Covid-19 claims the life of two more persons in Malta
Early on Friday morning the Health Ministry reported that two more persons lost their life after infecton by coronavirus, meaning that 73 persons have now succumbed to the virus.
The Ministry said that a 75-year-old man tested positive for Covid-19 on 14 October and was admitted to Mater Dei Hospital a day later. He died on Thursday evening at the Intensive Therapy Unit.
A 90-year-old woman also died from Covid on Thursday. She had been admitted to Mater Dei Hospital today week and tested positive that same day. She also passed away yesterday evening.
This means that eight persons have now died in the past three days, including a 54-year old yesterday, the second youngest victim so far. The Health Department yesterday had reported 174 new cases of coronavirus, with the number of active cases standing at 1929.
Australia’s Victoria completes full week with no COVID-19 cases
Australia’s Victoria state reported its seventh consecutive day of zero locally transmitted COVID-19 cases on Friday, suggesting a three-month strict lockdown in the city of Melbourne has successfully contained a second wave outbreak.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said the state remained on track to ease travel curbs to allow movement between state capital Melbourne and other parts of the state on Sunday, but he urged people to remain vigilant.
“We can’t just pretend that seven days of zeros is like a vaccine against this virus, it isn’t,” Andrews told reporters.
A three-month lockdown was imposed in Melbourne to stall an outbreak that peaked at more than 700 new cases reported in a single day in early August.
Britain removes Denmark from travel corridor
Britain said it is removing Denmark from its travel corridor list, with people arriving from there needing to self-isolate from Friday after health authorities in Denmark reported widespread coronavirus outbreaks in mink farms.
Denmark announced strict new lockdown rules on Thursday in the north of the country after authorities discovered a mutated coronavirus strain in minks bred in the region, prompting a nationwide cull. Authorities said five cases of the new virus strain had been recorded on mink farms and 12 cases in humans.
U.S. cases make record climb for second day in a row
Coronavirus cases in the United States surged by at least 120,276 on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, the second consecutive daily record rise as the outbreak spreads in every region.
U.S. cases have risen by more than 100,000 for three of the last seven days, putting pressure on hospitals in several states and causing families to rethink their plans for Thanksgiving on Nov. 26. While the spread of the virus is wide, the outbreak is hitting the Midwest particularly hard, based on daily new cases per capita.
China reported 36 new coronavirus cases in the mainland for Nov. 5 compared to 28 cases a day earlier, the health commission said on Friday.
Of the new infections, 30 were imported, according to a statement published by the National Health Commission. The remaining six were locally transmitted cases in the northwestern Xinjiang region. Authorities in the region have been conducting large-scale testing in Kashgar and Kizilsu in Xinjiang’s latest outbreak. China reported 33 new asymptomatic patients, compared to 24 a day earlier. As of Nov. 5, mainland China had 86,151 confirmed coronavirus cases, the health authority said. The COVID-19 death toll stood at 4,634.
Paris bans nighttime food and drink delivery to tackle worsening COVID-19 crisis
Paris will ban delivery and takeaway services for prepared food and alcohol between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. from Friday to limit the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected a record number of 58,046 people nationally over 24 hours on Thursday.
The police prefecture also said the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks in public spaces would be banned at night starting on Friday.
President Emmanuel Macron imposed a new lockdown last month, forcing non-essential shops – such as those not selling basic foods or medicines – to close, and making people use signed documents to justify being out on the streets.
But a week into the lockdown, France still registers more than 40,000 new virus infections per day and intensive care units across the country are under stress as more than 4,200 ICU beds are now occupied by COVID-19 patients.
The second wave of coronavirus infections tearing across France will be more severe than the first experienced in the spring if it is allowed to continue spreading at the current rate, the country’s health minister said at a press conference.
France would see the number of COVID-19 sufferers in intensive care peak at 6,000 if the public complied with the new lockdown, or as many as 7,000 if the virus continued spreading as it is now with not everyone respecting the confinement rules, Health Minister Olivier Veran said.
AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to begin clinical trials in China, executive says
AstraZeneca Plc plans to start early and mid-stage clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in China this year, a senior executive said on Friday, as it prepares a global rollout of the vaccine.
The vaccine candidate is already in the final stage of clinical trials in other countries, and AstraZeneca and its partner on the project, the University of Oxford, expect data from the late-stage trials this year.
If successful, they will file for emergency approvals in as many countries as possible at the same time, its CEO, Pascal Soriot, said this week.
Celltrion’s antibody drug cut recovery time-early study
South Korean drugmaker Celltrion Inc said on Friday patients treated with its experimental COVID-19 antibody drug in a small, early-stage trial showed at least a 44% improvement in recovery time. The result bodes well for Celltrion, which plans to seek conditional approval for the monoclonal antibody treatment, CT-P59, for emergency use by the end of this year in South Korea.
Should we be paid to get COVID-19 shots?
A suggestion by an ethics professor at a top British university that governments should pay people to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus has sparked debate over whether such incentives are ethical, or dangerous, and would boost or limit uptake.
“‘Anti-vaxxers’ may never be convinced to change their stance, but incentivising vaccination may persuade others who might not have done so to get the jab,” Julian Savulescu, a professor at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University, wrote in an article in the British Medical Journal.
In Brief
Europe
Cases in Italy rose by a record 34,505 over the past 24 hours, the health ministry said.
Russia’s coronavirus tests give false negative results up to 40% of the time, a health official said as new infections rose and Moscow’s mayor warned of a worsening situation.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko ordered border guards to prevent the return to Belarus of its citizens who left and are currently abroad, with the exception of those in Russia, to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said a hard lockdown will be imposed in seven municipalities in northern Denmark after a mutation of the coronavirus that was found in mink had spread to humans.
Greece ordered a nationwide lockdown for three weeks, its second this year after a sharp increase in infections this week.
Poland reported a record 27,143 new infections, approaching a threshold at which the government has said it could be forced to impose a nationwide lockdown.
Paris will be placed under more restrictions, including a requirement for more shops to close in the evening.
AMERICAS
Latin American nations, including those that have brought down coronavirus transmission rates, should take heed of the second wave hitting much of Europe and not let their guard down, a Pan American Health Organization official said.
The United States set a one-day record for new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, with hospitals in several states reporting a rising tide of patients, according to a Reuters tally.
ASIA-PACIFIC
South Korea has alerted about 1,000 people who attended the memorial of the late Samsung Group patriarch Lee Kun-hee last week to get tested for the coronavirus after one person at the event tested positive.
Australia agreed to purchase two more COVID-19 vaccines in development, beefing up its prospective arsenal against the pandemic to 135 million doses as it aims to complete a mass inoculation programme within months.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
The pandemic is having a knock-on effect on other vital health services in Africa as countries are forced to redirect already stretched resources, a regional head of WHO said.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals said U.S. health regulators were doing a careful analysis of its experimental antibody cocktail to treat COVID-19 and that it was hopeful the drug could be authorized for emergency use in the country soon.
A summer dip in UK infections has pushed back test results for AstraZeneca’s potential vaccine, leading the drugmaker to delay deliveries of shots to the UK government.
A WHO-led scheme to supply COVID-19 drugs to poor countries is betting on experimental monoclonal antibody treatments and steroids, but is shunning Gilead’s remdesivir blockbuster therapy, an internal document showed.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
British finance minister Rishi Sunak ramped up his 200 billion-pound economic rescue programme once again in a coordinated move with the Bank of England, which increased its already-huge purchases of government debt.
Indonesia suffered its first recession in over two decades as the pandemic hit consumption and business activity in Southeast Asia’s largest economy, costing millions of jobs.
