The coronavirus has already claimed over one million lives worldwide, with over 34.2 million cases were confirmed, according to Johns Hopkins University. The highest number of confirmed cases has been registered in the US (over 7.27 million and a death toll of 207,791), India (over 6.3 million infected and 98,678 fatalities), and Brazil (4.8 million cases and almost 144,680 deaths).
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PETROPAVLOSK-KAMCHATSKY (Sputnik) – The Russian Ministry of Economic Development is analysing the measures imposed to support business amid the coronavirus pandemic and may preserve some of them after the end of the epidemic, Economic Development Minister Maksim Reshetnikov said on Friday.
"Right now, we are facing the task to analyze the anti-crisis measures that we have imposed, and to preserve some of them in the future. Because we have introduced many moratoriums, suspended some checks and so on, and nothing bad has happened. The question of whether we need all that is a great food for thought", Reshetnikov said at a meeting with business people in the Kamchatka Territory.
The total death toll from COVID-19 has risen by 8 to 9,508, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) data showed on Friday.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Moscow's COVID-19 death toll has risen by 28 over the past day — the highest single-day figure since July — to 5,282, the Russian capital’s coronavirus response centre said in a statement on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the single-day increase to the death toll was 24.
The offer made by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the UN General Assembly high-level week to provide free coronavirus vaccines to all UN staff was positively accepted by the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia told reporters on Thursday.
"That idea was positively accepted by the Secretariat, I spoke to the Secretary-General on that issue", Nebenzia said when asked about the United Nations’ response to the proposal. "The Secretary-General will appoint a focal point here at the United Nations to discuss the whole range of issues around it, because it's not that simple: there are various things around it - legal, procedural medical logistical, etcetera - that has to be discussed".
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will bring to a vote in Congress later Thursday a revised $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill if Democrats and Republicans can find common ground on tax breaks.
Pelosi has been trying to get President Donald Trump’s Republican party to agree with the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, which the Democrats originally proposed at $3 trillion before reducing to $2.2 trillion and agreeing to further revisions in recent weeks.
"I'm hoping that we'll be voting on it today", Pelosi told reporters. "It still has some of their [Republicans'] tax breaks and in [those] tax breaks hopefully we can find our common ground".
Congress passed four packages of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in the second quarter of this year, dispensing roughly $3 trillion to disburse as loans and grants to businesses, paycheck protection for workers and personal aid to qualifying US citizens and residents.
Moscow is seeing increase in new coronavirus cases but there is no second wave in the Russian capital, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Thursday.
"There is an increase, and a big one. We can see similar increase in other European cities — Madrid has four times what it did in the spring, I believe, London has half the spring number, Vienna has several times more than in the spring, and so on", Sobyanin said, as aired on Rossiya 24 broadcaster.
At the same time, Moscow is not experiencing the second wave, the mayor said.
Grateful to both Secretary of State @MattHancock and the Speaker. My amendment may not have been selected but my concerns – shared by colleagues and the public – have been heard: more Parliamentary involvement promised in decisions re Covid regulations going forward.” #Covid19UK pic.twitter.com/HFfmvZ4LT5
— Graham Brady MP (@SirGrahamBrady) October 1, 2020
"I am today extending these measures that have been in place in the northeast since the start of this week to the Liverpool city region, Warrington, Hartlepool and Middlesborough", Health Secretary Matt Hancock told parliament.
MOSCOW, (Sputnik) - Russia has registered 8,945 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, up from 8,481 yesterday, taking the cumulative case total to 1,185,231, the coronavirus response centre said on Thursday.
"In the past 24 hours, Russia has confirmed 8,945 COVID-19 cases in 85 regions, of which 2,426 (27.1 percent) were detected with people showing no clinical symptoms", the response centre said in a statement, specifying that the total count has now reached 1,185,231.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has asked for a 5.7 billion pounds ($7.4 billion) bailout to keep the capital’s transport system running for the next 18 months given huge losses that it has suffered during the pandemic, Financial Times reported on Thursday.
In a submission to the Treasury, the mayor outlined the damage that the coronavirus restrictions had inflicted on the network, including some 90 percent fall in income from ticket sales, which "will be nowhere near returning to normal levels as long as social-distancing measures are in place."
The mayor also criticised the government for excluding the capital from its recent spending announcements as part of efforts to "level up" the regions. This has made the London transport system ever more dependent on fares.
In the document, Khan also requested "urgent" support measures for other pandemic-hit sectors, like retail, hospitality, leisure and culture.
According to the newspaper, the government will likely heed the mayor’s calls, but the money for the transport system will come with strings attached, like it was the case with 1.6 billion pounds bailout in May, when Khan was obligated to agree to a rise in fares and the congestion charge.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) revised downwards is forecasts for 2020-2021 GDP dynamics in the countries of its presence because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The financial institution said in its fresh report that it expects the GDP in the countries of its presence to decline by 3.9 percent in 2020 (compared to 3.5 percent in the previous report) and to grow by 3.6 percent the next year (compared to 4.8 percent in the previous report).
The EBRD explained it was revising its forecasts chiefly due to the fact that the COVID-19-related restrictions were in place during a longer period than expected.
"Output in the EBRD regions contracted sharply in the second quarter of 2020 by around 8.2 per cent year on year. In many economies the contraction was larger than declines seen during the global financial crisis. The speed of recovery is expected to be similar to the one observed in the aftermath of that crisis, with pre-pandemic levels of GDP returning towards the end of 2021," EBRD Chief Economist Beata Javorcik said.
According to the EBRD, measures introduced for containing the pandemic result in declining demand and supply amid external shocks, such as "low commodity prices, weak demand for exports, a collapse in tourism and drops in remittances."
The EBRD qualified tourism as the most affected sector, which would be long suffering from the negative consequences of the coronavirus. Therefore, the countries that largely depend on tourism — Albania, Greece, Cyprus, Croatia and Montenegro — will see the sharpest economy decline, according to the EBRD.
American Airlines and United Airlines will start furloughing more than 32,000 employees on Thursday, when the federal coronavirus-related aid package expires, since the talks for an additional government support have failed, CNBC reported.
According to the broadcaster, both airline companies pledged to recall workers if a deal on additional government support is reached.
On Thursday, Germany lifted its blanket warning against travelling to all countries outside the European Union. The reopening was okayed by the German cabinet three weeks ago and comes as a number of European nations are facing a surge in coronavirus cases, with many reimposing harsh restrictions.
India has confirmed 86,821 new cases of the coronavirus over the past 24 hours thus continuing to register the world's largest daily increase in the number of COVID-19 patients, with the total number of those infected having reached 6,312,584, the country's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Thursday.
The death toll from the disease has reached 98,678 people, with 1,181 new fatalities recorded over the past day. More than 5.27 million people have recovered in India since the outbreak of the pandemic.
