Live Updates: Global COVID-19 Count Reaches 90 Mln, Johns Hopkins University Data Shows

MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) - Mexico has confirmed its first case of the UK strain of the coronavirus, Gloria Molina Gamboa, the secretary of health of the Tamaulipas state, said.

According to the official, the new strain, known as B117, was confirmed in an international traveler, who arrived in the state from Mexico City on December 29.

"The result of the test for the new strain of SARS-CoV-2, which originally appeared in the United Kingdom in mid-September and has become the predominant variant in the country, has come back positive," Molina said in a statement.

The health secretary added that all passengers and crew, who had been on the same flight, were tested negative.

CAIRO (Sputnik) - Egypt has confirmed less than 1,000 new COVID-19 cases in 24 hours for the second day in a row, the country's health ministry said.

Previously, the ministry reported 989 new cases.

"We have registered 993 new positive coronavirus tests, 55 people died from the disease in 24 hours," the ministry's spokesman Khaled Mugahed said in a statement obtained by Sputnik.

The country passed the threshold of 1,000 new cases a day in late December amid the second wave of the pandemic.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Brazil will begin manufacturing the Russian-developed Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus disease on January 15, according to the vaccine's Twitter account.

"Brazil will start production of Sputnik V on January 15th," the account said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The number of new COVID-19 cases in Russia in the first 10 days of the year is 12 percent less than that same metric in the final 10 days of 2020, Rospotrebnadzor Chief Anna Popova said.

"It is still early to talk about the stabilization [of epidemic in Russia] but the figures are as follows: if we compare the first ten days of the new year and the final ten days of last year, the number of cases [registered daily] has decreased by almost 12 percent," Popova said in a televised appearance on state broadcaster Rossiya 1 Sunday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia detected its first case of the UK strain of coronavirus in a Russian national returning from the country, chief of consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, Tatyana Popova, said Sunday.

"One person had the new strain of coronavirus," Popova said in a televised appearance on state broadcaster Rossiya 1, commenting on the vetting of arrivals from the UK.

TOKYO (Sputnik) - Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) on Sunday confirmed it had found a new strain of the coronavirus among four individuals arriving from Brazil.

The new strain showed similarities to the variant detected in the UK and South Africa but there is no evidence that it is more transmissible or likelier to cause serious symptoms, news agency Kyodo reported, citing institute chief Takaji Wakita.

The four individuals arrived at Tokyo's Haneda airport from Brazil on January 2from the state of Amazonas, Brazil. The four tested positive in airport quarantine.

Of the four, a man in his 40s was hospitalized with difficulty breathing, a woman in her thirties displayed symptoms such as headache and sore throat. One male in his teens developed a fever while a female in the same age group showed no symptoms, Kyodo reported.

The news comes on the same day that Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the government was mulling an expansion of the state of emergency in several regions of the country.

The new strains of coronavirus discovered in the UK and South Africa late last year were proven to be up to 70 percent more easily transmissible than its predecessor and are believed to be driving new waves of transmissions.

BELGRADE (Sputnik) - Serbian authorities are on the verge of completing the first phase of vaccinating around 720,000 people using both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Sputnik V vaccines, Health Ministry State Secretary Mirsad Djerelek said Sunday.

“In the next seven to 10 days, the vaccination of health workers, employees and wards of elderly care centers will be completed… this will make it possible to complete the first phase - 720,000 vaccinated,” Djerelek said at a briefing after a hospital visit in capital city Belgrade with Prime Minister Ana Brnabic.

Djerelek said that the program would move over into the next phase where doses will be administered to all citizens over 75 years of age and people over 64 who suffer from comorbidities.

Brnabic, on her part, said that Serbia was expecting another shipment of 500,000 Sputnik V vaccines as well as agreements in place with China’s Sinopharm to preliminarily cover 4 million Serbs with 8 million doses.

Over recent weeks, Serbian authorities have publicly taken shots from both Pfizer and Russia's Gamaleya Research Institute production in a campaign to raise public trust for the vaccine.

TEHRAN (Sputnik) – Four cases of the mutated coronavirus strain, which was discovered in the United Kingdom last month, have been registered in Iran, Health Minister Saeed Namaki said on Sunday.

"Four new cases were confirmed yesterday", Namaki said, as cited on the country's government website.

According to the top health official, those infected are members of one family, who have returned from Europe.

"At the moment we're running over 200,000 people being vaccinated every day", Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News. "We've now vaccinated around a third of the over-80s in this country, so we are making significant progress, but there's still further expansion to go. This week we are opening mass vaccination centres".

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia has registered 22,851 COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, down from 23,309 the day before, taking the tally to 3,401,954, the coronavirus response centre said on Sunday.

"Over the past day, 22,851 coronavirus cases were confirmed across 83 Russian regions, including 2,589 cases (11.3 percent) that were detected among people showing no clinical symptoms", the centre said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The number of deaths from the coronavirus disease in Germany has exceeded 40,000, the Robert Koch Institute said.

According to the institute, the death toll has increased in the last 24 hours by 465 to 40,343 people.