Scientists find Covid-19 reinfection possible – latest updates

Monday, August 24, 2020

Turkey reports 1,443 new coronavirus cases

Turkey has confirmed 1,443 new cases of Covid-19, bringing the country's tally to date to 259,692.

On Twitter, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Monday 743 patients recovered over the past day, pushing the total number of recoveries to 237,908.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the country reached 6,139, as 18 more people lost their lives.

Healthcare professionals did 95,943 more tests to diagnose the virus over the last 24 hours, bringing the tally to more than 6.4 million.

UK records 853 new confirmed cases

The United Kingdom recorded 853 new cases of the virus in the latest daily statistics, down from 1,041 on Sunday, government figures showed.

Four people died after testing positive for the coronavirus within the previous 28 days, compared with six deaths announced on Sunday.

France's cases rise by nearly 2,000

The number of new, confirmed cases in France has risen by 1,955 compared to the previous day, the French health ministry has said, with 22 new clusters found.

The health ministry added the number of deaths had risen by 15 from the previous day to stand at a total of 30,528 casualties.

France has the seventh-highest Covid-19 death toll in the world.

Spain reports more than 2,000 cases

Spain diagnosed 2,060 infections in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said, below the levels seen last week and bringing the cumulative total to 405,436.

Three people died from the virus over the same period, while the seven-day death toll was 96, the ministry said, with the cumulative death toll reaching 28,872.

Infections have risen sharply since Spain lifted a three-month lockdown in late June, but deaths have been much lower than during the epidemic's late-March peak.

US approves plasma to treat virus

The United States has announced an emergency authorisation to use blood plasma from recovered virus patients as a treatment for the disease.

The plasma therapy shows "an incredible rate of success" and "will save countless lives", Trump claimed on Sunday – but that went much further than his own health officials' cautious welcome of the treatment.

Plasma is believed to contain powerful antibodies that can help fight Covid-19 faster, and has already been used on patients in the United States and other countries.

Hong Konger reinfected with Covid-19

A Hong Kong man has been infected with the novel coronavirus for a second time, researchers at the University of Hong Kong have found. 

The patient had been cleared of Covid-19 and was released from hospital in April but tested positive for the virus when he returned from Spain earlier this month. 

The research team said the findings suggest that Covid-19 immunity does not last for long and "there is evidence that some patients have waning antibody level after a few months." 

The researchers also noted that the two virus strains contracted by the man in April and August were “clearly different.”

Lithuania adds Germany to virus isolation list

The Baltic country of Lithuania is as of Monday ordering a 14-day isolation for travellers from Germany because the number of infected people there is high.

Germany was added to the Lithuanian Health Ministry’s list of coronavirus-affected countries because the infection rate on Friday reached 16.5 cases per 100,000 people over the last two weeks.

Anyone entering Lithuania must self-isolate if they return from countries with rates above 16 per 100,000 people and must also get tested if they return from countries with rates above 25.

Health officials said that besides Lithuania, where the rate stands at 12.8, seven EU member countries currently have less than 16 cases per 100,000 people: Slovenia, Italy, Slovakia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary and Latvia.

Lithuania has seen 2,635 confirmed cases and 84 deaths.

Russia's virus tally passes 960,000

Russia reported 4,744 new cases, pushing its confirmed infection tally to 961,493, the fourth largest in the world.

Authorities said 65 people had died over the past 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 16,448.

Tokyo's new cases one-and-a-half month low

Tokyo reported 95 new cases, marking the lowest single-day tally since July 8, data from the Metropolitan Government showed.

The cases were confirmed from around 2,900 tests, with those under 40-years-old accounting for 60 percent of new cases. 

Total serious cases in the Japanese capital declined by one from the previous day, to 38.

Cases have declined from peaks of above 400 seen in early August. 

Bali bans foreign tourists for rest of 2020 over virus

Foreign tourists won't be allowed to visit Bali for the rest of 2020 due to pandemic concerns, its governor said, scrapping a plan to open up the Indonesian island from next month.

The holiday hotspot re-opened beaches, temples and other tourism spots for domestic visitors at the end of July and had said it would let foreign tourists return on September 11.

But the plan has now been cancelled over concerns about Indonesia's mounting virus cases and with many foreign nationals subject to travel bans in their home countries.

"The situation in Indonesia is not conducive to allow international tourists to visit Indonesia, including...Bali," the island's governor I Wayan Koster said in an official letter dated Saturday.

"The central government supports (Bali's) plans to recover tourism by opening the doors for international tourists. However, this requires care, prudence, not to be rushed, and requires careful preparation," it added.

Bali has recorded some 49 deaths and just over 4,000 cases of coronavirus.

Xinjiang residents protest online against virus lockdown

Residents in China's northwestern Xinjiang region have complained on social media about the harsh lockdown measures in the sensitive region after a local outbreak.

A new cluster in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi in mid-July prompted fresh restrictions. A total of 902 cases have been officially reported in the outbreak.

Officials said earlier this month that they had " effectively contained" the spread of the Urumqi cluster, and there have been no new cases reported in the last eight days.

But hundreds of residents flooded local social media forums in recent days to complain about harsh conditions, including many being forced to stay home.

After some of these comments were removed –– China's internet is heavily censored –– users tried to flood local forums on the Twitter-like Weibo platform in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Social media users shared photos of front doors sealed with steel crowbars, and locks installed by community workers.

Russia may resume flights to seven more countries this week

Russian authorities may this week announce the resumption of international flights to France, Hungary, Malta, Cyprus, Jordan, Egypt and China's Shanghai, the Izvestia newspaper cited unnamed airport and airline sources as saying on Monday.

Russia grounded international commercial flights during the lockdown earlier this year and has so far only resumed flights to London, Turkey, Tanzania and Switzerland.

Russia has confirmed the world's fourth largest tally of cases. It has recorded close to 5,000 new cases of the virus on a daily basis for the last several weeks.

New Zealand to extend lockdown of largest city

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the lockdown of Auckland will last an extra four days as authorities try to stamp out an outbreak of the coronavirus.

The two-week lockdown of the country’s largest city was due to end Wednesday but will now continue through Sunday.

Ardern said Monday that authorities need to be sure they have found the perimeter of the outbreak and they’re not seeing too many cases crop up that they haven’t found through contact tracing.

New Zealand went 102 days without any community transmission of the virus before the cluster of cases was found in Auckland this month.

Ardern said the rest of the country would continue for now with some restrictions under Alert Level 2, and it would become mandatory from next week to wear masks on public transport under level 2.

Health authorities on Monday reported nine new virus cases.

South Korea battles resurgence of virus

South Korea counted its 11th straight day of triple-digit daily jumps in cases after social distancing restrictions were tightened nationwide.

Most of the 266 new cases reported by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were in the Seoul metropolitan area, home to half of the country’s 51 million people, but new infections were also reported in other major cities, including Busan, Daejeong and Sejong.

KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong said it’s likely the country will continue to report huge infection numbers in coming days as health workers scramble to trace and test contacts of virus carriers.

Officials consider the current outbreak South Korea’s biggest crisis since the emergence of Covid-19, given the population density of the capital region and the spread of the virus among various sources.

Covid-19 cases in India surge past 3.1 million

India reported 61,408 infections in the last 24 hours, taking its total caseload past 3.1 million, data from the federal health ministry showed.

India crossed the 3 million cases milestone on Sunday, 17 days after it crossed the 2 million mark. 

It is the worst-affected country in Asia, and third behind Brazil and the US globally.

The number of deaths in the last 24 hours was 836, taking the total to 57,542.

Germany's confirmed cases rise by 711 to 233,575

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 711 to 233,575, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.

The reported death toll rose by three to 9,272, the tally showed. 

Mexico reports nearly 4,000 new cases

Mexico's health ministry has reported 3,948 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus infection and 226 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 560,164 cases and 60,480 deaths.

The government says the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.

Australia sees lowest daily rise in cases

The Australian state of Victoria reported its lowest daily rise in new coronavirus infections in seven weeks, fuelling optimism that a deadly second wave there is subsiding.

Victoria reported 116 cases and 15 deaths from the virus during the past 24 hours, down from a peak of more than 700 cases early this month.

Australia saw a surge in infections in the past month in Melbourne, Victoria's capital and the country's second-largest city, but cases have been trending downward in recent days helped by a total lockdown.

China sees 8th day of no locally-transmissions

China reported 16 new Covid-19 cases in the mainland on Sunday, all of which were imported infections involving travellers from overseas, the country's health authority said.

This compared with 12 new Covid-19 cases reported a day earlier, all imported too, and marked the eighth consecutive day of no locally-transmitted cases.

The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 84,967, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,634.

The National Health Commission said in a statement that 27 new asymptomatic Covid-19 cases – patients who are infected with the coronavirus but not exhibiting any symptoms – compared with 15 such cases reported a day earlier.

Trump authorises convalescent plasma treatment

President Donald Trump announced the emergency authorisation of convalescent plasma for Covid-19 patients, in a move he called “a breakthrough,” one of his top health officials called “promising,” and other health experts said needs more study before it's celebrated.

The announcement came after days of White House officials suggesting there were politically motivated delays by the Food and Drug Administration in approving a vaccine and therapeutics for the disease that has upended Trump’s reelection chances.

Brazil registers 3.6 million cases

Brazil reported 23,421 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 494 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said.

Brazil has registered 3,605,783 cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll from Covid-19 has risen to 114,744, according to ministry data, in the world's worst coronavirus outbreak outside the United States.