India upbeat despite cases reaching a record 28,000

With a record single-day spike of 28,637 new coronavirus cases and 551 deaths in the last 24 hours, India’s total cases neared 8.5 lakh with the death toll up to 22,674, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare data said on Sunday.

Despite high number of cases Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday said India was leading a successful fight in managing the coronavirus pandemic at a time when health services of most countries were collapsing.

The Home Minister said that the whole world was concerned about how India - a huge densely populated country with a federal structure would fight this pandemic, but today “the most successful fight against this pandemic has been fought in India.”

The UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) announced on Sunday that it conducted over 50,000 additional COVID-19 tests, which revealed 401 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of cases in the UAE to 54,854.

MoHAP also noted that an additional 492 individuals had fully recovered from COVID-19, bringing the total number of recoveries to 45,140.

MoHAP also announced two deaths because of COVID-19 complications.

The Palestinian Authority on Sunday imposed a night-time and weekend curfew on the occupied West Bank for the coming 14 days to try and rein in rising coronavirus numbers.

“Travel will be prohibited daily from 8:00 pm (1700 GMT) to 6:00 am in all governorates,” as well as from Thursday evening to Sunday morning, Palestinian government spokesman Ibrahim Melhem told a news conference.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 230,370 in 24 hours.

The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a daily report. The previous WHO record for new cases was 228,102 on July 10. Deaths remained steady at about 5,000 a day.

Russia has become the first nation to complete clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccine on humans, and the results have proven the medication’s effectiveness, the media reported on Sunday.

“The research has been completed and it proved that the vaccine is safe. The volunteers will be discharged on July 15 and July 20,” Chief researcher Elena Smolyarchuk was quoted as saying in the report.

There was, however, no further information on when this vaccine would enter commercial production stage.

The Trump administration on Sunday again pressed for full school reopenings in the fall, even as resurgent COVID-19 infections raised mounting criticism that a premature return to classes could pose a danger of greater spread of the disease.

With the virus setting new records by the day in many parts of the country, a top health official warned that “everything should be on the table”

Florida shattered the national record Sunday for the largest single-day increase in positive coronavirus cases in any state since the beginning of the pandemic, adding more than 15,000 cases as its daily average death toll continued to also rise.

According to state Department of Health statistics, 15,299 people tested positive, for a total of 269,811 cases, and 45 deaths were recorded.

Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday called the resurgence of the novel coronavirus in the country “truly tragic” and urged all citizens to help stem what has been the region’s deadliest outbreak.

“Let everyone play their part in the best way to break the chain of transmission in the short term and save the country,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said.

According to figures announced Sunday, 194 deaths from the COVID-19 disease and 2,186 new cases were recorded in the past 24 hours.

The health ministry announced a record 221 deaths in a single day on Thursday.

Countries in Eastern Europe are facing rising waves of coronavirus infections, leading to new restrictive measures such as the mandatory use of face masks in Croatia and travel bans or quarantines to be imposed by Hungary.

Hungarian authorities said on Sunday that they would put countries in three categories - red, yellow and green - based on their rate of new coronavirus infections, and would impose restrictions, including entry bans and mandatory quarantines, depending from which country people were coming from.

Agencies