Thu 21 May 2020:
The World Health Organization has reported the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases, The WHO said Wednesday that more than 106,000 virus cases had been reported — the most in a single day since the outbreak erupted in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December.
The UN body’s chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “very concerned” about the situation in low- and middle-income nations.
Latin America has seen infections surge in recent days and, in some cases, countries have reinstated lockdown measures that had been eased.
Brazil has been hardest hit, logging the third-highest number of cases in the world. Peru, Mexico and Chile have also seen steady increases in infections.
Health officials in Brazil reported 1,179 new coronavirus deaths in a single day, although far-right President Jair Bolsonaro remains bitterly opposed to lockdowns, having described them as unnecessary over a “little flu.”
With the outbreak in the world’s sixth-largest country expected to accelerate until early June, Bolsonaro has refused to accept experts’ advice, pressing regional governors to end stay-at-home measures.
With a global death toll of more than 325,000 and nearly five million people infected, governments around the world are desperately hoping for a vaccine that would allow them to dispense with the lockdowns that have hammered their economies.
Promising studies
There was encouraging news on that front Wednesday, as experiments on monkeys offered hope that humans can develop immunity to the virus.
Researchers reported progress from one study that looked at a prototype vaccine, and another on whether infection with COVID-19 confers protection against re-exposure.
“We demonstrate in rhesus macaques that prototype vaccines protected against SARS-CoV-2 infection and that SARS-CoV-2 infection protected against re-exposure,” said senior author Dan Barouch of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
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