Medicine

The truth is that the coronavirus, like all viruses, is transmitted at all hours of the day, all around the world - despite initial speculation or hope - regardless of the season. It is the height of summer and Greece has more cases per day than it had in the spring.

The European Commission has concluded exploratory talks with Johnson & Johnson to buy 200 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the EU executive and the U.S. pharmaceutical company said on Thursday.

A puzzling new outbreak of the coronavirus in New Zealand's largest city grew to 17 cases on Aug. 13, with officials saying the number will likely increase further.

And a lockdown in Auckland designed to extinguish the outbreak could be extended well beyond an initial three days.

Turkey plans to re-open schools on Sept. 21 with measures in place to counter the coronavirus after three months of online courses for the new education year, Education Minister Ziya Selçuk said on Aug. 11.

Italy ordered travellers arriving from Croatia, Greece, Malta and Spain to be tested for Covid-19 on Wednesday and added Colombia to a list of countries under a complete travel ban amid growing concern over new infections.

Kon told RTS that the numbers still show that we have no "zero" situation anywhere.
He pointed out that the creation of collective immunity without vaccination would take several years, so much is expected from the vaccine.
"Miracle is expected from a vaccine, and miracles generally don't happen", Kon pointed out.

COVID-19-associated hospitalization rate has been declining but severe infection care is rising in Turkey, the health minister has said.
"There has been a 32 percent decline in hospitalization over the past three days," Fahrettin Koca wrote on Twitter on Aug. 11.

It took six months for the world to reach 10 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus. It took just over six weeks for that number to double.

The worldwide count of known COVID-19 infections climbed past 20 million on Aug. 10, with more than half of them from just three countries: the U.S., India and Brazil, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Australia's Northern Territory will be closed to visitors from virus hotspots for a further 18 months to protect its large and vulnerable Aboriginal population, authorities said Tuesday.

The sparsely populated northern region is home to roughly 250,000 people -- 30 per cent of whom are Aboriginal -- according to government figures.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced the registration of the world's first vaccine against coronavirus infection.

"As far as I know, this morning, for the first time in the world, a vaccine against COVID-19 was registered," the president said. He added that one of his daughters has already been vaccinated and is feeling well.