COVID-19 could push the number of people living in extreme poverty to over 1 billion by 2030, says UNDP study

Focused SDG investments over the next decade could prevent the rise of extreme poverty and even exceed the development trajectory the world was on before the pandemic

New York – Severe long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic could push an additional 207 million people into extreme poverty on top of the current pandemic trajectory, bringing the total to over 1 billion by 2030, according to findings released today by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This is not a foregone conclusion: with a focused set of investments towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an additional 146 million people could be lifted out of extreme poverty compared to current COVID-19 trends.

The study, part of a long-standing partnership between UNDP and the Pardee Center for International Futures at the University of Denver, assesses the impact of different COVID-19 recovery scenarios on the SDGs, evaluating the multidimensional effects of the pandemic over the next decade.

The ‘Baseline COVID’ scenario, based on current mortality rates and the most recent growth projections by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), would result in 44 million more people living in extreme poverty by 2030 compared to the development trajectory the world was on before the pandemic.

Under a ‘High Damage’ scenario, where the recovery is protracted, COVID-19 is likely to push an additional 207 million people into extreme poverty by 2030, and increase the female poverty headcount by an additional 102 million compared to that baseline, says the report. The High Damage scenario anticipates that 80 percent of the COVID-induced economic crisis would persist in 10 years’ time due to loss in productivity, preventing a full recovery to the growth trajectory seen before the pandemic.

However, the study also finds that a focused set of SDG investments over the next decade in social protection/welfare programmes, governance, digitalization, and a green economy could not only prevent the rise of extreme poverty, but actually exceed the development trajectory the world was on before the pandemic.

This ambitious, yet feasible ‘SDG Push’ scenario would lift an additional 146 million people out of extreme poverty, narrow the gender poverty gap, and reduce the female poverty headcount by 74 million, even taking into account the current impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As this new poverty research highlights, the COVID-19 pandemic is a tipping point, and the choices leaders take now could take the world in very different directions. We have an opportunity to invest in a decade of action that not only helps people to recover from COVID-19, but that re-sets the development path of people and planet towards a more fair, resilient and green future,” said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner.

The concerted SDG interventions suggested by the study combine behavioral changes through nudges for both governments and citizens, such as improved effectiveness and efficiency in governance and changes in consumption patterns of food, energy and water. The proposed interventions also focus on global collaboration on climate change, additional investments in COVID-19 recovery, and the need for improved broadband access and technology innovation.

The study also concludes that ‘SDG Push’ investments hold significant potential to boost human development in fragile and conflict-affected states, given that the majority of the additional 146 million people who would be lifted from poverty live in such settings, including 40 million women and girls.

This publication is the first installation of a UNDP flagship report on the impact of COVID-19 on the SDGs. It focuses on the implications of the pandemic on poverty, education, health, nutrition and gender equality – also referred to as the ‘People’ Goals in the 2030 Agenda. In early 2021, subsequent publications will share new insights about impacts on other dimensions of the 2030 Agenda – with a focus on prosperity, peace and planet.

Read the study and visualizations here: https://sdgintegration.undp.org/accelerating-development-progressduring-covid-19

Bill Gates says more than 50% of business travel will disappear in post-coronavirus world

Noah Higgins-Dunn

The coronavirus will fundamentally alter the way people travel for and conduct business, even after the pandemic is over, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said Tuesday.

“My prediction would be that over 50% of business travel and over 30% of days in the office will go away,” Gates told Andrew Ross Sorkin during the New York Times’ Dealbook conference.

Moving forward, Gates predicted that there will be a “very high threshold” for conducting business trips now that working from home is more feasible. However, some companies may be more extreme with their efforts to reduce in-person meetings than others, he said.

Source: CNN

Gates, whose foundation has been working to deliver a coronavirus vaccine to people most in need, said during a new podcast, “Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions,” that he’s had a “simpler schedule” due to the pandemic now that he doesn’t travel for business.

The philanthropist and tech executive, who appeared alongside Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during the livestreamed conference on Tuesday, said he’s already held five virtual roundtables this year with pharma executives — a meeting that’s usually held in person in New York.

“We will go to the office somewhat, we’ll do some business travel, but dramatically less,” Gates said.

The pandemic has devastated air travel demand, particularly for lucrative business trips. Business travelers before the virus accounted for half of U.S. airlines’ revenue, but just 30% of the trips, according to Airlines for America, an industry group that represents most U.S. carriers.

However, Microsoft executives have predicted that business trips will make a rebound, even as the company moves to make air travel more sustainable.

“We believe that as we return to the skies, the travel routes we’ve had ... will resume at the level they had been before,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft’s worldwide commercial business, said in October.

— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

Pollution and pandemics: A dangerous mix

Washington University in St. Louis

Pollution may bear part of the blame for the rapid proliferation in the United States of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the spread of COVID-19, according to new research.

The United States may have set itself up for the spread of a pandemic without even knowing it.

According to new research from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, pollution may bear part of the blame for the rapid proliferation in the United States of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the spread of COVID-19.

The research, from the lab of Rajan Chakrabarty, associate professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, was published online ahead of print in the journal Science of The Total Environment.

When it comes to how ill someone gets after contracting COVID-19, medical professionals believe that a person's health -- having certain medical conditions, for example -- can play a vital role. When it comes to how fast the virus can spread through the community, it turns out the health of the environment is directly correlated to the basic reproduction ratio R0, which denotes the expected number of people each sick person can infect.

The reproduction ratio R0 of COVID-19 associates directly with the long-term ambient PM2.5 exposure levels. And the presence of secondary inorganic components in PM2.5 only makes things worse, according to Chakrabarty.

"We checked for more than 40 confounding factors," Chakrabarty said. Of all of those factors, "There was a strong, linear association between long-term PM2.5 exposure and R0."

PM2.5 refers to ambient particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less; at that size, they can enter a person's lungs and cause damage. For this reason, PM2.5 can be detrimental to respiratory health. But how this relates to the spread of COVID-19 through a population had yet to be explored.

Chakrabarty and his graduate student Payton Beeler, both aerosol researchers who have done previous coronavirus modeling, became interested in the relationship after two papers were published in quick succession. First, a July paper in the journal Science found that levels of susceptibility to COVID-19 is a driving factor for the pandemic; it is more important than temperature, which researchers initially thought might play an outsized role.

Then in August, research published in the Journal of Infection found that the highest number of cases of COVID-19 with severe illness were in places with higher pollution levels.

"I was thinking, why, in the majority of the U.S. states, have we had such a rapid spread of the virus?" Chakrabarty said. Particularly in the earlier stages of the pandemic. "We wanted to confine our study to the point in time when the shutdown was in place. For the most part, people did remain confined from early March until the end of April."

The team decided to look at places where R0 was greater than one -- that's the point at which one person can spread an illness to more than one person, and the illness takes off. In those places, they looked at 43 different factors -- including population density, age distribution, even time delays in states' stay-at-home orders.

Then, using pollution estimates across the U.S. between 2012 and 2017 published by Randall Martin, professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, the team looked for any relationships.

Modeling revealed an increase of almost 0.25 in R0 corresponding to a 10% increase in sulfate, nitrogen dioxide and ammonium, or SNA composition and an increase of 1 ?g/m3 in PM2.5 mass concentrations, respectively.

They found these linear correlations to be strongest in places where pollution levels were well below National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), the levels of air pollutants that are considered safe for humans.

"Annual mean PM2.5 national standards are set at or below 12 micrograms per cubic meter, below that you are supposed to be safe," Chakrabarty said. "What we saw, the correlation we're seeing is well below that standard." In fact, they saw a rapid increase in R0 when PM2.5 exposure levels were below 6 micrograms per cubic meter.

Chakrabarty hypothesizes this initial increase in R0, which is followed by a plateau once levels hit 6 micrograms per cubic meter, is a result of initial changes in condition; when the air is free of PM2.5 , an individual is unaffected. The initial exposure is the catalyst for change in lung health resulting in a change from non-susceptibility to susceptibility, which is reflected in the increasing R0.

And although there was no direct correlation between black carbon -- a.k.a. soot -- and R0, researchers did find a connection.

"Our collaborators at Saint Louis University suggested a mediation/moderation statistical approach," a detailed analysis that looks at the way additional variables affect the outcome of the initial relationship. In this case, researchers looked at soot's effect on R0, considering SNA's effect.

"We found black carbon acts as a kind of catalyst. When there is soot present, PM2.5 has more of an acute effect on lung health, and therefore on R0."

The mediation/moderation study was not superfluous -- one of the common ways people are exposed to SNA is through pollution emitted from cars and coal-fired power plants. Both of which also emit soot.

"Although decades of strict air quality regulations in the U.S. have resulted in significant reductions of nitrogen dioxide levels," the authors wrote in the paper's conclusion, "recent reversal of environmental regulations which weaken limits on gaseous emissions from power plants and vehicles threaten the country's future air quality scenario."

"Instead of working to resolve this issue, these reversals may be setting us up for another pandemic," Chakrabarty said.

COVID-19 provides rare opportunities for studying natural and human systems

Stanford University

Like the legendary falling apple that hit Isaac Newton and led to his groundbreaking insight on the nature of gravity, COVID-19 could provide unintended glimpses into how complex Earth systems operate, according to a new Stanford-led paper. The perspective, published July 29 in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, hypothesizes outcomes of unprecedented changes in human activity wrought by worldwide sheltering orders, and outlines research priorities for understanding their short and long-term implications. Getting it right could revolutionize how we think about issues as broad as greenhouse gas emissions, regional air quality, and the global economy's connection to poverty, food security and deforestation, according to the researchers. It could also help ensure an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable recovery from the coronavirus pandemic while helping prevent future crises.

"Without distracting from the most important priority -- which is clearly the health and well-being of people and communities -- the current easing of the human footprint is providing a unique window into the impacts of humans on the environment, including a number of questions that are critical for effective public policy," said lead author Noah Diffenbaugh, the Kara J Foundation Professor at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

For example, the question of how much electrifying the vehicle fleet will improve air quality has until now relied heavily on theoretical arguments and computer models. The scale of recent emissions reductions, however, provides an opportunity to use atmospheric observations to check just how accurate those models are in simulating the impact of pollution-reduction interventions such as electric vehicle incentives.

Predicting pandemic outcomes

The researchers note that although many of the initial impacts of COVID sheltering, such as clear skies resulting from reduced pollutant emissions, could be perceived as beneficial to the environment, the longer-term impacts -- particularly related to the economic recession -- are less clear. To understand the impacts across both short and long timescales, they propose focusing on cascading effects along two pathways: (1) energy, emissions, climate and air quality; and (2) poverty, globalization, food and biodiversity.

Given the complex interactions along these pathways, the researchers emphasize the need for techniques that can bring together multiple lines of evidence to reveal causes and effects. This includes bolstering and expanding coordinated efforts to study the impacts of the pandemic, including safe deployment of environmental sensors that can track changing conditions, computer models that simulate Earth's response to the sheltering measures and solutions-oriented research trials that lend insight into human behavior and decision making. The authors also call for a coordinated data repository where many different kinds of data can be made openly available to the public in a uniform format.

"Almost overnight, people across the world had to change the way they live, the way they work -- with many facing loss of income -- commute, buy food, educate their children and other energy-consuming behaviors," said Inês Azevedo, an associate professor of energy resources engineering in Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. "It's critical for us to better understand how future societal disruptions and catastrophes could affect interactions among energy systems and other systems that serve society."

Understanding the human response

A key factor in understanding how the pandemic's effects play out is its influence on human behavior and decision making.

"Human behavior contributes to, but is also affected by, changes in the Earth system, and COVID-19 is creating new challenges for ensuring people and corporations act to protect the planet," said co-author Margaret Levi, the Sara Miller McCune Director of Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a professor of political science. "While government was not a central focus in this paper, it clarifies the roles that laws, regulations and investments play in the safety of the food supply and food workers, emissions controls and many other aspects of the health of the Earth and its inhabitants."

Some of the pandemic's most lasting impacts on climate and air quality could occur via insights it provides into the calculation of policy parameters that measure the value that individuals and society place on different environmental trade-offs. The COVID-19 crisis is making these tradeoffs more explicit, the researchers point out. This is because governments, communities and individuals are making historic decisions reflecting underlying preferences for current and future consumption, as well as the tradeoff between different types of economic activity and individual and collective risk.

These decisions can help quantify the parameters that are routinely used in environmental policymaking (such as the cost of human lives lost to air pollution or of climate change associated with carbon dioxide emissions). As those updated parameters are incorporated into actual policy decisions, they will have lasting effects on the regulations that impact the long-term trajectory of climate and air quality.

Studying policy interventions designed to prevent socio-environmental damage -- such as the role of poverty in driving deforestation -- could also help vulnerable people weather poverty shocks from COVID-19 by providing a deeper understanding of how and where poverty and environmental degradation are most tightly linked. The researchers propose using the kinds of solution-oriented research trials that were awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Economics to study whether interventions such as payments for protection of natural resources are effective in staving off deforestation, over-fishing and other environmental damages.

"COVID-19 poses some of the biggest challenges we have faced in the last century," said paper co-author Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies. "With every challenge, there are opportunities for learning, and this paper provides a map for expanding the set of opportunities."

A coronavirus vaccine would be a triumph, but the worst human impulses threaten its success

Polly Tynbee
Guardian columnist

An anti-lockdown protester in Hyde Park, London, in May. Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

The world has moved a step closer to ending the Covid-19 horror as researchers from Oxford University, among the 200 global teams working on vaccines, published promising results in The Lancet. The UK has already ordered 90m doses, in breath-holding hope.

A vaccine would mark another feat of astonishing human brilliance. But expect the usual human bad behaviour too. Vaccine researchers pledge to make them available to all as cheaply as possible, but we should brace ourselves for nationalists everywhere to fight for their country first, just as Donald Trump plundered other countries’ personal protective equipment and tried to corner the market in remdesivir. Countries agreed a framework from the World Health Organization (WHO) to share all vaccine information, but few expect an orderly queue: calls for solidarity and cooperation risk being swept away by those with the sharpest elbows, deepest pockets and crookedest swindling.

If the first successful vaccine turns out to be British, wait for the demand that every Briton gets it before the rest of the world, despite the fact that to end the pandemic scientists need to get it fastest to the places where the contagion is most rampant. But if the worst-affected nations are first in line this will include Brazil and the US, where presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump bear personal responsibility for their countries’ high infections and death tolls due to their Covid-19 denials and lockdown refusals. Trump will seize the chance to boast he got vaccines early to boost his election campaign. If a British vaccine succeeds, wait for Boris Johnson’s cock-crows boasting of a world-beating triumph as it if were his own invention, hoping to wipe clean memories of his errors and the UK’s shameful death rate. Science must be blind to politics, plead the global vaccinators.

A vaccine will be held up as an emblem of rational human scientific success, but be prepared for an explosion of human unreason. The idiotic and criminal are already surging across the web spreading toxic anti-vaccine messages. A recent poll suggests one in six Britons would refuse a vaccine. Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, accuses Facebook of profiting from websites promoting bogus wellness gurus’ alternatives to vaccines and anti-vax conspiracy theories that Bill Gates created the pandemic deliberately.

In the US the anti-vaxxers are far-right conspiracists, but in the UK the spread of this anti-vax brain failure finds a home among the “wellness” folk peddling naturopathic junk. The Society of Homeopaths is under investigation by the Professional Standards Authority, which regulates health professionals, as a member of its staff posted messages on social media calling vaccines “poison”, claiming homeopathy had a “great track record of success in epidemics” including Spanish and bird flu. Celebrities including Novak Djokovic and Robert F Kennedy Jnr add their names to anti-vaxxing conspiracies.

No surprise that anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield has resurfaced to claim Covid-19 is a hoax and people must fight to the death to refuse vaccination, as he told a Health Freedom event. Covid-19 was “no more deadly than seasonal flu” and its death toll was “greatly exaggerated”, he said. Wakefield was struck off the medical register and disgraced when his research purporting to show the MMR vaccine caused autism, heavily promoted by the Daily Mail, was exposed as fraudulent. His pernicious influence continues: in 2018 Britain lost its WHO “measles elimination” status, bracketing us with Albania, as vaccination rates fell for the fifth successive year, now at 90%, when the WHO requires 95% of under-fives to be covered. Cases of measles and mumps among teenagers rose after parents failed to vaccinate them as babies due to the Wakefield scare.

However, the fall in take-up of vaccines now is more likely to be caused by government negligence than anti-science homeopaths or anti-vax conspiracists. The austerity decade stripped away services that helped to get babies vaccinated – health visitors, school nurses, social workers, community midwives, Sure Start centres and district nurses. GP appointments are in short supply. The help young parents need is depleted or nonexistent: the fall in vaccination rates is just another sign of neglect that has seen infant mortality rise for the first time in my life.

Britain’s Covid-19 experience has shown how bad policies and confused messaging from government can cause a large number of deaths, particularly in vulnerable groups. If a new vaccine works, if large batches are manufactured fast, will this government be capable of delivering vaccinations to everyone, after austerity has destroyed so much of the basic community health infrastructure?

Herd immunity requires a high vaccination rate, but if one in six is refusing, it will take a herculean effort in persuasion to shift those deep fears. Prof Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says: “Trust is key. But the UK has not done well and that will be a problem.” Political polarisation is a danger: leavers tend to dismiss the danger presented by the virus, remainers are more obediently mask-wearing and cautious. “Compulsion can backfire. Reasoning with people is all there is,” says McKee.

Mixed, muddled, contradictory advice has spread confusion and an increasingly petulant resistance. Senior doctors are pleading with the public to keep to the social distancing rules for fear the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter.

Rightwingers, ever eager to make a culture war out of anything, are losing their absurd mask wars: polling shows that seven out of 10 support mandatory mask-wearing in English shops, with only 13% opposed. The public is more cautious than Johnson: they know it’s not over, lifting lockdown has not led to a spike in cases, but local and national lockdowns remain a risk.

On Monday the prime minister was at a school, oddly emphasising that: “We’ve got to continue with our current approach, maintaining social distancing measures … washing hands … wearing face masks in confined spaces like on public transport or in shops. And then we will continue to drive the virus down by our own collective action.” Yet only last week his “return to normality” message urged everyone back to stuffy offices on crowded public transport, bribing them with a tenner to cram into town centre restaurants and cafes.

Where will absolute trust come from when so much has been blown away by Johnson, and by the unapologetic Barnard Castle jaunt by his adviser Dominic Cummings? Failure in care homes and a track and trace system unfit for purpose will make it hard for any government figure to convince all doubters to follow best scientific advice.

The official scientists are now distancing themselves from the politicians moving dangerously fast towards “back to normal”. But will they be trusted enough after standing so long at their lecterns while Johnson made wrong and late decisions? If not, then who? Archbishops? The Queen? Internet influencers? Captain Tom? In persuading people to vaccinate, the most powerful influencers will be local: nurses and doctors, the only people who emerge from this national disaster still carrying public respect.

Coronavirus: Climate change 'bigger threat' than Covid-19

Steffan Messenger
BBC News

Poor air quality and climate change pose a bigger threat to people's health and the economy than coronavirus, NHS staff have warned.

BBC Wales has seen a letter sent on behalf of hundreds of healthcare workers to the Welsh Government.

It calls for environmental issues to be prioritised as part of a "healthy recovery" following the pandemic.

The Welsh Government said it was "committed" to a green recovery.

The letter calls for scientific advisors to be involved in developing economic policy in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Efforts to pedestrianise cities, encourage walking and cycling, and increasing how much energy is supplied by renewable sources should be sped up, it says, as well as businesses getting money to help cut energy consumption and waste.

Anaesthetic registrar at University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, Dr Farzad Saadat, said: "What we're asking is that the government put clean air, clean energy and a cleaner environment at the centre of their policies for the future."

The Welsh Environmental Anaesthesia Network (WEAN), one of the organisations behind the letter, has worked with hospitals across Wales for the past 18 months to cut back on emissions of potent, planet-warming gases involved in treatment.

This has resulted in a cut of 130,000kg of CO2 per month "the same as flying to New York 130 times," said Dr Saadat, a WEAN member.

He added: "There's growing evidence, for instance, that air pollution makes us more susceptible to the disease and makes us more likely to have a bad outcome should we get it.

"There's convincing evidence too that diseases like Covid-19 are more likely to emerge as we destroy the natural world."

Member Yasmina Hamdaoui, a pharmacist, said pollution could lead to - and exacerbate - cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, with possible links also to dementia and diabetes, as well as weight gain in babies and lung development in children.

"We've seen during this period that we have the ability to make drastic changes to our way of life when we need to. We want to learn from these changes and not just return to old habits."

She said the letter was inspired by another sent to leaders of the G20 countries by more than 350 groups representing 40 million healthcare workers.

"This is our attempt to do something at a more local level, join forces as Welsh organisations and call on the Welsh Government to make a commitment too," she added.

Air quality in parts of Cardiff ranks among the worst in the UK when population is taken into account, and government data shows Wales has the highest levels of CO2 per capita emissions in the UK.

"Our record to date hasn't always been the best," Dr Saadat said.

"While I do think the Welsh Government have been active, the reality is we have to do better - we don't have a choice."

Mathew Norman, of Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation in Wales, backs the plan: "The cost of air pollution to our NHS is £1bn pounds a year - that's just in Wales.

"If we improve air quality, we're not just improving the nation's health and our environment we'll also be helping the NHS."

The circumstances surrounding coronavirus could provide an opportunity to "fast-forward" some of the changes required, he suggested.

"More of us are working from home, we've seen in Cardiff and elsewhere measures to transform the city centre, bringing in cycling infrastructure and pedestrianising whole streets. All of this will limit the amount of pollution we emit.

Tracy Cross, of Llanishen, Cardiff, has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma and said every breath was like "breathing through straws".

She has noticed a "huge change" in air quality during lockdown.

"It used to make my chest feel really tight and restricted and I had to risk assess every time I wanted to go out. But during lockdown it's been fantastic - I've been able to get out a lot more into the garden with my children."

Ms Cross said it was important things did not revert to "normal" as there would be many people with lung conditions who have lost fitness while shielding at home and deteriorating air quality would lead to "a lot more people suffering".

A Welsh Government spokesperson said it was "committed to a green and socially just recovery, leading to a cleaner, healthier and more equal nation".

"This recovery will require working with partners across Wales," they said.

"Our Team Wales approach already includes work with Natural Resources Wales who have created a panel to advise on this recovery work, and through the Partnership Council for Wales we have jointly set an ambitious target to achieve a net-zero carbon public sector in Wales by 2030.

"Air pollution is the largest environmental threat to public health.

"We will be publishing our Clean Air Plan for Wales this August, which reflects how we will deliver our commitment to reducing emissions and delivering vital improvements for health and well-being, natural environment, ecosystems and biodiversity."

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: Confirmed Cases and Deaths by Country, Territory, or Conveyance Statistical data

The coronavirus COVID-19 is affecting 213 countries and territories around the world and 2 international conveyances.

Globally, there are currently 5,517,708 confirmed cases, 2,310,480 recovery cases and 346,964 deaths from the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak as of May 25, 2020, 09:43 GMT.

In Africa, there are 112,181 confirmed cases, 45,001 recovery cases, and 3,356 confirmed deaths as of May 25, 2020, 09:05  GMT.

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World Total confirmed COVID-19 cases, by source

World Total confirmed COVID-19 cases, by source

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For a detailed view, see table below:

COVID-19 – A Nature’s Self-Healing Mechanism

 Ekta Chaudhary

The recent CORONA outbreak is currently posing as one of the biggest epidemic disease hovering over the World. Due to this recent outbreak of this epidemic, the World has come to a standstill. The never stopping life on the Earth has been stopped abruptly. As we all know, the Nature always find its way. In this recent Corona Outbreak, the nature has found its way to help heel itself. With the onset of this epidemic disease all over the world, the nature has started healing itself at a very fast pace.

As this COVID-19 situation is proving to be out of the human reach, the only preventive measure for this disease is to maintain social distancing. As this disease is a communicable disease, it is spreading very rapidly from individual to individual. To prevent this contamination chain, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared maintain social distancing as the only possible measure to prevent the spread of the disease.

Following the WHOs advisory, affected countries over the world have adopted social distancing for preventing their people form this infection. The World is currently undergoing a total lockdown mode. The World has been on the shutdown mode since this COVID-19 outbreak. The World’s lockdown is been proving as a boon for the deteriorating environmental conditions of the World.

EFFECTS ON AIR QUALITY

Image Source: Twitter

Countries have imposed stricter restrictions on the movement of modes of transportation causing a drastic decrease in the pollution level in the atmosphere. The streets are empty with more people inside their houses. As per the NASA report, the air pollution levels have been decreased drastically since the COVID-19 outbreak. Since the factories, industries, and all the workplaces are on the shutdown mode, the CO2 and CO emission levels have also been reduced. According to the World Air Quality, the average concentration of PM 2.5 in New Delhi came down by 71 percent.

Image Source: Twitter@RameshPandeyIFS

As a result of decreased air pollution levels, the Himalayan ranges were clearly visible from the Jalandhar area. It is on of the rarest cases that happened to be in India. According to the local people, the incident has happened after a huge interval of 30 years. The distance of the Jalandhar city from the Dhauladhar ranges is approx. 200 km.

In another rare sighting due to decreased levels of AQI, the inner Himalayan peaks of Bandarpunch and Gangotri became visible from the town of Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh

EFFECT ON WATER QUALITY

The clear water of Ganga River at Haridwar, Uttarakhand (Image Source: PTI)

The water transport movement, water activities has also been stopped resulting in the improvement of the water quality. The water in the famous Venice lake has been marked absolutely clear. The huge reduction of tourist numbers and commuting workers in the city may also be leading to an improvement in the water quality due to a reduction of sewage discharges into the canals.

image Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/photos-water-in-venice-italys-canals-clear-amid-covid-19-lockdown.html)

Many industries and offices are closed due to the lockdown these days and therefore the water quality of many rivers has improved. The stoppage of industrial pollutants and industrial waste has definitely had a positive effect on water quality. The water quality of river Ganga, in India, is also been marked as fit for drinking as per recent research by Indian scientists.

image Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/photos-water-in-venice-italys-canals-clear-amid-covid-19-lockdown.html)

As several religious activities have decreased as the lockdown effect, the banks of river Ganga at Varanasi and Haridwar areas are comparatively clearer and cleaner than before.

• The COVID-19 pandemic is also likely to have a significant impact on other environmental factors, including the emission of greenhouse gases as the global economy heads into recession.

• The quarantine protocols may also have a deep, but short-term, impact on greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, as fewer people are traveling and fewer businesses are operating.

As per the recent records, there is currently a total of 32,56,846 confirmed cases of COVID -19. The total number of people worldwide who have lost their lives is 2,33,388. The total number of recovered cases at present is 10,14,753.

Speaking of India’s context, a total of 35,043 are the total active cases with a total of 1,147 deaths across the country, A total of 8,889 cases have reportedly been cured of the disease.

(Data as on 01-05-2020).

Jeffrey Sachs: What Asian nations know about squashing Covid

devex.com

The number of Americans who have died from Covid-19 now significantly exceeds the total US troop fatalities during the Vietnam War.
 
While the coronavirus continues to ravage the country, with confirmed cases exceeding 1 million and deaths rising by the day, some states are lifting stay at home orders in hopes of salvaging the economy. With so many lives at stake, it's time the United States looked to those countries in the Asia Pacific region that have successfully controlled the pandemic to figure out how to save ourselves and the economy.
 
Several places in the Asia-Pacific, including Australia, China, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, have suppressed the estimated effective reproduction number -- the average number of people who will catch the disease from a single infected person -- to below 1, without the need for continued, widespread lockdowns.
 
They are now rapidly and successfully suppressing outbreaks of the disease by isolating those who are infected and their contacts who are likely to be infected.
           
It's as if there are two worlds.
 
The United States has had more than 66,000 deaths, or about 20 deaths per 100,000 people. The number of deaths per 100,000 people reported in Western European countries is also very high: Belgium, 67; France, 37; Italy, 47; Germany, 8; Spain, 53; and Sweden, 26.

Meanwhile, the reported rates in Asia and Oceania are considerably lower: Australia, 0.4; China, 0.3; New Zealand, 0.4; South Korea, 0.5; Taiwan, 0.03.
 
Despite the stark disparities, America seems blind to the strategies other countries have used to control the virus. How is it that one part of the world is succeeding, while the other part refuses to learn the lessons of success?
 
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal extolled the virtues of Germany's efforts in comparison with the United States, France, Italy, and Spain, without even a mention that Germany's mortality rate per million is itself more than 100 times higher than Taiwan and Hong Kong, and more than 10 times higher than in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
 
How have these countries succeeded to date?
 
Many have adopted nationwide public-health standards, using mobile technologies, professionalism of government, widespread use of face masks and hand sanitizers, and intensive public health services to isolate infected individuals or those likely to be infected.
 
Testing has played an important role, but has not been the be-all-and-end-all as is sometimes believed in the United States.
 
Vietnam has succeeded, for example, with contact tracing and an aggressive quarantine regime. When one person is confirmed positive, many of his or her close contacts -- even those without symptoms -- are isolated. As a result, Vietnam tested only a moderate number of people as a share of the population because it managed to contain outbreaks so effectively. Vietnam, with about 95 million people, has not reported a single Covid-19 death so far.
 
In New Zealand, the government is starting to ease lockdown restrictions as officials say they are now in a position to test and trace any new clusters of infection.

Here are the careful and precise words of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. "There is no widespread undetected community transmission in New Zealand. We have won that battle. But we must remain vigilant if we are to keep it that way."
 
There are similar success stories across much of the region.
 
South Korea, which has dramatically broken the epidemic with aggressive testing, contact tracing and basic public health measures such as thermal monitoring, has also employed digital technology in the fight against Covid-19, according to a new report. South Korea uses a text alert system to keep the public informed, while various apps allow people to track new Covid-19 cases, make doctor's appointments or monitor hotspots to avoid.
 
The government also uses apps to monitor people in quarantine, through self-reported symptoms and location tracking. Despite the fact that these apps may raise privacy issues in the United States, the upshot is an economy that is open, albeit cautiously so, together with a suppression of new infections.
 
The US government has been utterly incapable of learning from these cases of success.
                   
President Donald Trump is incompetent and his appointees at Health and Human Services, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Transport Security Administration have failed to provide leadership. America First has put us first in deaths in the world, with tens of thousands of lives squandered as a result.
 
We can save ourselves and our economy, if we look to and learn from the achievements of other nations. And if the federal government continues to fail, as seems likely, our governors and mayors must step forward to do the job.

Six nature facts related to coronaviruses

Did you know that around 60 per cent of all infectious diseases in humans are zoonotic, as are 75 per cent of all emerging infectious diseases, in other words they come to us via animals?

Zoonoses that emerged or re-emerged recently are Ebola, bird flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), the Nipah virus, Rift Valley fever, sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus, Zika virus disease, and, now, the coronavirus. They are all linked to human activity.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa was the result of forest losses leading to closer contacts between wildlife and human settlements; the emergence of avian influenza was linked to intensive poultry farming; and the Nipah virus was linked to the intensification of pig farming and fruit production in Malaysia.

Scientists and specialists working at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have been pulling together the latest scientific facts about the coronavirus—what we know about the virus and what we don’t know.

While the origin of the outbreak and its transmission pathway are yet to be discovered, here are six important points worth knowing:

1. The interaction of humans or livestock with wildlife exposes them to the risk of spillover of potential pathogens. For many zoonoses, livestock serve as an epidemiological bridge between wildlife and human infections.

2. The drivers of zoonotic disease emergence are changes in the environment—usually the result of human activities, ranging from land use change to changing climate; changes in animals or human hosts; and changes in pathogens, which always evolve to exploit new hosts. 

3. For example, bat-associated viruses emerged due to the loss of bat habitat from deforestation and agricultural expansion. Bats play important roles in ecosystems by being night pollinators and eating insects.

4. Ecosystem integrity underlines human health and development. Human-induced environmental changes modify wildlife population structure and reduce biodiversity, resulting in new environmental conditions that favour particular hosts, vectors, and/or pathogens.

5. Ecosystem integrity can help regulate diseases by supporting a diversity of species so that it is more difficult for one pathogen to spill over, amplify or dominate.

6. It is impossible to predict where the next outbreak will come from or when it will be. Growing evidence suggests that outbreaks or epidemic diseases may become more frequent as climate continues to change.

“Never before have so many opportunities existed for pathogens to pass from wild and domestic animals to people, says UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen. “Our continued erosion of wild spaces has brought us uncomfortably close to animals and plants that harbour diseases that can jump to humans.”

Nature is in crisis, threatened by biodiversity and habitat loss, global heating and toxic pollution. Failure to act is failing humanity. Addressing the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and protecting ourselves against future global threats requires sound management of hazardous medical and chemical waste; strong and global stewardship of nature and biodiversity; and a clear commitment to “building back better”, creating green jobs and facilitating the transition to carbon neutral economies. Humanity depends on action now for a resilient and sustainable future.

Researchers identify cells likely targeted by Covid-19 virus

Anne Trafton

Study finds specific cells in the lungs, nasal passages, and intestines that are more susceptible to infection.

Researchers at MIT; the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard; and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; along with colleagues from around the world have identified specific types of cells that appear to be targets of the coronavirus that is causing the Covid-19 pandemic.

Using existing data on the RNA found in different types of cells, the researchers were able to search for cells that express the two proteins that help the SARS-CoV-19 virus enter human cells. They found subsets of cells in the lung, the nasal passages, and the intestine that express RNA for both of these proteins much more than other cells.

The researchers hope that their findings will help guide scientists who are working on developing new drug treatments or testing existing drugs that could be repurposed for treating Covid-19.

“Our goal is to get information out to the community and to share data as soon as is humanly possible, so that we can help accelerate ongoing efforts in the scientific and medical communities,” says Alex K. Shalek, the Pfizer-Laubach Career Development Associate Professor of Chemistry, a core member of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), an extramural member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, an associate member of the Ragon Institute, and an institute member at the Broad Institute.

Shalek and Jose Ordovas-Montanes, a former MIT postdoc who now runs his own lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in Cell. The paper’s lead authors are MIT graduate students Carly Ziegler, Samuel Allon, and Sarah Nyquist; and Ian Mbano, a researcher at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa.

Digging into data

Not long after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began, scientists discovered that the viral “spike” protein binds to a receptor on human cells known as angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Another human protein, an enzyme called TMPRSS2, helps to activate the coronavirus spike protein, to allow for cell entry. The combined binding and activation allows the virus to get into host cells.

“As soon as we realized that the role of these proteins had been biochemically confirmed, we started looking to see where those genes were in our existing datasets,” Ordovas-Montanes says. “We were really in a good position to start to investigate which are the cells that this virus might actually target.”

Shalek’s lab, and many other labs around the world, have performed large-scale studies of tens of thousands of human, nonhuman primate, and mouse cells, in which they use single-cell RNA sequencing technology to determine which genes are turned on in a given cell type. Since last year, Nyquist has been building a database with partners at the Broad Institute to store a huge collection of these datasets in one place, allowing researchers to study potential roles for particular cells in a variety of infectious diseases.

Much of the data came from labs that belong to the Human Cell Atlas project, whose goal is to catalog the distinctive patterns of gene activity for every cell type in the human body. The datasets that the MIT team used for this study included hundreds of cell types from the lungs, nasal passages, and intestine. The researchers chose those organs for the Covid-19 study because previous evidence had indicated that the virus can infect each of them. They then compared their results to cell types from unaffected organs.

“Because we have this incredible repository of information, we were able to begin to look at what would be likely target cells for infection,” Shalek says. “Even though these datasets weren’t designed specifically to study Covid, it’s hopefully given us a jump start on identifying some of the things that might be relevant there.”

In the nasal passages, the researchers found that goblet secretory cells, which produce mucus, express RNAs for both of the proteins that SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect cells. In the lungs, they found the RNAs for these proteins mainly in cells called type II pneumocytes. These cells line the alveoli (air sacs) of the lungs and are responsible for keeping them open.

In the intestine, they found that cells called absorptive enterocytes, which are responsible for the absorption of some nutrients, express the RNAs for these two proteins more than any other intestinal cell type.

“This may not be the full story, but it definitely paints a much more precise picture than where the field stood before,” Ordovas-Montanes says. “Now we can say with some level of confidence that these receptors are expressed on these specific cells in these tissues.”

Fighting infection

In their data, the researchers also saw a surprising phenomenon — expression of the ACE2 gene appeared to be correlated with activation of genes that are known to be turned on by interferon, a protein that the body produces in response to viral infection. To explore this further, the researchers performed new experiments in which they treated cells that line the airway with interferon, and they discovered that the treatment did indeed turn on the ACE2 gene.

Interferon helps to fight off infection by interfering with viral replication and helping to activate immune cells. It also turns on a distinctive set of genes that help cells fight off infection. Previous studies have suggested that ACE2 plays a role in helping lung cells to tolerate damage, but this is the first time that ACE2 has been connected with the interferon response.

The finding suggests that coronaviruses may have evolved to take advantage of host cells’ natural defenses, hijacking some proteins for their own use.

“This isn’t the only example of that,” Ordovas-Montanes says. “There are other examples of coronaviruses and other viruses that actually target interferon-stimulated genes as ways of getting into cells. In a way, it’s the most reliable response of the host.”

Because interferon has so many beneficial effects against viral infection, it is sometimes used to treat infections such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C. The findings of the MIT team suggest that interferon’s potential role in fighting Covid-19 may be complex. On one hand, it can stimulate genes that fight off infection or help cells survive damage, but on the other hand, it may provide extra targets that help the virus infect more cells.

“It’s hard to make any broad conclusions about the role of interferon against this virus. The only way we’ll begin to understand that is through carefully controlled clinical trials,” Shalek says. “What we are trying to do is put information out there, because there are so many rapid clinical responses that people are making. We’re trying to make them aware of things that might be relevant.”

Shalek now hopes to work with collaborators to profile tissue models that incorporate the cells identified in this study. Such models could be used to test existing antiviral drugs and predict how they might affect SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The MIT team and their collaborators have made all the data they used in this study available to other labs who want to use it. Much of the data used in this study was generated in collaboration with researchers around the world, who were very willing to share it, Shalek says.

“There’s been an incredible outpouring of information from the scientific community with a number of different parties interested in contributing to the battle against Covid in any way possible,” he says. “It’s been incredible to see a large number of labs from around the world come together to try and collaboratively tackle this.”

The research was funded by the Searle Scholars Program, the Beckman Young Investigator Program, the Pew-Stewart Scholars Program for Cancer Research, a Sloan Fellowship in Chemistry, the National Institutes of Health, the Aeras Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science Project Pilot Program, the MIT Stem Cell Initiative, Fondation MIT, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.

Social media can accurately forecast economic impact of natural disasters—including COVID-19 pandemic

 University of Bristol

Social media should be used to chart the economic impact and recovery of businesses in countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research published in Nature Communications. University of Bristol scientists describe a 'real time' method accurately trialled across three global natural disasters which could be used to reliably forecast the financial impact of the current global health crisis.

Traditional economic recovery estimates, such as surveys and interviews, are usually costly, time-consuming and do not scale-up well. However, researchers from Bristol's Departments of Engineering Maths and Civil Engineering show they were able to accurately estimate the downtime and recovery of small businesses in countries affected by three different natural hazards using aggregated social media data.

The method relies on the assumption that businesses tend to publish more social media posts when they are open and fewer when they are closed, hence analysing the aggregated posting activity of a group of businesses over time it is possible to infer when they are open or closed.

Using data from the public Facebook posts of local businesses collected before, during and after three natural disasters comprising the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal, the 2017 Chiapas earthquake in Mexico, and the 2017 hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the team charted the number of smaller urban businesses who were closed and then were able to measure their recovery post-event. The team validated their analysis using field surveys, official reports, Facebook surveys, Facebook posts text analysis and other studies available in literature.

Importantly, the framework works in 'real time' without the need for text analysis which can be largely dependent on language, culture or semantic analysis and can be applied to any size area or type of natural disaster, in developed and developing countries, allowing local governments to better target the distribution of resources.

Dr. Filippo Simini, Senior Lecturer and lead author explains: "The challenge of nowcasting the effect of natural hazards such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and pandemics on assets, people and society has never been more timely than ever for assessing the ability of countries to recover from extreme events.

"Often, small to medium-sized businesses slip through the net of traditional monitoring process of recovery. We noticed in areas struck by natural hazard events that not all areas and populations react in the same way."

Dr. Flavia De Luca, Senior Lecturer in Bristol's Department of Civil Engineering and lead author, added: "We had the idea of supporting post-emergency deployment of resources after a natural hazard event using public Facebook posts of businesses to measure how a specific region is recovering after the event. It was amazing to find out that the approach was providing information on the recovery in 'real time."

"We would like to test the method to measure the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic."

Sequencing the genome of the virus behind COVID-19

Amanda Zrebiec

Biologists from the Applied Physics Lab work to track the mutation of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19

Image : Johns Hopkins APL / ED Whitman

Peter Thielen and Tom Mehoke have spent years sequencing the genome of influenza. Now, as a new strain of coronavirus spreads across the globe, these biologists from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory are transitioning their work to better understand the virus that causes COVID-19.

Inside the molecular diagnostics laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital, while health care workers and hospital staff work tirelessly to process patient tests, Thielen and Mehoke, members of APL's Research and Exploratory Development Department and the Johns Hopkins Center of Excellence in Influenza Research and Surveillance, are waiting for the positive tests. Certainly, positive tests are no cause for celebration, but for Thielen and Mehoke, they are a key to learning more about the rapidly spreading virus.

With software and molecular biology approaches developed in part at APL, Thielen and Mehoke are using handheld DNA sequencers to conduct immediate on-site genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19.

"This information allows us to track the evolution of the virus," Thielen said. "It gives us a sense of where the new cases coming into Baltimore could've originated, and insight into how long transmission may have occurred undetected. There are a lot of things we can glean from that."

Topping that list is the ability to see how quickly the virus mutates—integral information for mapping its spread, as well as developing an effective vaccine. Influenza, for example, mutates constantly. That's why it's necessary to vaccinate against different strains of the flu each year.

The virus causing COVID-19, Thielen said, does not appear to be mutating as fast.

"When this virus was first sequenced in China, that information was helpful in starting the process to develop a vaccine," Thielen explained. "What we're doing informs whether or not the virus is mutating away from that original sequence, and how quickly. Based on the mutation rate, early data indicates that this would likely be a single vaccine rather than one that needs to be updated each year, like the flu shot."

In the near-term, the mutations inform how the virus is spreading.

With the United States continuing to ramp up testing and mitigation capabilities, the ability to understand how outbreaks are linked gives public health departments another tool for evaluation. Mutations can explain how long the virus may have gone undetected and the supposition that there are likely far more cases than diagnosed, and can advise on what measures to put in place (such as the social-distancing efforts and closings that are ongoing nationwide).

Sequencing of the virus' genome is being performed by scientists all over the globe as they work to trace the source of regional outbreaks. In northern California, for example, news reports suggest that genome sequencing has linked the Bay Area outbreak to the Grand Princess cruise ship, which linked back to the virus found in Washington State, which likely came from China.

That's the type of insight—a DNA fingerprint, if you will—that Thielen and Mehoke will gain as more virus genomes are sequenced from the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., regions.

They've completed analysis of the first four COVID-19 samples, with upward of 100 in the queue from the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area, and expect many more in the coming weeks.

Operating remotely with handheld sequencers and laptop computers, Thielen and Mehoke's process required a several day wait before results could be transferred. But, at the end of last week they validated a new process that enables same-day sequencing—one that can be done by the hospital staff members already administering the diagnostic tests.

In the last nine months, Thielen and Mehoke held two workshops with the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center to help train scientists from low- and middle-income countries on how to use the handheld sequencers to do this work. The latest workshop was held virtually last week, when they trained stateside researchers to do the same type of on-site sequencing in their own laboratories.

"We were doing that to prepare as many researchers as we can, in the event that there would be a future pandemic," Thielen said. "It's here."

Coronavirus HandBook

In this certainly very challenging moment, relying on the latest available science is more crucial than ever. This is why I would like to share the Coronavirus Tech Handbook, which provides a space where technologists, specialists, civic organizations, and public and private institutions can collaborate on a rapid and sophisticated response to the outbreak. It is a dynamic resource with many hundreds of contributors that is evolving very quickly. Its design is easy to read, intuitive to use, and allows for easy long term engagement. With your help, we can produce a comprehensive library of all known resources for mitigating every impact of the pandemic.

Created by the London College of Political Technologists, it features everything from tips for remote working to tools for data visualization and fighting misinformation.

Number of CoronaVirus cases rise in the United States

The quantity of affirmed cases in the United States bounced from 65 to 88 throughout the end of the week. States across the nation revealed new contaminations, including the nation's initial two passings.

The number of confirmed novel coronavirus cases in mainland China climbed to over 80,000 over the weekend, although at 202, the number of daily new cases is the lowest since January 23 — when emergency measures were introduced. Outside of China the virus has in recent days spread rapidly, now to 57 countries, according to the World Health Organization. In all, the illness has killed nearly 3,000 people.

No country should make ‘fatal’ mistake of ignoring COVID-19: Tedros

All countries should do more to prevent the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus and none should make the “fatal” mistake of assuming that it won’t be affected,  UN health agency chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Thursday.

Virus ‘does not respect borders’

“Whether we get it wrong or right is in our hands… every country must be ready for its first case, its first cluster, the first evidence of community transmission and for dealing with sustained community transmission…These are four scenarios, and it must be preparing for all of those scenarios at the same time. No country should assume it won’t get cases; that could be a fatal mistake, quite literally. This virus does not respect borders.”

Citing the latest COVID-19 data, updated at 6am in Geneva on Thursday, the WHO Director-General said that China had confirmed 78,630 cases, including 2,747 deaths.

Slight fall in coronavirus infections ‘nothing to celebrate’, says UN health agency

A slight drop overnight in the number of people infected by the new coronavirus is welcome but “nothing to celebrate”, a top UN health official said on Thursday.

Dr Michael Ryan, head of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, was speaking in Geneva after confirmation that there are now 28,060 confirmed cases of infection in China and 564 deaths - with 225 cases in 24 other countries, where one death has been recorded, in the Philippines.

“Although we are pleased that the numbers from today are the first day in which the overall numbers of confirmed cases reported from China have dropped, and so we are thankful, and I’m sure our colleagues on the frontline in China are thankful too”, he said.

“But it is very difficult to make any prediction relating to that. We are still in the middle of an intense outbreak and we need to be very careful on making any predictions.” 

CoronaVirus: Eleven confirmed cases in the US

Health officials Sunday announced three more cases of the coronavirus in California, bringing the state's total to six and the country's total to 11 cases. - CNN

The State Department has warned Americans to avoid all travel to China due to the "rapidly spreading" outbreak. The decision came after the WHO designated the outbreak a global public health emergency.

Two new cases of coronavirus were confirmed in San Benito County, California, the county public health department said.  

Health officials told CBS San Francisco the new two people were a husband and wife have also tested positive for the illness. Of more concern was that health officials said the husband, who had recently returned from Wuhan, had infected his wife with the disease.