News Desk :
Covid-19 claimed 4,28,753 lives globally while infected 77,65,878 in 213 countries and territories and recovered 39,83,751, according to worldometer.
In the US, which has confirmed the most Covid-19 deaths 1,16,831 with total cases 21,17,027, according to worldometer. More than a dozen states, including two of the most populous, Texas and Florida, reported their highest-ever daily case totals this week.
“It’s important that we remember that this situation is unprecedented. And that the pandemic has not ended,” Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a media briefing on Friday.
Nevertheless, US President Donald Trump and many local officials remain determined to get the world’s biggest economy back on track.
The virus and resulting lockdowns have caused a spike in US unemployment — 44.2 million people have filed claims for jobless benefits since mid-March.
The Trump-admiring former army captain has repeatedly downplayed Covid-19 as media “hysteria” and “a bit of a cold” and on 12 April, with the official death toll at 1,223, falsely claimed: “This matter of the virus appears to be going away.”
The top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, delivered a grim assessment of the devastation wrought around the world by the coronavirus, describing Covid-19 as his “worst nightmare” – a new, highly contagious respiratory infection that causes a significant rate of illness and death.
“In a period of four months, it has devastated the whole world,” Dr. Fauci told biotech executives during a conference held by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. “And it isn’t over yet.”
Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy climbed by 56 on Friday against 53 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, taking the total toll to 34,223.
The official tally of new cases rose by just 163 against 379 on Thursday, but this was muddied by a recalculation of past data by the southern region of Campania, which subtracted previous cases and reported a total of -229 on Friday.
The northern region of Lombardy, where the outbreak was first identified, remains by far the worst affected of Italy’s 20 regions, reporting 272 new infections on Friday.
The second highest regional tally was in Emilia-Romagna, on Lombardy’s southern border, which recorded just 33.
The total number of confirmed cases nationwide since Italy’s outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 now amounts to 236,305, the seventh highest global tally.
People registered as currently carrying the illness fell to 28,997 from 30,637 the day before.
There were 227 people in intensive care on Friday, down from 236 on Thursday, maintaining a long-running decline. Of those originally infected, 173,085 were declared recovered against 171,338 a day earlier.
The agency said 2.784 million people had been tested for the virus as of Friday against 2.746 million on Thursday, 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 lives with total cases 2,90,289.
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.
