Foreign Desk Report
GENEVA: Number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has passed 14 million globally as of Sunday morning, the World Health Organization’s dashboard showed.
The WHO has received reports of 14,007,791 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 597,105 deaths as of 10:35 a.m. CEST (0835 GMT) Sunday. A record high of 259,848 cases were registered on Satuday, according to the organization’s daily situation update. The United States reported the largest single-day rise of 71,484 confirmed cases on Saturday, bringing the total number of infections to 3,544,143.
Brazil and India remain the world’s second and third most affected countries after the United States. Global confirmed COVID-19 cases topped 14 million on Friday, reaching 14,060,402 as of 10:35 p.m. local time (0235 GMT on Saturday), according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Meanwhile, the death toll worldwide rose to a total of 601,820, the data showed.
The United States suffered the most from the pandemic, with 3,641,539 cases and 139,176 fatalities, followed by Brazil with 2,046,328 cases and 77,851 deaths, the tally showed.
Countries with more than 300,000 cases also include India, Russia, Peru, South Africa, Mexico and Chile; and countries with over 30,000 deaths are Britain, Mexico, Italy and France, according to the center.Agencies add: The United States has reported 140,000-plus COVID-19 deaths and more than 3.71 million cases as of Sunday morning, both figures ranking first worldwide, as the global tally of cases has topped 14.3 million with a death toll above 602,000.
Despite skyrocketing caseloads, U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he won’t issue an order at the national level mandating the use of masks, even as the country continued to break its single-day coronavirus case record amid a pandemic that is far from being contained.
By contrast, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday called on people in a statement to wear masks to prevent the pandemic’s spread, with CDC Director Robert Redfield saying, “Cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus.”
In this challenging era brought about by the pandemic, another move by the White House has led to increased worry among health experts, as the Trump administration on Tuesday ordered hospitals to sidestep the CDC and report real-time patient data directly to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) via a new platform “HHS Protect,” or through a system called “TeleTracking.”
Although the move casts doubt upon data transparency and credibility, Redfield defended the policy change, saying this would reduce their reporting burden, while the CDC team and other COVID-19 response teams still have access to hospital data, according to a CDC statement. The newspaper also quoted Rep. Donna E. Shalala of Florida, who served as Health Secretary under former President Bill Clinton, as saying, “only the CDC has the expertise to collect data.”
