The worst-hit nations are currently the US, with over 25.5 million infected and 429,000 deaths, India (over 10.6 million cases, more than 153,500 fatalities) and Brazil (almost 9 million cases, at least 217,000 deaths).
In Europe, the most affected country is the UK, which suffers from a new coronavirus strain, there a total of 3.7 million have reportedly been infected and over 102,000 have succumbed to the virus.
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MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Brazil has increased by 61,811 within the past 24 hours and reached 9,058,687, the Ministry of Health said.
The death from has risen by 1,386 to 221,547 within the same period of time, according to the ministry.
Brazil comes third in terms of the number of cases after the United States and India, as well as second in terms of the deceased people following the United States.
The US government has indicted a businessman in the state of Nevada on fraud charges for winning $1.9 million in government COVID-19 aid by filing applications on behalf of a fabricated workforce, the Justice Department said in a press release on Thursday.
“The indictment alleges that [Jorge] Abramovs obtained nearly $2 million in Paycheck Protection Programme (PPP) loans from seven different lenders by, among other things, submitting multiple loan applications in the names of three different businesses while falsely claiming to have numerous employees earning wages,” the release said.
The indictment further alleges that Abramovs used the PPP funds for personal purposes, including purchases of a Tesla, a Bentley and two condominiums, while paying his home mortgage, the release said.
Charges announced by the Justice Department include five counts of bank fraud, one count of making false statements to a bank, and five counts of money laundering, the release also said.
US Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach ordered that Abramovs remain in pre-trial detention, the release added.
Moldova hopes that the United Nations and the World Health Organization will assist the county in the issue of acquiring COVID-19 vaccines, President Maia Sandu said on Thursday.
Sandu met with UN Resident Coordinator for Moldova Simon Springett and the WHO’s representative in the country, Igor Pokanevych, on Thursday.
"The key topics that we discussed today at a meeting with UN Resident Coordinator Simon Springett and WHO Representative in our country Igor Pokanevych are the fastest possible access to a vaccine for Moldovan citizens, as well as support for economic recovery after the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic", Sandu wrote on her Facebook page.
The Moldovan leader mentioned that the UN and the WHO assisted Moldova’s health care system last year during the pandemic.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday announced plans to prolong the closure of the borders for two more weeks over fears of the spread of the new coronavirus variants.
"At the upcoming Cabinet meeting, I will seek to add at least two weeks to the closure of the borders and the halt to flights. We closed the land crossings because we do not want to allow the new mutations to enter at a time when we are running to be vaccinated. We can do this", Netanyahu said, as cited by his office.
According to the prime minister, the parliament will soon adopt a government-sponsored law to increase fines for those violating quarantine restrictions.
Commenting on the national vaccination campaign, Netanyahu said that the state would provide a vaccine to every citizen of Israel, regardless of nationality and religion.
Earlier in January, the Israeli government extended the third nationwide lockdown, which came into force on 27 December, until 31 January as daily coronavirus cases continue to spiral despite active vaccination. Earlier this week, Israel closed Ben Gurion Airport over the pandemic.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday that he rejects the conclusions of German experts who have said that a vaccine against COVID-19 produced by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford should not be given to people aged 65 or above.
On Tuesday, the German newspaper Handelsblatt published a report which claimed that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine had shown to be only eight percent effective among elderly residents. Two days later, media outlets reported that Germany's vaccine committee issued a recommendation telling elderly residents not to get the vaccine.
Speaking during a visit to Scotland, Johnson told broadcasters that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was "very good and efficacious" across all age groups, adding that he did not agree with Germany's decision.
The prime minister spoke during a visit to a facility in Livingston run by French vaccine producer Valneva, which announced earlier in the day that it would begin production with the aim of supplying 60 million vaccine doses by the end of the year.
During a government press briefing on Wednesday, Johnson said that he expects that the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to work "very well."
The UK has a total of 360 million COVID-19 vaccine doses on order from seven different suppliers. This figure includes 100 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
An end to mandatory face mask wearing in Russia could come as early as this year as greater numbers of residents are inoculated against COVID-19, Anna Popova, the head of public health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, said Thursday.
"There is certainly hope. This hope rests on the fact that we have already shown that we can live with the virus, and secondly, because we are getting vaccinated", Popova said in response to a question posed during an appearance on Russia's Channel 1 broadcaster.
Popova also noted the seasonality of the coronavirus disease, as demonstrated by the current decline in new cases being registered in Russia.
"At the moment, it is slowly leaving", the public health chief said.
The number of new positive tests registered daily in Russia has steadily declined since 24 December, when a record 29,935 cases were registered. On Thursday, 19,138 new cases were confirmed by the Russian coronavirus response center.
"The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) announced today the detection of two cases associated with the SARS-CoV-2 variant that first emerged recently in South Africa. These are the first two cases of this variant in the United States", the state's Health Department said in a press release on Thursday.
An international rights group on Thursday accused the administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro of using a dictatorship-era law to imprison critics of the government’s COVID-19 response.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Brazil resorted to the 1983 National Security Law, which was enacted during the country’s dictatorship, to seek prison sentences for those who criticize the government’s strategy during the global health crisis.
"Since June 2020, federal police have opened criminal investigations against at least four government critics under the 1983 National Security Law at the administration’s request", the HRW said in a press release.
In addition to those four cases, the government called for an investigation into a Supreme Court justice based on the 1983 law and two reporters based on a differed law but prosecutors and the police have not yet said if the investigation is opened, the HRW added.
"The National Security Law grants special protections to the reputations of high-level officials, including the president, and the armed forces that no other Brazilian citizen or institution receives", HRW’s Americas Director Jose Miguel Vivanco said, as quoted in the press release.
The rights group mentioned the case of caricaturist Renato Aroeira who published a cartoon that depicted Bolsonaro drawing a giant swastika. Brazilian Justice Minister Andre Mendonca called for an investigation against Aroeira and a reporter who shared his cartoon online for violating Article 26 of the 1983 law which criminalizes defamation or slander of the president.
The United Kingdom's world-renowned Chelsea Flower Show has been pushed back from May to September for the first time in the event's 108-year history due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) said Thursday.
"For the first time in its 108 year history, the RHS is postponing RHS Chelsea Flower Show to take place in the autumn instead of spring, due to the worldwide pandemic", the RHS said in a press release.
The RHS said that the rate of new COVID-19 infections was too high across the United Kingdom to hold the event safely, adding that the show could be staged in September, when millions more people across the country may be vaccinated against the disease.
"Whilst we are sad to have had to delay RHS Chelsea and are sorry for the disruption this will cause, we are excited that we are still planning to bring the world’s best loved gardening event to the nation at a time when more people are gardening more than ever", Sue Biggs, the director general of the RHS, said.
More than 150,000 people visit the Chelsea Flower Show, which is held in the London region bearing the same name, annually.
"At the moment, some 20-25 percent have got antibodies for this virus," Russian public health chief Anna Popova said as aired on Pervy channel.
Turkey has delivered a second shipment of 20,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses to the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the region's health minister, Ali Pilli, told the Anadolu news agency on Thursday.
"Turkey has always been by our side, and the supply of vaccines is further proof", Pilli said, as quoted by the agency.
The public health official said that the shipment contained 20,000 doses of a vaccine against COVID-19 produced by the Chinese firm Sinovac. A first shipment of the same amount of doses arrived in North Cyprus on 14 January, the agency said.
Turkey received 6.5 million doses of the China-developed vaccine on Monday, following an initial delivery of three million doses one month ago.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet regional governors by video on Monday for emergency talks on coronavirus vaccine deliveries, a cabinet spokesman said.
"Apart from other members of the federal government and heads of federal and state cabinets, vaccine producers and relevant unions will also be present at the negotiations," the spokesman told reporters.
This comes after Pfizer and AstraZeneca both cut vaccine supplies to the European Union, citing production issues.
German media reported that AstraZeneca would deliver only 31 million doses in the first quarter, down from the promised 80 million, due to problems at a site in Belgium. The factory was raided on Thursday at the request of the EU's executive body.
Global tourism suffered its worst year in 2020, losing $1.3 trillion due to the COVID-19 pandemic measures, the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) said in a statement on Thursday.
"The collapse in international travel represents an estimated loss of USD 1.3 trillion in export revenues - more than 11 times the loss recorded during the 2009 global economic crisis", the statement said.
While the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines is expected to slowly normalise travel in 2021, the agency said most experts do not see a return to pre-pandemic levels taking place before 2023.
"While much has been made in making safe international travel a possibility, we are aware that the crisis is far from over", UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili said.
Extended scenarios indicate that it can take two-and-a-half to four years to return to 2019 levels, according to UNWTO.
Asia and the Pacific recorded the largest decrease in arrivals last year compared to 2019, 84 percent, followed by the Middle East and Africa both with a 75 percent decline.
Europe suffered the largest drop in absolute terms with more than 500 million fewer international tourists.
Belarus expects the delivery of a free batch of coronavirus vaccines from China, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei said on Thursday.
"We are working closely with our Chinese partners. A couple of days ago the leaders of our states discussed this issue [supplies of vaccines]. China is ready to provide a batch of vaccines free of charge", Makei told reporters.
Makei added that Belarus was also cooperating with other COVID-19 vaccine developers from Russia, US and other countries.
According to the minister, Belarus continues to work with Russia on the delivery of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine to the country after already receiving the first batch and starting its vaccination campaign.
On Tuesday, the press service of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that the president had a telephone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Beijing confirmed its readiness to supply Minsk with the COVID-19 vaccine in the necessary amounts.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which is producing Sputnik V along with the Gamaleya research institute, said in December that Belarus had become the first foreign country to register the Russian-made vaccine.
Sputnik V was the first COVID-19 vaccine registered in Russia and the world. It is 91.4 percent effective, according to the latest trial results released by Russian developers.
Thai police have issued one-month suspended jail sentences and fines of 10,000 baht ($133) to more than 100 revelers who attended a party on the island of Ko Pha Ngan earlier this week in violation of the country's COVID-19 rules, the UK's Sky News broadcaster reports, noting that six Britons were among those fined.
Law enforcement officers informed the broadcaster of the ruling, adding that the owner of the Three Sixty Bar, where the party took place on Tuesday, as well as a drink seller were given two-year suspended jail sentences and fines of 10,000 baht.
In total, 111 people, including 89 foreigners, were arrested after the event, the broadcaster said.
The Thai government in April introduced strict limits on tourists entering the country as part of measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. In December, restrictions for citizens from 56 countries were eased, although visitors are still required to undergo a period of hotel quarantine.
Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has received a shot of the vaccine against the coronavirus in a clinic located at Turkey's Istanbul University, the Orthodox Times news website reported on Thursday.
In early January, 80-year-old Bartholomew said that he was planning to get the COVID-19 vaccine since he was in the risk group, and called on the faithful to adhere to the coronavirus related precautionary measures.
According to the news outlet, during the visit to the clinic, Bartholomew expressed gratitude to the clinic's staff and to all health care workers dedicated to their professional duty.
The patriarch expressed hope that more people would be vaccinated soon and the world would finally curb the spread of the virus.
The news website did not specify with which vaccine the patriarch was vaccinated.
Turkey launched its nation-wide vaccination on 14 January, after it received the first batch of CoronaVac vaccines developed by China's Sinovac pharmaceutical company. The first Turkish citizen who received the vaccine was health minister Fahrettin Koca. According to Koca, Turkey planned to receive 50 million doses of CoronaVac vaccine by February and would acquire 4.5 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by the end of March.
About 72.5 percent of Spaniards are ready to receive vaccine against COVID-19 immediately, according to the results of a survey released by the Social Investigation Centre (CIS) on Thursday.
According to the survey, 72.5 percent are ready to get a shot of vaccine immediately, while 16.5 percent of people still do not want to be vaccinated.
Among the main reasons why Spaniards do not want to be vaccinated is mistrust of vaccines, the fear of experiencing side effects and the willingness to wait in order to see how the vaccine works.
In a previous poll was conducted 1-9 December, before the start of vaccination campaign in Spain, only 40.5 percent of citizens expressed their interest in immediate vaccination.
On 27 December, Spain as well as other European countries began vaccination campaigns against COVID-19. To date, the country received over 1.3 million doses of the US Pfizer vaccine and 35,700 shots of the Moderna vaccine.
India has delivered to neighboring countries more than 5.5 million doses of domestically-manufactured vaccines against the novel coronavirus free of charge since 20 January, external affairs ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said on Thursday.
"From 20 January 2021 onwards, we have gifted over 55 lakh [a lakh is equal to 100,000] doses of vaccines to our neighbouring countries and in our extended neighbourhood ... These supplies are based on requests from these countries. Over the next few days, we plan to gift further quantities to Oman (1 lakh), CARICOM countries (5 lakh), Nicaragua (2 lakh) and Pacific Island states (2 lakh)", Srivastava said at a press conference.
According to the diplomat, India has shipped 150,000 doses to Bhutan, 100,000 to the Maldives, 1 million doses to Nepal, 2 million Bangladesh, 1,5 million doses to Myanmar, 100,000 doses to Mauritius, 50,000 doses to Seychelles, 500,000 doses to Sri Lanka and 100,000 doses to Bahrain.
The spokesman added that India also supplied the vaccines to Brazil, Morocco and Bangladesh on a commercial basis and was expected to extend them to Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Canada, Mongolia and other countries.
"Further, we are going to supply 1 crore (10 million) doses to Africa and 10 lakh (1 million) to UN health workers under GAVI’s COVAX facility", Srivastava said.
India is currently shipping domestically-manufactured Covieshield vaccine, developed jointly by UK pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the Oxford University. Apart from that, the country is also distributing the Covaxin vaccine, which is developed by Indian biotechnology firm Bharat Biotech.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday promised that more vaccines against the novel coronavirus produced in his country would soon be made available in order to help the world fight the pandemic.
Earlier in January, India began shipping the free-of-charge domestically-manufactured Covieshield vaccine, developed jointly by UK pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the Oxford University, to neighbouring countries. Apart from that, the country is also distributing the Covaxin vaccine, which is developed by Indian biotechnology firm Bharat Biotech.
"So far, only two made-in-India coronavirus vaccines have been introduced to the world. In the near future many more such vaccines will be made available from India. These vaccines will help us in assisting countries across the world faster and on a much bigger scale", Modi said in his special address to the Davos Agenda virtual event as part of the World Economic Forum.
The prime minister also recalled that at the beginning of the outbreak, several experts and organisations made predictions that India would be most affected by the pandemic, with hundreds of millions of Indians being infected with the virus.
"Looking at the condition of countries with better health infrastructure, the world was right in worrying about us. India, however, took a proactive public participation approach and developed a COVID-specific health infrastructure and trained its resources to fight COVID", the official said, adding that the country also was using technology for testing and tracking the spread of the virus.
According to the prime minister, India, which hosts 19 percent of the world population, not only fulfills its need for personal protective equipment but also exports the necessary equipment and vaccines to help other countries.
In addition, India has already vaccinated over 2 million health workers and will meet the target of vaccinating 300 million senior citizens and those with co-morbidities in the next few months, Modi said.
"India's upcoming vaccines will help other countries at a swifter pace to fight the pandemic", the official added.
Commenting on the economic situation in the country, the prime minister said that it would change in the post-COVID era, as India continued its economic activities during the pandemic, providing employment.
Modi also noted that the country was launching a new initiative to provide a unique health ID to 1.3 billion citizens for easy access to health care.
Russia's population declined by 500,000 over a year to 1 January 2021, totaling 146,238,185, preliminary official figures showed.
As of 1 January 2020, Russia had a population of 146,748,600. The decline thus amounted to 510,000 people.
Some 109.3 million Russians live in urban areas and about 37 million in the countryside, according to state statistics agency Rosstat.
Nearly 128,000 Finnish citizens have been vaccinated against the coronavirus by Thursday, the result of a month-long vaccination campaign, the national institute for health and welfare THL reported.
"A total of 127,783 people have been vaccinated", the institute said in a COVID-19 vaccination data update, adding that 10,540 citizens have received two shots.
In particular, it noted that 32,936 people were inoculated in the capital region, including 3,596 local residents who received two shots of the vaccine.
Finland kicked off its mass vaccination campaign on 27 December, using the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines against the virus.
The THL reported an increase in the incidence of the coronavirus in Finland after a long steady period since last month. To date, the national health authorities have confirmed 43,616 COVID-19 infections and 660 related fatalities.
The US economy shrank 3.5 percent in 2020, its sharpest contraction on record since 1946, as the coronavirus pandemic continued to take its toll on the country, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.
“Real GDP decreased 3.5 percent in 2020, compared with an increase of 2.2 percent in 2019”, the department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said in a statement on its first reading of fourth-quarter 2020 Gross Domestic Product.
The contraction was the first for the US economy since 2009, and the sharpest decline since 1946, when GDP shrank by 11.6 percent in the wake of World War II.
The economy expanded by a 4-percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2020, but that growth came on the heels of a record plunge of 33.4 percent in the April-June quarter amid business restrictions and closures in many parts of the country.
“The full economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be quantified in the GDP estimate for the fourth quarter of 2020 because the impacts are generally embedded in source data and cannot be separately identified”, the department said.
The third quarter GDP expansion of 33.1 percent was the highest ever attained by the United States for a three-month period.
But despite that rebound, the economy came under renewed stress in the fourth quarter after a fresh spike in coronavirus infections that have now topped 25.5 million cases and killed nearly 430,000 people. Daily COVID-19 hospitalisation rates also hit daily record highs in the fourth quarter, even with vaccination programs accelerating.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The unemployment rate in Spain increased by 16.13 percent in 2020, with 622,600 jobs lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said on Thursday.
The current unemployment rate is the highest since 2017 when it reached 16.55 percent, according to INE.
In absolute terms, by the end of 2020 the number of the unemployed in Spain amounted to 3.71 million people, which is almost 528,000 more than in 2019. It is the largest increase since 2012.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Vaccination passports are a bad idea, as it makes people wrongfully think that COVID-19 immunisation is mandatory, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said on Thursday.
"Introduction of additional passports or some other documents, as we see, annoys citizens, and citizens in this case interpret vaccination as a mandatory thing, this is unacceptable", Golikova said at a president-led meeting with cabinet members.
She particularly warned Russian regions against introducing vaccination passports, describing it as an "inexpedient and even harmful" measure.
WARSAW (Sputnik) - The number of people hospitalised with the coronavirus infection in Poland is declining, the country's ministry of health said on Thursday.
The COVID-19 dynamics in Poland went sharply up in November, hitting a record daily increase of 27,875 new cases and 674 new deaths in one day.
According to the ministry of health, 13,879 people remain in hospitals across Poland due to COVID-19, of whom 1,406 are on ventilators. On Tuesday, there were 14,596 COVID-19 patients in hospitals.
BANGKOK (Sputnik) - Vietnam has registered 84 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases over the past day after nearly two months of zero local infections, the government's news portal reported on Thursday.
According to the VGP news portal, the new coronavirus statistics were announced at an emergency government meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
EU countries adopted guidelines on proof of vaccination for medical purposes.
— European Commission 🇪🇺 (@EU_Commission) January 28, 2021
These guidelines aim to support the interoperability of vaccination certificates.
It will be an important tool for citizens during the pandemic but also after we have overcome it. #StrongerTogether
It’s brilliant that @ValnevaSE is starting the large-scale manufacture of its potential vaccine, creating 100 high-skilled jobs at their Livingston facility.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) January 28, 2021
We’ve secured 60m doses due to be delivered by the end of the year if it is approved for use.https://t.co/4pDUbczlVl
"The Department of Health has issued health directions on the management of human remains that died of COVID-19 that prescribes measures to be implemented. These directions do not prescribe the covering of coffins with plastics, use of biohazard stickers nor wearing full PPE by funeral directors or sanitising of the graves or clothes of people attending the funeral as this is unnecessary", the department said in a press release.
