MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th October, 2021) The death toll from the coronavirus infection in the world topped 4.903 million, almost 241 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.
As of 20:00 GMT Monday, the number of cases globally is 241,023,120, including 4,903,196 fatalities. As many as 6.65 billion of vaccine doses have been administered to date.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has started evaluating the use of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine among children aged 5 to 11, the regulator said.
French biotechnology company Valneva, which produces vaccines against infectious diseases, said on Monday that its coronavirus vaccine candidate has shown results that proved superior to that shown by some two-shot vaccines during Phase 3 clinical trials.
Italy is exploring reciprocal recognition of Russian and Chinese COVID-19 vaccines to expand freedom of travel for those inoculated with non-EU approved vaccinations, Director of the Italian Medicines Agency Nicola Magrini said.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that new coronavirus variants continue to emerge as a result of inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines among countries.
Over 1 billion COVID-19 vaccines made in the European Union have been shipped globally in the past 10 months, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
Russia confirmed a new record high of 34,325 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, up from 34,303 the day before, bringing the cumulative total to 8,027,012, the federal response center said.
The fifth wave of the coronavirus pandemic has broken out in Georgia, Amiran Gamkrelidze, the head of the Georgian National Center for Disease Control and Public Health (NCDC), said.
The Latvian Crisis Management Council has declared a lockdown in the country from October 21 to November 15, Health Minister Daniels Pavluts said.
A pilot project to allow Sputnik V-inoculated tourists to fly to Israel will be presented to the country's prime minister for approval on Wednesday; it will almost certainly be approved, a source in government circles told Sputnik.
Special police units completely freed the entrances to the shipping port of the northern Italian city of Trieste, which has been under siege since Friday by workers protesting the new COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis decried the accusations voiced by the opposition about the poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic by the government as far-fetched.
The head of Health Center 4, which bills itself as Latvia's largest private ambulatory medical institution, warned Monday that a surge in COVID-19 cases had pushed the healthcare sector to the breaking point.
