Travel restrictions have returned to numerous countries in Europe, Asia, and America, as well as mandatory mask-wearing and other pandemic measures due to a new wave of coronavirus outbreaks across the world.
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Germany has 348,557 registered COVID-19 cases, according to the Robert Koch Institute. The total number of coronavirus deaths is 9,734.
As of Friday, Mainland China had 85,659 registered COVID-19 cases, according to the National Health Commission. The total number of coronavirus deaths is estimated to be at 4,634.
The French Health Ministry on Friday registered 25,086 new official COVID-19 cases.
The total number of people infected since the beginning of the year now is estimated to be at 834,770, the cumulative number of dead stands at 33,303.
Moscow has registered 56 deaths of patients infected with COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, bringing the Russian capital's death toll to 5,906, the city's coronavirus response center said in a statement on Friday.
"Another 56 patients, who were diagnosed with pneumonia and tested positive for the coronavirus infection, died in Moscow," the center said.
In the previous day, 54 people infected with the coronavirus died in Moscow.
The Berlin Administrative Court overturned on Friday the city authorities' order to restrict the work of bars and restaurants in the German capital in light of the growing number of COVID-19 cases.
On October 6, the authorities of Berlin issued the directive for eating establishments to remain closed from 11 p.m to 6 a.m. (21:00-04:00 GMT) over a surge in new cases of the infection.
"The curfew on imposed on eating establishments introduced by the Berlin authorities as protection measure against SARS-CoV-2 has not passed the legal assessment," a court's spokesperson said.
The court said that the need to impose the restrictions was "not apparent," since bars and restaurants are not the hot spots of the coronavirus and do not contribute to an increase in infection rates.
Despite the decision of the court, German authorities called Berlin's catering institutions for further restrictions.
After a temporary stabilization of case numbers in late August and early September, Germany, like other European countries, is experiencing a sharp rise in coronavirus cases. The daily increase on Friday was more than 7,300 new cases — the highest figure since the pandemic began.
BUENOS AIRES (Sputnik) - The authorities of Argentina have begun to resume traffic inside the country, which was interrupted seven months ago by the coronavirus pandemic, and new rules for bus, rail and air traffic have been prepared, according to documents released on the website of government regulations.
"The road and rail transport services are being restored", one of the documents read.
Another document is devoted to the restoration of domestic air traffic services.
Travel for tourist purposes remains prohibited even between the country's provinces. The list of those who are allowed to travel includes medical and security personnel, employees of infrastructure industries, journalists and some other categories.
Trains and buses will transport people with certain limitations in terms of the number of passengers.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The number of US COVID-19 cases increased from 7 million to 8 million in less than one month, data from the Johns Hopkins University revealed mid-day on Friday.
More than 8 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States since earlier this year, data showed.
The United States has begun to experience another surge in COVID-19 cases this fall, the data showed.
"We've had good discussions with the Russian vaccine developers that we all participated in. So our relationship with Russia is as good, and the same as a relationship with all the other countries that we speak with. ... We had a good teleconference with the Russian developers of the second vaccine, the Vector Institute. They gave us some information and they also asked for clarifications on what guidance we can provide on research, on prequalification, and the EU process, and on the policy process and how that works. So a very good dialogue", Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO's chief scientist, said at the briefing.
"By the end of the year all doctors who make home visits, work at ambulances, with potentially contagious patients must be vaccinated," Health Minister Mikhail Murashko told reporters.
MADRID (Sputnik) - Owners and workers at food businesses in Barcelona took to the streets on Friday to protest against the reinstated closures and restrictive measures introduced by the authorities amid a resurgence in COVID-19 cases.
Earlier in the day, Spain's north-eastern autonomous region of Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital, enacted a set of new coronavirus-related restrictions and pledged a new financial support package to mitigate the decline in the hospitality sector.
Food outlets, in particular, will only be allowed to cater for "take away" orders or delivery.
Spanish broadcaster 24 Horas reported that business owners and workers have gathered in front of the government building at the Placa de Sant Jaume square, with some protesters throwing objects at the building and police.
ROME (Sputnik) - COVID-19 vaccination in Europe is likely to start in the spring-summer of 2021, but it will take roughly a year to deliver a serious blow to the pandemic, the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) chief, Guido Rasi, said in an interview on Friday.
"We think and hope that the first significant batches [of a vaccine] for people from the risk group may be available in the spring of 2021, kick-starting serious vaccination. In my opinion, the availability of doses of a vaccine will be increasing very quickly after its approval. I think we will be lucky, and many of those who want to get vaccinated will get this opportunity in the summer of 2021", Rasi told Italy’s Sky TG24.
According to the EMA chief, the development of a coronavirus vaccine will not immediately put an end to the pandemic, and serious results will be visible a year after the start of its use.
"Because of the pandemic, we have once again remarked that the planned informal meeting in November cannot happen, unfortunately, we have to cancel it because this is an important signal regarding [personal] contact", the chancellor told a press conference.
A World Health Organisation (WHO) trial that concluded the drug remdesivir by Gilead did not significantly help COVID-19 patients is reliable, Richard Peto, an independent statistician hired by the WHO to evaluate the trials, noted.
"It's a reliable result, don't let anybody tell you otherwise, because they'll try to”, he said, according to Reuters, adding that any benefit from remdesivir may be due to chance.
Gilead previously criticised the WHO finding, saying that the "emerging (WHO) data appears inconsistent".
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Friday said the coronavirus-related curfew imposed by authorities earlier in the week in highly-infected areas of the country is preferable to a nationwide lockdown that could cost up to 20 billion euros ($23 billion) per month.
"An element of comparison: if we proceeded with a real lockdown in areas where the virus is actively circulating, the cost would be around 5 billion euros. If we had a generalised lockdown, the cost would be – depending on the reaction of the economic world – from 15 to 20 billion euros per month", Le Maire said on BFMTV.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia has registered a record single-day increase of 15,150 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, up from 13,754 yesterday, taking the cumulative case total to 1,369,313, the country's coronavirus response centre said on Friday.
"In the past 24 hours, Russia has confirmed 15,150 COVID-19 cases in 85 regions, of which 4,031 (26.6 percent) were detected with people showing no clinical symptoms", the response centre said in a statement, specifying that the total count has reached 1,369,313.
The largest increase was identified in Moscow, where 5,049 new positive tests were registered (up from 3,942 yesterday). A total of 647 new cases were recorded in St. Petersburg (up from 638 yesterday) and 448 cases were confirmed in the Moscow Region (up from 439 yesterday).
NEW DELHI (Sputnik) – India has confirmed 63,371 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 7,370,468, the country's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Friday.
The death toll from the disease has reached 112,161 people, with 895 new fatalities recorded over the past day. More than 6.45 million people have recovered in India since the start of the epidemic.
India is second in terms of the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, following the United States with more than 7.97 million COVID-19 patients.
