The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABUJA — The Nigerian government on Thursday directed all schools to reopen on Jan. 18 despite a recent spike in COVID-19 cases in the country.
The directive followed a comprehensive appraisal of a school resumption proposal by stakeholders, Ben Goong, spokesperson for the Nigerian education ministry, told reporters.
WASHINGTON — U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday unveiled a 1.9-trillion-dollar COVID-19 relief bill, which includes another round of direct payments to individuals, aid for state and local governments, increased unemployment benefits, as well as more funding for testing and vaccine distribution.
Calling the recently approved 900-billion-dollar bipartisan relief package “an important first step,” Biden said in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware Thursday night that “we need more action, more bipartisanship, and we need to move fast.”
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil recorded more than 1,000 deaths from the coronavirus for the third consecutive day, reporting 1,131 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the national death toll to 207,095, the government said Thursday.
According to the Ministry of Health, 67,758 new cases were registered in the past day, the third day in a row with more than 60,000 infections, raising the total caseload to 8,324,294.
SEOUL — South Korea reported 513 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Thursday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 71,241.
The daily caseload stayed below 600 for five straight days, after posting 451 on Jan. 11. It peaked at 1,240 on Dec. 25 last year.
CANBERRA — A scientist who led the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has warned Australia against delaying its rollout.
The Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology recently called on the Australian government to pause its planned rollout of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccines, saying it may not be effective enough to generate herd immunity to the virus.
HARARE — A total of 47 COVID-19 deaths were reported in Zimbabwe on Thursday, the highest daily figure since the onset of the pandemic in the country last March.
To date, the pandemic has killed 636 people in the country, according to the Ministry of Health and Child care.
BEIJING — The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported 144 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, of whom 135 were locally transmitted and the rest arrived from outside the mainland, the National Health Commission said Friday.
Of the locally transmitted cases, 90 were reported in Hebei, 43 in Heilongjiang, and one each in Guangxi and Shaanxi, the commission said in its daily report
