MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th July, 2020) The COVID-19 global tally stands at over 14.3 million, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Over 8 million patients have recovered, and more than 600,000 have died.
The United States has the highest tally with over 3.7 million cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The country is followed by Brazil and India, with slightly over 2 million cases and 1 million cases, respectively.
Russia is the fourth with over 770,000 cases.
No one, including high-ranking officials across the globe, is immune to the coronavirus. On Sunday, Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama confirmed contracting the virus. He is going to self-isolate in a health facility.
On a positive note, Italy's Lombardy, one of the hardest hit regions, has registered zero coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said on Sunday. In total, three people with COVID-19 have died over the given period in the country, which is the lowest figure since February 28.
Hong Kong makes the wearing of face masks mandatory in indoor public places and orders telework for civil servants as the city registers a record single-day spike of 108 COVID-19 cases, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said.
US President Donald Trump is switching from "big massive rallies" to telephonic ones, he told his supporters in Wisconsin during the first tele-event.
A second group of volunteers engaged in the clinical trials of Russia's COVID-19 vaccine at Moscow's Sechenov University feel fine on the eve of discharge, Vadim Tarasov, director of the university's Institute for Translational Medicine and Biotechnology, told Sputnik. The first group of volunteers, who left hospital on July 15, are also OK.
Chinese pharmaceutical giant Sinovac, which is due to start the first part of Phase 3 trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine candidate in Brazil on Monday, said in a statement emailed to Sputnik that it plans more Phase 3 trials of the vaccine, which will soon be announced. The first part of Phase 3 trials of the vaccine is set to involve 9,000 volunteers recruited among health care professionals.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told Sky news that he is "absolutely confident" that Russian intelligence services had tried to steal Western countries' coronavirus vaccine research. A few days ago, London claimed that the Russian intelligence was "almost certainly" to blame.
Ambassador in London Andrei Kelin told the BBC that "there is no sense" in this story. The diplomat denied that it would be an "advantage" for Russia to get hold of the West's vaccine development secrets. He recalled that Russian pharmaceutical company R-Pharm had already agreed with AstraZeneca to produce Oxford vaccine against COVID-19 in Russia, should it prove effective.
A nationwide opinion poll by Japan's Kyodo News revealed on Sunday that 36.4 percent of respondents said the Olympic games, which had been pushed back to 2021, should be further postponed, while 33.7 percent said the Summer Olympics should be canceled.
A whopping 75.3 percent of the Japanese nationals believe that the COVID-19 pandemic will not be contained in the near future, according to the survey.
The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry told Sputnik that it expects a group of Russian medics to arrive in the country on July 22 to help fight coronavirus.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov called on EU nations to agree a health protocol to streamline coordination, as the coming period will prove critical in the pandemic.
