Global COVID-19 cases top 12 million

The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

NEW YORK

Global confirmed COVID-19 cases topped 12,012,000 on Wednesday night, passing the 12 million mark, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

A total of 548,914 people worldwide have died from the disease, the data showed.

The United States suffered the most from the pandemic, with 3,054,695 cases and 132,299 fatalities, the tally showed.

Read alsoU.S. COVID-19 cases surpass 3 million

ROME

Around 135 Bangladeshi passengers were rejected from getting off a plane in Rome’s Fiumicino Airport on Wednesday over COVID-19 concerns, local health official said.
Italy on Tuesday has suspended flights from Bangladesh due to a spike in COVID-19 cases in the Bangladeshi community in Rome caused by arrivals from their homeland.

The Bangladeshi nationals from the Bangladeshi capital city of Dhaka flew from the Qatari capital city of Doha, said Alessio D’Amato, head of the Lazio region’s Health Authority Crisis Unit.

WASHINGTON

U.S. formal notification of withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) is “dangerous to human life” as the world faces not only the COVID-19 threat but also the threat of future pandemics, a U.S. public health expert said Wednesday.

As global COVID-19 infections top 12 million, with a vaccine still not in sight, “withdrawal is counterintuitive at best and dangerous to human life at worst,” Amanda

Glassman, also executive vice president of the Center for Global Development think tank, told USA Today. “The U.S. Congress should immediately explore what power it has to prevent this from happening.”

Read alsoBudapest has the worst air quality in Europe after the epidemic

WASHINGTON

Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute Dr. Ashish Jha criticized the U.S. move to officially withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, noting that its blame on WHO for not investigating the COVID-19 outbreak in China is “deeply disingenuous.”

“I think it’s an extraordinarily bad decision that will both harm global public health and harm the health of the American people,” Jha was quoted as saying by the New York Times. “It’s unclear to me how the American people benefit by not being at the table and not being able to shape those policies.”

WASHINGTON

A significant number of younger COVID-19 patients in the United States end up with long-term health complications and the exponential spread of the disease will make the protection of the vulnerable an impossible task, a local paper has warned.

The United States is standing on the second upswing of the first wave of COVID-19 infections and the average age of people infected by the disease has fallen by roughly two decades, a Washington Post article said on Tuesday.

LOS ANGELES

California reported on Wednesday the biggest daily jump of 11,694 COVID-19 cases as the positivity rate and hospitalization rate are trending upward in the 14-day average in the most populous U.S. state.

The California Department of Public Health also confirmed 114 new COVID-19 deaths in a daily update. So far, 289,468 confirmed cases and 6,562 deaths have been registered across the state.

RABAT

Morocco registered 164 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, raising the tally of infections in the North African country to 14,771, the Ministry of Health said.

The death toll from the virus reached 242, as two new fatalities were recorded in the last 24 hours, said Hind Ezzine, head of the department of epidemic diseases of the Ministry of Health, at a regular press briefing.

Source: Xinhua