Live Updates: We Are in Last and Hardest Stage of 'Pandemic Marathon', German Health Minister Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The number of people, who have died of the coronavirus in Brazil, has increased by record 3,650 to 307,112 within the past 24 hours, the Ministry of Health said on late Friday.

The number of confirmed cases has risen by 84,245 to 12,404,414 within the same period of time.

More than 10.82 million people have recovered since the start of the outbreak.

Brazil comes second both in terms of the death toll and of the number of confirmed cases after the US with more than 30.14 million cases and about 548,000 fatalities.

UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) - The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) is in the midst of a coronavirus outbreak with more than 400 of its peacekeepers fighting the infection, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said in a press briefing.

"We have numbers of 409 affected people in the UN Mission in South Sudan," Haq said on Friday when asked about how many members in the mission have recently contracted the novel coronavirus.

The UN spokesman explained UNMISS is doing everything possible in order to prevent the coronavirus from spreading outside the mission, adding that the infected peacekeepers have beenplaced under quarantine.

"We took immediate action to keep the involved contingents separate from others and from the society around them," Haq said.

UNMIS said it has some 18,000 personnel on the ground in South Sudan.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The WHO-backed COVAX program requires immediate access to ten million doses of coronavirus vaccine to distribute to the remaining 20 countries that are yet to start vaccination campaigns in order to kick-start the rollout in line with the WHO goals, the organization's Secretary General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated on Friday.

"COVAX needs ten million doses immediately as an urgent stop-gap measure so these 20 countries can start vaccinating their health workers and older people within the next two weeks. So, today I'm asking countries with doses of vaccines that have WHO emergency use listing to donate as many doses as they can to help us meet that target," Tedros said at a press briefing.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US Department of Defense (DoD) has administered more than 1.8 million vaccines to its personnel and more than 5 million vaccines as part of the FEMA mission to assist in the COVID-19 response, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Terry Adirim said in a briefing on Friday.

“We have administered more than 1.8 million shots within DoD and more than 5 million shots have gone into arms by a military service members in support of the FEMA mission,” Adirim said.

The Defense Department has also implemented new guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)and made fully vaccinated individuals exempt from quarantine and testing in case they were exposed to somebody with the novel coronavirus, Aldrim said.

The Defense Department will make all its beneficiaries eligible for vaccination by May 1 in alignment with President Joe Biden’s announcements that all Americans will get access to vaccines during that month, Adirim added.

Canadian health officials project that the country is on track to hit 1 million coronavirus cases by the beginning of April, an updated epidemiology and modeling report revealed on Friday.

Officials project up to an additional 53,458 cases and more than 525 coronavirus-related deaths in the next ten days, the report said.

The number of Canadians who will have tested positive for the novel coronavirus will range between 973,080 and 1,005,020 while the number of deaths is expected to fall in the 22,875 to 23,315 range by 4 April, the Public Health Agency of Canada said.

Canadian health officials report a steady rise in daily new case averages, with an average of 4,100 new cases during the last seven days, up from a plateaued caseload of 2,500 one month ago.

As of Friday, the agency has reported more than 953,000 cases and more than 22,800 coronavirus-related fatalities.

In view of the increasing number of corona patients in the state, Uddhav Thackeray has instructed to impose a curfew in Maharashtra from Sunday night (March 28) to avoid congestion, implement some strict measures to curb growing infection, State Chief office said. The population of the state is 112 million.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The European Union has enough vaccines approved and in production to cover its needs, and does not expect newly authorized ones to enter the market before 2022, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said on Friday.

"My message is that we don’t need a new vaccine, we have already four vaccines approved. We are the only continent with so many vaccines now approved and in production, the only one. We will have soon a fifth one, we expect this maybe end of May-June", he told the press during the visit to a medical laboratory in Spain.

According to the commissioner, it will take from ten months to a year for any new vaccine now under review by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), including Russia's Sputnik V, to get from the authorization to the rollout stage.

"Today, our main objective is to make sure that within the next four-five months, we get all the doses which have been already ordered and are in the process of being manufactured", Breton noted.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin received coronavirus shots earlier than the president did, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, adding that the vaccines were homegrown.

"As far as I know, yes, they were inoculated even earlier [than Putin]. If I am not mistaken, Putin himself talked about this", Peskov told reporters when asked whether the president's relatives, especially his daughters, were vaccinated from the coronavirus.

Commenting on whether the vaccine was a Russian one, the official answered affirmatively.

"Of course", Peskov said.

"We have paid attention to public statements by some representatives of the European Commission, including Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, about the absence of need for the EU to bulk purchase Russia's Sputnik V. This is a politicised approach. We hope that the European Commission's approach to Sputnik V — or indeed to its own citizens and to the solution of the global problem — will not affect the speed of considering Russia's request for vaccine registration by the European Medicines Agency", foreign ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharovasaid at a briefing.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia registered 9,167 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, down from 9,221 the day before, taking the overall tally to 4,501,859, the coronavirus response centre said on Friday.

"Over the past day, 9,167 coronavirus cases were confirmed across 85 Russian regions, including 1,176 cases (12,8 percent) without clinical symptoms", the centre said, adding that the cumulative case count has now reached 4,501,859, with the rate of increase at 0.2 percent.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Around 44 percent of Moscow residents have immunity against COVID-19, which is a rather high figure, Deputy Mayor Anastasia Rakova told Sputnik.

"We are systematically measuring the level of herd immunity: some 43-44 percent of Moscow residents have IgG antibodies. This is a rather high figure that allows the city to live almost normally, with the minimum number of restrictions", Rakova said.