Coronavirus Global Updates, Nov 18: Japan sees record daily infections; Russia exceeds 2m cases

Thu Nov 19 12:10:01 CAT 2020

 <https://www.gemportal.co.zw/> 

Zimbabwe COVID19 Update

COVID-19 update: As at 18 November 2020, Zimbabwe had 8 981 confirmed cases, including 8 184 recoveries and 261 deaths.

Coronavirus live news: Japan sees record daily infections; Russia exceeds 2m cases

The head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases said on Thursday recent news on experimental Covid-19 vaccine trials has been extremely encouraging.

“This is of course extremely encouraging, extremely positive news,” Lothar Wieler said at a virtual news conference. Vaccines with an efficacy of more than 90% would be “great weapons” in the fight against the pandemic, he added.

European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde on Thursday called for the EU’s planned coronavirus recovery fund to become available “without delay” after Poland and Hungary blocked the adoption of the plan.

The appeal came ahead of a videoconference by EU leaders set to be dominated by the budget row, which threatens to hold up the unlocking of badly needed stimulus to cushion the economic hit from the pandemic.

The 750-billion-euro ($887-billion) Next Generation EU package “must become operational without delay,” Lagarde told the European Parliament’s committee on economic and monetary affairs.

“The package’s additional resources can facilitate expansionary fiscal policies, most notably in those euro area countries with limited fiscal space,” she added.

Poland reported a new daily high of 637 coronavirus-related deaths on Thursday, according to the health ministry’s Twitter account. There were 23,975 new cases reported on Thursday, the health ministry said.

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AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s potential Covid-19 vaccine produced a strong immune response in older adults, data published on Thursday showed, with researchers expecting to release late-stage trial results by Christmas.

The data, reported in part last month but published in full in The Lancet medical journal on Thursday, suggest that those aged over 70, who are at higher risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19, could build robust immunity.

“The robust antibody and T-cell responses were seen in older people in our study are encouraging,” said Maheshi Ramasamy, a consultant and co-lead investigator at the Oxford Vaccine Group.

“We hope that this means our vaccine will help to protect some of the most vulnerable people in society, but further research will be needed before we can be sure.”

A senior German health official said on Thursday the trend of a slowing spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany could continue.
“I’m very optimistic that this will happen,” said Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.

He said it is unclear for how long German measures to slow the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic will have to remain in place. “We’ll see how that works out. I can’t predict that,” Lothar Wieler said at a virtual news conference.

The head of the Orthodox Church of Greece, Archbishop Ieronymos, has been hospitalized after being diagnosed with Covid-19, a leading Athens hospital said Thursday.

The 82-year-old archbishop was hospitalized in an augmented care unit of Athens’ Evangelismos Hospital, the same hospital where the Archbishop of Albania, Anastasios, is being treated for Covid-19 since being airlifted to Greece last week.

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas expressed the government’s wishes for a speedy recovery to Ieronymos. The archbishop had met with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Saturday, but Petsas said both men had undergone a coronavirus test before the meeting and the results had been negative.

Petsas said there was no need for the prime minister to self-isolate as a precaution as he had also tested negative before his trip to the United Arab Emirates earlier this week.

The number of new Covid-19 infections in Germany is still much too high and is causing a serious pandemic situation, the head of the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases (RKI), Lothar Wieler, said on Thursday.

The head of RKI’s surveillance unit, Ute Rexroth, added there are indications that Germany’s new distancing measures are working after the number of new infections has stabilised.

British postal operator Royal Mail on Thursday said revenue from parcel deliveries has for the first time overtaken that from letters in the wake of the pandemic.

Reporting results for its first half, or six months to the end of September, the former state-run company said growth in online shopping during the coronavirus outbreak led to total group revenue growth of almost 10% to £5.67 billion ($7.39 billion, 6.23 billion euros) year-on-year.

“For the first time, parcels revenue at Royal Mail is now larger than letters revenue, representing 60% of total revenue, compared with 47% in the prior period,” Royal Mail’s interim executive chair Keith Williams said in an earnings statement.

In England, a hospital consultant who gave birth to twins while she was in a coronavirus coma has described the delivery of the babies as a “miracle”.

Perpetual Uke, a rheumatology consultant, was taken to Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham when she contracted Covid-19 in April and was placed on a ventilator in a medically induced coma when her condition deteriorated.

Doctors decided to deliver the babies by caesarean section in case their mother did not recover. Her due date had been mid-July, but the babies were delivered at just 26 weeks.

But when Uke woke from the coma and could not see her bump, she feared that she had lost the babies.

“I couldn’t see my bump and I thought my babies were gone,” she told Metro. “It’s just a miracle what happened, to come out of this.

Christmas hasn’t been cancelled yet but meeting Santa and his little helpers is going to look different for a lot of people this year, with video calls that take children to the north pole replacing many visits to local grottos.

Socially distanced events are still planned in some event spaces in England, although they will only be able to take place once the national lockdown has lifted, as businesses pivot to deal with coronavirus restrictions.

Helen Nurse, the founder of Wonder Adventures, said their events were usually live but they soon realised that would need to change this year. “At Easter, we cancelled our event and took the event online … to see if it worked, and it did, so we did ‘themed stuff’ throughout the summer to refine it and in the summer we considered Christmas and we made the call that we were not going to take the risk to book live venues … so we planned for doing it all virtually.

The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) said a survey of its members echoed this. However, others including the Royal Albert Hall in London, are still planning to go ahead with their experience, although it will be socially distanced.

Mike Battle, the founder of LaplandUK, a Christmas-themed park, said they could have cancelled their event but thought instead: “Father Christmas stands for children and I don’t believe he would let them down, so nor can we.”

Its event has doubled in size and a range of measures have been put in place to make it safe. “People won’t be allowed to enter the site without notification on their app … They will go through a process of waiting in the car before another notification on the app which tells them when they can go in.”

France will not face electricity outages this winter even if the new coronavirus crisis disrupts nuclear plant maintenance, Environment Minister Barbara Pompili said on Thursday.

“There will be no blackouts in France,” the minister said on France’s BFM TV when she was asked over risks of electricity shortages.
Power grid operator RTE is expected to update its forecasts for electricity needs this winter later on Thursday.

RTE said in September that the ability of France to meet electricity needs required vigilance as the pandemic made forecasts difficult.
Pompili said that industrial companies would have to halt output in the case of any electricity shortages to reduce demand.

Turkey will sign a contract within days to buy at least 20 million doses of a Covid-19 candidate vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech, the health minister was cited as saying, adding that Ankara was also in talks to buy doses of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine.

“We will be able to procure at least 10 million doses of the Chinese vaccine in December. We want to increase this number. It will be just as much in January, too,” Health Minister Fahrettin Koca was quoted as saying by the state-run Anadolu news agency.

Japan is on “maximum alert” after logging a record number of daily coronavirus infections, its prime minister said Thursday, though no immediate restrictions are planned.

The comments came as Tokyo raised its alert level to the top of its four-tier system, with local media saying the capital would report a record number of infections for a second day running.

More than 2,000 cases were recorded nationwide on Wednesday, with nearly 500 in Tokyo.

While these figures are comparatively low globally speaking, they represent a sharp rise in cases for Japan, where testing is often less widespread than in other parts of the world.

“We are now in a situation of maximum alert,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

“I ask you, the Japanese people, to fully implement principles such as wearing masks,” Suga added, urging people to wear them even while talking during meals in restaurants.

The country has taken a relatively relaxed approach to virus restrictions so far - even a nationwide state of emergency in the spring carried no obligation for businesses to close or for people to stay home.

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