BEIJING, December 31 (Xinhua) – The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
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STOCKHOLM – Sweden has reported four cases of a new, more contagious COVID-19 variant that was first discovered in the UK, the country’s public health authority confirmed on Wednesday.
“We always expected to find more cases of this new virus strain. This shows that our increased efforts to analyze and handle cases have been fruitful,” said state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell in a written statement.
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LIMA – Peruvian officials on Wednesday warned citizens not to lower their guard against COVID-19 in the middle of a second wave of infections.
At a press conference, Prime Minister Violeta Bermudez urged the public to continue to follow the sanitary measures adopted by the Ministry of Health, including the use of face masks, social distancing, hand washing and large gatherings.
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LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles County said Wednesday that the most populous U.S. county has crossed its own dismal threshold of 10,000 deaths from COVID-19.
The county reported 274 more coronavirus-related deaths on Wednesday, leading to the number of deaths since the pandemic broke out to 10,056, according to the latest data published by the county’s director of public health Barbara Ferrer during an online conference.
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BEIJING – China announced on Thursday that it had granted a conditional marketing authorization for its first self-developed COVID-19 vaccine.
The inactivated vaccine, which was approved by the National Medical Products Administration, was developed by Beijing Biological Products Institute Co., Ltd. under the China National Biotec Group, which is affiliated with Sinopharm.
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Rome – Italy plans to vaccinate 10 to 15 million of its approximately 60 million citizens against COVID-19 by April 2021, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Wednesday.
At a press conference at the turn of the year, Conte said that during Italy’s mass vaccination campaign, the first group of people to be inoculated will be the country’s 1.8 million doctors, nurses and nursing homes and staff.
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BUENOS AIRES – Argentina registered 11,765 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, taking the national number of 1,613,928, the Ministry of Health said.
The ministry also reported 145 more deaths from the disease, bringing the nationwide death toll to 43,163.
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SAO PAULO – Brazil registered 1,194 deaths from the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the last 24 hours, which increased the number of deaths to 193875, the Ministry of Health said on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, tests detected 55,649 more cases, raising the nationwide sum to 7,619,200, it said.
Source: sn.dk