WHO reports third straight daily record in Covid-19 cases

The World Health Organization's coronavirus dashboard on Sunday showed a third consecutive daily record high in the number of new confirmed cases, report agencies.
The WHO's complete figures for Saturday showed that 465,319 cases were confirmed to the UN health agency during the day, topping the 449,720 recorded on Friday and the 437,247 logged on Thursday.
However On Sunday 406,580 people were infected globally, according to Worldometer tally. More than 43.43 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 1,160,381have died.
The WHO has warned that some countries are on a "dangerous track", with too many witnessing an exponential increase in cases.
Within each week, the pattern of cases being reported to the WHO tends to spike towards Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and dip around Tuesday and Wednesday.
Nearly half of Saturday's new cases were registered in the WHO's Europe region, which logged a one-day record high of 221,898 cases.
In total, more than nine million cases have now been registered in the region.
Another report adds: A number of European countries are putting into place new restriction measures as a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates across the continent.
France reported a daily record of 52,010 new cases on Sunday, two days after becoming the second Western European country to register more than 1 million coronavirus cases, according to the Public Health Agency.
France may be experiencing 100,000 new COVID-19 cases per day -- twice the latest official figure -- Professor Jean-François Delfraissy, who heads the scientific council that advises the government on the pandemic, told RTL radio on Monday.
"There is probably more than 50,000 cases per day. We estimate, on the scientific committee, that we are more in the region of 100,000 cases per day," said Delfraissy.
France, the euro zone's second-biggest economy, is currently examining whether to tighten lockdown measures further to curb the resurgence of the COVID-19 virus, having already imposed night-time curfews on major cities including Paris.
The spokesmen for Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and President Sergio Mattarella both said that they tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, when the number of COVID-19 infections topped 20,000 for the first time in Italy in a 24-hour span.
Spainish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Sunday announced a state of emergency, days after the country became the first EU member to pass the 1-million-infection mark.
Also on Sunday, another 19,790 people in Britain tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the national tally to 873,800, with 44,896 coronavirus-related deaths, according to official figures.
The latest figures came as British doctors raised grave concerns about the pandemic situation in the autumn and winter period.
Meanwhile, cases have also risen strongly in Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria and Lithuania, some of which have reported record daily surges in infections in recent days. Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said on his Facebook page on Sunday that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
Another report adds: Hospitals in many Iranian provinces are running out of capacity to handle COVID-19 cases, health authorities say, with novel coronavirus now killing around 300 people a day or one person every five minutes.
Report from New Delhi adds:: Days after the BJP stoked a controversy with the announcement of free COVID vaccine for poll-bound Bihar, Indian Union Minister Pratap Sarangi said that that all people of the country will be given free coronavirus vaccine.
Notably, the BJP has included the promise of providing the COVID vaccine (once it has been cleared by the ICMR) free of cost in its manifesto issued for the Bihar assembly elections.
Meanwhile, Sarangi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced that all people will be provided free of cost vaccines. "An estimated Rs 500 odd will be spent on vaccination of each person", he stated.
Another report adds: Johnson & Johnson's first batches of its Covid-19 vaccine could be available for emergency use as soon as January, Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, the company's head of public health research and development, said in a presentation at the World Health Summit.
The timeline matches that previously given by the U.S. drugmaker, which said on Friday it plans to restart a large late-stage trial of the vaccine that had been paused due to safety concerns. The 60,000-person study is expected to have initial results by the end of the year.