Coronavirus cases top 30 million worldwide: AFP tally
PARIS, France — The number of coronavirus cases registered worldwide topped 30 million on Thursday, according to an AFP tally based on official sources.
The grim landmark came as the World Health Organization warned of "alarming rates of transmission" of Covid-19 across Europe.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.
Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.
The coronavirus death toll is now at 943,086 since it surfaced in China late last year and the number of cases has ballooned to 30,000,062, according to figures available at 19:45 GMT.
The United States has the highest national figures with 6,650,570 cases and 197,364 deaths, followed by India at 5,118,253 infections and 83,198 fatalities and Brazil with 4,419,083 cases and 134,106 deaths.
The rhythm of the pandemic seems to have stabilised globally since the middle of July with a million new cases surfacing every four days.
It took 94 days to hit a million infections and then another 86 days for the number of cases to cross 10 million on June 28.
The number of infections has tripled since then.
Asia has registered the most new cases in the past week with 742,286 infections, of which more than 80 percent are in India.
Latin America and the Caribbean are next at 493,120, followed by Europe (327.524), Canada and the US (273,339), the Middle East (111,986), Africa (52,584) and Oceania (548).
Latin America has 8,484,443 infections in all and 316,827 deaths, followed by Asia (6,861,965 cases and 120,334 deaths).
Canada and the US have nearly 6.8 million cases and 206,602 deaths, Europe has 4,700,387 infections and 223,849 deaths and the Middle East has 1,750,232 cases and 41,254 deaths.
Africa has recorded 1,381,036 cases and 33,324 deaths followed by Oceania at 30,890 infections and 896 deaths.
India recorded the most number of new infections in the past week at 650,231, followed by Canada and the United States at 267,995, Brazil (221,194), Argentina (76,719) and Spain (70,981).
The number of new cases rose 39 percent in the UK the past week, 22 percent in Canada, 19 percent in France, 11 percent in Brazil, 9 percent in the US and 8 percent in India.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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