Key points
The rate of new coronavirus infections has slowed again in France, a day before shops can resume selling non-essential goods, health ministry data showed.
The number of daily new infections fell to 12,459, compared to 13,563 on Thursday and 22,882 last Friday. The cumulative reported total now stands at over 2.19 million.
The Hyderabad divisional director of Sindh's information department, Zahid Mustafa Memon, has died of complications from Covid-19 at the Liaquat University Hospital. He was 58.
Memon was admitted to LUH's high dependency unit on Nov 23 and was suffering from co-morbidities in addition to the coronavirus, officials said.
The World Health Organisation needs to see clinical data and information of good manufacturing practice to be able to evaluate Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, WHO assistant director general Mariangela Simao has said.
Russia's Sputnik V vaccine is more than 90 per cent effective, a representative of the health ministry said this month, citing data collated from vaccinations of the public rather than from an ongoing trial.
The United Kingdom recorded 16,022 new coronavirus cases on Friday and 521 deaths within 28 days of a positive test for the virus, Reuters reported citing official data.
Thursday’s data had shown 17,555 new coronavirus infections and 498 deaths.
Ten Covid-19 vaccines could be available by the middle of next year if they win regulatory approval, but their inventors need patent protection, Reuters quoted the head of the global pharmaceutical industry group as saying on Friday.
Vaccines by Pfizer and BioNtech, as well as Moderna and AstraZeneca have shown promising results in large clinical trials, but there is no question of “cutting corners”, said Thomas Cueni, director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA).
“So far, 3 out of 3 were hits. I would expect that we will see something similar with Johnson & Johnson, I would expect that we would see similar positive results with Novavax, and many others, Sanofi Pasteur, GSK are in there, Merck,” he said.
‘Big Pharma’ and biotech firms have invested heavily in research and development and in boosting manufacturing during the pandemic to be able to roll out vaccine doses, Cueni told a Geneva news briefing.
The number of hotels for sale in Spain surged by 19 per cent in October compared to March, with most of those on offer in holiday hotspots, Reuters quoted leading property portal Idealista as saying on Friday.
Spain’s economy is heavily hospitality dependent and lockdowns to contain the coronavirus have hit hard.
In the Balearic Islands, the number of hotels on sale jumped 84% over the period, while for Andalusia the increase was 45pc. Overall, 557 hotels were on sale in the country as of October, 101 of them in Catalonia, Idealista said.
1,423 new cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed in Sindh, taking the provincial tally to 170,206, according to Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah.
Twelve more people lost their lives due to the virus, with Sindh's death toll climbing to 2,897.
A total of 12,226 tests were carried out during the last 24 hours in Sindh, showing a positivity rate of 11.6 per cent, which Shah termed "dangerous".
Germany is mobilising huge sums of money to soften the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and hopes the economy will emerge from the crisis with full strength in 2021, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has said.
“Our goal is to overcome this pandemic and grow out of it with full strength next year,” Scholz told a virtual news conference, reported Reuters.
Five patients were killed in India on Friday in a fire that broke out in a Covid-19 ward, the fourth blaze in a novel coronavirus hospital since the outbreak began, which drew angry questions from the Supreme Court, according to Reuters.
The early morning blaze in Rajkot city in the western state of Gujrat gutted the intensive care unit (ICU) of the private hospital, television footage showed. The most likely cause was an electrical short circuit, said government official Udit Agarwal.
“Three of the patients in the ICU died on the spot, and two others succumbed on way to hospital. The two other patients in the ICU were unhurt,” Agarwal told Reuters.
India has recorded 9.3 million infections, the second-highest in the world after the United States, and more than 135,000 deaths. On Friday, the health ministry said it reported 43,082 new cases and 492 deaths in the past 24 hours.
The positivity rate of coronavirus tests in Peshawar has exceeded 19 per cent and is the highest in the country, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) has been told.
Following are the positivity rates in each provincial capital:
Peshawar: 19.65pc
Karachi: 17.73pc
Lahore: 4.52pc
Quetta: 9.77pc
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In a supermarket in downtown Beijing, refrigerator shelves normally filled with steak from around the world sit empty as tougher testing for the novel coronavirus creates supply bottlenecks and raises prices for importers.
Fresh supplies of beef won't arrive for days, a salesman at a Carrefour outlet told Reuters — if then. That's a big setback for the industry at traditionally one of its busiest times of the year.
“Whether we can get supplies then, and how much, remains a question,” said the sales person, who declined to be identified as he was not allowed to talk to media.
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Pakistan has reported 3,113 cases of the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours, making it the third day in a row that the country has recorded more than 3,000 infections, data from the government's Covid-19 portal shows.
The highest number of cases were reported by Sindh, followed by Punjab. Following is the number of cases reported by each region over the past 24 hours:
Sindh: 1,402
Punjab: 654
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: 453
Balochistan: 66
Islamabad: 425
Gilgit-Baltistan: 15
Azad Jammu and Kashmir: 98
Germany has hit another grim milestone in the coronavirus pandemic, ticking above 1 million confirmed cases of Covid-19.
The Robert Koch Institute, the country's disease control center, said that Germany's 16 states reported 22,806 cases overnight for a total since the start of the outbreak of 1,006,394.
Despite the high number of infections, Germany has seen fewer deaths than many other European countries, with 15,586 compared with more than 50,000 in Britain, Italy and France, for example, according to AP.
A rapid response to the initial outbreak, massive testing and a robust hospital system have been credited with helping keep the fatalities down. A total of 696,100 people have recovered from the virus, according to the Robert Koch Institute's figures.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), one of the developers of Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, has announced that India-based drugmaker Hetero will produce over 100 million doses of the jab, AFP reported.
“Hetero, one of India's leading generic pharmaceutical companies, have agreed to produce in India over 100 million doses per year of the world's first registered vaccine against the novel coronavirus infection — Sputnik V,” the RDIF said in a statement, adding that production was expected to start in early 2021.
Islamabad, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan have collectively reported 538 coronavirus cases and 11 deaths during the last 24 hours.
Breakdown of cases and death reported:
Punjab has reported 654 coronavirus cases and 22 deaths.
The provincial total has risen to 117,160 while the death toll is 2,945.
Balochistan has recorded 66 coronavirus cases. No new deaths have been reported in the province over the last 24 hours.
The provincial total has risen to 17,008 while the death toll remains 165.
Pakistan has reported 1,489 coronavirus recoveries during the last 24 hours, according to the government's portal for tracking the spread of the virus in the country.
The total has risen to 335,881 while the recovery rate is 86.3 per cent.
The Punjab government seems reluctant to investigate and notify the Covid-19 reinfections that have seen a sudden surge recently in the province.
A spokesperson for the department told Dawn the health experts had received three such cases in the starting phase of the first wave of the virus in March and April.
He said the system had, at that time, generated alerts when the CNIC numbers of the three patients were reentered in the data system showing them positive cases for the Covid-19. However, he added, the department’s medical and health experts had declared these reinfections doubtful because of certain reasons.
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AstraZeneca is likely to run an additional global trial to assess the efficacy of its Covid-19 vaccine using a lower dosage, its chief executive was quoted as saying amid questions over the results of its late-stage study.
Instead of adding the trial to an ongoing US process, AstraZeneca might launch a fresh study to evaluate a lower dosage of its vaccine that performed better than a full dosage, Pascal Soriot told Bloomberg News.
“Now that we've found what looks like a better efficacy we have to validate this, so we need to do an additional study,” he said, adding that the new, likely global, study could be faster because it would need fewer subjects as the efficacy was already known to be high.
Australia's second largest state, Victoria, once the country's Covid-19 hotspot, said it has gone 28 days without detecting any new infections, a benchmark widely cited as eliminating the virus from the community.
The state also has zero active cases after the last Covid-19 patient was discharged from hospital this week, a far cry from August when Victoria recorded more than 700 cases in one day and active infections totalled nearly 8,000, Reuters reported.
The spread of the virus was only contained after a lockdown lasting more than 100 days, leaving some 5 million people in Melbourne, Australia's second largest city, largely confined to their homes.
France has reported 13,563 new coronavirus infections, compared with 16,282 yesterday and 21,150 a week ago, suggesting the spread of the virus continues to slow in the fourth week of a national lockdown.
The number of people hospitalised with Covid-19 continued falling by a further 662 to 29,310, while the number of people in intensive care fell by 130 to 4,018, continuing a trend dating back two weeks, health ministry data showed.
In cavernous cold-storage warehouses at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, KLM workers are gearing up for a surge next year in Covid-19 vaccine cargos that will need to be flown around the world at ultra-low temperatures.
A major hub for pharmaceutical products, Schiphol has already handled some of the vaccines being used in trials and KLM's boss is confident its “cold chain” operations will cope with the influx of cargos as mass inoculations start in earnest.
“The short and sweet of it is, yes, we're ready,” KLM Chief Executive Pieter Elbers told Reuters. “Obviously both for societies and our industry it's of paramount importance to have these vaccines distributed at the quickest possible pace.”
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Turkey’s daily number of coronavirus deaths hit a record high for a fourth consecutive day with 174 in the past 24 hours, Reuters reported quoting data from the Health Ministry.
The country also reported the highest number of new daily infections yet. According to data, 29,132 new Covid-19 cases, including asymptomatic ones, were reported on Thursday.
The Sindh government has decided to extend closure timings of markets, shopping malls and commercial centres from 6pm to 8pm.
“This is to inform that markets in Sindh will remain open till 8pm,” Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab said in a tweet.
He emphasised that with the relaxation, businesses are expected to adhere to the health guidelines, saying: “It is again expected from the market associations, shop owners and citizens that due regard to SOPs shall be observed and everyone including the shopkeepers and visitors shall wear a mask.”
Argentines in their thousands, wearing soccer jerseys and face masks, packed into snaking queues on the streets of Buenos Aires on Thursday to pay their last respects to flawed soccer genius Diego Maradona - despite concerns around the spread of Covid-19.
The crowds, which some expect to reach a million people to see Maradona’s casket after his death on Wednesday, reflect the soccer star’s status in the South American country, where he has almost cult following and is fondly known as “God”.
“You have to be here. There was no way this wouldn’t happen. Somehow this is Maradona too, breaking the rules,” said Marcelo Gades, a 52-year-old employee, who was waiting to enter the wake with a rose in his hand.
“Argentina is Maradona, and Maradona is Argentina, with all the good and all the bad.”
Argentina has recorded almost 1.4 million cases and 37,714 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic. The government imposed a strict lockdown in March and restrictions on schools and travel remain in place. New cases have been slowing in recent weeks.
The second wave of Covid-19 infections that has hit Sweden could peak in mid-December, Reuters quoted health officials as saying on Thursday, stressing developments will depend on how well the public follows social distancing advice.
New infections have hit record levels in recent weeks after a lull in the summer, throwing the country’s light-touch approach to fighting the pandemic into renewed focus.
In total, 6,622 people with Covid-19 have died in Sweden, a per capita total vastly higher than neighbours Norway, Denmark and Finland, which opted for stricter lockdowns during the spring, but lower than a handful of larger European nations.
Tougher restrictions in place since mid-October, however, may have helped slow the spread of the disease with the Public Health Agency saying infections could peak in the coming weeks.
Rome’s Fiumicino airport will run Covid-tested flights to and from the United States operated by Delta Air Lines and Alitalia, it said, adding it will be the first airport in Europe to offer the service on transatlantic flights.
From December, passengers flying between Rome and some US destinations can be tested for the coronavirus 48 hours before departure and on arrival at the airport, to avoid the mandatory 14-day quarantine Italy imposes on incoming travellers.
The Netherlands has reached over half a million total coronavirus cases, with 503,123 confirmed infections, data showed.
The daily tally of new infections in 24 hours was 4,470 which was a slight drop from a day earlier in the country, one of the worst-hit in Europe's second Covid-19 wave.
Sindh has reported 1,402 new Covid-19 cases and 19 deaths over the past 24 hours, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said.
The total number of confirmed cases in the province, according to the Sindh government, is now 168,783. The death toll stands at 2,885.
Additionally, 749 patients were reported to have recovered from the virus over the past day.
Greece will extend its nationwide lockdown until December 7 as Covid-19 cases continue to surge across the country, government spokesman Stelios Petsas has said.
Greece has registered a total of 97,288 Covid-19 cases and 1,902 deaths, with the hardest-hit area being northern Greece. Hospitals are operating at almost full capacity, according to health ministry data.
London will be placed into the second highest risk category when a national lockdown ends on December 2, according to a government website that allows residents to check the rules which will apply to them, Reuters reported.
For London, this means no mixing of households indoors and a maximum of six can meet people outdoors, hospitality venues can only offer alcohol alongside a substantial meal, and tightly restricted attendance of sporting events.
Europe's drugs watchdog said it expects to receive the first application for conditional marketing approval for a Covid-19 vaccine “in the coming days”, the latest step towards making a shot available outside the United States.
The European Medicines Agency did not name the company it expects to file the application, but Pfizer Inc and BioNTEch are the most advanced in the regulatory process among the three companies that have published late-stage trial data for their vaccines, Reuters reported.
Walt Disney Co said has said it will lay off about 32,000 workers, primarily at its theme parks, an increase from the 28,000 it announced in September, as the company struggles with limited customers due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The layoffs will be in the first half of 2021, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to Reuters.
A spokesman for Disney confirmed that the latest figures include the 28,000 layoffs announced earlier.
Sweden’s Prince Carl Philip and his wife Princess Sofia have tested positive for Covid-19, the Swedish royal court said.
The two are feeling well under the circumstances, the court said in a statement, adding that King Karl XIV Gustaf, Queen Silvia, the prince’s older sister Crown Princess Victoria and her husband Prince Daniel would be tested during the day.
Carl Philip is fourth in the line of succession to the Swedish throne, Reuters reported.
Sudan’s last democratically elected prime minister, Sadiq al-Mahdi, who was overthrown in the 1989 military coup that brought Omar al-Bashir to power, has died from a coronavirus infection, his party said, according to Reuters.
Mahdi, aged 84, had been hospitalised in the United Arab Emirates three weeks ago.
Last month, Mahdi’s family said he had tested positive for Covid-19. He was transferred to the UAE for treatment a few days later following a brief hospitalisation in Sudan.
In a statement, the Umma Party said Mahdi would be buried on Friday morning in the city of Omdurman in Sudan.
Germany will probably have to stick with measures to dampen the coronavirus pandemic into January, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said, while her chief of staff suggested that restrictions might be needed until March, according to Reuters.
“Given the high number of infections, we assume that the restrictions which are in place before Christmas will continue to be valid until the start of January, certainly for most parts of Germany,” Merkel told parliament.
People in France could return to some form of normal life by autumn 2021 provided that a major vaccination programme to tackle the Covid-19 virus works well, French government scientific adviser Arnaud Fontanet told BFM TV.
Fontanet, a leading epidemiologist, said France needed to get vaccines to 80-90 per cent of its population for a semblance of normality to return by autumn of 2021.
Pakistan has reported 3,306 coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, a day after it confirmed more than 3,000 daily infections for the first time since July.
The countrywide breakdown of daily infections is as follows:
India has recorded 44,489 new coronavirus infections, data from the health ministry showed, the 19th straight day that single-day cases have stayed below the 50,000 mark.
India’s coronavirus tally now stands at 9.27 million, the second-highest in the world, after the United States.
Deaths rose by 524, taking the total to 135,223.
The global tally of confirmed coronavirus cases has hit 60 million, with the pace of new infections accelerating and the United States reporting record numbers of hospitalisations, according to a Reuters tally.
An analysis of the data showed the rate of new infections picking up globally. It took just 17 days to go from 50m cases to 60m, compared with the 21 days it took to go from 40m to 50m. Around 580,000 cases have been reported each day over the past week and around half of all cases since the start of the pandemic were reported over the past 70 days.
In Europe, 1m new cases were recorded over just five days, for a total of more than 16m cases, including 365,000 deaths.