BALTIMORE: The United States set a record of more than 126,400 confirmed cases in a single day on Friday.

The seven-day rolling average of new daily cases in the country approached 100,000 for the first time, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Total US cases since the start of the pandemic neared 10 million and confirmed cases globally approached 50 million.

Worldwide infection numbers also set records. The world reached 400,000 daily confirmed cases on Oct 15; 500,000 on Oct. 26, and 600,000 on Nov 6.

The seven-day rolling average for daily deaths in the U.S. rose in the past two weeks from 772 on Oct. 23 to 911 on Friday. Those numbers were higher in the spring and August.

The global death toll hit a daily record of 11,024 confirmed deaths on Wednesday.

Malaysia’s government said it would expand movement restrictions to most parts of the country after coronavirus cases tripled in a month. Another 1,168 new cases were reported on Saturday, bringing the tally to 39,357 -- compared to just 13,993 cases a month ago. The death toll stands at 282.

Senior Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said the entire peninsula Malaysia, except for three states, will be placed under a conditional movement control order from Monday until Dec 6. He said the move would help curb the virus spread and allow targeted screening to be done.

The restrictions have been imposed since Oct 14 in Kuala Lumpur, the administrative capital Putrajaya and the richest state of Selangor.

Surge in Iran

Iran has reported 9,460 cases of the coronavirus, breaking its previous single-day record earlier this week.

The health ministry registered 423 deaths on Saturday, pushing its confirmed death toll to 37,832, the highest in the Middle East.

Iran has seen a recent surge of infections as the government resists a centralised lockdown to salvage its sanctions-hit economy. However, authorities have recently tightened movement restrictions and introduced travel bans and mask mandates as hospitals in the hard-hit capital of Tehran near overwhelming numbers of patients.

Irans medical council announced Saturday that 300 health workers had died from the virus.

In Bangkok, health authorities confirmed a new case of local transmission of the coronavirus, one of a handful discovered in recent months in Thailand.

The department of disease control identified the new case as a 37-year-old Indian man working as a waiter in the southern province of Krabi. It said he tested positive for the disease when he applied to have his work permit renewed.

Krabi is a province on the Andaman Sea and normally popular with tourists, though Thailand was completely shut to foreign tourists from early April until last month.

The health agency says it confirmed 12 new cases of coronavirus, including the Indian man. Two each had traveled from France, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Myanmar, and one each from Mexico, Switzerland and the Netherlands. All arrivals from abroad must be quarantined for 14 days.

Thailand has confirmed a total of 3,830 coronavirus cases and 60 deaths since January.

Germany’s disease control centre reported a daily record of 23,300 coronavirus infections.

The Robert Koch Institute says that surpassed the record of 21,506 set the day before, which was the first time the country had registered more than 20,000 daily cases.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2020