In this file photo, the UN logo is seen in the corridors of the United Nations headquarters in New York City. (PHOTO / AFP)

WASHINGTON / RIO DE JANEIRO / SOFIA / SANTIAGO / CAIRO / ADDIS ABABA / LYON / BERLIN / RABAT - World leaders will not be coming to New York for their annual gathering in September for the first time in the 75-year history of the United Nations because of the coronavirus pandemic, a UN spokesperson confirmed on Thursday.

The General Debate of the General Assembly, traditionally the most high-profile UN event of the year, will be a slimmed-down affair this September, with world leaders staying away from New York, and contributing set-piece speeches via video link, Reem Abaza, spokesperson for the president of the General Assembly, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, told reporters at a press briefing.

The new virtual format is largely due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with many countries continuing to grapple with the health, social and economic fallout from the crisis.

While the number of new cases of COVID-19 in New York has dramatically fallen, since the city was the global epicenter of the pandemic in April, the United States as a whole has 4 million reported cases, higher than any other country.

Abaza said that each member state, observer state, and the European Union, was invited to submit a pre-recorded video, delivered by its designated high-level official, which will be played in the General Assembly Hall.

The hall will not be empty, Abaza explained, and the videos will be introduced by a representative of each state, who will be physically present.

The same procedure will apply for a series of special high-level sessions scheduled to take place, including a commemoration of the landmark 75th anniversary of the United Nations; a summit on biodiversity; and a meeting to commemorate, and promote, the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

Health care workers prepare a COVID-19 test sample before a person self-administered a test at the COVID-19 drive-thru testing center at Miami-Dade County Auditorium in Miami as the novel coronavirus pandemic continues, July 23, 2020. (David Santiago / Miami Herald via AP)

US

The United States on Thursday recorded more than 1,100 deaths from COVID-19, marking the third straight day the nation passed that grim milestone as the pandemic escalates in southern and western US states.

Chile reported a total of 338,759 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and 8,838 have died from the disease

Fatalities nationwide were recorded at 1,118 on Thursday. Deaths were 1,135 on Wednesday and 1,141 on Tuesday.

Even though deaths are rising in the United States for a second week in a row, they remain well below levels seen in April, when 2,000 people a day on average died from the virus.

The United States on Thursday also passed a total of more than 4 million coronavirus infections since the first US case was documented in January, according to a Reuters tally, reflecting a nationwide escalation of the pandemic.

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The United States took 98 days to reach one million confirmed cases of COVID-19 but just 16 days to increase from 3 million to 4 million, the tally showed. The total suggests at least one in 82 Americans have been infected at some point in the pandemic.

President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would no longer hold part of the Republican Party’s nominating convention in Florida in August because of a spike in coronavirus cases in the state.

Trump already moved part of the convention from North Carolina to Florida because of restrictions on gathering due to the virus, but the surge in cases had led some Republicans to pull out of attending the Florida event.

Trump said it was not the right time to hold a “crowded convention.”

“The timing for this event is not right,” Trump said in a White House press briefing. “It’s just not right with what’s happened recently, the flare up in Florida. To have a big convention it’s not the right time.”

He said he ordered his aides to cancel the event “to protect the American people.”

Republican delegates would still be meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, the original venue for the convention, on the week beginning Aug 24, Trump said.

He added he would still give a convention speech but “in a different form” and said there were plans for so-called “telerallies” during the week.

Residents from the Rocinha slum protest against the lack of water amid the new coronavirus pandemic at the Rocinha slum, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 23, 2020. (SILVIA IZQUIERDO / AP)

Brazil

Brazil on Thursday said it registered 59,961 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24 hours, its second-highest one-day increase.

A day earlier, it reported a record 67,860 new cases in a single day.

The latest new cases took the country's total caseload to 2,287,475, the Health Ministry said.

In the same 24-hour period, 1,311 more patients died of the disease, taking the death toll to 84,082.

Brazil has the world's second-largest outbreak, after the United States, in both numbers of cases and deaths.

Southeast Sao Paulo state, Brazil's most heavily populated, is the epicenter of the national outbreak, with 452,007 cases and 20,894 deaths, followed by Rio de Janeiro, with 151,549 cases and 12,535 deaths, and Ceara, with 156,242 cases and 7,374 deaths.

Bulgaria

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov has gone into quarantine after the head of his political office tested positive for coronavirus late on Thursday, the government press office said in a statement.

Borissov, 61, whose first test for coronavirus came out negative, will stay in self-isolation until the results of a second test taken early on Friday come out, a government spokeswoman said.

Bulgaria has registered a spike in coronavirus infections in the past month. On Friday, the Balkan country had 268 new cases, bringing the total to 9,853 including 329 deaths.

Chile

Chile on Thursday reported a total of 338,759 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and 8,838 have died from the disease.

According to the Health Ministry, in the previous 24 hours, tests detected 2,371 new cases of infection and 116 more COVID-19 patients died.

Of the new infections, 1,841 presented symptoms and 379 were asymptomatic.

Nationwide, the chances of testing positive is 13 percent, Health Minister Enrique Paris said.

The deputy minister for Aid Networks, Arturo Zuniga, said 18,867 tests were carried out in the same 24-hour period, bringing the total number of tests processed since March to 1,464,640.

Authorities reported 18,490 active cases of COVID-19, with 311,431 former patients having recovered in recent months.

Over the weekend, Chile presented a "step-by-step" plan to gradually open up the economy in five stages, from lockdown to transition, preparation, initial opening and advanced opening.  

Egypt

Egypt witnessed on Thursday its highest single-day recoveries from COVID-19, as 991 patients were cured and discharged from hospitals, bringing the total recoveries in the country to 31,066, said the Egyptian Health Ministry.

On the same day, 40 patients died from the novel coronavirus, marking the lowest daily fatalities in nearly six weeks and raising the death toll to 4,480, Health Ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed said in a statement.

Meanwhile, 668 new COVID-19 infections were confirmed on Thursday, increasing the total cases registered in the country since the outbreak of the pandemic to 90,413, he added.

It is the 15th consecutive day for Egypt's COVID-19 daily infections to fall below 1,000, as a record 1,774 infections were seen on June 19.

Ethiopia

The Ethiopia Ministry of Health (MoH) on Thursday evening reported 409 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the country's total confirmed cases to 11,933.

A total of 6,898 tests were conducted in the previous 24 hours, the ministry said.

The ministry said 5,645 patients who tested positive for COVID-19 have so far recovered, including 139 in the last 24 hours.

The ministry further said a total of 6,089 COVID-19 patients are still undergoing medical treatment, out of which 65 are in severe condition.

The Ethiopia Ministry of Health recorded nine COVID-19 related deaths on Thursday. So far, 197 people have died due to COVID-19 related illnesses in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia, Africa's second-most populous nation with about 107 million people, confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on March 13. 

A medical personnel prepares to collect a sample at a COVID-19 free screening booth set up in the arrival hall of the Bordeaux-Merignac international airport in Merignac, southwestern France, on July 23, 2020. (PHILIPPE LOPEZ / AFP)

France

A hospital in the southern French city of Lyon is testing patients with a new machine that enables them to breathe into a tube to see whether they have COVID-19 in a matter of seconds.

The machine is entering a second trial phase after three months of use on dozens of people, among whom about 20 had the virus and the others did not. Unlike the uncomfortable standard PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests, it is not invasive and provides an immediate result.

“It’s the same principle as a classic breathalyser test,” Christian George, director of research at the National Centre of Scientific Research at the la Croix-Rousse hospital, told Reuters.

“The machine will register the molecules in the exhaled air and then detects the traces of the sickness.”

Jean-Christophe Richard, head of intensive care at the hospital, said the objective was to have the machine fully operational by the end of the year.

“This type of quick test means we will have the results straightaway and can then move the patient to the right area of the hospital. As we now have a few efficient treatments, the quicker we can diagnose the quicker we can treat them,” he said.


France's public health authority said on Thursday there had been a significant rise in confirmed, new cases of people suffering from COVID-19, as the number of deaths in the country edged up.

The number of deaths in France from COVID-19 rose by 10 from the previous day to 30,182 - the sixth highest casualty toll in the world.

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Germany

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany has surpassed 204,000, according to data released Friday by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

As of the end of Thursday, the COVID-19 cases reached 204,183 with a daily increase of 815.

The virus-related death tally climbed to 9,111, with 10 more recorded over the past 24 hours, the RKI data showed.

Morocco

A total of 302 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed in Morocco on Thursday, bringing the total infections in the country to 18,264.

The number of the cured patients increased to 15,872 with 236 new recoveries, said Mouad Mrabet, coordinator of the Moroccan Center for Public Health Operations at the Health Ministry, at a press briefing.

The COVID-19 death toll rose to 292 after seven new fatalities were recorded in the last 24 hours, Mrabet said.

Belarus 

Belarus reported 158 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Friday, taking its total to 66,846, according to the country's health ministry.

There have been 316 new recoveries in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 59,755, while five have died of the disease over the period, taking the country's death toll to 524, the ministry added.

Norway 

Norway will re-impose a 10-day quarantine requirement for people arriving from Spain from Saturday after a surge in COVID-19 cases there, while it will ease restrictions on people coming from more counties of Sweden, the government said on Friday.

Residents of the European Union, European Economic Area or Schengen countries with fewer than 20 confirmed cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last two weeks are able to enter Norway without being required to go into self-quarantine.

The latest data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) showed COVID-19 infections in Spain had risen to 30.9 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The Spanish Foreign Ministry did not immediately responded to a Reuters request for comment.

Olaug Bollestad, Norway’s minister of agriculture and food, who announced the government’s decision, said Norwegians should think hard before travelling abroad as countries marked “green” could quickly turn “red”, meaning a requirement for quarantine.

There were about 12,000 Norwegians on holiday in Spain, according to Norway’s public broadcaster NRK.

Portugal

Britain’s decision to persist with a quarantine regime for travellers from Portugal, which has hit the tourism-dependant country hard, is not supported by facts, its foreign minister said on Friday.

Portugal initially won praise for its quick response to the pandemic but a steady count of several hundred new cases per day in and around Lisbon in the past two months has worried authorities at home and abroad.

It was this month left off an initial list of more than 50 countries Britain considered safe enough for travel without coronavirus-related restrictions, and left off again when London updated the list on Friday, adding more countries including Estonia and Slovakia.

Portugal regretted a decision “that is neither substantiated nor backed by the facts,” Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva tweeted.

The need for holidaymakers returning to Britain from Portugal to quarantine for 14 days has particularly affected the southern Algarve region, popular among Britons for its sandy beaches and golf courses.

Other European nations including Ireland, Belgium and Finland have also imposed travel restrictions on Portugal.

Spain, meanwhile, has stayed on the UK safe list, despite a sharp increase in new cases.