MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th April, 2020) The number of coronavirus cases registered globally reached 1,905,935, including 446,336 recoveries and 118,623 deaths, according to the statistics collected by Johns Hopkins University.
The United States still has the highest case count in the world, with 572,587. This includes 42,422 recoveries and 23,078 fatalities.
Italy has confirmed 159,516 cases, including 20,465 deaths and 35,435 recoveries. Spain reported 169,628 cases in total, including 64,727 recoveries and 17,628 deaths.
French President Emmanuel Macron has extended restrictions on movement within the country, which had been introduced due to the coronavirus epidemic, until May 11. However, the epidemic began to slow down.
The Moscow authorities do not plan to ban trips to other Russian regions, such a decision can only be made at the federal level, the head of the city's main control department, Evgeny Danchikov, said.
Kiev Pechersk Lavra, a historic Orthodox Christian cave monastery, is closing for quarantine after a coronavirus outbreak was registered there, Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital, said.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has stated his willingness to lift the state of emergency, declared due to the coronavirus outbreak, on May 10 and gradually remove quarantine.
The Maldivian government has ordered that the COVID-19 curfew in the capital of Male be lifted, while keeping the ban on public gatherings in place, the Russian embassy in Sri Lanka and to the Republic of Maldives said.
Sudan has introduced a quarantine, banning its citizens from traveling across the country, as a move to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Lockdowns and similar restrictions that have been introduced in high-income countries may not bring the desired effect in poorer nations where people depend on daily on-site labor, the chief of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said. He reiterated his call on all countries to ensure that lockdowns and similar physical distancing measures were not at the expense of human rights.
The unemployment rate in Russia will grow considerably this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the number of people who will lose their jobs is expected to increase from 2.5 million to 8 million, head of Russia's Accounts Chamber Alexey Kudrin said.
The Russian government is monitoring the situation in the country all the time and is ready to offer new measures to support the economy and the citizens amid the coronavirus pandemic, if needed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The US budget deficit will exceed $3.8 trillion this year due to the impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the country's debt will be larger than the size of its economy, rewriting in three years the record set after World War II, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CFRB) said.
As the COVID-19 pandemic puts unprecedented pressure on the European Union, it is becoming clear that the European health system has failed the test in light of the outbreak, Mick Wallace, who is a member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs in the European Parliament, told Sputnik.
The European Union's members states should buy stakes in European companies to stop them from falling into hands of Chinese rivals, as the coronavirus outbreak has made companies in Europe vulnerable to unfair competition, the EU competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, has told the Financial Times daily.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko warned lawmakers on Monday that Kiev needed to borrow from the International Monetary Fund to weather the coronavirus crisis.
Canada will provide businesses $1,080 to cover for the additional cost of temporary foreign workers having to self-isolate amid the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Marie-Claude Bibeau said.
Alexis Rodzianko, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Russia, told Sputnik that the United States would be able to show a goodwill gesture and respond to Russia's help in the fight against the spread of coronavirus if necessary.
A Russian company has developed a drug for treatment of the novel coronavirus disease and plans to begin clinical trials in 10-12 days, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said.
The coronavirus infection vaccine currently being developed by China is just entering the first phase of the clinical trials, and it will probably take more than a year to finish it, Wang Kaili, the head of the Heilongjiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said.
South Korean scientists have picked 38 antibodies from the blood of COVID-19 patients that can fight the coronavirus, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The COVID-19 pandemic is 10 times deadlier than the 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus also known as swine flu, and an efficient vaccine is the only thing that can fully stop the transmission of the disease, WHO's Tedros said.
However, the WHO does not have a full picture of what immunity from the novel coronavirus causing acute respiratory disease dubbed COVID-19 looks like and stresses the need for more studies of recovered patients, Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said.
South Dakota is going to hold state-wide trials on thousands of people to test the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine on victims of the coronavirus (COVID-19), and it will be the first US state to hold such trials, Governor Kristi Noem said.
Moscow will start testing people for immunity to coronavirus on Tuesday, Russia's chief public health official Anna Popova said.
Russian biosecurity watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said that its affiliate, the Federal Center for Animal Health (ARRIAH), had developed the first-ever specialized tests for diagnosing COVID-19 in animals.
Unmanned aerial vehicles have been tested in drills in the western Russian region of Tver over the weekend for their capacity to transport COVID-19 test samples and other medical supplies, as well as perform public information campaigns, the International Aero Navigation Systems Concern (IANS), told Sputnik.
Japanese biotech company Toyobo has developed a test kit that can detect the coronavirus in an hour. Each kit includes 100 tests and will be sold to health institutions, pharmaceutical companies and universities in Japan for 90,000 Yen ($833). The company reportedly plans to start exporting test kits in May or later.
Fallout from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic threatens to create new narratives to inspire Islamist extremists, as well as secular extremists on the left and the right, leading to an increase in terrorist attacks, a report from the Soufan Center said. Jihadists will attempt to portray the pandemic as "God's will" and have already increased their attacks in Africa's Sahel religion and in large swaths of East Africa as a result of the virus, it said.
The health ministers of the world's largest 20 economies will hold a video conference on April 19 to discuss the impact of COVID-19 and exchange national practices undertaken to curb the pandemic, G20 said.
