generalspeaking

Record Worldwide Daily COVID Increase

"Certainly the numbers are increasing because the epidemic is developing in a number of populous countries at the same time and across the whole world."
"Some of that increase may be attributed to increased testing ... and certainly countries like India are testing more. But we do not believe that this is a testing phenomenon."
"There still are relatively low tests per population, and the positivity rates for testing are still quite high overall. From that perspective, we would say that this trend is not reflective of exhaustive testing, but probably underestimating the actual number of cases."
"I'm not 100 percent sure about the age profile, but I've seen the reports that some of this is among younger people. That may reflect the fact that  younger people are more mobile and they are getting out and taking advantage of the reductions in restrictions of movement .... "
"What is clear is that the increase is not entirely explained through just increased testing."
Mike Ryan, emergencies expert, World Health Organization

There are "worrying increases" of novel coronavirus cases in Latin America. Brazil in particular is seen by the World Health Organization as a country whose control of the outbreak is particularly questionable even as the number of SARS-CoV-2 infections have been soaring in a number of major countries simultaneously. Over 183,000 new cases of the new coronavirus were recorded on Sunday, the most in a single day since the December date of the outbreak, according to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The nine million mark of global cases of COVID-19 was passed on Monday, identifying the United States and China reporting a new wave of outbreaks. They're not the only countries alarmed at the resurging epidemic hurling itself into their plans to reopen their shattered economies, leaving the future of international trade and individual nations' capacity to withstand much more damage, in question.

A leap in coronavirus cases in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Panama, Bolivia and Guatemala, along with Brazil, which has itself passed the one million mark of infections among its population, is concerning for the WHO.

Specimens tested for COVID-19, LifeLabs The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

Brazil's outbreak is now counted second to that of the United States, where Brazil reported a record 54,000 cases in the most recent 24-hour period. As Latin America's largest, most populous country, Brazil has often recorded over 1,000 deaths in the space of a day in the last month.

President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of his nation's crisis has gained him wide criticism in the face of the crisis.

"Great upticks" in cases in a number of American states particularly concerns Mr. Ryan, who attributes the increase to a young generation of Americans feeling themselves impervious to harm.

And in Germany, where the reproduction rate of the virus has suddenly risen to 2.88 on Sunday, considerably higher than the target maximum level of one transmission per person required to contain the disease, the latest statistics stand out as particularly worrisome.