South Korea has reported its highest single day number in months, so lockdown-like restrictions seem inevitable as broadcasts spiral out of control.
High profile Manchester United player and French midfielder Paul Pogba was banned from the national squad for next month’s Nations League games after testing positive for COVID-19.
This story will be updated throughout Friday.
The most important moments on Friday:
South Korea reports the highest daily value in months
South Korea reported 441 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday (local time), the highest single figure in months, making lockdown-like restrictions appear inevitable as transmission spins out of control.
The country has added nearly 4,000 infections and reported triple-digit daily jumps for each of the past 14 days, prompting health professionals to warn about hospitals that may be running low.
The 441 cases reported on Thursday were the largest daily increase since the 483 reported on March 7.
According to the South Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 315 of the new cases came from the Seoul metropolitan area, which is home to half of the 51 million people in the country where health workers struggled to detect infections related to various sources such as churches, restaurants, Schools and schools keep track of workers.
The National Assembly in Seoul has closed and more than a dozen ruling party politicians were forced to isolate themselves on Thursday after a positive test by a journalist covering a meeting of the ruling party’s leaders.
Health officials have cited the outbreak for the past two weeks as the country’s biggest crisis since the emergence of COVID-19.
While the outbreak in the Daegu area was largely attributable to a single parish, health workers are having greater difficulty tracking transmissions in the much more populous capital.
Manchester United star Paul Pogba tests positive
High-profile Manchester United player and French midfielder Paul Pogba has been banned from the national squad for next month’s Nations League games after testing positive for COVID-19, says France coach Didier Deschamps.
Rennes midfielder Eduardo Camavinga was called up as a late replacement for Pogba.
“I had to change this list at the last minute because Paul Pogba should be on this list,” Deschamps told reporters on Thursday.
“But unfortunately he did a test for him [for COVID-19] yesterday, which turned out to be positive today, he was replaced at the last minute by Eduardo Camavinga. “
France will visit Sweden on September 5 and receive Croatia three days later.
North Korea has yet to report a single case of COVID-19
North Korea has told the World Health Organization (WHO) that it had tested 2,767 people for the coronavirus by Aug. 20, and that all of them tested negative.
In an email to the Associated Press, WHO representative in North Korea Edwin Salvador said the country is currently monitoring 1,004 quarantined citizens.
Mr Salvador said North Korea had told WHO that it had released 29,961 people from quarantine since December 31, including 382 foreigners.
North Korea has yet to confirm a single case of COVID-19, but outsiders have largely questioned its virus-free claim.
In late July, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered the lockdown of Kaesong, a town near the border with South Korea, after the North reported it had found a person with COVID-19 symptoms.
Masks compulsory for Parisians
France should order the compulsory wearing of face masks across Paris to curb the rising rate of coronavirus infections, Prime Minister Jean Castex warns, warning that the outbreak could spiral out of control if no swift action is taken.
“The spread of the epidemic could be exponential if we don’t react quickly,” Castex said at a press conference.
France made it compulsory to wear a face mask in enclosed public spaces such as shops and banks on July 21, and in early August it was compulsory outdoors in crowded parts of the capital.
A Paris City Hall spokesman said the decision to extend the order across the city had been made by the government and it was not yet clear when it would take effect.
Mr Castex, who oversaw France’s emergence from the lockdown prior to his appointment as prime minister in July, said the scientific advisors had warned of a second wave in the northern autumn.
France reported 5,429 new daily infections on Wednesday (local time), a new high after the lockdown and a level not seen since the epidemic peak in early April, where infections skyrocketed in young people.
Another one day record of new cases in India
India has another one-day record of new coronavirus cases, reporting 75,760 new confirmed infections in the past 24 hours.
The Ministry of Health also reported 1,023 deaths in the past 24 hours on Thursday (local time), killing a total of 60,472 people.
India’s highest daily number to date was 70,488 on August 22nd.
India has had more than 60,000 new infections per day in the past two weeks and has reported 3.3 million cases since the pandemic began.
With an average of more than 800,000 tests per day, India has increased the number of tests per million to more than 27,000, according to the ministry.
It is also said that India’s recovery rate was 76 percent, with a death rate of 1.84 percent.
India has reported the third highest number of cases in the world after the US and Brazil, and the reported deaths are the fourth highest in the world.
China’s BeiGene begins registering Australians for human antibody treatment testing
China-based drug maker BeiGene Ltd announced that an early human trial to test treatment with COVID-19 antibodies will begin in September.
The study will enroll 30 healthy people in Australia, while enrollment for another larger study in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 is expected to begin in early October.
BeiGene has entered into a license agreement with Singlomics Biopharmaceuticals Co Ltd to develop, manufacture and sell the privately held anti-COVID-19 antibodies outside of the greater China area.
Under the terms of the agreement, BeiGene intends to develop one or more of these antibodies globally outside of Greater China, while Singlomics will retain the rights in Greater China, the companies said.
Antibody therapies use antibodies made by infected humans or animals to fight the disease in patients.
In general, the goal of a vaccine is to create an immune response that can prevent someone from getting sick with a disease, while antibody-derived products are generally developed to treat diseases.
As a third of the world’s children, there is a lack of “educational emergencies” in distance learning
Every third schoolchild around the world had no access to distance learning while coronavirus schools were closed, the United Nations Children’s Agency UNICEF warns of a “global education emergency”.
Nearly 1.5 billion children have been hit by school closings as countries shut down to prevent the disease from spreading, UNICEF said in a report.
However, at least one in three students was unable to continue their education at home.
“Distance learning was absent for at least 463 million children whose schools were closed due to COVID-19,” Henrietta Fore, executive director of UNICEF, said in a statement.
The report examined 100 countries and examined children’s ability to access distance learning through television and radio broadcasts or online courses, as well as the availability of the right educational materials on these platforms.
It found that students in Africa were hardest hit and nearly half had no access to distance learning, compared with 38 percent in South Asia and 34 percent in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Latin America and the Caribbean had the lowest number of affected children. 9 percent of students had no access to study at home, the report said.
Most of the children lived in rural areas, in poor households with no access to the internet, electricity, or the multinational television and radio broadcasts.
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