Coronavirus: What's happening around the world on Aug. 31

The latest:

• U.S. coronavirus cases pass sixmillion as Midwest, schools face outbreaks.
• Detroit honours COVID-19 victims with public park memorial.
• Portugal Communist Party gets OK for 16,500 people at event, prompting outcry.
• Ottawa signs agreement in principle for up to 114million doses of possible COVID-19 vaccine from two U.S. drug companies.
• Some Russian teachers fear back-to-school shots of "Sputnik V"COVID-19 vaccine.
• British authorities say 16 coronavirus cases have been linked to a flight from Greece.
• Paris to make free COVID-19tests available in the capital.
• New COVID-19rules take hold in South Korean capital.

U.S. cases of the novel coronavirus have passed six millionas many states in the Midwest reportincreasing infections, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota have recently reported record one-day increases in new cases, while Montana and Idaho are seeing record numbers of currently hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Nationally, metrics on new cases, deaths, hospitalizations and the positivity rates of tests are all declining, but there are emerging hot spots in the Midwest.

Many of the new cases in Iowa are in the counties that are home to the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, which are holding some in-person classes. Colleges and universities around the country have seen outbreaks after students returned to campus, forcing some to switch to online-only learning.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday said his state was sending a SWAT teamto a State University of New York (SUNY) campus in Oneonta, in upstate New York, to contain a COVID-19 outbreak. Fall classes, which started last week at the college, were suspended for two weeks after more than 100 people tested positive for the virus, about three per cent of the total student and faculty population, SUNY chancellor Jim Malatras said.

"We have had reports of several large parties of our students at Oneonta last week, and unfortunately because of those larger gatherings, there were several students who were symptomatic of COVID," hesaid.

Across the Midwest, infections have also risen after an annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D., drew more than 365,000 people from across the country from Aug. 7 to 16. The South Dakota health department said 88 cases have been traced to the rally.

More than eight months since the country'sfirst case, the United States continues to struggle with testing. The number of people tested has fallen in recent weeks.

Many health officials and at least 33 states have rejected the new COVID-19 testing guidance issued by the Trump administration last week that said those exposed to the virus and without symptoms may not need testing.

Public health officials believe the United States needs to test more frequently to find asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers to slow the spread of the disease.

WATCH | Politicization of FDA could hurtcredibility, epidemiologist says:

Politicization of FDA could undermine credibility, epidemiologist says

4 years ago

Duration 1:00

If the U.S. FDA grants emergency authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine before key trials are complete, due to pressure from the Trump administration, it could damage the agency's credibility, according to Dr. Christopher Labos.

The United Statesleads the world withthe most recorded coronavirus infections with more than six million cases, followed by Brazil at nearly 3.9 million and India with 3.6 million cases.

The U.S. also has themost coronavirus-related deaths in the world at more than 183,000, followed by Brazil at 120,000 and India at 64,000.

In Detroit, an island park has become an extraordinary memorial garden, with cars packed with families on Monday slowly passing hundreds of photos of city residents who have died from COVID-19.

Mayor Mike Duggan declared it Detroit Memorial Day to honour the 1,500-plus city victims of the pandemic. Hearses escorted by police led solemn all-day processions around Belle Isle Park in the Detroit River after bells rang across the region at 8:45 a.m.

More than 900 photos submitted by families were turned into large posters and staked around Belle Isle, revealing the crushing breadth of the virus.

What's happening with coronavirus in Canada

As of 6p.m. ET on Monday,Canada had 128,948confirmed and presumptive coronavirus cases. Provinces and territories listed 114,158of those as recovered or resolved. ACBC News tallyof deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC's reporting stood at 9,163.

Canada's federal government announced on Monday that it has signed an agreement in principle with two U.S. drug companies, securing up to 114 million doses of potential COVID-19 vaccines under development.

Maryland-based biotechnology company Novavaxannounced on Monday that it has struck a deal to produce 76 million doses of a vaccine it is workingonfor the Canadian government, should the vaccine ever get Health Canada approval.

Later in the day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeauannounced it has signed another deal with U.S. drug company Johnson & Johnson to supply up to 38 million doses of the company's potential vaccine.

Canada has now secured access to four of the leading vaccine candidates, including agreements already reached withPfizer and Moderna. Pfizer will supply a minimum of 20 million doses of its vaccine candidate, whileModernawill supply up to 56 million doses.

WATCH | Quebec premier encourages citizens to 'be careful' this fall:

Quebec premier urges renewed discipline around coronavirus

4 years ago

Duration 0:45

The number of coronavirus cases is rising in many regions and sectors of Quebec society and may threaten children's return to school, warned Quebec Premier Franois Legault.

Novavax's vaccine is known as a"protein subunit" vaccine, which has the advantage of being manufacturedfaster than some other types of vaccinebut generally doesn't produce as strong an immune response as some other potential options.

The companyreleased promising resultsof a very small clinical trial earlier this month, which showed itproduced higher levels of the antibodies in healthy volunteers after two doses than those found in recovered COVID-19 patients.

The company plans tostart much larger late-stage clinical trials soon, and told Reuters last month that if all goes well, it expects it could obtain regulatory approvals as early as December. The company said Monday that the vaccine, should it work and be safe, would be available to Canadians as early as the second quarter of 2021.

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Here's what's happening around the world

According to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, the global total ofconfirmed coronavirus cases is now more than 25.3million.More than 848,084people havedied, while 16.6 million haverecovered.

Health authorities in Portugal are allowing the country's Communist Party to let 16,500 people into its annual open-air festival next weekend an unusually high number for a gathering in Europe amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The permit has caused an outcry because officials have for months slashed the number of people allowed into other public events, forcing many of them to cancel.

The announcement came as the centre-left Socialist government is seeking political support from other parties, including the Communists, for its 2021 spending plan.

WATCH | WHO's Dr. Maria Van Kerkhovedescribes the new normal:

Our new normal includes physical distancing, WHO's Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove says

4 years ago

Duration 2:34

The World Health Organization's technical lead for COVID-19 says controlling the coronavirus is clearly possible, but people need to make modifications to their daily lives to keep themselves and others safe.

The festival, called Festa do Avante, features concerts and political speeches in a fenced-off area of countryside south of Lisbon. In past years it has drawn some 100,000 people over three days.

Authorities in the United Kingdomsay 16 coronavirus cases have been linked to a flight that brought U.K. tourists back from Greece, and everyone aboard has been told to self-isolatefor two weeks.

Public Health Wales says it is contacting almost 200 people who were aboard the Tui flight from the Greek island of Zante to Cardiff, Waleson Tuesday.

Gwen Lowe of Public Health Wales says 30 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the last week among people who returned from Zante on several flights. She says the number is expected to rise.

The U.K. requires people arriving from overseas to quarantine for two weeks, unless they are coming from one of more than 70 countries and territories considered at low risk from the coronavirus. Greece is on the exemption list.

The Paris local municipality said on Monday that it would look to make free COVID-19 testing available in all of the capital's 20 districts, or arrondissements, as authorities battle against signs of a re-emergence of the virus in France.

The Paris mayor's office said in a statement that from Monday onward, there would be three permanent laboratories set up to conduct free COVID-19 tests, as well as two other mobile laboratories that would go around the capital.

France's new COVID-19 infections surged by almost 50 per centin August, which recorded the highest monthly tally since the beginning of the outbreak earlier this year, while hospitalizations for the disease are slowly increasing.

The country's health authorities reported 3,082 additional cases over the past 24 hours, sharply down from a caseload of above 5,000 each on the two previous days, howeverMonday figures always tendto dip as there are fewertests conducted on Sundays.

The surge of new cases has led authorities to re-impose some containment measures, such as making face masks mandatory in the streets, shops and public transportation of almost all the country's main cities. As of Tuesday, masks will also be compulsory in workplaces.

In Russia, a small independentteachers' union is urging members not to be coerced into accepting shots of the "Sputnik V" coronavirus vaccine.

Moscow clinics last week began receiving supplies of the vaccine, which has been approved for use inside Russia even though the final Phase III tests, involving 40,000 people, began only last Wednesday.

WATCH | Doubts surround Russia'sCOVID-19 vaccine:

Doubts surround Russias coronavirus vaccine

4 years ago

Duration 3:14

Russian President Vladimir Putin says a locally developed COVID-19 vaccine has been given regulatory approval after less than two months of testing on humans, but there are concerns safety could have been compromised for speed.

From September, doctors and teachers will be among the first to be offered the vaccineon a voluntary basis, officials have said.Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has said shots of the vaccinewill be made mandatory for military personnel.

Ahead of Russian schools reopening on Sept. 1, the teachers' union Uchitel has launched an online petition against making the vaccine mandatory for teachers before all clinical trials are complete. "It's likely that school principals will be under pressure for everyone to be vaccinated," the petition says.

Uchitel represents only about 700 of Russia's 1.2 million school teachers, a senior union official said, but it says nearly 1,400 people have signed its petition.

Private tuition centres shut for the first time in South Korea's capital on Monday and traffic was light on the first working day of tighter physical-distancing rules aimed at halting a second wave of novel coronavirus infections.

South Korea took the unprecedented step on Friday of restricting the operation of restaurants, coffee shops and so-called cram schools in the greater Seoul area, with churches, nightclubs and most public schools having already closed.

The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 238 new cases as of midnight on Sunday, mostly in Seoul and surrounding regions, the 18th day of triple-digit rises in daily infections.

A more infectious mutation of the novel coronavirus has been found in Indonesia, the Jakarta-based Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology said on Sunday, as the Southeast Asian country's caseload surges.

The "infectious but milder" D614G mutation of the virus has been found in genome sequencing data from samples collected by the institute, deputy director Herawati Sudoyo told Reuters, noting that more study is required to determine whether that was behind the recent rise in cases.

The strain, which the World Health Organization said was identified in February and has been circulating in Europe and the Americas, has also been found in neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia.

The state at the epicentre of Australia's second wave of COVID-19 infections said on Monday the number of new cases fell to a near two-month low, allowing authorities to detail in a week's time how stringent lockdown measures will be lifted.

Victoria said it has detected 73 new COVID-19 infections in the past 24 hours, the lowest since July 3.

At the same time, the countryreported a record daily rise in COVID-19 deaths on Monday, as Victoria said its COVID-19 death toll rose by 41, including 22 fatalities thatcame from aged care facilities in the weeks leading up to Aug 27. Australia's previous one-day record for COVID-19 deaths was on Aug. 25 when 25 people died.

In neighbouring New Zealand, schools and businesses reopened in Auckland on Monday after the lifting of a lockdown to contain the resurgence of the coronavirus, but face masks were made mandatory on public transport across the country.