21/06/2020
COVID-19 UPDATE
June 21, 2020 @11:55
*Between 5% and 7%' of people in England have had virus (BBC)
Sir Ian Diamond, the UK's National Statistician at the Office of National Statistics (ONS), says blood tests to look at the proportion of the population with antibodies suggest between 5% and 7% of the population - or around 3.5 million people in England - either have or had coronavirus, or have natural antibodies to it.
Prof Diamond says there is a "real gradient in health and mortality towards the most disadvantaged members of society" and that BAME people - black, Asian, and minority ethnic - are more highly concentrated towards that more disadvantaged end of society.
But he reports that higher rates of coronavirus deaths in certain groups are not just to do with disadvantage alone.
*South Korea local infections rise
South Korea is the latest country to report a rise in locally transmitted infections after virtually eliminating the coronavirus.
A further 48 cases were confirmed on Sunday, most of which were local infections, as the country tries to curb outbreaks in the capital Seoul and Daejeon, two of the country's largest cities. Imported cases of the virus have fallen.
The increase brings South Korea's total caseload to 12,421, a relatively low number by international standards. No new deaths were reported, so the total remained 280.
The country has been praised for its aggressive test-and-trace regime, which has been credited with keeping infections down to manageable numbers.
But as the country eased its lockdown in April, clusters of infections began to take root once again in cities.
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*Hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses available for 2021(WHO)
“If we’re very lucky, there will be one or two successful [vaccine] candidates before the end of this year,” said Soumya Swaminathan, WHO chief scientist. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Thursday it was seeking to produce several hundred million coronavirus vaccine doses by the end of the year 2020, and at most two billion doses by the end of 2021, according to a FOX news report. The organization, which is part of the United Nations, also noted that it was currently deciding who is eligible to receive the first batch of doses, based on specific criteria among the potential patients.
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*Italy’s sewage water shows SARS-CoV-2 present prior to reported outbreak in Wuhan
Italian researchers have found traces of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in sewage wastewater that indicates that the virus may have been in circulation since December 2019. This controversial discovery shows that even before the first case was reported in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, the virus had already arrived in northern Italy.
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