Category: World News

Pills will be ordered from pharmaceutical company Pfizer to treat up to 20 million patients, President Joe Biden said Tuesday (Jan. 4) at the White House. “We may even need more,” Biden said, looking ahead to the coming months. The drug will prevent many hospitalizations and deaths, he added. Pfizer, along with German company Biontech, already markets a widely used vaccine against the corona virus. The number of new corona infections recorded daily in the U.S. has exceeded one million for the first time since the pandemic began. With about…

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In Great Britain, driven by the Omicron variant, more than 200,000 new Corona infections have been recorded within one day for the first time. Within 24 hours, 218,724 cases were reported, the government said Tuesday. In addition, 48 deaths were recorded, it said. The national health service NHS warned of an overload of hospitals because of the many quarantined employees. At least six hospitals reported “critical incidents” Tuesday, meaning the situation could affect priority care. Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to take action to fill staffing gaps in the hardest-hit…

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The number of Covid 19 cases registered so far was already around 290 million worldwide at the turn of the year. But all statistics are likely to reflect only part of the pandemic. Indeed, 40 percent of those testing positive for Sars-CoV-2 have no symptoms. This is the result of a meta-analysis of international studies involving almost 30 million people. Conclusion: asymptomatic infected individuals contribute quite significantly to the spread of covid-19. Qiuyue Ma and co-authors from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Peking University recently published their findings…

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More than 292 million people have tested positive for the virus worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 5.4 million infected people have died. More than 9.2 billion vaccine doses have been administered so far. Thailand will not relax entry rules tightened before Christmas until at least the end of the month. That’s what Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said Tuesday (Jan. 4), according to the Bangkok Post. The government had decided on Dec. 21 to initially suspend until Jan. 4 the quarantine-free “Test&Go” model, under which fully vaccinated tourists…

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About 150 passengers on board the cruise ship “MSC Grandiosa” have tested positive for coronavirus in Genoa. The ship had arrived in Genoa from Marseille and was scheduled to sail on to Civitavecchia, the port of Rome, this afternoon, the cruise line said. The mostly Italian passengers were isolated in their cabins until the arrival of port authorities and regional health officials. They will reportedly be taken home in buses, while the foreign passengers have been placed in a nursing home in Genoa. If that facility is at capacity, additional…

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More than 290 million people have tested positive for the virus worldwide, according to John Hopkins University. More than 5.4 million infected people have died. More than 9.1 billion vaccine doses have been administered. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tested positive for the corona virus Sunday (Jan. 2). The Pentagon said Austin was showing only mild symptoms, but he would follow guidelines from the CDC health agency and spend the next five days at home in quarantine. He retains all command authority and will continue to work virtually and attend…

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India has reported 22,775 new infections in the past 24 hours. The data show sharp increases in densely populated regions such as around the capital New Delhi, the financial center of Mumbai and the metropolis of Kolkata in the east of the country. Since the peak of the second covid wave last year, daily infection rates in India had fallen from over 400,000 to below 10,000 at times. Now experts fear a third wave due to the virus variant Omicron. Thirteen million residents of the Chinese city of Xian are…

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Shortly before the planned impressive fireworks at the turn of the year in Sydney Harbour, the Australian state of New South Wales has recorded more new corona infections than ever before. Authorities in the east coast region reported about 21,100 new cases on Friday – nearly 9,000 more than on Thursday and 15,000 more than on Wednesday. Higher numbers of new infections have never been recorded in any Australian region, broadcaster ABC reported. Australia had long pursued a zero-covid strategy and closed its national borders to visitors. Despite this, infection…

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More than one million people have died in Eastern Europe in connection with the virus since the first recorded cases of Corona in China about two years ago, according to calculations by the Reuters news agency. Among the worst-hit countries in the region are Russia, Poland and Ukraine, the data show. A total of 1.04 million people in Eastern Europe died from the virus. In Europe, a total of 1.87 million deaths were counted. In Russia alone, more than 87,000 people died in November in connection with the coronavirus, a…

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