Deaths from Covid-19 reached worldwide 4,06,666 with 210 countries and territories with total number of cases 71,20,563 while recovered 34,77,389, according to worldometer.
Total numbers of deaths from Covid-19 in the United States climbed to 1,12,477 while infected 20,08,266, according to worldometer.
Vaccines in development around the world are in various stages of testing. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he’s confident one of the vaccine candidates will be proven safe and effective by the first quarter of 2021.
In the meantime, the US government is helping companies such as Moderna ramp up development of their candidate vaccines so that if they’re proven to work safely, they can be rolled out quickly.
“By the beginning of 2021, we hope to have a couple of hundred million doses,” Fauci said.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, gave a similar forecast: “If all goes well, maybe as many as 100 million doses by early 2021” would be possible, Collins said.
But many doctors say getting an effective vaccine out by January is a highly ambitious goal.
If the vaccine trials are successful, millions of doses would be ready to go — potentially saving lives immediately instead of waiting months for production to ramp up. But if the trials aren’t successful, the stockpile of pre-made vaccines could go to waste.
Scientists should have enough data by November or December to determine if the vaccine works, Fauci said.
Another vaccine candidate, made by AstraZeneca, is underway in the UK and will follow a similar schedule.
Italy reported 53 new COVID-19 deaths on Sunday against 72 a day earlier and 197
new cases, down from 270 the day before, the Civil Protection department said.
The total death toll since the outbreak emerged on Feb. 21 now stands at 33,899, the agency said, the fourth highest in the world after those of the United States, Britain and Brazil.
With a total number of confirmed cases at 234,998, Italy now has the seventh highest global tally.
People registered as currently carrying the illness fell to 35,262 from 35,877 the day before.
The northern region of Lombardy, where the outbreak was first identified, remains by far the worst affected region, accounting for 125 of the 197 new cases reported on Sunday.
The next worst-hit region, Emilia Romagna, reported just 14 new cases and of the country’s 20 regions, the only others to register more than 10 new cases were Liguria with 13 and Lazio with 11.
Italy lifted travel restrictions on movement between regions last week and some regional governors have complained that allowing people to travel freely out of Lombardy could spark new areas of contagion elsewhere in the country.
There were 287 people in intensive care on Sunday, down from 293 on Saturday, maintaining a long-running decline. Of those originally infected, 165,837 were declared recovered against 165,078 a day earlier.
The agency said some 2.627 million people had been tested for the virus as of Saturday, against 2.599 million on Saturday, out of a population of around 60 million.
There have been at least 241,500 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Spain, according to the Spanish Ministry of Health. As of Monday morning, 27,136 people had died.
Spanish authorities have begun to loosen the nationwide lockdown in place since mid-March, one of the world’s strictest, which only allowed people outside to walk their dogs or shop for groceries. In late April, children under 14 years old were permitted to go outside for the first time in six weeks, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced a plan to return to normalcy by the end of June.
Spain began lifting restrictions by region in mid-May, allowing small groups to gather and dine outdoors, and small shops to reopen. Hair salons are also open. But about half the population, including residents of the two largest cities, Madrid and Barcelona, have remained under tighter restrictions.
