Coronavirus Live News: Global Cases Exceed 22m As Wall Street Record Disappears Economic Gloom | World news

Argentina confirmed 6,840 new cases of coronavirus and 172 dead on Tuesday as the country has struggled in recent weeks to contain a rise.

The country’s health ministry said it now had a total of 305,966 cases and 6,048 deaths.
Dr Luis Camera, a member of the Argentine government’s health advisory group, said that although cases, admissions of intensive care and hospital occupancy rates had not yet climbed, they had established themselves at an unsustainable level.

He told Reuters TV that Argentina had hit the ‘altiplano’:

The highest points for the city of Buenos Aires could have been the last days of July and the first days of August. Now the infection curve has stabilized on a plateau but a high plateau. In South America you call it the altiplano, as opposed to the lowlands.

The number of cases of coronavirus worldwide has been reported at 22 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. Deaths from the virus stand at more than 777,000.

Stock markets in Asia-Pacific have opened in positive territory on Wednesday after that historic lead from Wall Street.

The ASX200 in Sydney jumped 0.38% in early trade, while the Kospi in South Korea rose by 1%. Japanese Nikkei was somewhat off.

Kyle Rodda at IG Markets in Melbourne said that despite closing the S & P500 record, much of the heavy lifting was done by Amazon and the Google parent Alphabet, and 4.1 per cent and 2.6 respectively per cent rally.

[It] speaks of the concern that this record is high built on shaky foundations. Only 61% of the stock traded above its 200-day moving average – well below the 81 percent that characterized the last record high.

New cases in Mexico have risen by 5,506 to 531,239, although the government says the actual number of infections is likely to be “significantly higher”.

Deaths from the disease stand at 57,774, the third-highest total in the world after the US and Brazil.

The American postmaster general has tried to take the heat out of the increasing anger over possible disruption of mood via mail in the November elections by announcing that all proposed operational changes to the postal system will be delayed until after the vote.

Chamber member Nacy Pelosi said the promise made by Louis DeJoy, a Trump nominee whose changes threatened to exempt millionaire voters because the pandemic affected the rape of people to vote in person, was “not enough”.

Follow all feeds of this and the Democratic convention on our US live blog:

Testing and contacting are important measures to slow the spread of Covid-19, but are not enough on their own to contain the disease, according to a new study by researchers at Imperial College, London.

The work, which was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases on Wednesday, says that test-and-trace could reduce the reproduction level of the virus, as R-number, by 26%, reports AFP.

But main author Nicholas Grassly, a professor at the School of Public Health of Imperial College, said the test and trace work had to be carried out very quickly in order to be effective. That means

• immediate testing with onset of symptoms and results within 24 hours
• the quarantine of contacts, even within 24 hours;
• and the identification of 80% of cases and contacts.

Very few countries – particularly South Korea, Taiwan and Germany – have come close to staying within these guidelines, and most still fall well short.

The Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, says it will be mandatory for people to have a Covid-19 vaccine once it is available.

Australia had previously revealed that it had agreed a deal with AstraZeneca to supply the potential vaccine from the University of Oxford. People will get the vaccine for free in Australia, Morrison said, calling the vaccine in Oxford “one of the most advanced and promising in the world”.

Meanwhile, the Australian state of Victoria, the epicenter of the country’s second invasion, 216 new cases recorded in the past 24 hours and 12 dead, officials said Wednesday morning.

You can follow all the updates on our Australian liveblog here:

De S&P 500 stock index on Wall Street closed at a record high on Tuesday night marking the complete recovery of shares after the shock of the pandemic.

The record confirms that Wall Street’s most followed index entered a so-called bull market entry – as an upward curve – after its March 23 pandemic hit. It has since increased by about 55% thanks to mass intervention by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve’s central bank. It closed 7.79 points, as 0.23% higher at 3,389.78.

That makes the bear market – as a downward movement – which started the shortest in the S&P 500 at the end of February. The S&P 500 is a broader index of U.S. companies than the Dow Jones industrial average, which represents only 30 companies.

The story of how stock prices have skyrocketed as workers around the world find themselves out of a job rather than on lower pay is one of the central problems of the pandemic. Read more here about how it is pledged in the US:

And from a UK perspective here:

Good morning / afternoon / evening. I’m Martin Farrer and thank you for joining me for live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

Here are the key developments over the past 24 hours:

• Global cases of coronavirus approach 22 million and the worldwide death toll has increased to nearly 776,000. De largest executives of the case counts are the United States and Brazil, according to John Hopkins University. The US has recorded more than 5.45 million cases and more than 170,000 lives have been lost.
• Shares in Wall Street’s S & P500 index hit a high on Tuesday night, completing their recovery from the pandemic shock. The world’s most visited measure of stock prices has increased 55% since its coronavirus ran low on March 23 after enormous stimulus from government and central bank.
• Young people are not invincible in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, warned the World Health Organization. The WHO said that Covid-19 is now being spread mainly by people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, who may not be aware that they are infected, and could potentially transmit the disease to more vulnerable groups. “We see young people ending up in ICUs. Young people are dying from this virus, ”said WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove.
• The Netherlands could “go back to square one” if the country did not manage new infections, warned Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Without any mandatory restrictions, Rutte gave people urgent advice not to hold parties at home and to limit events such as birthdays and other private house gatherings to a maximum of six people.
• A hotel quarantine security guard in Sydney has contracted Covid-19. The guard was likely infected by a U.S. traveler, officials said, asking questions about whether nurses should replace security personnel.
• Ireland’s National restrictions on coronavirus will be “significantly strengthened” until at least 13 September, when cases increase at the fourth highest rate in Europe. After the rise in the last three weeks, people have been urged to restrict visitors to their homes, prevent public transport and restrict their contacts for older people. ‘We are absolutely not at a stage where we can return to normalcy. We are at another critical moment, “said Michael Martin.
• Germany its pandemic furlough scheme is expected to extend to 24 months. Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that she was proposing the short work program runs until 2021. A final decision is expected on August 25th.
• Lebanese authorities announced a new lockdown and an overnight stay to create an impetus for infections. The new measures will take effect on Friday and last just over two weeks. Areas damaged by the devastating explosion that hit Beirut on August 4 will be exempt from the restrictions, as cleaning continues through several weeks.
• South Africa will launch clinical trials this week of a US-developed coronavirus vaccine with 2,900 volunteers. It is the second such study in the African country to be least affected by the disease. Known as NVX-CoV2373, the vaccine was developed by US biotech company Novavax from the SARSCoV2 genetic sequence. It will be administered Wednesday to the first volunteer in the randomized, observer-blind trial.