News Desk :
Global death tolls from Covid-19 jumped to 4,32,973 with total cases 79,05,723 in 213 countries and territories while recovered 40,62,659, according to worldometer.
According to report by worldometer, the US has recorded 1,17,538 deaths while total cases 21,43,177.
Leading US public health expert and White House coronavirus taskforce member Dr Anthony Fauci has said the US may not see a “second wave” of cases of Covid-19.
Many experts fear attempts to reopen shuttered state economies and mass protests over police brutality and structural racism could contribute to a second surge in cases.
But Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has been sidelined by the White House since April, after breaking with Donald Trump’s position on reopening the economy, told CNN on Friday increases in cases in several states were not necessarily indicative of a “second spike” of infections.
“When you start to see increases in hospitalisation, that’s a surefire situation that you’ve got to pay close attention to,” Fauci said.
“It is not inevitable that you will have a so-called ‘second wave’ in the fall, or even a massive increase if you approach it in the proper way,” he added, advising people to maintain social distancing and to continue to wear masks in public.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), close to 80% of Americans self-isolated in the last month and 74% wore face coverings in public either always or often. Residents of New York and Los Angeles did so about 90% of the time. In the past week, 19 states including Texas, South Carolina, Utah, Arizona, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Oregon, California, Nevada and Florida have reported seven-day rolling average highs for new Covid-19 infections.
Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy climbed by 78 on Saturday, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the tally of new cases increased by 346.
The total death toll since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 now stands at 34,301, the agency said, the fourth highest in the world after those of the United States, Britain and Brazil.
The death count was muddied by the fact that the central region of Lazio, around the capital city of Rome, said that only two of the 25 deaths declared on Saturday had happened in the last 24 hours, bringing the daily deaths down to 55.
The number of confirmed cases amounts to 236,651, the seventh highest global tally behind those of the United States, Russia, Brazil, Spain, Britain and India.
The northern region of Lombardy, where the outbreak was first identified, remains by far the worst affected of Italy’s 20 regions, accounting for 210 of the 346 new cases reported on Saturday.
People registered as currently carrying the illness fell to 27,485 from 28,997 the day before.
There were 220 people in intensive care on Saturday, down from 227 on Friday, maintaining a long-running decline. Of those originally infected, 174,865 were declared recovered against 173,085 a day earlier.
The agency said 2.817 million people had been tested for the virus as of Saturday, against 2.784 million on Friday, out of a population of around 60 million.
For days now, Spain’s daily coronavirus death toll has been on hold, generating widespread uncertainty about the real state of the epidemic that has claimed 27,136 deaths with total cases 2,90,685.
The health ministry’s emergencies coordinator Fernando Simon, who for months has given a daily briefing on the pandemic’s evolution, acknowledged the “astonishment” and “confusion” generated by the figures.
On May 25, the ministry changed its method of collecting data on confirmed cases and fatalities, initially giving a daily death toll of between 50 and 100.
But the figure then fell to fewer than five per day and on some days there were no deaths at all.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez even told parliament there had been “no deaths” for several days, prompting a backlash from the right and the far-right who have since accused him of hiding the real number of fatalities.
“(The) biggest danger is communicating this idea that the epidemic is over because the virus is still present in our country although at much lower levels,” warned Salvador Macip, an expert in health sciences at Catalonia’s Open University.
