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 One death every 15 seconds
Latin America surpassed Europe on Tuesday to become the region with
the highest novel coronavirus death toll, according to a Reuters
tally. The region has now recorded more than 206,000 deaths,
approximately 30% of the global total.
Brazil, the Latin American country most affected by the coronavirus,
had recorded a total of 95,819 deaths as of Tuesday. Mexico, the
second-most affected country in the region, has 48,869 deaths.
Outbreaks have also accelerated in Colombia, Peru, Argentina and
Bolivia.
The global death toll from COVID-19 has surpassed 700,000, according
to a Reuters tally. Nearly 5,900 people are dying every 24 hours
from COVID-19 on average, according to calculations based on data
from the past two weeks. That equates to 247 people an hour, or one
person every 15 seconds.
Closing down Victoria
Australia's Victoria state reported a record rise in new coronavirus
cases and deaths on Wednesday, as it prepared to close much of its
economy to control a second wave of infection that threatens to
spread across the country.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said further restrictions would
include shutting most child-care centres and expanding a ban on
elective surgery to the whole state to free up medical resources for
coronavirus cases.
In Queensland state, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said travellers
from New South Wales state and the capital, Canberra, would be
barred from Saturday. The state is already closed to people from
Victoria.
Vaccine developments
Novavax said its experimental COVID-19 vaccine produced high levels
of antibodies against the novel coronavirus, according to initial
data from a small, early-stage clinical trial.
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The U.S. company said it could start a large pivotal Phase III trial as soon as
late September, and added that it could produce 1 billion to 2 billion doses of
the vaccine in 2021.
Novavax research chief Gregory Glenn told Reuters the late-stage clinical trial
could potentially glean enough data to obtain regulatory approvals as early as
December.
Meanwhile, India's Zydus Cadila said its vaccine candidate was found to be safe
and well-tolerated in an early-stage human trial.
The company will now start a mid-stage trial of the vaccine candidate, ZyCoV-D,
in over 1,000 healthy adult volunteers from Thursday to test its effectiveness.
Young people not invincible
Young people hitting nightclubs and beaches are leading a rise in new
coronavirus cases across the world, with the proportion of those aged 15 to 24
who are infected rising three-fold from 4.5% to 15% in about five months, the
World Health Organization said.
Apart from the United States, which leads a global tally with 4.8 million total
cases, European countries including Spain, Germany and France, and Asian
countries such as Japan, have said that many of the newly infected are young
people.
"We've said this before and we'll say it again: young people are not
invincible," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a recent news
briefing in Geneva. "Young people can be infected; young people can die; and
young people can transmit the virus to others."
(Compiled by Karishma Singh and Linda Noakes; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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