YANGON, September 21 (Reuters): Myanmar plans to push ahead with a November general election despite calls from opposition parties to postpone it because of a surge in novel coronavirus cases, officials said. The Southeast Asian country reported 671 new cases of the coronavirus on Sunday, its highest daily toll since the beginning of its outbreak in March, taking its total to 5,541 infections and 92 deaths. Myanmar had gone weeks without a case of local transmission before a

TEL AVIV, September 18 (Reuters): Israel entered a second nationwide lockdown on Friday at the onset of the Jewish high-holiday season, forcing residents to stay mostly at home amid a resurgence in new coronavirus cases. A lockdown was imposed in late March and eased in May as new cases tapered off, reaching single-digit lows, but in the past week, new cases have reached daily highs of more than 5,000. Israeli leaders have acknowledge they lifted measures too soon, but the m

MUMBAI, September 11 (Reuters) - Millions of coronavirus cases may have gone undetected in India earlier this year, a research paper estimates, saying that for every confirmed case in May, there were 82 to 130 infections that were not recorded. The paper, published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research, estimated that the country had nearly 6.5 million cases as early as May. Total cases stood at more than 180,000 in late May, according to the health ministry. Infections

YANGON, September 10 (Reuters): Myanmar increased lockdown measures in its biggest city on Thursday after reporting another record daily rise in coronavirus cases, with 120 new infections taking its overall cases past the 2,000 mark. Health authorities expanded a stay-at-home order to nearly half of the townships in greater Yangon, a city of at least 5 million people, where most of the new infections were found. The country has now reported a total of 2,009 COVID-19 cas

MUMBAI, September 9 (Reuters): India reported 89,706 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday, taking its total caseload to 4.3 million, data from the health ministry showed. The South Asian nation has the highest number of coronavirus infections outside of the United States, reporting the largest single-day increases in cases every day for more than a month. Its death rate has remained relatively low, but is starting to show signs of rising, with more than 1,000 deaths repor

MUMBAI, September 8 (Reuters): India recorded its highest daily deaths from the coronavirus in more than a month on Tuesday, even as new infections slowed, data from the health ministry showed. The health ministry said 1,133 people had died of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, the highest since July, taking total mortalities to 72,775. But new daily cases were at 75,809, the lowest in a week. India surprassed Brazil on Monday to become the country with the most number of corona

JAKARTA, September 3 (Reuters): Indonesia posted another day of record high coronavirus cases on Thursday, with 3,622 new infections as the world's fourth-most populous nation grapples to contain a spread that has caused the region's highest COVID-19 death toll. The 134 deaths reported on Thursday took total fatalities to 7,750 from among Indonesia's 184,268 cases. Public health experts say the real number is likely to be higher given Indonesia's low testing rat

MEXICO CITY, August 17 (Reuters): Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday he would volunteer to be among the first to try a Russian vaccine for the novel coronavirus if it proved effective. Moscow's decision to approve the vaccine and produce the first batches after less than two months of human testing has raised concerns among some scientists considering only about 10% of clinical trials are successful. Some scientists have said they fear Russia ma

New Delhi, August 12 (IANS): All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Director Randeep Guleria, one of India's leading medical experts, has asserted that the coronavirus cases in the country have not yet hit their peak or even plateaued. The remarks come at a time when the infections are racing ahead with the country adding at least a lakh new cases every two days. It has logged more than 23 lakh cases and over 46,000 deaths so far since the first case on January 30.

HONG KONG, July 31 (Reuters): Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Friday postponed a Sept. 6 election to the Chinese-ruled city's legislature by a year because of a rise in coronavirus cases, dealing a blow to the pro-democracy opposition which had hoped to make huge gains. The decision came after 12 pro-democracy candidates were disqualified from running for perceived subversive intentions and opposition to a sweeping new security law imposed by Beijing, prompting questions amo

HANOI, July 30 (Reuters): There had been so few coronavirus cases in Vietnam that every patient was known by a number: Patient 17 brought the virus back from Europe after an initial wave of infections from Wuhan. Patient 91, a British pilot, almost died. Now there is a new number that has become an unwelcome marker. Patient 416, a 57-year-old man in the central city of Danang, tested positive for coronavirus last week after more than three months without a new infection in t

RANCHI, JULY 28 (IANS): Jharkhand is witnessing an increase in the number of coronavirus cases due to neighbouring states of Bihar and West Bengal, a senior officer said on Tuesday. Health Secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni pointed out that 65 per cent of the COVID-19 cases in Jharkhand had link either to Bihar or West Bengal. "People suffering from coronavirus are coming to Jharkhand from Bihar due to better treatment here. As many as 65 per cent of corona patients have come fr

BERLIN, July 28 (Reuters): Negligence is behind a steady rise in new coronavirus infections in Germany, the head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases said on Tuesday, adding that it was unclear if the country was experiencing a second wave. "The new developments in Germany make me very worried," Lothar Wieler said during his first news conference in weeks. "The rise has to do with the fact that we have become negligent." The number o

GUWAHATI, July 27 (Reuters): When doctors in a flood-ravaged Indian state urgently sought plasma of a particular blood type for a COVID-19 patient this month, health officials sent a boat for a marooned donor who had recovered from the disease weeks ago. With coronavirus cases surging in Assam and critical medicines running low, local authorities are rolling out the red carpet for now-cured patients - all for their blood plasma believed to be rich in virus antibody, although re

ASUNCION/SANTIAGO, July 26 (Reuters): Coronavirus cases in Latin America for the first time have surpassed the combined infections in the United States and Canada, a Reuters tally showed on Sunday, amid a surge of infections in Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Argentina. The quickly growing number of cases make Latin America the region most impacted by the pandemic globally, with 26.83% of worldwide cases. Latin America now has 4,327,160 total cases of the novel coronaviru

Reuters U.S. coronavirus cases were approaching 4 million on Thursday, with over 2,600 new cases every hour on average, the highest rate in the world, according to a Reuters tally. Infections in the United States have rapidly accelerated since the first case was detected on Jan. 21. It took the country 98 days to reach 1 million cases. It took another 43 days to reach 2 million and then 27 days to reach 3 million. It has only taken 16 days to reach 4 million at a rate of 43 new c

CHENNAI, July 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation): When Bajirao Thengde voiced his fears about going to work after dozens of colleagues fell sick with coronavirus, his boss at a motorbike factory in western India said he should "learn to live with the virus". As India's coronavirus cases exceeded one million last week, unions say similar spikes in infections in reopened factories are putting workers at risk - accusing companies of skimping on health and safety as they rush

MADRID, July 19 (Reuters): Authorities in Catalonia on Sunday urged more than 96,000 people in three towns to stay at home, as coronavirus cases continued to rise in one of Spain's worst-hit regions.   This is in addition to some four million people in the region, including in its capital Barcelona, that were on Friday urged to stay at home as regional authorities toughened their response to the crisis.   In a statement on Sunday, authorities urged people

SYDNEY, July 8 (Reuters): Five million Australians face a heavy police clampdown from midnight on Wednesday to contain a flare-up of coronavirus cases, with checkpoints to be set up around Melbourne to ensure people stay at home.   State police said they would conduct random checks of vehicles on major roads surrounding the country's second most populous city, creating a "ring of steel" as partial lockdowns are reinstated for six weeks to stem a surge in i

BELGRADE, July 8 (Reuters): Dozens of demonstrators and police were injured in overnight rioting in Belgrade, triggered when a crowd stormed Serbia's parliament in protest at plans to reimpose a lockdown following a surge in coronavirus cases.   Footage showed police kicking and beating people with truncheons while protesters pelted officers with stones and bottles, after thousands chanting for the resignation of President Aleksandar Vucic gathered outside the build