The US remains the worst-hit nation, with around 31 million cases of COVID-19, while at least 560,000 Americans have died during the pandemic. Next comes Brazil with around 13.2 million cases and over 345,000 deaths.
Meanwhile, India has the third-highest number of COVID-19 infections (12.9 million cases and almost 166,000 deaths), while Mexico has the third-highest death toll in the world - over 206,000 fatalities, with around 2.2 million infected.
Follow Sputnik's Live Feed to Find Out More!
PARIS (Sputnik) – The vaccine against COVID of the French company of Sanofi may be ready by the fall of this year, Secretary of State for European Affairs in the French government Clement Beaune said.
“We hope that it [the Sanofi vaccine] will be ready in fall 2021. All our contacts with Sanofi show that these statements and prospects are realistic,” Beaune said told the Franc Info radio broadcaster on late Friday.
NEW DELHI (Sputnik) – Four people have died and two are in critical condition following a fire that hit a hospital for COVID-19 patients in the city of Nagpur in India's Maharashtra state, Indian media reported on Saturday.
According to the NDTV broadcaster, 27 patients were evacuated to other hospitals over the blaze.
The fire reportedly erupted at the air conditioning unit in the intensive care unit.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed condolences over the incident.
“Saddened by the hospital fire in Nagpur. My thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives. Praying that the injured recover at the earliest,” Modi wrote on his Twitter page on Saturday.
Causes of the incident remain unknown.
BUENOS AIRES (Sputnik) – Bolivia will keep its border with Brazil closed for one more week over the situation around COVID-19, the Bolivian Ministry of Health and Sports said.
Bolivia closed its borders with Brazil for seven days on April 2.
“The Ministry of Health and Sports, the Foreign Ministry and the government say that in order to decrease the risk of new variants of the coronavirus entering the country … that the effect of Article 7 of the Decree 4481 – which temporarily closes the borders with Brazil – will be extended until the midnight, April 16,” the ministry said in a statement on late Friday.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Pfizer and BioNTech said in a statement that they have applied to expand emergency use authorization of their vaccine for usage in adolescents between 12 and 15 years old.
"Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE today requested amendments to the US Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine (BNT162b2) to expand the use in adolescents 12 to 15 years of age," the statement said on Friday.
The EUA requests are based on the recent results of the concluded Phase 3 trial in adolescents 12 to 15 years of age with or without prior evidence of the novel coronavirus that demonstrated 100 percent efficacy and strong antibody response after vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
In the coming days, the companies plan to request similar authorization by the regulatory authorities in other countries worldwide, the statement added.
BUENOS AIRES (Sputnik) - Officials of Brazilian national sanitary inspection agency Anvisa will visit a production facility of coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V in Russia next week, Anvisa said on Friday.
"Next week, Anvisa begins inspection of the production of the Sputnik V vaccine in Russia. The purpose of the trip is to collect the missing data on the production of the vaccine, which is important both for assessing its use and for importing it into Brazil," the statement says.
The regulator clarified that its employees would visit two factories: one responsible for production (the inspection will take place from April 15 to 21) and one responsible for the final stage and packaging (from April 19 to 23).
China’s coronavirus vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm are in the final stages of evaluation by the World Health Organisation, which plans to decide on at least one of them on 26 April.
"We have convened the technical advisory group for a vaccine assessment for the 26th of April", WHO’s prequalification director Rogerio Pinto de Sa Gaspar told a news conference on Friday.
If one of the vaccine candidates is not reviewed on that day it will have another opportunity to be vetted for emergency use listing during the week starting 3 May, Rogerio Gaspar added.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - France has vaccinated a record number of people - 437,000 - in one day, on Thursday, French Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Friday.
"With a record of 437,000 injections yesterday, the vaccination campaign is accelerating and protecting our citizens more and more", Veran wrote on Twitter, adding that 1.3 million vaccines were delivered in two days to pharmacists, doctors, and private duty nurses.
"Over the past day, 9,150 coronavirus cases were confirmed across 83 Russian regions, including 1,198 cases (13.1 percent) without clinical symptoms", the coronavirus response centre said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The UK Global Taskforce, a government advisory body, has set out a new approach to safely restart international travel that includes a new traffic light system for categorisng countries and the introduction of travel certification, the UK government said on Friday.
According to the press release, there are four main factors to group countries based on risk alongside the restrictions required for travel, namely the percentage of the population that is vaccinated, the rate of infection, the prevalence of variants of concern, and the country's access to reliable scientific data and genomic sequencing.
The so-called traffic light system prescribes three main categories of arrivals, and "restrictions for inbound passengers, such as a 10-day managed quarantine, home quarantine, and stringent testing will remain in place - but will apply to people differently depending on whether the destination visited is categorised as 'green', 'amber' or 'red'."
