Covid-19 has infected more than 310.6M people and killed over 5.5M worldwide. Here are some of the latest coronavirus-related developments:
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
US reports at least 1.13 million Covid cases in day
The United States has reported at least 1.13 million new coronavirus infections, according to a Reuters tally, the highest daily total of any country in the world as the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant showed no signs of slowing.
The previous record was 1.03 million cases on January 3. A large number of cases are reported each Monday due to many states not reporting over the weekend.
The seven-day average for new cases has tripled in two weeks to over 700,000 new infections a day.
Not all states have yet reported on Monday and the final figure is likely to be even higher.
The record in new cases came the same day as the nation saw the number of hospitalised patients also hit an all-time high, having doubled in three weeks, according to a Reuters tally.
There were more than 135,500 people hospitalised with Covid, surpassing the record of 132,051 set in January last year.
About 861,336 people have died from Covid in United States, according to Worldometer tracker.
Mexico's president tests positive for the second time
Mexico's president has announced he has come down with Covid-19 a second time, as coronavirus infections spike in Mexico and virus tests become scarce.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wrote that he tested positive, after he had sounded hoarse at a morning news briefing. He contracted Covid-19 and recovered from it the first time in early 2021.
Two of the president’s Cabinet secretaries, the heads of the Environment and Economy departments, announced they had tested positive in recent days.
Earlier on in the day, the president told Mexicans to just assume they had Covid-19 if they had symptoms. The number of confirmed cases spiked by 186 percent last week. .
US hospitals' Covid-infected staff to stay on the job
Hospitals around the US are increasingly taking the extraordinary step of allowing nurses and other workers infected with the coronavirus to stay on the job if they have mild symptoms or none at all.
The move is a reaction to the severe hospital staffing shortages and crushing caseloads that the omicron variant is causing.
California health authorities announced over the weekend that hospital staff members who test positive but are symptom-free can continue working.
Some hospitals in Rhode Island and Arizona have likewise told employees they can stay on the job if they have no symptoms or just mild ones.
EU ends Omicron travel ban from southern Africa
The European Union ended travel restrictions on flights from southern Africa well over a month after imposing them to in hopes of containing the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The highly contagious variant was first discovered in southern Africa in late November and the 27-nation bloc restricted travel for visitors from that region, where the variant brought on a sudden surge of infections.
Omicron has since become the dominant variant and is responsible in the EU and many other nations for a unprecedent increase in infections. That made the travel ban from southern Africa a moot point.
Peru reports all-time high weekly Covid case count
Peru has reported an all-time high 70,000 Covid-19 infections in the first week of January, a health official told reporters, as a third wave of the pandemic spreads through the Andean nation driven by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Dante Cersso, a government health official, told reporters that the new weekly case count had exceeded the previous record of 67,107 cases during the second week of April of last year.
At the time, Peru was going through a brutal second wave that left the country with the world's worst per-capita death rate, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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(With input from news agency language)
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