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 Not the time to take foot off pedal
More than 136,000 new coronavirus cases were reported worldwide on
Sunday, the most in a single day so far, World Health Organization
(WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at an online
meeting. "More than six months into the pandemic, this is not the
time for any country to take its foot off the pedal," he said.
WHO's top emergencies expert, Dr. Mike Ryan, also said infections in
central American countries including Guatemala were still on the
rise, and that they were "complex" epidemics.
Hugging and dancing
"I just realised ... I can hug someone today," said one user on
Twitter where #COVIDFreeNZ was trending as New Zealand removed all
coronavirus restrictions for the first time in more than three
months, after it declared it was free of the virus on Monday.
This means no more limits on people in cafes, malls, stadiums,
nightclubs or public and private gatherings. Life, for the most
part, is back to normal. Many offices and businesses still have hand
sanitiser dispensers at the entrance, although it is no longer
mandatory to use them. Pubs are opening their dance floors and are
expecting many to turn up on Friday.
Stock surge at odds with official recession
On the same day that the Nasdaq marked a new bull market, the U.S.
economy was officially declared to be in recession. The two
milestones on Monday illustrate how an 11-week surge in stocks has
occurred despite widespread economic devastation fuelled by the
coronavirus pandemic.
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Wall Street for months has appeared to ignore grim economic readings as
investors focus on trillions of dollars in government stimulus and bet that a
recovery would be relatively quick.
Negative coronavirus PCR tests rarely wrong
The most reliable method of diagnosing infections with the new coronavirus is
the so-called RT-PCR test of samples obtained by nasopharyngeal swab.
Researchers at two large health systems analysed data from nearly 21,000 people
who had tested negative for the coronavirus and found that fewer than 5% came
back for a repeat test within a week because symptoms that led to them getting
tested had persisted or worsened.
Of this group, just 22 people, or 3.5%, were positive for the coronavirus on the
second test. "These observations suggest that false-negative nasopharyngeal
SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR results do occur, but potentially at a lower frequency than is
currently believed," the research team concluded in a paper published on Sunday
in Clinical Infectious Diseases. (https://bit.ly/3f42HM4)
(Compiled by Karishma Singh; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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