SATURDAY OCTOBER 10 - CORONAVIRUS GLOBAL UPDATE

 in-cyprus 10 October 2020 - by Annie Charalambous

COVID-19 shattered records for new cases in the U.S. Midwest, while Europe surpassed 100,000 daily cases for the first time after countries including Russia and the UK saw no respite in the mounting number of infections every day in the past five days.

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

EUROPE

* France, Switzerland, Poland and Bulgaria reported record daily rises in cases.

* Spain’s Socialist-led government invoked a state of emergency to re-impose a partial lockdown for several million people in and around Madrid.

* European Union countries agreed to a common “traffic light” system to guide them on COVID-19 testing or quarantines on EU tourists and other non-essential travellers during the pandemic.

* Ukraine will open more hospitals to accept COVID-19 patients amid a recent spike in new cases.

AMERICAS

* Canada is at a tipping point in the fight against a second wave of cases and health care workers are increasingly swamped, PM Justin Trudeau said.

* U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin failed to reach agreement on a COVID-19 stimulus package.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* Nepal’s total infections passed 100,000, the health ministry said, and are rising at a faster rate than both Pakistan and Bangladesh which have far larger populations.

* China said it has joined a global COVID-19 vaccine initiative co-led by the World Health Organization.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* Oman will re-introduce a night-time ban on movement and enforce the overnight closure of shops and public places between Oct. 11 and 24, state media reported.

* Iran said large numbers of cases meant its hospitals would not treat non-emergency patients and extended a lockdown in the capital, which has been the hardest hit, for a second week.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* The U.S. government expects to be able to provide at no cost more than 1 million doses of antibody treatments for COVID-19 similar to the one President Donald Trump received to treat his illness, according to a top U.S. health official.

* Nevada’s recent ban on the use of Quidel Corp’s Sofia and Becton Dickinson and Co’s Veritor point-of-care antigen tests for COVID-19 in long-term care facilities violates federal law, a U.S. government official said.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* Coronavirus border closures and restrictions have stranded nearly 3 million migrants around the world who want to return home but cannot, the U.N. migration agency said.

* British finance minister Rishi Sunak took fresh steps to try to stave off a surge in unemployment, offering extra help for businesses and people who are forced to stop work during local lockdowns.

* The Reserve Bank of India left key interest rates unchanged as widely expected, while keeping policy accommodative to help pull the coronavirus-ravaged economy out of its worst slump in four decades.