Globally, the total number of coronavirus cases has surpassed 83.9 million on Saturday, while the deaths have surged to more than 1.80 million, as per Johns Hopkins University.
Here are the top 10 developments this morning:
- The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 20 million on Friday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
- U.S. COVID-19 case count rose to 20,007,149, with a total of 346,408 deaths, as of 12:22 p.m. local time (17:22 GMT), according to the CSSE tally. California reported 2,297,336 cases, followed by Texas with 1,766,791 cases and Florida with 1,323,315 cases. The states of New York and Illinois both registered more than 960,000 cases.
Other states with over 520,000 cases include Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona, the CSSE data showed. - By far, the United States remains the nation worst hit by the pandemic, with the world’s most cases and deaths, making up more than 23 percent of the global caseload.
- The Chinese mainland reported 14 new imported COVID-19 cases Friday, bringing the total number of imported cases to 4,287.
Four new imported cases were reported in Shanghai, three each in Tianjin and Guangdong, and one each in Liaoning, Fujian, Shandong and Shaanxi, the National Health Commission said in its daily report Saturday. Among all the imported cases, 4,015 had been discharged from hospitals after recovery while 272 remained hospitalized, the commission said.No deaths had been reported among the imported cases. - South Korea reported 824 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Friday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 62,593.
The daily caseload fell below 900 in five days due to fewer tests on the New Year’s holiday. The daily number of infections hovered above 100 for 56 days since November 8 due to small cluster infections in Seoul and its surrounding Gyeonggi province as well as imported cases.The daily average number of confirmed cases for the past week was 956.
Of the new cases, 246 were Seoul residents and 222 were people residing in Gyeonggi province. - Brazil’s COVID-19 death toll totalled 195,411 after 462 more patients died in the past 24 hours, the Ministry of Health said Friday.
Meanwhile, tests detected 24,605 new cases, bringing its total to 7,700,578. While Brazil celebrated the New Year without festivities and fireworks amid the ravaging pandemic, local authorities were still struggling to prevent the public from flocking to beaches on New Year’s Day. - Chile’s Ministry of Health on Friday reported 3,588 new daily cases of the novel coronavirus disease, the highest daily figure since July 5 (3,685), raising the total caseload to 612,564.
- In the daily pandemic report, Minister of Health Enrique Paris said 52 more patients died of the disease, bringing the death toll to 16,660. Chile has seen a 14 percent rise in new cases in the last week, and a 31 percent rise in 14 days, with a second wave of outbreaks forecast for January potentially seeing a peak of up to 9,000 new cases a day, said Paris.
- In a positive news update, The World Health Organization on Thursday approved the emergency use validation for the vaccine against the coronavirus developed by the Pfizer and BioNTech companies, the first one since the start of the pandemic.
- “The World Health Organization (WHO) today listed the Comirnaty COVID-19 mRNA vaccine for emergency use, making the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine the first to receive emergency validation from WHO since the outbreak began a year ago,” the WHO said in a statement.
(With Agency Inputs)
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