Global death toll from the coronavirus infection has become a six-digit number on Friday, according to the statistics collected by Johns Hopkins University
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th April, 2020) Global death toll from the coronavirus infection has become a six-digit number on Friday, according to the statistics collected by Johns Hopkins University.
The number of coronavirus cases registered globally reached 1,677,256, including 372,428 recoveries and 101,732 deaths, it says.
The United States still has the highest case count in the world, with 486,994. This includes 27,612 recoveries and 18,022 fatalities. The state of New York has registered 777 new deaths from COVID-19, bringing the total to 7,844.
Italy has confirmed 147,577 cases including 18,849 deaths and 30,455 recoveries. Spain reported 157,053 cases in total, including 55,668 recoveries and 15,970 deaths.
The situation with the spread of the coronavirus in Moscow began to worsen since Monday, the number of patients is on the rise, and most of them are hospitalized before the virus is diagnosed, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Moscow will start to introduce a pass system gradually from next week, he said.
Italy extends the nationwide COVID-19 quarantine until May 3, but will reopen bookstores and children's shops starting April 14, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is looking forward to lifting the coronavirus-forced state of emergency in the country by the end of April.
Poland wishes to loosen some of COVID-19 restrictions starting mid-April provided that the epidemiological situation improves, the head of the prime minister's office said.
Moldovan Prime Minister Ion Chicu hopes the national economy will bounce back by the end of 2021 to the levels seen before the coronavirus pandemic.
The government of the breakaway region of South Ossetia decided on Friday to extend restrictions regarding crossing the border with Russia until May 1 due to the coronavirus pandemic. So far, South Ossetia has not registered any cases of the coronavirus on its soil.
Antiviral activity of Mefloquine, usually used to treat malaria, has been proven against the coronavirus, Russian Federal Biomedical Agency said. Mefloquine has been proved able to block the cytopathic activity of SARS-CoV-2 in the concentration of 2 microgram per liter, it said.
The Turkish Health Ministry has green-lighted the use of blood plasma of those recovered from COVID-19 in treating patients still struggling with disease, and the therapy is already proving to be effective, Dr. Kerem Kinik, the Turkish Red Crescent (TRC) president, told Sputnik. He expects the coronavirus pandemic to slow down by the summer but urges the world to join hands to avert even more victims.
Russia has registered a test system for detecting coronavirus antibodies, which was developed by the State Scientific Center for Virology and Biotechnology Vector, Russian consumer rights and health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said. It also said Russia had conducted over one million coronavirus tests as of Friday.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who is also the head of the world's largest private charity, agreed to enhance cooperation in developing a coronavirus vaccine in a phone call on Friday.
The Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency, the Russian information center on the coronavirus and the stopcoronavirus.rf website are launching a special project to share stories of doctors and medical staff who are fighting the disease on a daily basis.
The coronavirus pandemic will have a greater impact on the global economy that the 2008 financial crisis, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said during a G20 ministerial on Friday.
Russia's cooperation with other countries on space projects has been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, said. At the same time, Rogozin noted that Roscosmos was the only space agency to continue its work.
More than 5.5 million Canadians have applied for some form of economic support since mid-March, as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to take its toll on the country's economy.
EU Leaders will discuss on April 23 the recovery of the European economy after the coronavirus outbreak, European Council President Charles Michel said.
Leaders of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) member states will hold a video conference on April 14 to discuss the coronavirus.
The Bank of Russia has expanded the list of industries the most affected by the coronavirus pandemic and to which regulatory exemptions and facilitated lending will now be applied, the central bank's governor Elvira Nabiullina said.
Moscow businesses will be allocated 25 billion rubles ($338.2 million) amid difficulties they are facing due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Russian capital's economic response center said.
Russia has sent over 60,000 coronavirus test kits to member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and will provide 50,000 more soon, chief public health official Anna Popova said. The Russian Foreign Ministry also said it had been assisting allied post-Soviet countries in bringing their coronavirus-stranded citizens back from third countries.
It is important to mitigate the unintentional consequences of sanctions that are imposed on countries even while they are severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, Tobias Privitelli, the deputy head of the Swiss diplomatic mission to Russia, told Sputnik.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has criticized the US and Chinese response to the coronavirus outbreak as two extremes that should not be followed in Europe. China has taken some very authoritarian measures, while in the US, the situation was downplayed for too long, he said.
The fear of seeking medical care, untreated chronic diseases and the unpreparedness of emergency health care response systems in Africa make the COVID-19 outbreak particularly threatening for the continent, the executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), Catherine Kyobutungi, told Sputnik. African countries are taking steps to prevent the rampant spread of COVID-19 on the continent by boosting the production of critical health care supplies and expanding access to clean water, but response measures to the outbreak have varied across the continent and countries do not have the means to conduct mass testing, she said
The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture has posted a regulation online saying dogs should be considered pets and companions, rather than livestock. The change in the guidelines, up for public debate for a month, comes in response to the global spread of a new coronavirus, suspected to have originated at a wet market in Wuhan, which traded in live animals.
