo news agency showed on Sunday.
Only 12.6% of respondents spoke in favor of holding the Games, but with a limited number of spectators, while 25.2% preferred stands completely empty.
Russia's St. Petersburg is set to promote imperial cuisine, based on the recipes from the country's historical royal court, in a bid to boost tourism after the COVID-19 pandemic, the city's tourism chief, Sergey Korneev, told Sputnik on Sunday.
St. Petersburg authorities expect royal dishes to become part of the city's hospitality concept as they make their way into menus of local eateries, according to Korneev, who serves as the chairman of the committee for tourism development. To attract professional and public attention to the imperial cuisine, the city launched the special Best Chef Award.
